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Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark
Your Pet’s Flea & Tick Meds Are Making Your Family Sick | Dr. Judy Morgan, DVM
01:36:01
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- [00:00]
A
One pet food company, the dogs and cats are spewing bloody vomit and diarrhea, seizuring and dying. I went public with it, got death threats. Purina was the number one. We never were able to find the contaminant. We had some insiders who were giving us information. One of them mysteriously died. I mean, what with pet food? With pet food?
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B
Does Hillary Clinton have a stake in Purina? I'm kidding. The pet industry has convinced millions of owners that their animals will die without constant medication. And most vets are too afraid, pressured or trained inside the system to challenge it. In this episode I'm joined by Dr. Judy Morgan, holistic veterinarian, best selling author and named holistic veterinarian of the decade to expose why heartworm, flea and tick preventatives are not the universal non negotiable necessity pet parents are told they are. And why you should never let a vet bully you into lifelong drugs that may shorten your pet's life. We talk about how the pet food industry actually operates, including cartel level control, intimidation tactics and even death threats. And why most commercial pet food is designed for profit, not longevity. Dr. Judy breaks down what dogs should really be eating, how food alone can heal chronic issues like allergies, paw licking, shedding anxiety and gut disease. And why genetics is often blamed to cover up lifestyle damage. This conversation connects the dots between environmental toxins, lawn chemicals, tap water, vaccines over medication, and the silent ways modern living is accelerating aging in our pets. Most importantly, Dr. Judy lays out the simple rules that can literally double your pet's life expectancy. Watch this episode on the real Alex Clark YouTube channel or culture Apothecary on Spotify. Make sure to leave us a five star review and tell everyone why this is your favorite podcast in the health and wellness space. I mean, duh, who else is talking about holistic pet care? Please welcome holistic veterinarian Dr. Judy Morgan to culture Apothecary. Some people believe that shedding is just normal for dogs. Other people think that shedding is completely dependent on the type of diet your dog has and that it's actually preventable. Where do you land in that debate?
- [02:35]
A
A little bit in the middle.
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B
Okay.
- [02:36]
A
Interestingly, we have long haired dogs now and they shed a little bit but not much. Short haired dogs, we had Dobermans before we had the Cavaliers. They shed incredibly, just all the time. It never seemed to stop. I will say that once I got them off kibble and and dry base diets and put them on high moisture, more species appropriate diets, the shedding Decreased dramatically. But all dogs and cats are going to turn over their coat a couple of times a year. That's just a normal process. But that shedding period should be shortened. It should be within a couple of weeks we turn over the whole coat. We see the same thing in our farm animals. Our horses, particularly the miniatures, they grow about 5 inches of hair for the winter and then it all has to come out in the spring. But we try to make that happen over a period of one to two weeks. Not all year round. Hair everywhere.
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B
I've got friends with golden retrievers and some of them are feeding them raw real food diets. They hardly shed at all.
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A
Exactly.
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B
I have friends that are on the traditional ultra processed food kibble diet with their golden retriever and it is so gross how much they shed. And I, that's why I feel so passionate about real food for pets.
- [03:45]
A
Absolutely.
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B
I think it just contributes to so much. I mean with my dog everybody assumes the shedding must be insane because he's a long haired Pekines and he doesn't shed at all.
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A
Exactly.
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B
So I don't know, I, I think that's fascinating. I think a lot of people don't realize how food is medicine for humans, but food is also medicine for dogs.
- [04:04]
A
Absolutely. And that's really my main platform, that food is medicine. It's also the foundation of life. You cannot out supplement a bad diet. So if your pet is suffering with chronic issues, chronic inflammatory problems, you can give them all the supplements in the world. But if you don't fix the that foundation, you're not going to solve the problem.
- [04:23]
B
When you see excessive shedding in a pet, what does that tell you about a dog's or cat's internal health?
- [04:30]
A
A lot of times it tells me there's not enough moisture in the diet for one thing. Two, their body is undergoing some chronic inflammation, some chronic dis. Ease. Just things are not as optimized as they could be. And so we, we see people say so often, oh, my pet's been eating that low quality, high processed food for years. They're fine, they live to be 15. They lived, but did they thrive? There's a difference between surviving and thriving.
- [05:03]
B
And I say that about humans too. They're like, well, we're living longer. I'm like, and we're also on, you know, seven medication plus starting in our 50s.
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A
Exactly.
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B
That isn't normal. So yeah, you're not even thriving. You're supposed to be able to, to enjoy running around with your grandkids and your family and retirement Age and doing all these fun activities. You're not supposed to be bedridden for 25, 30 years. I mean, and that's how a lot of Americans are living. So we're really seeing, right. A mimic of the chronic disease epidemic that we're seeing in humans, especially in America. We're also seeing that in our pets here too.
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A
100. So if we look back at the 1970s, the average life expectancy for a middle sized dog was about 17 years. Now it's about 10 years. What have we done wrong in the past 55 years that has decreased their lifespan almost by half?
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B
Wow.
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A
And it's really interesting. People will say, oh, he had a good long life. He lived to 10 or 11 or 12. To me, that's half a life. Our dogs are living to 18, 19. My cats are living into their early 20s. I would love to see that be even longer. We all love our pets. They're like our children. And when something happens to them, we're devastated. So why wouldn't we want to have them be with us longer and while they're here with us for that longer period of time, have them be active and energetic and not on seven different medications and suffering with chronic disease and not being able to walk or exercise. So if we can kind of shift the paradigm of what we're doing with our pets, we think that by having all these new medications and being able to do more diagnostics, that we are making things better. But a lot of those medications that are being given to our pets, the pesticides that are being given to our pets, they're shortening their lifespan by a lot and they're causing more trouble than what they're fixing.
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B
Why do so many pets need regular dental cleanings when wild animals rarely have rotted teeth?
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A
It's due to the carbohydrates in the diets. That's a big part of it. So we, we say to people, oh, you know, this dry kibble is going to keep their teeth clean. That is such a fallacy. It's a total myth. Dry kibble doesn't keep your teet clean. That would be like your dentist saying to you, here, eat these crackers every single day. That's the only thing you're ever going to eat. Don't bother brushing your teeth. Your teeth are going to be just fine. You won't have any teeth by the time you're 35, if, if that's what you survived on. So we need people to understand how important dental care is as far as that. Either daily brushing or a daily supplement or chewing raw meaty bones, if you're somebody who can do that with your pets. I have a couple of dogs who don't have very many teeth, so raw, meaty bones are not really in their future. My dog Forest, who has hydrocephalus, when they have hydrocephalus, it's very painful for them to chew on something hard. It causes reverberations through their water in their brain. So we have a lot of breeds that are naturally hydrocephalic, and so they are not able to chew on hard things to keep their teeth clean. So there's a lot of things that go into it, but one of the big myths is that chewing on dry kibble is going to solve dental problems. It actually causes them.
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B
Do you think it's fair to say that we as pet owners are unintentionally accelerating aging in our pets?
- [08:24]
A
Absolutely.
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B
Wow.
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A
Just for so many reasons, over vaccination is just huge. When we first started vaccinating for things like distemper and parvo and rabies, this is what I was taught in vet school. And I I am a dinosaur. So it was a long time ago. But what we were arbitrarily taught was, you have them come in every year for shots. And so we took a key from the dental practices and said, oh, we'll send a reminder that they're due for shots every year. Well, that's a bunch of malarkey. The vaccines last five to seven years or maybe a lifetime, so we don't need to give them every year. And what we need to be doing is saying to people, hey, you need to come in every year or maybe every six months, get that physical exam. A veterinarian can see and feel things in your animal that you can't as the average pet owner. So having that complete physical exam is so critical for prevention. And I'm a huge fan of lab work. So when I had my practices, I would do complete lab work on all of my patients at least twice a year. If they were on any chronic medications, they were getting lab work four times a year. So that's every three months. At first, people balked, and then they started to see the benefits of it, Particularly if you have a pet who's on chronic medications. Those medications can damage the liver, they can damage the kidneys. I want to see that and follow trends and be able to jump on that as soon as we start seeing changes, rather than waiting a year or two years and then saying, oh, my gosh, now he's in Complete liver failure or that drug caused kidney disease. So we want to be very proactive. But I'm not saying to people, hey, come in every year for shots, because I know that they don't need them every year. So we need to change our thinking. The. The chronic use of flea and tick pesticides on our pets, One of the most horrible things we've ever done. We would never feed pesticides to our children and say, here, it'll keep them from being bitten by a mosquito. What a crazy idea.
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B
Yeah, I have a lot of questions about that, actually. That's something that I really want to get into. So when you are feeling an animal in that yearly exam, are there things that you're feeling for as a holistic veterinarian that a conventional vet may not?
- [10:38]
A
Yes. So I practice traditional Chinese veterinary medicine as. As part of my overall. And so we look at things a little bit differently with that. So we look at the tongue color, and we feel the pulses. So there are different qualities in the pulses, different qualities in the tongue color. But because I also do modalities like chiropractic and acupuncture, I'm feeling for tightness in muscles, problems with joint mobility. So extension and flexion of every joint, and a lot of that should be done by a traditional veterinarian as well. And I used to do relief work, so I'd go in a lot of other practices kind of as like the substitute teacher. And I would see a lot of other veterinarians practice. And the complete physical exam ran the gamut from, you know, putting them on the table, listening to their heart, and saying, good to go to something that would take 20 minutes to look at every single piece and part of the animal.
- [11:37]
B
My yearly exam with Mochi lasts about an hour, maybe a little longer.
- [11:41]
A
That is amazing.
- [11:42]
B
She does want me to come in yearly for teeth cleaning because he's got, you know, short head, wide mouth. It's just hard to get back there and do all kinds of stuff. She says teeth are basically perfect, but she's like, just for. To be precautionary, she thinks that he needs to come in for a deep cleaning, go under once a year. I don't know. How do you feel about that?
