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- [00:00]
A
Our pets should be living longer. We've cut their lifespan in half. In 2023, there was a lawsuit against Rachael Ray Nutrish Dry Pet Food because somebody tested the DNA of what animals were in that because they wanted to see if it matched what was on the label. It didn't match. There was horse DNA and dog DNA. I can tell you instantly which dogs are on chemicals, which dogs have been over vaccinated because they're all drooling excessively. They've got red inflamed feet, itchy ears, itchy skin. In the mid-70s, the average life expectancy for golden retriever was 17. It's 10.
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B
Doctor Judy Morgan, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I was telling you before we started recording that I'm very excited to have you and I appreciate you taking a trip to Austin. I've been wanting to get you on the podcast for a while. I have two dogs and they are my whole world. And I just love everything that you talk about from. Oh, thanks. Yeah, from pet diets and species appropriate diets. We're going to talk about flea and tick medicine, which is what we started to dive into. I want to dive into vaccines a little bit because I know my audience has a lot of questions about that.
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A
I watched a webinar on that last night and there was smoke coming out my ears. So, yeah, we can talk about that. Okay, good, good.
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B
Bring that energy to this podcast. I love it. Well, thank you so much for coming on.
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A
I'm really happy to be here.
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B
Yeah, so we were. We were just talking about flea and ticks, so something. A big pain point for my husband and I is fleas with our dogs. I was living in California for a long time with one with my dog, and then we got a golden retriever together in colorad. And we never had an issue with fleas. I just. I was never giving them meds because we never. We never dealt with it. And then we moved to Texas and it has been a whole different beast.
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A
Yes.
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B
And we are really struggling. And I told you this, I am, like, this close to giving them the oral pesticide pill, which goes against everything that I believe in. And I am desperate for anything else to do because I just hate seeing my dogs suffer.
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A
Yeah, absolutely.
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B
What are some options?
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A
So, first of all, let's talk about why you want to not be any closer than this close. So the pesticides that we are putting onto and into our pets are neurotoxins. So that means they're literally attacking the nervous system and Most animals do fine with them. And so this is where we get into the big arguments and why FDA says no, they're fine. It's because most animals are okay. But there's a subset of animals that are not okay, and they will either die or have their life dramatically changed forever. Having seizures, inability to walk in a straight line, muscle tremors, just so many problems that we see. And there's new studies coming out that actually look at why do these drugs cross the blood brain barrier in some animals and not others. And we don't know all the reasons why. And unfortunately, there's no way to test to say, oh, this dog will be fine, and this dog won't be fine. But besides what it's doing to our individual pets, it's what is it doing to us and what is it doing to our environment? So the topicals that we put on fipronil has been around for probably 25, maybe even 30 years. It's been there for a long time. And so that is a very common chemical that's used topically on our animals. It is now found in every waterway in Europe, and it is in the hair of children tested in France. So it doesn't just stay on your dog or your cat. It is in the environment. The new oral pesticides, the isoxazolines that passes out, the metabolites are in the stool of your animal. And all the little bugs that help break down that stool and break it down in the soil, they're all dying because it's an insecticide. And so we are killing different levels of animal species that are part of our environment. And it's sort of like, you can't kill all the mosquitoes in the world because you don't want to have malaria, because there's a lot of animals that eat mosquitoes, and that's their food source. And so if we look back years ago, when they eradicated wolves from Yellowstone, it caused a huge ecological impact on all the way down the food chain, all the way up the food chain. And it literally. The park was being destroyed. And then they brought the wolves back in and reintroduced them, and everything went back to the way it's supposed to be. So we, you know, we have population control and we have food sources. So we want to think about this from. Well, here's another good one. They took three dogs, and one dog was given no chemicals. One dog had a topical chemical put on, and one was given an oral chemical. Flea and tick. They put the three dogs in a waiting pool with just a few inches of water in it for just a few minutes. They tested all three dogs after that three minutes. All three dogs had both chemicals, the oral and the topical, in their systems.
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B
All three of them, were they in the same pool?
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A
They were just in a little waiting pool. So literally their feet are in a waiting pool for a few minutes. So, you know, if, if you're being told, oh, it's fine for your children to hug your pet after you, you know, give them these chemicals or put these topical only if you want your children to be exposed to those chemicals and yourselves. So for me, it's, it's no. It's just an absolute no. And we live in North Carolina, so it doesn't get real cold there. Usually we have outdoor cats because we have a farm and keeping everybody flea free, not necessarily the easiest thing in the world.
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B
That sounds like a full time job.
