"Clinical obesity" describes a dog or cat whose excess adiposity has caused, worsened, or sustained a clinically meaningful abnormality: a patient who needs intervention, not a label assigned from a body condition chart alone. Revised in September 2026 to match the WPOA clinical obesity framework, this article makes the evidence-based, Lancet-aligned case for the term, walks through the four terms and the diagnostic criteria for clinical obesity, and explains why attribution is the step that turns a finding into a diagnosis.