- [12:02]
A
It depends on the pet. So with our animals, I have, like, Forest, my hydrocephalic guy. He has to go in every year to have a complete dental cleaning, and he probably could use it even more often because he does build up a lot of plaque and tartar. From a Chinese medicine perspective, he has something called a Jing deficiency. And a JING deficiency affects the nervous system, so the brain and spinal cord, which we know he's got issues there. It affects the joints. Some of his joints bend the wrong way, so that's a problem as well. And it affects the teeth. So he's got very poor enamel. Small breed dogs tend to have a lot more dental problems. They don't have enamel that says strong. And a lot of them. It was interesting before I got into holistic stuff and I was in traditional practice, we used to say that a Yorkie that still had any teeth left in his head at seven years old was doing amazingly well because they're just a breed that's known to have a lot of dental issues. So for instance, those golden retrievers, they may never have to have a dental cleaning. They just, especially if they're on the right diet and if they're chewing on something and getting any kind of home dental care, a lot of those large breeds will never have an issue. So when we compare it to animals in the wild, Yorkies don't live in the wild, Pekingese don't live in the wild. So we have unfortunately genetically bred these animals to have a lot of these issues. So it really is an individualized thing. Like it really wouldn't matter if I brushed Forrest's teeth twice a day, gave him dental supplements, gave him whatever he could to chew on, which is not much. He would still need to go in and have to have dental cleanings, which I'm not thrilled about putting him under anesthesia to have that done. But the non anesthetic dental cleanings are a waste of money. 75% of dental disease is below the gum line. So they're going to have to be sedated and get radiographs of their, their tooth roots, their jaw structure. That's the only way you know what is going on in that mouth. So we used to have a lot of clients who would get that, you know, non anesthetic dental cleaning and think that everything was great. We'd bring the animal in, take X rays and find that there were roots that were being reabsorbed, there were broken teeth, all kinds of things going on that you're not going to find just by scraping the tartar off.
- [14:19]
B
That's super important to know. And I know none of us want to be wasting money on pets for sure. So that's really good info. From your perspective, what are we doing that's shortening a dog's life the most?
- [14:29]
A
Three together? Okay, Wrong diet, over vaccination and overuse of chemicals. So Whether that's antibiotics, anti inflammatories, flea and tick pesticides. So it's, it's kind of a three pillar thing. We need to kind of back off and really look at everything with a critical eye. And one of the things that I think is hugely important is when you go to your veterinarian and you know, whether you're there for a problem or something, routine, if they're prescribing something for your pet, ask them what the potential side effects are. It's really interesting in human medicine when you go to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription, you get pages of information on these are the potential side effects, interactions with other drugs, what to watch for, when to take it. In veterinary medicine, you're handed a bottle of pills and just told to give it twice a day.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And nobody ever talks about the side effect effects. So what I tell people, before you accept any medication for your pet, take your phone out of your pocket, look up the side effects. It's very easy to just put that in your search engine side effects of xyz, look at what those are and then ask questions about that. Because all too often we just look at the person in the white coat and say, well, they said it was safe, so it must be. I've even gone through this with my mother. She was in the hospital and a nurse came in to hang three bags on her IV pole. And I said, what are those? We hadn't even seen a doctor yet. And I said what are those? She said the doctor prescribed these three antibiotics. And I said for what? The doctor hasn't seen her yet. So I said no. And then when the doctor came in, I said she was a young resident. And I said, do you know the side effects of those three antibiotics you want to hang on my mom's pole? And she said, not off the top of my head. I said, funny thing I do. Yeah, so I'm not going to let you do any of that until you look it up on your phone right now in front of me and read me the side effects effects. And after she did, I said, would you do that to your 84 year old mother? And she went, well, maybe not. And I, I said, okay, well we're not going to do that. And so I chose one out of the three, the one that I thought was going to be the most helpful and it did solve the problem. But we have to be the advocates for our pets and our family members and that's very difficult for the layperson who doesn't know anything about the medications. But the great news is we can all look those things up.
- [16:55]
B
Are candles and air fresheners harming our pets?
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A
Oh, yes, absolutely. So I actually did a presentation for a summit on air quality. And VOCs are a huge problem for our pets. Cats and birds are super, super sensitive. So for instance, if you cook with Teflon cookware, don't have birds anywhere in your kitchen because it'll. The fumes are going to kill them, which should tell you something about what that's doing to you. That's why they had the canaries in the coal mines, because the canaries knew when the the air quality was not good, they dropped dead. And that was little warning, get out of the mine. So we have that with birds and with cats. So a lot of people will have potpourri or essential oil, candles, or, you know, incense and things that they burn. And particularly if their cat is in a small room and there's not good ventilation, they can go into liver failure. So essential oils are amazing. If they're good essential oils and they are pet safe and they've been tested to know that they're pet safe VOCs. Our cats have something like 5 million olfactory receptors to our one, and dogs have like 60 million to R1.
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B
Wow.
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A
And those olfactory receptors are not just the smell receptors. They're not just in the nasal passages. They're in every organ in the body. So when we're using all these artificial fragrances and artificial air fresheners, it's really toxic for them.
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B
And buying new toxic furniture and our
- [18:26]
A
windows are closed, our doors are closed,
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B
and so all of the stuff is off. Gassing in your living room, your pet is just breathing it in and it's affecting them more than you.
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A
Absolutely. And so like, cigarette smoke is a huge issue for pets because it settles down and our pets spend most of their time on the floor. Studies have shown that cats actually concentrate those toxins much more than dogs. And that's because cats are kind of on everything. And then they're grooming themselves so much. So when we test the blood of cats and dogs and people, we find that the toxins are highest in cats and then dogs and then people.
- [19:08]
B
So if you are somebody who is just hanging on to Clorox and conventional cleaners with a death grip, and you're like, I have to use conventional cleaners, Because I feel like that's how I know my house is clean. If it's smells clean with the chemical smells, how is that affecting our pets?
- [19:23]
A
The bottom line is that eventually it's causing cancers and it can cause neurologic problems. So many things. And the. There are great studies. I look at my kids who were raised with horses and, you know, always had dirty hands and eating a sandwich in the barn after cleaning the stalls. I mean, I look at that and go, great probiotics. This is awesome. My kids are really healthy. But we have so many studies that show that children who are brought up in those sterile environments where the moms are like, everything is white and everything is Clorox to death. Those children have a lot more asthma, a lot more allergies. Their immune system never got off to a good start. You literally are much better to send your kids outside and let them eat dirt.
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B
Yes.
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A
My granddaughter runs barefoot through the chicken coop. I go kind of go, ah. But you know, her immune system is pretty amazing.
- [20:11]
B
You think about the most perfect suburban neighborhood in America and the lawns are manicured and they've got the lawn guy that comes once a month to spray the lawn. How is that affecting children and pets especially?
- [20:25]
A
So there was an interesting case somewhere out here in the West a couple years ago where something was put down. I can't remember what it was anymore, but it was something that basically when it got wet, made a gas that killed moles and things in the yard, and children went out and played on it right after it rained and it was off gassing and the kids died. We have great studies that show that those lawn chemicals contribute to bladder cancer in dogs. And interesting. We just had a 17 year old dog die of bladder cancer and actually he didn't die of his cancer. He lived with the cancer for two years and it actually was shrinking. Just died of old age. But bladder cancer is something that we absolutely have proof that that is being caused by these lawn chemicals that we're using. So our dogs tend to go out, roll around in the grass, nibble on the grass. They're ingesting so much more of that than we are. But if our children are going out there and rolling in the grass and running barefoot through it, they're getting those chemicals as well. And interestingly, I can't get away from this. Back to our flea and tick chemicals. When you give the oral or topical flea and tick chemicals to your pet, those are also being transmitted to your children. So in Europe, fipronil, which is one of the very commonly used topicals, it's been used for over 20 years in flea and tick chemicals. It is found in all the waterways in Europe and in the hair of French children. They Tested. So is that what you, you know, your veterinarian is going to say, well, apply this. Once it's dry, it's fine. Your kids can hug them, sleep with them, kiss them. It's no problem. It's a problem. It is being spread environmentally. And when we look at these chemicals that are toxic to fleas and ticks, then they're in their water, our waterways, and in our environment. What else is it killing off? There was talk years ago when they came out with bravecto, which is an isoxazoline floral lanner for flea and tick prevention on our pets. They discussed, and it actually is being used as a product called Exalt, being fed to poultry now to kill poultry mites, because poultry mites decrease egg production and decrease the growth rate of the chickens. So they actually discussed giving BraveCT to 25% of the human population in places like Africa and India, where malaria is a huge problem. And they said, well, if we give this, you know, computer models, if we give this to 25% of the human population and they're getting bitten by mosquitoes, it'll kill the mosquitoes who take that blood meal, and that will kill off enough of the mosquito population that then malaria won't be such a problem. Well, first of all, I don't want to be the person who has to take the drug because the side effects from it are horrible. But what happens if we kill off the mosquito population? What about all the birds and frogs and newts and salamanders and beings that survive with that as their food source? Why are we so egotistical that we think we can just wipe out a species on this planet and it will have no effect on the other species and the environment? So we need to go back and really examine what. What are we doing to our world? What are we doing to our environment? Is fipronil in all the waterways in Europe a good thing? I don't think so. And they're saying it's coming from all the pets who were being treated with it. And then swimming in the water.
- [24:11]
B
You know that scene in Cinderella where the little mice are running around sewing the dress and fixing everything. Cinderelli. Cinderelli. I swear, sometimes I wish I had that, but for my health. Like, imagine a tiny medical team at your fingertips that, that you could have look at your blood work or whip together a nutrition plan, help balance your hormones and tell you exactly which supplements you actually need, instead of guessing in the vitamin aisle and walking out with 300 worth of bottles that you probably won't ever Use. Great news. That company exists and it's called Jevity. Now, they're real people, not mice, but they make health optimization simple and personalized. Their process starts with at home blood work. They literally send a phlebotomist to you at your house and then they'll do a virtual consultation where they review over 90 biomarkers that they tested and they will build a personalized plan just for you. They're going to recommend just the exact supplements, therapies, and nutrition support that your body needs. For me, you're like, oh, great, so they're going to put me on like 20 different things. No, I think there's like five pills in my packet. That's like nothing. Okay. Your custom supplements and everything will be delivered right to your door as well. Instead of playing supplement roulette, you're actually going to support your body based on real data from your blood work. Your health team at Jevity will explain everything that's going on with your blood work, so nothing will be over your head. If you want access to special tests to check for environmental toxins, hormones to see if you have the MTHFR gene and more, they've got those too. Membership at jevy is just $129 a month, which includes comprehensive testing and access to their health experts. Go to goy.com use code Alex for 20% off your first purchase. That's go.com use code Alex for 20 percent off your first purchase. Every time I go for this yearly appointment for Mochi, she's hammering me about two things. Heartworm and flea and tick. With flea and tick, I am always asking 100 questions because I don't understand why she is adamant he take it. I live in the desert. My dog is 99% of the time indoors. You know, a pekines dog wants to be next to your human, sitting near you on the floor. In. In the house, he goes for a short walk, you know, morning and evening, and that's basically it. He is not this athletic outdoor dog. I travel with him like twice a year maybe to go home to Indiana where I'm from. And even there, you know, it's a short going outside to pee really quick, coming back in. He's not hanging around and rolling around in the yard. When I ask her this, she's like, well, it only takes one second and your dog has all this hair and you're never going to find that tick. I've had him now for a little over a year. And so my question to you is, you know, am I doing the Right thing, giving him flea and tick or is she also right that it just takes one second and then really horrible things can happen?