- [05:52]
A
Yeah, would be. And so the thing that people Forget is that 95% of the life cycle of fleas and ticks is not spent on your pet. So when we get all crazy like, I'm going to give him a pill, I'm going to put something on my pet. We're only taking care of 5% of the life cycle. So we need to look at what's the environmental space that we're dealing with. And we also need to, if we want to go with a more natural route, we need to multi layer things. So for our own dogs, my barn cats, I can't put collars on them, so I can't put tags and, you know, anything like that on them. So they're, they're a little bit trickier. But I still have ways that I deal with them. For our dogs, I do multiple layers of things. So in their food, I put a powder that has neem and yarrow and things that make them taste not so good for the fleas and ticks. And so that's going to kind of repel, like they don't really want to bite these animals. The problem with most of those chemicals that we use, they don't repel the fleas and ticks. The fleas and ticks still have to bite your dog in order to die.
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B
And then they die.
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A
Right.
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B
Because it's. The pesticide is in their blood. Right.
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A
So and the topicals, it's in the hair follicles. So but they're still having to get on the pet. Your pets are still getting bitten. So if you have a pet with a flea allergy and you're giving something that doesn't prevent them from being Bitten. Not solving the problem for them. So. So for our dogs, we've already started for the springs. It's starting to warm up. They're getting that powder in their food every day. So that's layer one, Layer two they're all wearing. We have two different tags. There's an ultrasonic tag called tickless, and that's really good for, like. And they actually make them for people to, like, put on your shoes. And there's a tickless mini you can put in your house. And so that's ultrasonic. Very effective. And then the other one that we have is called Fleas Gone Tag, and it's Scalar Waves. It is very effective. And the company that makes it actually guarantees that your pets will not have fleas. So they have to be flea free when you put it on. And it takes 30 days for it to sync with your dog's heartbeat or your cat syncs with their heartbeat. And as long as you never take it off so it can get wet, they can go swimming, they can go out in the rain, you can give them a bath, but the tag has to stay on them, then it works really well. So that's layer two for our guys. Layer three is treating our yard where the dogs live. And we. You can do a couple of different things. My sister lives in Massachusetts, and she has a big tick problem. You know, Lyme disease is a big problem up there.
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B
Yeah.
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A
So she has her yard sprayed with cedar oil. Keep the yard cut short. Deer repellent plants don't have a lot of shrubbery and bushes where that's the ticks. And fleas don't like bright, sunny, dry areas. They like shady, moist areas. So you want your dogs to be going out in the dry, kind of barren yard, not where you have a lot of shrubbery and mulch and things where they're gonna like to hide.
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B
Okay. What if you put those little cedar chips in the mulch, though?
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A
Cedar mulch is going to be really helpful.
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B
Okay.
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A
They just don't like cedar oil. And then we use beneficial nematodes. So it's sort of a little bug that prevents fleas and ticks from maturing to adults. So this is the. One of the best ways to break the life cycle. And it's something you. They come that kind of look like a powder, and you put them in water and then spray it on your yard. Oh, and.
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B
And they're bugs in the powder.
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A
Yeah, they're really tiny. Like you can't even see them. Wow. Very, very effective. We've my daughter was having a big, we bought a house for her that had had a lot of animals, weren't well cared for and so the yard was just infested. And so the beneficial nematodes were the thing that broke the life cycle for her, for her, her animals as well. So. And then if my pets, like if we're going out to an area where we, we want to hike through the woods, we want to be in an area that hasn't been treated, then I use essential oil sprays that are made specifically for pets. And there's a lot of different really good companies that do that. And there are different essential oils. And it's really interesting. In some areas the lemongrass base works the best. In other areas the lavender base works better. And in other areas the cedar oil works better. So if you try one product as one of your layers and you're like, ah, this one doesn't really seem to be working so well, try a different one because you're. It's really interesting that fleas and ticks are sensitive to different things.
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B
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A
Okay.
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B
Because we have the wonder side sprays and they come in those different scents. And I haven't found, to be honest, I just haven't seen any of them that have worked particularly well.
- [13:04]
A
Yeah. So it's a multi layer approach. So you're having an issue. I would, I would layer on everything. And all of this is going to be child safe, pet safe, people safe, yard safe, environmentally safe.
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B
Yeah.
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A
So, you know, you can speak. I would, you know, you said you've been spraying your yard, you've been having somebody spray the yard. And so the question is, what are they spraying the yard with? Are they using chemicals? Are they using essential oils? Like, if it's a chemical spray, I would say, okay, I'm going to soon have a child crawling through there. And I've got my dogs crawling through there. And we do know there's great studies that show that bladder cancer is much higher in dogs that are on treated yards. They're mostly talking about like, you know, herbicides for weeds and that sort of thing.
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B
Yeah.
