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	<title>The Optimal Dog</title>
	<link>http://www.theoptimaldog.com</link>
	<description>A Blog About Pet Fitness and Wellness</description>
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		<title>Why Lean Muscle Mass Will Make Your Dog Live Longer</title>
		<description><![CDATA[If there is a core principle at the heart of every morsel of health and lifestyle advice that we give away here at VP it could well be this: If you want your dog to live a long and happy life, you must minimize the amount of excess fat in her body. (We&#8217;ve expanded on [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.theoptimaldog.com/2012/10/26/why-lean-muscle-mass-will-make-your-dog-live-longer/</link>
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		<title>Canine Obesity Trends</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It has been my experience that most people believe that they make healthier lifestyle decisions than their generational predecessors. There is a compelling causal narrative at the core of their beliefs: scientific researchers uncover new truths about the world every day; as that newly-discovered information trickles down into the mainstream over time, we all become [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.theoptimaldog.com/2012/09/14/canine-obesity-trends/</link>
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		<title>On Canine Body Fat, Chronic Inflammation, and Adipokines</title>
		<description><![CDATA[At Varsity Pets we beat our anti-body-fat drum loud and proud. Body fat kills dogs. And we want our dogs to live for a long time. So we’re against body fat. The purpose of this article is to explain one of the reasons why body fat is so dangerous, not only for dogs but for [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.theoptimaldog.com/2012/09/01/on-canine-body-fat-chronic-inflammation-and-adipokines/</link>
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		<title>Tackle Canine Obesity in Three Easy Steps</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Obesity kills dogs. It’s that simple, really.  We can spend our time discussing the specific health conditions that have been linked with obesity – nasty stuff like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.  Or we can focus on figuring out how obesity does it’s dirty business – explaining the specific biological processes going on inside an [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.theoptimaldog.com/2012/08/13/tackle-canine-obesity-in-three-easy-steps/</link>
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		<title>The Straight Dope on Canine Color Perception</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It’s easy to forget that the world as it appears to a dog is very different from the world as it appears to you and me. I mean that literally. Because we all “know” that our dogs experience the world differently than we do (at least in the sense that we’ll all agree with that [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.theoptimaldog.com/2012/07/30/the-straight-dope-on-canine-color-perception/</link>
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		<title>Who Cares About Canine Obesity?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[If you spend as much time as I do talking about pet obesity and fitness, you’re bound to run across someone who attempts to defend their overweight dog using some variation of the “so what?” defense: “Yeah, I know he’s overweight, but so what? Look at him &#8212; he doesn’t seem to mind, he’s perfectly [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.theoptimaldog.com/2012/07/23/who-cares-about-canine-obesity/</link>
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		<title>Canine fMRI Scans: The Future Is Bright (Unless You&#8217;re a Celebrity Dog Trainer)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[One reason why celebrity dog trainers and other self-appointed “experts” are so quick to tell you what your dog is thinking or feeling is this: it’s difficult to prove them wrong. As you may have noticed, dogs can’t communicate verbally.  So they’re never going to explicitly tell us what’s going on inside their heads.  Instead, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.theoptimaldog.com/2012/07/13/canine-fmri-scans-the-future-is-bright-unless-youre-a-celebrity-dog-trainer/</link>
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		<title>Is Your Dog Overweight?  Use This Free, At-Home Guide For An Accurate Diagnosis In Five Minutes – Unless You’re Chicken</title>
		<description><![CDATA[On a high level, the chain of reasoning supporting the claim “your dog should lose some body fat” looks something like this: (1) canine overweight and obesity are “bad” for dogs (they shorten lives and amplify suffering); (2) your dog is overweight or obese; therefore (3) your dog should lose some body fat. Most dog [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.theoptimaldog.com/2012/06/08/is-your-dog-overweight-use-this-free-at-home-guide-for-an-accurate-diagnosis-in-five-minutes-%e2%80%93-unless-you%e2%80%99re-chicken/</link>
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		<title>A Vegetarian Diet For Cats and Dogs? [Facepalm.]</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Hang around a fancy boutique pet store long enough and you may run into a bizarre and confounding creature – the pet owner or animal rights advocate who feeds his dog or cat a primarily (or even exclusively) vegetarian diet. These curious critters come in all shapes and sizes.  And while some are elitist snobs, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.theoptimaldog.com/2012/05/04/a-vegetarian-diet-for-cats-and-dogs-facepalm/</link>
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		<title>Hack Your Dog: Upgrade Your Aging Dog’s Brain With Antioxidant Supplementation</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Since we were children, purveyors of folk wisdom have been telling us that “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” For the most part, they’ve been right.  In dogs, as in primates and humans, impaired learning and memory functions correlate with aging.  It’s a sad but true fact that as we grow older our [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.theoptimaldog.com/2012/04/13/hack-your-dog-upgrade-your-aging-dog%e2%80%99s-brain-with-antioxidant-supplementation/</link>
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