- [26:51]
A
She's absolutely wrong.
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B
Okay?
- [26:53]
A
And you're absolutely right. And here's why. My mother taught me this. My mother before I was holistic years ago, she said, hey, when you go to the clinic today, bring home my six month pack of heartworm prevention, my four month pack of flea and tick prevention. And I just looked at her and I said, mom, have you ever found a flea or a tick on your dog? And she said no, and I don't want to. And I had a light bulb moment. My light bulb moment was she thinks that by putting this on it is repelling fleas and ticks. They don't repel the flea or the tick still has to bite your dog and have a blood meal in order to die. So you're not preventing the spread of tick borne diseases. You're not preventing the spread of things that fleas carry because your animal still has to get bitten. So it's not a preventative. It's killing them after the fact. So to me, that was my light bulb moment of I need to explain to people that these are not repelling. Now what will repel is essential oil sprays. This is the other problem. The especially for fleas, the life cycle of fleas, 5% of the life cycle is spent on the pet. We get so crazy attacking our animals with sprays and powders and collars and we're working on 5% of the life cycle. What about the other 95? It's in the environment. So we live in North Carolina. It gets really hot in the summer. Heartworms are a huge problem. Fleas are a huge problem. We have all these outdoor cats that live in the barn. We don't use chemicals on anybody. I don't use heartworm prevention for our dogs. I kind of quit. We, my practices were in New Jersey before we moved south and I kind of quit about five years before we left New Jersey. And even when I was there, we were giving it to seasonally in the summer. We had a lot of mosquitoes. Heartworms were sort of a problem. My dogs are like yours, they spend, you know, they go outside, they run around the yard in the middle of the day. Mosquitoes aren't out there in the middle of the day. It's ridiculously hot. So at night, at dusk when the mosquitoes come out, we go inside. I don't want to be bitten. Neither do they. Yeah, if I need to stay out there I'm going to hit me and them with an essential oil spray that is safe for them, that is made for that.
- [29:06]
B
What do you like?
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A
We have quite a few companies that we work with. There's Wolf Creek Project, Suds, Kin and Kind. So there's a whole bunch of them on drjudymorgan.com so. But these are ones that have been tested, they're organic, they're certified for use on animals and we know that they work. And so the. We were at a, an event and we had a tent set up at a county fair. And just for talking about holistic veterinary medicine and the little tiny. No, see, um, gnat things were just biting us like crazy. And I had a couple of dogs in the tent with me and we were going nuts. And I said, you know what, I'm gonna stop this problem right now. So I took one of the essential oil sprays off the shelf that we had in the tent, gave my dog one spritz down her back. The entire tent cleared out of mosquitoes and gnats. And nobody, everybody was like, can we come in your tent? Because it's the only place where we're not getting bitten. And that was from one spritz on my dog. So we know that these things will repel. For our yard in North Carolina, we use what are called beneficial nematodes. They're basically little tiny bugs and they eat the immature stages of the fleas and ticks. So that's getting rid of that other 95% of the life cycle.
- [30:20]
B
So what about people that do have primarily outdoor dogs that are living in wooded areas of the United States? What would you do for flea and tick for them?
- [30:28]
A
So for our cats that live in the barn, we actually they're spraying cats is almost impossible. They don't want to be sprayed with anything. They're also really sensitive to the smells. So we actually have a powder that has neem yarrow and diatomaceous earth. And so this is one of the projects for my 88 year old mom. She'll sprinkle powder into her palm and then she'll walk up to the kitties and go, good kitty, good kitty. And pet them and just put the powder on them. And that works to keep our cats in the barn from being infested with fleas and ticks. And I will say, the better the immune system is for your pet, the less parasites they will have. So for instance, we never have intestinal parasites. We haven't had any heartworm issues. And our cats, if they go down in the woods to hunt. I maybe pull off one or two ticks a year off of nine cats. They're just not bringing them home. They don't taste good. They're on a species appropriate diet. They're not over vaccinated. They've got some powder on them and it's just not an issue. We also have scalar wave tags and ultrasonic tags that you can put on your pet's collar or harness that work really, really well. Again, they're, they're sending out ultrasonic or scalar waves that the parasites don't like.
- [31:46]
B
What is the lifespan on the powders or the sprays? Like, do you have to do it every single day or every three days or once a week or what?
- [31:52]
A
Really depends on your pet's exposure.
- [31:54]
B
Okay.
- [31:54]
A
So if I had, for instance, a hunting dog or a dog that I was hiking in the woods all the time, I might hit them with something every morning before we headed out.
- [32:05]
B
Got it.
- [32:05]
A
I was asked to speak at the Pointer national specialty in Ohio 15 years ago by one of my clients. And so part of the pointer national specialty, they have to go out and hunt in the fields. So in the morning, a hundred dogs went out on the hunt. My client's dog had an essential oil spray on her and her dog, she was the only one who came back without ticks.
- [32:28]
B
That's insane.
- [32:29]
A
Everybody else came in with ticks. Wow. And so you better believe the next day I sold out of all of my spray. And the next day everybody went out in the field with essential oil spray on because they all came back with so many ticks the day before.
- [32:40]
B
Talk to me about heartworm because I still haven't put mochi on heartworm. Do we need to be so scared of this? How do you prevent them from getting it naturally?
- [32:49]
A
So Dr. Will Falconer, who is in Texas, he's a holistic veterinarian, he wrote a. It's an ebook. It's naturally healthy Dogs don't get heartworms. Something like that. And again, it goes back to the immune system. And there is a great video on YouTube where it's a time lapse thing where there's a blood sample with an immature heartworm swimming around in the bloodstream, and it's from a healthy animal. And over time, what we see is the white blood cells and all the parts of the immune system come in. They surround that little baby worm and digest it over a period of 24 hours. So a good, healthy, functioning immune system is not going to allow your pet to become overwhelmed with any Kind of parasitic infection. We don't use heartworm preventative. Where we are now, it's a, it's a high heartworm state. If you look at the heartworm maps, and that's one thing that people can, can do, they can go online to the American Heartworm Society and look at the maps and it will show you. Because, because a heartworm positive dog, in order to get the medication to treat the adult heartworms, you have to report it. And so we have pretty good numbers as to how many cases are reported in all areas of the United States. And there are some areas, like in Colorado, where there just isn't any. The American Parasite foundation, whoever they are, they recommend, and most traditional veterinarians recommend heartworm and flea prevention every month, every pet, all year round. Well, if I'm in upstate Michigan in December, January, February, March, under two feet of ice, I don't have mosquitoes that are going to bite my dog. I don't have fleas. Maybe I'll find a tick that might still be crawling. But we just don't have that parasite issue. So that is, you know, that's great for the drug companies to sell to every single pet. There's 160 million pets in this country. Sure, that's, that's great marketing.
- [34:55]
B
How do you know if your dog has a strong immune system?
- [34:58]
A
Do they have any chronic disease? Are they shedding excessively? Are they itching all the time? Do they have ear infections? Do they have skin infections? Do they have arthritis? Do they have chronic bowel issues? Those are all signs of chronic inflammation in the body. Get your lab work done. And is it all perfect? Is it right down the middle where you want it to be or are there things in there that are pointing to. We've got some issues. So for instance, if you get blood work done and the platelets are really high, platelets go up with inflammation. Are the globulins high? That's going to go up with inflammation. Is the white blood cell count elevated or skewed in the proportion of different cells? So that's why that lab work is so important, because we can use that as an indicator of, of. Oh, geez. He's only five years old. But look, we've. His platelets were 300, 000 last year and now they're 500, 000. What happened? Yeah, something's going on.
- [35:54]
B
This is Mochi's blood work.
- [35:56]
A
So one of the things that I actually love is interpreting lab work. To me it's like a logic puzzle and you put the pieces together and it gives you information that then you can fix things or be proactive about things. So I actually have a course that is interpreting and understanding lab values. And I have it in two levels. So there's a lower level that just kind of tells you what all these abbreviations are for the average pet parent who's just kind of like, what does this mean? And then you can add on to that an interpretation where you can send me your lab work and I will record me going through your lab work and saying, oh, okay, and I'm gonna do that with yours now where I record. Okay, I'm seeing this. This is a signal that we need to be looking for xyz. These are some of the things that you could consider doing to, you know, with diagnostics and with natural therapies or food to help the situation. We also have a more in depth, like six hour course, which would be really good for anybody who's like a holistic health pet coach or a vet tech or even veterinarian who wants a refresher. Of course, most veterinarians absolutely don't like interpreting lab work. To me, I just, I love it. And so it was a huge part of my practice. All right, so we'll start at the top. Red blood cell count looks great. Hemoglobin is really good. So you're at high elevation here. Right. So yeah, so that makes perfect sense. White blood cell count is good. And we look at the distribution of neutrophils to lymphocytes since about 2 to 1, which is right where we want it to be. So that's great. However, we get down to platelets. Platelets should be on this lab. They say their upper end of normal is 4:12 and he's at 5:27. So that means we've got an inflammatory process is starting to kick in somewhere. And so, you know, we'll see if it tells us somewhere further down here where that might be.
- [37:54]
B
Okay.
