Free Watford health checks to battle dog obesity epidemic
11:30am Friday 25th May 2012 in News By Mike Wright
Dogwalkers in Watford will be able to get free health checks for their pets as part of a new scheme to combat the obesity epidemic afflicting the nation’s canine population.
PetCheck units will be in parks in Watford and Garston over the next few weeks to give dog owners advise on what weight and shape their dog should be.
The veterinary charity PDSA said a recent study showed that 58 per cent of dogs in the South East are fed junk food and fatty treats by their owners on a daily basis, leading to ballooning collar lines.
As with humans, obesity in dogs can lead to potentially fatal illnesses such as heart disease, diabetes and arthritis.
Sean Wensley, a PDSA senior veterinary surgeon, said: “These figures highlight the importance of our Petcheck tour in helping owners to have a deeper understanding of their pet’s health and welfare needs and how to meet them.”
The scheme, which is being run by Watford Borough Council and PDSA, will start in Garston Park on Wednesday 6 June, Callowlands Park on Thursday 7 June and Cassiobury Park on Friday 8 June.
All sessions will run from 10am to 5pm.
Source: www.watfordobserver.co.uk
London 2012: Phillips Idowu faces monumental task - coach - BBC News
Olympic silver medallist Phillips Idowu is facing a "monumental battle" to win gold in the triple jump at the London Games, says his coach Aston Moore.
Idowu's main rivals, Frenchman Teddy Tamgho and American Christian Taylor, have better personal bests.
American Will Claye, 20, will also pose a threat to the 33-year-old Londoner.
"I believe it will be a monumental battle of will and talent. You hope that Phillips comes out on top," Jamaican-born Moore told BBC Sport.
"The fourth place could be a jump that would normally have won the competition, but you could finish fourth this year.
"[But] it's an Olympic medal, it's never going to be easy or everyone would be doing it."
At the Beijing Games, Idowu's best jump was 17.62m, but he was beaten into second by 17.67m from Portugal's Nelson Evora, who has been ruled out of the London Games by a stress fracture.
Since then new faces have emerged in the form of 21-year-old world champion Taylor, who beat Idowu in Daegu in August, world championship bronze medallist Claye and 22-year-old Tamgho, whose personal best of 17.98m is third on the all-time list.
"The two American guys are very dangerous," Moore continued. "Sometimes you can have good athletes but you know you've pretty much got their measure. [Yet] these guys are good winners.
"I'm almost forgetting the young French guy Teddy Tamgho, who we haven't heard from yet this year but he's been jumping 17.90s for the last two seasons."
Idowu, who came out on top against his rivals in his opening competition of the season at the Diamond League meeting in Shanghai last weekend, was devastated after coming second in Beijing and Moore says the 2009 world champion's target has not changed.
"The gold - that's what he's preparing for, that's what he's ready for and he will be disappointed with anything other than gold.
"He wanted to win the last one but he came second by 5cm. He wants to put that right on home soil.
"He's a Londoner, a Hackney boy. I think he's going to love it."
UK Athletics' national triple jump coach Moore, himself a former triple jumper for Great Britain, started working with Idowu a few months before the Beijing Olympics and admits he has seen a change in the athlete ahead of London.
"I wouldn't say that pressure is getting to him but certainly with a lot of the athletes, as it's a home Olympics, people are much more focused, and I've noticed that from him," said Moore.
"He's much more focused on what needs to be done and how it needs to be done. My job is to make sure it doesn't become over the top and he starts looking at every last detail. I think together we can manage that quite well.
"Those five years are his most successful so that makes our relationship reasonably tight because I am the person that has helped him through his best period as an athlete."
Moore guided Commonwealth gold medallist Ashia Hansen to a world record and has worked with UK Athletics since 2000, but he admits he will feel the nerves when Idowu lines up for his first jump at the Olympic Stadium in London.
"I'm usually most nervous in the first round, because this is the one. This is the one that sets the scene for everything.
"I want the jump to send a particular message out to every other competitor. So I'm most nervous about that one because I want him to nail it, and then get better from there. Normally my blood pressure and heart rate and everything jump on that one.
"Then, it's work as usual."
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
London 2012 Olympics: Usain Bolt fails to fire in season opener - Daily Telegraph
You could chalk it down to the rarest of off nights, which is obviously the way he was trying to play it afterwards. You could put it down to the capricious Czech weather, with a wind swirling around that made it distinctly parky in the early evening. Indeed, his opponents, like Chambers, all used the weather to explain away the performance.
Yet Bolt himself was making no excuses. He had run into a headwind of 0.8m per sec but still expected to get inside his season’s best 9.82sec, the fastest time in the world this year that he had set earlier in the month in Kingston. He had been talking 9.7sec.
Instead, he sounded just a mite perplexed, unable to understand what had just befallen him. “It was very bad. No excuses. My legs normally feel good, and they drive me along but today I didn’t feel any power. I really can’t argue,” he said.
“It doesn’t bother me but I started the way I don’t usually feel. So that does bother me a little bit. It was going through the motions, really. Normally when I run I can tell what went wrong. I felt really good coming into the race but my first 40 was really, really bad.”
He reckoned he did not know what his rivals would think but Collins made that clear. “This gives you hope to come back and race him again,” he said.
As for Chambers, the search for the qualifying standard must go on to Paris at the start of next month. His time was at least his best since he was given the all-clear to attempt to qualify for the Olympics but, also, finishing behind veteran American Darvis Patton (10.22sec) and Jamaican Commonwealth champion Lerone Clarke (10.26sec) demonstrated the amount of hard work ahead. In the B race, Mark Lewis-Francis won in 10.36sec.
Still, perhaps it is too easy to overly worry about Bolt. He was reflecting here only on the eve of the race that expectations of him are of course always absurd because he has performed so consistently at an extra-terrestrial level. “You have to understand that he is human. He can’t run 9.5 every day,” sympathised Collins.
Nonetheless, this was reminiscent of Bolt’s 2010 season when, battling against injuries, he began to struggle, lost in Stockholm and had to end his season early.
By the end, though, he was still trying to put on a brave face as he was, after all, still a winner. “Even losing one race, losing two races, doesn’t matter. It’s about getting to the Olympics,” he shrugged. “And doing your best.” But this was far, far from his best and you could just imagine Yohan Blake and Tyson Gay rubbing their hands.
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
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