- [37:55]
A
But there's some inflammation. So glucose is 86. That's his blood sugar. That looks great. And you said he was a raw fed guy, so that's. Was he fasted for this?
- [38:04]
B
No. Was he supposed to be? They didn't tell me that.
- [38:07]
A
They don't tell you that. But they should be fasted for eight to 12 hours. So a lot of times we'll get like the first morning.
- [38:12]
B
Yeah, he had his morning breakfast.
- [38:14]
A
Yeah. So we'll get first morning bloods and just tell people, don't give them their breakfast before you come in. Or you can do it at the end of the day when they had breakfast like eight hours earlier. Okay, so a blood sugar of 86 after having just eaten is great. So in kibble fed dogs it'll be 110 to 120, whereas especially after eating. Whereas raw fed dogs it's going to be in the 80s and if they're fasted it might be in the 70s. So we know from human medicine studies that the higher your blood sugar stays chronically, the more inflammation you have in the body. So, so this is good. So is sdma, which is kidney function. Creatinine and BUN are all low to normal. And so that's great. Means his kidneys are working really well. We're happy with that. Then we look at electrolytes, phosphorus, calcium, sodium, potassium. His potassium's a little bit high. Interesting. One of my dogs just came back the same level. More than likely it's dietary related.
- [39:14]
B
So he has pumpkin puree every day, is that it?
- [39:16]
A
Pumpkin's a little high in potassium, so it could be.
- [39:19]
B
Yeah, he has pumpkin.
- [39:20]
A
It's not dangerously high, it's not something to worry about, but it is showing up as a little bit high. Okay. What's also interesting, when we look at the lab normals, those are based on kibble fed dogs, not on raw fed dogs. Got it. So sometimes we see some differences just based on diet, liver function, alt, alk, fast, ggt, bilirubin, cholesterol, all perfect. Amylase is low, which is a pancreatic enzyme. And that's fine because he's a raw fed guy, so that looks good. Heartworm and tick borne diseases, all negative, which is great.
- [39:57]
B
So he's got some inflammation for sure.
- [39:58]
A
He's got some inflammation going on somewhere, we don't know where. Liver and kidney function is great, but there's something that's not perfectly happy.
- [40:05]
B
One thing that I've noticed in him that's driving me nuts. I wanted to ask you about is excessive paw licking. But here's the thing, there is no yeast smell. He does not smell like corn chips. But he is obsessively licking his paws. So I was wondering if that is a sign of something medically or if he's bored or what that means.
- [40:22]
A
Could be either, but it could be a lot of times when they're trying to detox a little bit or when we're starting with allergies, it starts with the paw licking. So, you know, we might want to look at what can we do to try to make that go away and bring the inflammation down so the root cause of allergies and most inflammatory problems for our pets is abnormal microbiome in the gut. So we also can get abnormal microbiome in the respiratory system, on the skin, in the ears. And this goes back to all the Cloroxing. We spend so much time trying to kill off bacteria that we kill off all the good things too. And so we need that healthy microbiome. So because all of his lab work looks great, except that there's some inflammation brewing somewhere, I might look at doing a microbiome test on him. Really easy to do. You just get the little kit, send in the poop sample, and it comes back with, here's where we've got an imbalance. And now we can do. We have a couple of choices. We can add a probiotic, or we can do what's called fmt, which is a fecal microbiota transplant, which they've made it really simple. Now you can do capsules. You don't have to take them in and get poop shoved up one under the other. And so, interestingly, I did that on what I consider my healthiest of our four. Like, never has any issues. And so I did the test first and it came back. Everything looked really good. Her fungal organisms in her microbiome were a little low, but not bad. But she also had bacteria in her bowel that were antibiotic resistant bacteria. Hmm. Well, this is a dog who doesn't take antibiotics, hasn't taken antibiotics. So I'm like, oh, I wonder where that's coming from. So even though she was very healthy, her stool was very normal, she's on a great diet. I said, all right, well, we got this back and it, it's really good, but it's not perfect. Like, 99% of the people would be thrilled if their dog looked that great on the test. And we were doing this because we were trying to prove a point. So I did the FMT capsules for 30 days, and then we retested. All the antibiotic resistant bacteria were gone, and the fungal organisms were a much broader diversity.
- [42:44]
B
That's interesting.
- [42:45]
A
It was really interesting. It was like this. And it's funny because I keep seeing on social media, my interview with that company, when we talked about that study that we did, it's showing up as their advertisement now because we all think that we have this perfectly normal, healthy animal, but you don't know until you look inside. And so that's one of the greatest ways, easiest ways to look inside. We also have tests where you can do hair analysis and you can get so much information from hair analysis. So for instance, that potassium, that's a little bit high. If we were to take. And it's easy to get hair on this guy, if we were to send in a hair sample on him, we might find that we have mineral imbalances going on that we could do something to shift that and make things a little more balanced for him.
- [43:35]
B
So where do you buy a gut microbiome test for a pet? Like you have them on drjudymorgan.com okay, cool. Because I'd be interested in doing that and then I could just do it. I could get buy that and then I could send it to you and you could tell me what's on it.
- [43:46]
A
You sent. Well, yeah, so you send it to the company and they send you back all the results else.
- [43:50]
B
Oh, and then I asked you about them.
- [43:51]
A
If you need help with that, after you do it, you can, you know, send it to us and we'll be happy to help with that. But the companies are very good. They send you back these really detailed graphics.
- [44:01]
B
How can you tell that your dog has a cold or how do you know if your dog has allergies?
- [44:06]
A
We do see a lot of upper respiratory issues, particularly with dogs that go to boarding, grooming, daycare that, you know, any group setting, just like sending your, their kids to school. My granddaughter going to daycare in school brings home everything. We all, we all get exposed. Allergies with chronic watery eyes, runny nose, are not very common in pets. That's kind of the symptoms that we get. Maybe you'll see it if you have a really, really high pollen count because the watery eyes, the watery nose, that's the body washing the pollen out of the system. So if it's a clear discharge or they're sneezing a little bit, nothing to worry about. If that discharge becomes thick, yellow or green, we've got, you know, red eyes to go along with it. That's a symptom that we've got something more infectious going on that, that might need to be dealt with for allergies. For our pets, it's usually scratching. So they can have an inhaled allergen like pollen, grass, weeds, molds, that sort of thing. It's going to show up usually as itching, scratching, red skin.
- [45:19]
B
I went to Disneyland recently and the first thing I noticed was the amount of iPad kids like full blown toddlers and strollers watching YouTube while sitting inside Disneyland. I'm thinking we flew here, waited in line, and you're watching an unboxing video. But the other thing I noticed is that Disneyland is basically a giant petri dish. You're touching railings, ride handles, lap bars, chur counters. The same surfaces that tens of thousands of people touch five minutes before you. So I came prepared. I have my Beekeepers Naturals Propolis throat spray in my bag and I was spraying it throughout the day. If you've never heard of propolis, it's what bees use to protect their hive from germs. For us, it helps support the immune system with 300 plus beneficial compounds, including antioxidants and bioactive nutrients. So I keep the Propolis throat spray with me when I travel, but I also use their Propolis nasal spray at night as part of my bedtime routine, which is helps cleanse and soothe nasal passages when you've been breathing in. Well, Disneyland farts, coughs and burps. We all need to keep good immune system hygiene. What I love about Beekeepers Naturals is they're reinventing the medicine cabinet with clean, effective products. No dyes, chemicals or junk. A throat spray from Beekeepers naturals sells every 12 seconds. It's one of the most popular and effective wellness products of all time. Go to beekeepers naturals.com use code Alex Clark and you'll get 20% off your order. You cannot get that in stores, but if you want to get it in store, you can. Anywhere. Basically Target, Whole Foods, Walmart, Amazon, CVS and Walgreens. But again, my discount, which is Alex Clark, is only available on their website, beekeepersnaturals.com and you'll get 20 off. You can actually make a nutrient dense, super satisfying meal that your entire family will inhale using literal chips. I'm serious. Trust me, this is going to become your new favorite easy dinner. Cast iron nachos. All right. The secret ingredient is Masa chips. Little food history moment Most people don't know. Up until the 90s, pretty much all chips and fries in America were cooked in beef tallow. But then big food companies switched to cheap industrial seed oils to save money. Today, those seed oils make up about 20% of the average American's daily calories. And a lot of research is linking them to inflammation and metabolic health issues. So Masa decided to fix the problem. For your nachos, you're going to cook some ground beef with taco seasoning. Layer masa chips in a cast iron pan, add the meat, grate some cheddar or colby Jack, bake at 400 degrees for about 10 minutes, until the cheese melts, then top with guac Sour cream, whatever you want. It'll be the best nachos you've ever had. Just finish the night with a classic movie the kids will love, like Jeepers Creepers or Saw. If you are a fan of those one popular cheesy triangle chips, you'll really like the cabanero ones. But you can't go wrong with the original. Their tortilla chips have just three ingredients. Organic nixtamalized corn, sea salt and 100% grass fed beef tallow. No seed oils. They're the best chips I've ever had. They're crunchier, sturdier, they hold up in guac and nacho cheese without snapping in half. Ready to try masa cheese chips? Go to masachips.com use code real Alex Clark for 25% off your first order. That's masach chips.com use code real Alex Clark For 25% off your first order. Or if you don't want to order online. Maza chips are now available nationwide at Sprouts, so grab a bag next time you're there. What dog behaviors are often cries for help that owners miss?
- [48:27]
A
Oh, there are so many. And really, interestingly, based on the Chinese personality of your pet, we can change their diet to change their behavior. So that's something that's been really cool to see over the years. But first of all, we have dogs that have dog behaviors. Same with cats. Cats have cat behaviors like chewing furniture. Yeah. We want them to live in our world and follow our rules. Rules. And a lot of times our rules are in total contradiction to what the dog rules would be. So, you know, they all have a social order. And there are some dogs, some breeds, some personalities who want to be in charge. They want to be in charge of you. And that doesn't really work so well in our world. So, for instance, all the dogs that are used for Schutzhund work and for police work, those are dogs who are large and in charge. The Rottweilers, the Malinois, the Dobermans, the shepherds, they want to be in charge. And that's why we need the right owner with the right dog. Because if you're this kind of wimpy little person, you're probably not going to want one of those breeds anyway. But if you're a wimpy little person and you allow that dog to run your world, it's going to get ugly sooner or later. So a lot of times when we're seeing what we consider undesirable behaviors, it's the dog saying, no, I really need to do this. Our dogs don't get enough exercise. They don't get enough mental stimulation. They don't get enough playtime. So they really are fairly social animals. And I know most people, and I used to be one of them, are really against dog parks and group play setting things. Now, my dogs would be horrible in group play. I would never take them. I would think your Pekingese might not be great in group play either.
- [50:28]
B
He does not like to play with other dogs. He loves being around people, and he does not care about, like, barking at other dogs or anything. He completely ignores them. But if somebody has a toy, then he's very excited and he's very focused on, I want that toy. I want that toy. Like, if a kid is playing with a ball or something like that, that's what he sees and he freaks out. But another dog could be barking at him and he just walks right past. He's. But is it a concern? Like, should I be worried that I have like a, you know, like a loner school shooter dog that just has no friends?
- [51:03]
A
But no, I mean, that's absolutely fine. So we have four dogs and two. Forest, the crazy one, and Gilly. They're two days apart. One's an English toy spaniel, and the other one's a Cavalier King Charles. And we got Forest when he was a little guy, and we. We got Gilly when he was two years old. They are like brothers from another mother. They absolutely love to play together. They sleep together in the crate. Like they. They do everything together. And then they also do that brother thing where they hate each other and they want to kill each other and, you know, who knows what sparks them, but every once in a while, it's like, I'm going to, you know, eat you. And they totally ignore the other two dogs. So, yes, dogs have buddies and friends. And I used to think that, you know, Forrest wasn't really playful and didn't really care that much because his buddy before Gilly was an old cavalier that had heart disease. So very mellow. Didn't do a whole lot, but they hung out together all the time. When that one passed and we got Gilly, all of a sudden, we saw a totally different personality with Forrest. But we had two other dogs. Forrest doesn't do anything with those other dogs. Doesn't. Doesn't care. Our female English toy, she would love to be an only child. She's not mean to everybody else, but she just doesn't care about all those boys. They could just go away. So every dog has a different Personality. And we need to know what our dog needs. So, for instance, if you have a working breed, a herding breed, you better give them a job and find something for them to do, because if you don't, they are going to develop all kinds of bad behaviors that you are not going to like. So, you know, I used to have clients with these dogs that needed a job, and I'm like, buy them some ducks to herd. Go go to a sheep farm. I don't know. Get. Bring your grandkids over and let them herd them, but find a job. I had one client that I was working with, and her dog was a golden retriever. And it was during COVID And this woman was really a workout fanatic. And since she couldn't go to the gym, she built a gym in her garage, and she would go spend hours in her gym, and her dog would just lay in the corner, totally depressed and developed all of these gastrointestinal issues. And I said, this is. This is not a medical issue. This is a mental issue. Your dog lost his ability to go for walks, to play with his friends. He's hanging out in your gym all day, depressed because you're doing your thing, and he doesn't have a thing. And I said, you need to find a job for that dog. Even if you sit down and have a conversation with the dog and say, your job is to protect me and make sure I don't get hurt, that, you know, you follow me from, you know, equipment to equipment, you. Your job is to be here with me and babysit me, doing my thing, anything. And within a month, she's like, oh, he's back to normal. All the GI problems went away.
- [53:50]
B
Crazy.
- [53:50]
A
He didn't think he had a job. And so I said, whatever. Whatever you do. And I don't remember what else she did with him, but it was just. He needs a job. He totally lost. He's. He's a depressed kid sitting in the corner watching you do your thing. And so, you know, maybe you have a dog who would be great in a. In a good dog park, not an icky one. Maybe you have a dog who needs that social interaction. Maybe you don't. You don't. Your dog would do terrible at a dog park or group. You know, don't take him to doggy daycare. He's gonna hate it.
- [54:22]
B
I know. That's why I have it. Yeah, I. People always ask me that because I travel a lot for work. Like, what happens to Mochi? He has, you know, like, two babysitters that are Regular that I pay to. And he'll go to their house and he like knows them and.
- [54:33]
A
Exactly.
- [54:33]
B
And he feels more comfortable. I just know he would be miserable in a kennel situation. And he also is so weird. You know, I, I put a bib on him to eat dinner and all this. I'm like, I just don't see people in a dog doggy daycare being will weird little meal that I do and do a bib and put his hair up in a scrunchie cuz he has all this hair and I'm trying to keep him from getting messy.
- [54:52]
A
Same problem. Yeah. And most boarding situations will not feed raw food.
- [54:58]
B
Okay, that's good to know.
- [55:00]
A
They will not.
- [55:00]
B
Are most dogs under stimulated in modern life?
- [55:03]
A
Absolutely. Absolutely. And are cats horribly under stimulated so it, is it safer for a cat to live inside? Technically, yes. But over 80% of indoor cats are highly stressed. Like we look at their cortisol levels, they're through the roof because they're not getting to do cat things. So we have two indoor cats, highly stressed. We have seven outdoor cats who hunt and chase and climb and do cat things all day. They're all raw fed, they're all fed the same diet. Interestingly, I tested the microbiome on all seven, nine cats. We did this for a company that wanted to see the difference between indoor and outdoor cat. Cats all fed the same thing. So it was a pretty good controlled study. And all the outdoor cats had beautiful microbiomes. Our indoor cats, horrible microbiomes, all fed the exact same thing. But it's the stress level of not being able to hunt and pounce and climb. Cats need vertical climbing space. That's why they sit on top of your refrigerator. So we are not giving them what they need. And the same for our dogs. I had clients who lived in small apartments and wanted to get a herding breed. And I'm like, unless you are planning on doing a lot with that dog, that dog's gonna be miserable.
- [56:21]
B
Yeah.
- [56:22]
A
My daughter, when she first graduated from college, moved to the Raleigh area. She lived in a small one bedroom apartment and she adopted an 80 pound dog. I said, what are you gonna do with this 80 pound dog? And she said, well I walk her in the morning and then I walk her after work. And I, I'm like, that's not enough for this dog. Luckily they had not a good dog park, but they had a fenced area where she could let the dog off leash and actually entertain the dog and give her some exercise and give her a chance to get out her yayas. Because without that, that dog was going to be destructive. That dog was going to be howling and barking in an apartment setting. Not good.
- [56:56]
B
When dogs all of a sudden pick up barking in an apartment setting and they're not barkers, is that because they're understimulated?
- [57:02]
A
Prompt? Probably.
- [57:03]
B
Mochi has started barking. It drives me nuts. Like in the middle of night, he hears the littlest noise at 2am and all of a sudden he's barking and it's starting to really piss me off. I'm like, what is going on? You never barked before.
- [57:13]
A
Well, he's got something inflammatory going on, so we need to look at his gut.
- [57:16]
B
Yeah.
- [57:17]
A
In Chinese medicine, we call that a shen disturbance, which is disturbance of the mind. And so it can be diet related, it can be exercise and stimulation related. It could be maybe he needs a little melatonin before bed.
- [57:33]
B
Okay, good.
- [57:34]
A
That sounds good to me.
- [57:36]
B
Do dogs need sunlight in a similar way to humans?
- [57:38]
A
So they really don't do a good job of converting vitamin D from sunlight like we do. There's too much hair in the way and they. It's just not something that they're. Even if they were bald, their skin doesn't do it as well. So no, from that perspective. But yes, from the perspective that circadian rhythm and. And sunlight is so important for health in general. It's important for, for eye health. Really interesting. My daughter was looking up studies on wearing sunglasses and how bad that is for your health.
- [58:08]
B
Yeah, we've talked about that on the show.
- [58:09]
A
Yeah. So our dogs need that sunlight as well. They need that outdoor time. They need that fresh air. When we look at studies of people who work in offices under artificial lighting all day. So unhealthy for your mental health as well as your physical health. And we see the same with our pets.
- [58:30]
B
What is the biggest lie being sold to pet parents about dog food?
- [58:34]
A
So there's so much influence on the veterinary profession by big pharma and big food, just no different than in the human world. So when I was recently at the largest veterinary conference in the country and the millions of dollars spent on advertising and promotion for big pet food and Big Pharma is just over the top. We put on big events. I know how much it costs to wrap a post with an advertisement and when I see 50 posts wrapped by one company, that influence is crazy. So the biggest fallacy is that extruded dry kibble made by the big three pet food companies is the healthiest for our pets. It is absolutely the bottom of the barrel for our pets. But unfortunately, they have convinced the veterinarians of the world that that's the only way that we should feed our pets. If you took your child to the pediatrician and he handed you a box and it said, complete and balanced nutrition. Don't ever add anything to this. Don't put any fresh food in your child's bowl because that will unbalance the balanced, which is false because most of them aren't balanced anyway, according to studies. Here's your dry brown balls. Your child should eat those twice a day and don't add anything to it. You would think they were absolutely out of their mind, but yet we go to the veterinary office and that's what we're told to do, and we think that is fine. So in 2024, we had this one social media group that is talks about about pet food. And the person who runs that group contacted me and said, I don't know what's going on, but I have over a thousand complaints in one month against one pet food company where the dogs and cats are spewing bloody vomit and diarrhea, seizuring and dying. Like, and it was having to do with if they opened a new bag or a new can that this is what was happening within 24 hours of eating the food.
- [60:47]
B
Like, oh, there was a major contamination or something.
- [60:49]
A
Exactly. So I went public with it and got death threats from consumers, not even from the companies. I got death threats from consumers saying they were coming to my farm, killing my family, killing our animals.
- [61:04]
B
Because you called out a pet food company.
- [61:06]
A
Because I called out a pet food company. One of my vet school classes classmates sent me an email and said I should lose my license and not be allowed to be called a veterinarian because I was speaking out against this pet food company. And I said, you are so brainwashed. That's the brainwashing that goes on. And so we spent $20,000 sending food out for testing to multiple labs. Part of the things. Karen Becker also contributed to that. Susan Thixton from Truth About Pet Food contributed to that. We sent testing to so many labs, and then we found out that a lot of the labs had a conflict of interest. So that created a problem for us. And it's funny, those are some of my YouTube videos that have the most views.
- [61:53]
B
Wait, so are you allowed to say what the pet food is?
- [61:56]
A
Well, it ended up. There were a lot that were incriminated, but Purina was the number one, the worst, absolutely at the top of the list.
- [62:03]
B
And so that's the One that everyone was sending death threats about.
- [62:05]
A
About. Yes.
- [62:06]
B
What the heck is the Purina Mafia? This sounds like the big act, big chemical people that are trying to intimidate me.
- [62:12]
A
Yeah, exactly.
- [62:13]
B
So.
- [62:14]
A
But we never were able to find the contaminant. We had some insiders who were giving us information. One of them mysteriously died. I mean, what?
- [62:26]
B
With pet food?
- [62:27]
A
With pet food. Like you wouldn't think.
- [62:29]
B
Does Hillary Clinton have a stake in Purina? I'm kidding.
- [62:34]
A
I'm not sure who does. But this was a huge deal for about eight or nine months. And I mean, I was away trying to write one of my books when all this hit the fan.
- [62:47]
B
This is creepy.
- [62:49]
A
It was creepy crazy. And so, you know, we were on signal chats, going back and forth, trying to hide from everybody. It got nuts. And so. So 10 or 15 years ago. So I've been, you know, kind of. Susan Thixton got me into it from Truth About Pet Food. She's a pet food consumer advocate, and she has been for years because her dog died of bone cancer. And her veterinarian said, oh, it's probably from the ethoxyquine preservative that's in the pet food. And that actually was appearing a product, too. And this was 20 years ago. And when she called the company, they proudly said, oh, that pet food will be shelf stable for 25 years.
- [63:27]
B
Well, that's a huge red flag.
- [63:28]
A
That's a huge red flag right, right there.
- [63:30]
B
25 years.
- [63:31]
A
25 years.
- [63:31]
B
Disgusting.
- [63:32]
A
Susan has made it her life's mission to, you know, get truth in advertising and labeling in pet food. So she invited me to go to the AFCO meetings with her, which is the American association of Animal Feed Control Officials. Anyway, so there was one meeting that we were supposed to go to in San Diego, and a pet food company had a. A canned product that was tainted with euthanasia solution.
- [64:00]
B
What?
- [64:01]
A
Euthanasia solution is rampant in pet food.
- [64:03]
B
Why would that be in there?
- [64:05]
A
Because rendered meals, they can use any animal. So if a cow dies in the field, this is where we get gross. I hope nobody's eating. If a cow dies out in the field, just, you know, drops dead from whatever it can lay in the field for a couple of days, the meat guys come pick it up. They take these trucks, trucks that are not refrigerated, full of these dead carcasses and deliver them to the rendering plant, put them in big piles out in the sun in the parking lot. Eventually they're bulldozed into a big vat and cooked down and that's where we get all these animal digest and meat and bone meal and meat meals, and that's what goes in. So the, the extruded pet foods, a lot of them are made with the waste products from the human food industry. Industry. So in Wisconsin years ago, there was a truck that flipped over on the highway. It was full of Skittles that were misbranded and everybody was like, where's that open? Truck full of Skittles was a huge truck going to. It was going to be cattle feed. So waste products for the human food industry go into feeding our animals. And it's technically illegal to have these, you know, animals that died otherwise than by slaughter. So they weren't slaughtered for meat, but they just died and they got made into. To me, technically that's illegal, but when we question FDA about it, they said, we choose to overlook that.
- [65:26]
B
When did you question the FDA?
- [65:27]
A
Oh, we've questioned this every year for the past 20 years. And they're, they say, well, we, we choose to overlook this because if, if it didn't go to that, it would have to go into our landfills. You don't want to see our landfills filled with all this waste, do you? I. Well, I'd rather see it in a landfill or fertilizer or something. Anything other than what is going into my pet's bowl.
- [65:48]
B
Yeah.
- [65:48]
A
So back to the euthanasia thing. So, so this lady fed her five pugs, brand new cans of this food. All five dogs fell over. One lived.
- [65:59]
B
Oh, my gosh.
- [66:00]
A
And so, no, sorry, four lived, one died. But they all ended up at the emergency room. The lady happened to be a lawyer, so she was smart enough to say, okay, we got to test the stomach contents, we got to do autopsies on the dog. And found that it was euthanasia solution in the food. Now, this was labeled as a human grade euthanasia, USDA approved meat source. It wasn't. It was from the, you know, the guys who picked up the dead animals down the road. And so there was euthanized animal meat that got in there and it was in a high enough quantity to cause the death and illness of all her dogs. It was a good lawsuit about it, but that company had this crazy, crazy guy who had been featured on their calendars. And you know, he had. I can't remember what kind of dog he had, but he was so mad that we were speaking out against this company that he said he was coming to the AFCO meeting armed to come after us.
- [67:00]
B
I'm sorry, what?
- [67:01]
A
And so AFCO officials invited him in, told him he was welcome at the meeting. So we're in San Diego already and couldn't go to the meeting because they invited this armed crazy person who wanted to kill us. You wouldn't think that pet food is this crazy. It is.
- [67:23]
B
I don't even know what to say. I'm rarely rendered speechless on this show. And of all things, it's the pet food mafia running rampant.
- [67:33]
A
They literally are buying veterinary loyalty.
- [67:37]
B
Are pet food companies giving like bonus checks and things like that to veterinarians is to shill their products. Like what is going on here?
- [67:44]
A
They give them free food they get, they pay for a lot of the
- [67:48]
B
continuing education which means like special vacations and cruises and stuff.
- [67:52]
A
They just, they sponsor all this stuff. So when I first started in practice, well, my second job out of school, the guy that I worked for sold a lot of prescription diets. Small high end practice in a high end community. Literally every patient who walked in the door walked out with, with one of these prescription diets and he got trips all over the world. Like he was just rewarded. He was the largest seller. It was a very small practice, but he was the largest seller of those prescription diets of anybody in the country.
- [68:25]
B
Okay, you've blown my mind successfully.
- [68:28]
A
Sorry.
- [68:33]
B
Imagine getting all gussied up to go on a date night with your 80 year old boyfriend. You're getting ready in the bathroom, doing your makeup. He's sitting on the couch like, take your time sweetheart.
- [68:45]
A
I survived disco Nixon and dial up Internet. I'm not in a rush.
- [68:49]
B
But when you're getting ready for a date like that, the last thing you want is makeup that feels heavy, cakey or like you're wearing a mask. That's why I've been loving Adele Natural cosmetics. They're a clean beauty company creating handcrafted cosmetics and skin care that are totally non tox and actually nourishing for your skin. Everything is made in small batches in their central Texas studio with ingredients source from sustainable local farms whenever possible. Their moisturizing foundation is their top rated product which I love. Gets tons of five star reviews. They have a perfect liquid foundation brush to go with that. People say it feels like wearing nothing at all. I concur. It also evens your skin tone. It gives a really nice natural glow. It's not matte and it's not too oily looking. Their lip conditioner with hyaluronic acid is really great. If you have really dry skin and lips. This is something that you want to keep in every single person every single jacket pocket. And then there's also for the foundation, a complimentary color matching service so that you make sure that you are not walking around with a color that doesn't match. You go to Adele Natural Cosmetics.com use code ALEX for 25% off your first order. That's Adele Natural Cosmetics.com code ALEX for 25 percent off your first order. Whether your boyfriend is 24 or 84, he will love it. Are AirPods bad for you? Yes. Yes. The science is overwhelming. Fun fact. I have never owned AirPods and I never will. Even before I was Maha, I just knew something about them felt off. My instinct has not failed me yet. Think about it. AirPods are wireless devices sitting directly in your ears, constantly sending and receiving signals. That's electromagnetic fields or emfs right next to your brain. And thousands of peer reviewed studies from around the world show that these man made wireless EMFs have biological effects. At this point, EMFs are like cigarettes or glyphosate or red dye. It's something that we should actively be reducing in our daily lives. So for the last few years I have only used wired headphones just like the Hadid sisters. The ones in my purse are from Tech Wellness and they're called the Safer Tech Air Tube headphones. Here's what's genius about them. The speakers and wiring stay down the cord so the sound travels through hollow air tubes to your ear ears. That means the electrical signal stops before it reaches your head, dramatically reducing EMF exposure. They also sound incredible because they use high quality Japanese speakers and the extra long cord lets you keep your phone further away from your body, which is key because when it comes to EMFs, distance is your friend. So if you listen to podcasts, you know, like this one, hopefully take calls or you just like an old fashioned tik tok rot on your phone. This is one of the simplest ways to reduce your exposure exposure. Go to techwellness.com use code ALEX for 15 off EMF free air tube headphones. That's tech wellness.com code ALEX for 15 off air tube headphones Are there raw food, pet food brands that you do like that are complete meals?
- [71:40]
A
Absolutely.
- [71:41]
B
Okay.
- [71:41]
A
Absolutely. So what we look for when anything that's on my website or anything that I recommend has to be human grade. So whether it's a supplement or a food, any kind of product, it has to be something that I would be willing to use on myself in order for me to use it on my pets.
- [72:03]
B
Okay.
- [72:03]
A
So we jokingly said, you know, if the poop Hits the fan and we
- [72:08]
B
have to eat our pet food and
- [72:09]
A
we have to, you know, we can't go to the grocery store and if we have to guard something. Well, I'm placing one person at the end of our driveway for our farm because we make all of our own food there. But I'm also placing some security at our warehouse because everything in there is human grade and I won't starve to death for probably 10 years.
- [72:27]
B
Oh my gosh.
- [72:28]
A
My animals will be fine and I'll be fine because I am perfectly willing to eat any of the food or any of the products that are in my warehouse for pets.
- [72:34]
B
So mochi eats raw small batch sliders. Do you, what do you think about small batch brands?
- [72:41]
A
We actually like small batch and our pets are about to start eating raw raw raw small batch for the next month or so. But we have probably four or five brands that we rotate our own pets through.
- [72:55]
B
Okay.
- [72:55]
A
I actually have a list and Susan Thixon on Truth About Pet Food has something called the list that probably has about 40 brands on it that and it says on there how much it'll cost per day whether they're human grade. And in order for a company to get on her list, they can't buy their way on. They have to send her the bills of lading for every single ingredient, where it comes from, how it was raised, how it was processed. It's probably the most complete list. I have my own list and it's just companies that I know that I trust.
- [73:24]
B
So can you name a few?
- [73:25]
A
Sure. So I actually formulate a lot of food for all provide.
- [73:30]
B
Okay.
- [73:30]
A
Out of. They're out of Georgia and so they have actually made my trademarked pup loaf and cat loaf as well as traditional Chinese veterinary medicine based diets for the personality. So that's kind of an interesting fun thing. We like small batch. We like Steve's. We like green juju. Those are we. We can't ship frozen food out of our website. So we do the freeze dried. Freeze dried is. Is very similar to the frozen raw. It's just more expensive because it went through a freeze drying process and you have to add moisture back to it. So whether that's water, bone, broth, goat milk, whatever. But the great thing with freeze dries is great for traveling if. If you have a motor.
- [74:11]
B
That's what I do. So my mom has a bag of freeze dried small batch at her house. When I just come for like the holidays. That is what I make mochi whenever I'm there. But at home, what I do is anytime he runs out of a bag of the small batch raw sliders and it's like beef, chicken, duck, rabbit, pork, I get a different type of meat. So he's going through all these different types of meat so that I keep that different. And then I always give him like a couple scoops of pumpkin puree. I do like a little gut supplement sometimes like a turmeric anti inflammatory mix or something I put in there. Maybe I put on top like some toppers, like some muscles or beef heart or chicken liver, duck liver. I just put a couple that salmon bites. I just do like random things.
- [74:57]
A
Perfect.
- [74:58]
B
So is that enough or like do I need to do different or more?
- [75:02]
A
That is really great. So one of the things that I do recommend, so I like rotating proteins, but I also like rotating brands.
- [75:12]
B
Okay.
- [75:13]
A
And there's a reason for that. If you look at the recipes, all provide isn't like this, but a lot of companies are, the main protein might change, but then when you get three or four ingredients down, everything is the same after that.
- [75:27]
B
Makes sense. Like the vegetables or whatever's in there.
- [75:30]
A
Okay, Right. And they're all formulated to be complete and. Well, not all, but these companies we're talking about, they're formulated to be complete and balanced. Um, but let's just say for whatever reason there's a micro deficiency in there. You know, maybe that's a little bit low in zinc with their formulation for your particular pet, or maybe it's a little low in vitamin D because your pet isn't absorbing it as well. If we have a second or third brand that has a different formulation, then by switching that in sometimes maybe we make up for a micro deficiency that there might be there that we don't know about.
- [76:04]
B
This is so smart and so helpful.
- [76:06]
A
The other thing is, let's just say because we just went through this with all provide, their grinder broke and so they didn't have any beef product for a couple of months. They just couldn't make it. And so they were running short on some things while they were waiting for new equipment to come in. And people are freaking out. They're like, what do I feed my dog? I'm like, well, if you had two or three brands that you were rotating between, you'd have two more to fall back on. So let's just say small batch had some big problem in their plant and they couldn't make their food food. What are you going to do? You're going to have to do, you know, a quick change and hope that you Know your dog's gut can handle that change. And usually if you're feeding multiple proteins, they're going to handle a change with no problems, particularly if you're switching to another high end frozen raw. So I like to have a couple that I'm switching around between. And every once in a while, I'll also just make my own food because I have balanced recipes and I know what I can do. Like, I like to, just for fun, sometimes I will buy whole ground rabbit, so it's got the entire rabbit. Or whole ground quail. I know those aren't balanced completely, so. And I know what they're missing, so I can make them pretty close to balanced without having to run it through a calculator. So I was like, all right, well, we have raw eggs on our farm, and we have raw milk, and we have yogurt that we made from our raw milk, and we have sardines, beans. So I know if I throw some of that stuff in there. Yeah, we're pretty darn close.
- [77:29]
B
Yep.
- [77:29]
A
So I always want to have a backup plan. Like, I ran out of food a couple weeks ago. It's like, dag on it, I've got nothing. Well, you know what, sardines, eggs, and yogurt are gonna come pretty close. Here you go.
- [77:39]
B
So if somebody wants to learn, like, how to make the perfect plate for their exact type of dog, what's the protocol? Like, you need to get their blood tested, you need to get their gut tested.
- [77:50]
A
Not necessarily. So I. We do have a pet personality profile quiz. So you can download that from the website and figure out, you know, it walks you through. Well, he's got these symptoms of whatever, and then at the end you can say, oh, look at that. He's a wood personality dog. So wood personalities are prone to these things and it lists them and then it tells you what to feed to help counteract that, whether they're deficient in something or they have an excess in something. And we have recipes on. We have a lot of free recipes that you can download on our website. We also have a homemade Food for Dogs 101 course that you can learn starting from using a base mix. So Dr. Harvey's is a company that has really nice base mixes. They have all the vitamins and minerals and they have the vegetables. They have some that are complete too, but you can add your own own meat. So, you know, if you're like, ah, yeah, it sounds really expensive and really time consuming. Well, if you use a base mix and all you have to do is add Some meat to it, whether it's raw or cooked, and a little bit of oil. Poof. It's pretty easy.
- [78:56]
B
Yeah, I like that brand, Dr. Harvey's.
- [78:58]
A
So, you know, we can do the gamut from. It's completely done for you, which, yes, it's going to be more expensive. It's like eating at a restaurant. It's going to be more expensive. Somebody else made it for you. Then you can go to base mixes so you don't have. Have to think a whole lot. And then we have complete recipes with different proteins or for different issues. So my Yin and Yang 2.0, nutrition for dogs, Maximizing Health with Whole Foods, Not Drugs has over 60 recipes. And so those recipes are based on Chinese medicine principles, but they're broken down into, oh, we have liver problems, we have kidney problems, we have heart problems, we have obesity, Cushing's disease, diabetes, whatever. So that even if you don't and the book walks you through the Chinese medicine, but for some people, it's.
- [79:40]
B
It.
- [79:41]
A
It literally is like learning another language. So. So we make it pretty simple. It's like, well, you know, he's got some heart disease, he's got these symptoms. I'll. I'll try this.
- [79:50]
B
Is it acceptable to give dogs tap water?
- [79:53]
A
It really depends on your tap water. So we have a reverse osmosis system on our well. Because our well was contaminated, we didn't really have a choice. So it's a little low in minerals. So a couple of options that we could try. We could give them one water bowl with just that. We could give them a bowl with spring water, and we can give them a bowl with a little bit of salt in it and see what they gravitate toward. What we found in our house is they each have their preferred. There's three bowls. They each have a preferred bowl. It doesn't matter what's in the bowl. It's like, I'm going to that bowl. I don't care what you put in it. So it depends on your animal. We do know that a lot of city water systems, community water systems, are really high in fluoride and chlorine and arsenic. Yeah. So it is a good idea. So when we lived in town before we bought the farm, I went to the town well website to see when they had last tested the water and what it had in it. And it hadn't been tested for two years, like, so we have no idea what's near. So if you're not sure, maybe putting some sort of a filter on. There are great tests Water tests where you can send out and have your water tested. And even though we have reverse osmosis, I still think that we've got an issue. So I have a kit to send out out to see what's in our water. I still want to know. So it really depends, like, some water is so contaminated and some is not so contaminated.
- [81:17]
B
Is the pet vaccine schedule similar to the childhood vaccine schedule that we just kind of revamped, where there's, like, a lot of stuff on there that's completely unnecessary? And would you say that all of it is unnecessary or there's certain vaccines? You're like, okay, every dog should get these two.
- [81:31]
A
It's really interesting because the older I get and the more. More stuff that happens in the world, the more I'm thinking this whole vaccine thing is just not what it's proposed to be for pets. So we know, like, when I graduated from school, it was every vaccine every year. You know, rabies went to every three years. Yippee. We absolutely know that they're not needed every year.
- [81:56]
B
Okay. So they were telling me that they were like, you know, mochi's gonna need his rabies in, like, another year or something like that. And I'm like, I don't. I don't want to do that. Do I have to? Or am I gonna. Is it gonna be like, dog CPS coming for him? Like, what happens?
- [82:10]
A
Sort of. So where we had our clinics in New Jersey, we were a mile from the local shelter and the animal control officers. And so the county every summer would hire high school and college kids to go knock on doors and ask people to show proof of licensing for their animals. And if you had an animal who wasn't licensed. And it's really hard because somebody knocks on the door and all the dogs. Dogs come running, and the cats are sitting in the front window. And you can't say, I don't have any pets. Yeah, oh, no, that's somebody else. He's just visiting. And so then that would get. If you didn't have them licensed, you would get a fine, and you would be given 10 days to get them vaccinated and get them licensed. And most communities and states will not accept a titer. So a titer is a blood test that shows. Shows that they have immunity, which once they have a rabies vaccine, they're probably protected for anywhere from five to seven years, maybe longer. Just depends. So I was vaccinated with a rhesus monkey experimental rabies vaccine my senior year of vet school in 1984.
- [83:16]
B
Yikes that's.
- [83:18]
A
We had to do it.
- [83:19]
B
Ew.
- [83:19]
A
Yeah, there was no choice. We had a couple people who almost died and got really, really sick.
- [83:24]
B
Oh, my word.
- [83:25]
A
Luckily, I did fine with it, but I got bitten by a rabid kit probably 25 years later, and my titers were still good. So yay, rhesus monkeys. I guess. I don't know. I still had to do the whole seven vaccine post exposure series. So it's gonna be different for every pet again. A pet with a strong immune system that made a good immunity to that vaccine. They're probably gonna have a great titer. But even if you have a titer that shows that they're protected, most governmental agencies will not accept. Accept that. They will only accept a vaccine. So we wanted to take one of our dogs to Japan for open heart surgery. And in order to do that, she had to get a rabies vaccine, a titer. And even if it was good, she had to get a second vaccine and another titer. And I said, I'm not. I'm not willing, you know, I'm willing to spend $45,000 to get my dog's heart surgery. I'm not willing to give my dog two rabies vaccines.
- [84:21]
B
Side note, why go to Japan for that? Couldn't you do the surgery?
- [84:24]
A
Oh, no. This is very specialized. And at that time, it was only being done in Japan.
- [84:28]
B
Oh, okay.
- [84:28]
A
Now there's some other places doing it. So rabies is the only one that really is governmentally regulated. The rest of them, you may need proof for boarding, grooming, daycare. The other problem that we have is some veterinary offices insist that your pet be up to date on vaccines in order for them to. To see them as a patient.
- [84:48]
B
Yeah, well, if that happens, we will be finding someone else, I can tell you that. But hopefully they're going to accept the titers because I have a feeling he's going to be fine. So. Most of them are, but that's good to know. I feel like the vaccine thing with pets is as much of a racket as the childhood vaccine schedule, personally.
- [85:04]
A
Yep, yeah, I would agree.
- [85:05]
B
People hear chiropractic for pets or acupuncture for pets, and they're rolling their eyes like, okay, what are we, Paris Hilton? Do dogs really need all this? This is insane.
- [85:15]
A
What's your response again? Do we want our pets to thrive or survive? And chiropractic. I was not a believer until I learned chiropractic, which was accidental. I didn't know that it was called something else. The course. And I Didn't know I was taking a chiropractic course. About three hours into it, I was like, this guy's talking about chiropractic. I don't know if I believe in this. And so I stayed throughout the entire course. And when I went back to work the next week. Week. The first case in the door was a dog that couldn't walk. I did my new thing, and the dog got up and ran out the door. So I went, all right, apparently this works. So I. I used it from that point on in my practice. So for 30 years, I did chiropractic, and the results were amazing. I started doing it on horses. We had a huge equine chiropractic practice. My horse had arthritis problems and needed injections into his joints in order to keep his. Him mobile until I started doing chiropractic on him. And that solved the issue. And he never had another injection after I started doing chiropractic. And then I added acupuncture to it. So the whole thing with chiropractic is keeping nerve flow, blood flow, and energy flow circulating throughout the body. So anybody who's ever had a muscle spasm or your back locks up and you know that it hurts to move it. You know, maybe I had one arm that was numb for a year because I had a problem in my neck that I couldn't solve. So when we don't have perfect nerve blood and energy flow coming from the spine, nothing else works, Right?
- [86:50]
B
Right.
- [86:50]
A
For instance, if you watch your dog trot away from you, are their legs moving in a nice fluid motion? Is their tail, head going back and forth? Are they loose in their spine, or is their tail rigid? And are the legs moving like pistons? If they're moving like pistons and everything is rigid. Rigid. They need some help. And what I found. I did the chiropractic first, and then I learned acupuncture. And what I found is that the two agreed a hundred percent.
- [87:16]
B
But how do you put acupuncture needles on a pet? Aren't they, like, rolling around?
- [87:19]
A
So we usually do a permission point on their forehead, and that kind of chills them out, and they usually fall asleep. So we get our needles in, they'll fall asleep, and then after 15 to 20 minutes. And I saw this on my horses as well. After about. They fall asleep like they're literally. Their noses are touching the ground. And after about 20 minutes, their head pops up and their eyeballs blink. And then they give a big old shake. Needles fly everywhere. And it's like, I'm Done.
- [87:48]
B
Well, if I find out what is causing inflammation, emoji, acupuncture I know might be good because that can help the body heal that area, right?
- [87:55]
A
Yep.
- [87:55]
B
Yeah. So that's, I'm curious about that.
- [87:57]
A
Rebalancing the, the whole body.
- [87:59]
B
I'm into it cuz I, I talk about acupuncture. I've had an acupuncturist on the show for humans and so I understand the best benefits for the human body and I, I'm all in for pets too. Is it ever too late to turn your pet's health around?
- [88:12]
A
It is never too late. So one of the things that my husband and I have been really, really into for ever since we've been together is pet rescue. And so we have done some really crazy things in the pet rescue world. We once drove from New Jersey to Missouri to go to a dog auction to rescue a bunch of cavaliers King Charles spaniels that were being sold at auction, which a lot of these are puppy mill dogs that have been used for breeding. And these animals have been living their lives in little cages 2ft by 2ft, been used for breeding, had no veterinary care, eating very poor quality food. They come to us with ear infections, eye infections, skin infections, arthritis, chronic disease, I mean, you name it, they're a mess. And one of our best ones was Charlie. He was turned in by a puppy mill breeder at the age of eight. He only had four rotten teeth left and his X rays for arthritis were the worst I had ever seen. Charlie was put on his raw food diet. We solved all of his issues and he lived to 19 oh my word. And was happy, healthy. He had a four wheeled cart because his arthritis was so bad, but he was, was just the happiest guy and we've done that with so many of these rescues so it is never too late. I'm chief veterinary officer for a group called Monkey's House Senior Dog Hospice and Sanctuary in New Jersey. All of the dogs that go to Monkey's House come from high kill shelters and they all have a terminal diagnosis. So they get dropped off at the shelter and the shelter vet will say, oh, he's got cancer, he's got kidney diseases, disease, liver failure, heart disease, what. Most of them have a combination of all of those and Michelle puts those dogs on a whole food diet tailored to their issues and then whatever diagnostics and surgical procedures, dental cleanings that need to get them sort of put back together and a lot of them are coming with a prognosis of a couple of days to A couple of weeks to live. Live. And I think her longest one has been there like eight years.
- [90:23]
B
That's incredible. So is this only dogs in the New Jersey area or. They're coming from all over.
- [90:27]
A
She mostly does Philadelphia.
- [90:29]
B
Okay.
- [90:29]
A
High kill shelters there and New Jersey. But I. Over the past 12 years, they've had over 200 dogs come through.
- [90:40]
B
How can people hire you as, as their vet? Can they.
- [90:43]
A
They cannot. I am retired.
- [90:45]
B
Oh, Dr. Jennings. So how do you find, is there a database or a website to find a holistic veterinarian who has the same mindset as you in their individual states?
- [90:55]
A
It's very difficult. So a couple things that can be done. HVMA.org the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association.org has a veterinary finder. And so that would be people who are members of the ahvma. And the database isn't huge because there aren't that many of us. So you put in your state and it'll, it'll say, it'll list all the veterinarians and it'll say what they do, whether they do acupuncture, nutrition, homeopathy, whatever their specialty is. So that is a starting point. I take very, very few phone consultations these days just because I'm a little busy. But we do have a list of about a dozen veterinarians that will do telemedicine conversations. You do have to have a local veterinarian that you are working with that can, you know, supply the lab work and the diagnostic information that that veterinarian will need to work with. But we have some who specialize in working with people who have pets with cancer and others who specialize in nutritional needs. So you can reach out to us through our website and we can supply that list, but also hvma.org to find that in person.
- [92:04]
B
Do you have a podcast?
- [92:05]
A
I do.
- [92:06]
B
Tell everyone about that.
- [92:07]
A
So it's the Dr. Judy Morgan's naturally Health Healthy Pets podcast. And we've. I think we're in our third year. I had one years back for a couple of years and I quit due to lack of time. But now I have this whole team that helps me, so it's much easier.
- [92:22]
B
That's having a team.
- [92:23]
A
It's really nice having a team. So we interview holistic veterinarians and people who are making products or have companies that are doing amazing things. We look at latest research that's coming out and we also do an in person event every other year because there, it takes a lot, a lot to put them on. But our next one will Be in Dallas in April of 27 and we have six top speakers from around the world that will be coming in.
- [92:52]
B
And do people bring their pets?
- [92:53]
A
No. Oh, service animals are allowed. But it is a time when about 700 like minded individuals who like raw feeding and like everything natural. And then we will have close to 100 vendors. Vendors and these are all hand picked by us.
- [93:12]
B
Oh, I love it.
- [93:13]
A
So that everything is human grade, really above board. And one of the things with us, it's not even just about the products, it's about the people behind the companies. So if, if you have a company that doesn't, doesn't work with good integrity and good morals and you're not friends with other people in the space, that's going to be a problem for us.
- [93:34]
B
And then tell us about your book.
- [93:35]
A
So I actually have nine books that I've written. I've got all the way from raising naturally healthy pets, which is sort of the intro into the holistic pet, how to find the right veterinarian, how to talk to them about not doing all the vaccines and all the different things that we've talked about. After that is keeping your pets naturally healthy, which goes through all the different organ systems and different diseases and talks about how we would treat them from a traditional standpoint versus a more natural standpoint. How to combine the two? We have a couple of cookbooks. The Yin and Yang 2.0 is the most recent. I have Canine kitchen capers, which is just a fun read. Those were actually stories submitted by pet parents who were just going over the top making meals for their pets, meanwhile their families getting served hot dogs and cold cereal.
- [94:20]
B
So, but we can't have that.
- [94:23]
A
So that one's really fun. We have a book called protecting your pets against parasites. So you were asking all the questions about fleas and ticks and lyme disease and heartworms. That's all in that book. And then we have one about dog parks called Unleashed.
- [94:36]
B
What is your Instagram?
- [94:37]
A
I think everything's under Dr. Judy Morgan.
- [94:39]
B
Okay, perfect. If you could offer one remedy to heal a sick culture, it could be physically, emotionally or spiritually. What would it be?
- [94:46]
A
Food. We have to start with food. It's the foundation again. I, and I mean that spiritual, mental, physical, getting them out there, getting them moving, interacting, that is so, so, so important. But again, and if, if we're just feeding them toxins, we're never going to get good health. So we have to start there.
- [95:07]
B
Dr. Judy, thanks for coming on Culture Apothecary.
- [95:09]
A
Thank you so much. It's been so much fun.
- [95:14]
B
Are you going to be doing vaccines for your pets? Have you tried a raw food diet? Will you? Would you ever have your dog see a chiropractor or acupuncturist? I'm curious. Let me know in the Kerve it is Facebook Group New episodes of Culture Apothecary come out every Monday and Thursday at 6pm Pacific, 9pm Eastern with new expert guests. Anywhere you get your podcast, you can find the show on Instagram at Culture Apothecary. We post tons of cool stuff there, guides and extra information to supplement the episodes and then you can find me at real Alex Clark this content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be taken as medical advice. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional regarding any questions or decisions related to your health or medical care. I'm Alex Clark and this is Culture Apothecary.