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A
But I can't imagine if we're spraying things to kill bugs on our, you know, pesticides on our yard. That's not going to be good for our pets either. Yeah. So, you know, going the more natural route. And you know, if you're, if you're using one company's products and you're not seeing results, try a different one. And again, that multi layer approach. So our guys already are getting their, their powder in their food. They already have their tags on. I haven't had to start spraying yet, so as soon as it gets warm, we will. For my barn cats, that I can't do a lot of those things. We have a powder, and it's a powder that you don't need to use a lot. It's the same thing we actually use on our farm animals as well, but it has neem and yarrow and diatomaceous earth. My barn cats aren't the type that you're going to pick them up, snuggle them, spray them, But I can put powder in my hand and then pet the cat.
- [14:41]
B
Oh, smart.
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A
And if the cat's running by fast, I just shake powder over them. But it's an easy way to treat animals who are not real things. Thrilled with bathing and spraying and those sorts of things.
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B
Okay.
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A
Lot of options.
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B
Okay. That. Wow. Okay. I have so many questions. First of all, can you send me a link for the powder that you put in the food? Because I want to put that in the show notes. I bet everyone listening is going to want that.
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A
Yeah. We have a couple different ones on our website. One is made by Wolf Creek. Okay, very. That one is probably the most popular. And then we have another one. It's called the Resistance. It was called Bug off, and there was a problem that somebody else was using that same name, so they changed it. Now it's the Resistance. But you know, if you try one and you're like, ah, this doesn't seem to be doing it. Try or. And I can tell you that I've never had a problem with palatability. The animals, we mix it in, we feed raw or gently cook. So they're getting really good food anyway. And it's easy to mix it in. But I haven't had a problem, even with the cats.
- [15:42]
B
Okay, good. That's good to know. I had these little bites that I buy for them. They're like little, like, treats basically. And they have. I think it's brewer's yeast, garlic. There's a couple of other things in there, but I can't remember. But again, I didn't really notice that much of a difference.
- [15:57]
A
And something else that you might try is fresh garlic. It has to be fresh grated garlic, not something that's been grated in a jar and sitting in the refrigerator. But fresh garlic is actually really potent.
- [16:12]
B
So let's talk about this because there's a lot of.
- [16:14]
A
If you Google it, oh, it'll say garlic is toxic. Can I tell you how many times I've had to have this argument on social media. So the original study that decided that garlic is toxic for pets, they took a garlic extract. It would be the equivalent of feeding your dog 40 bulbs, not even cloves. 40 bulbs of garlic? Yeah. We'd have problems if we ate that much in one sitting as well. So they took this. This very potent garlic extract and gave it to them repeatedly. And shocking. They had some problems with Heinz body anemia. It was like, who would do that? And so that's a very, very old paper. And it just. We have a lot of things in veterinary medicine where there will be one statement and everybody just latches onto that, like white on rice and sticks with it for the rest of their life. And it' like, it's a lie. It's. And so cats are more sensitive than dogs, but we've had plenty of cat owners that. And you have to use it in appropriate doses. We have them listed on the website. But the fresh garlic is much more powerful for flea prevention than the powdered or the. The dried garlic that you're getting in the pills and things.
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B
Okay, so maybe we'll start adding a little bit of fresh garlic to their food. I wonder what the trick is to getting them to eat that.
- [17:36]
A
They love it. They do, yeah. Oh, no problem.
- [17:39]
B
Oh, good.
- [17:40]
A
Mix it in food.
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B
I mean, our golden retriever, I can basically get him to eat anything. Our little chiweenie might be a different story.
- [17:45]
A
They can be a little trickier. We have. We have one who's a little funny, and then we have a couple who are like, I'll eat anything you put in front. It doesn't matter what it is. Give me a salad. I'm in. So it just. It kind of depends on the animal, but I haven't had problems with garlic. They really like it.
- [18:02]
B
Okay, that's really good to know. Okay, so I'm gonna try that. So I'm gonna add garlic. Oh, and I was gonna just briefly ment have one of those little shield things on their collars, but I think we might have done it wrong because I think I put them on the collar when they still had some fleas on them.
- [18:17]
A
Right.
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B
And we have not been able to get rid of them since.
- [18:19]
A
Yeah. And so that's one of those things like that scalar wave tag 1. If it is a scalar wave, it takes 30 days for it to sink. So, you know, for us, I just start early in the season. Although I think the latest ones we got, I think it says they last for two years, something like that.
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B
Oh, wow.
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A
So, but the big thing is it has to stay in contact with the dog. And so a lot of people, like, they put it on a harness, and then they take the harness off at night when they go to bed, or they take it off when they go to the groomer. And so, yeah, you can't. It has to stay synced with them, which, you know, when I bathe my dogs. That's really fun. It's like, okay, I really want to take your harness off. That has the tag on it, but I've got to keep it, like, right next to the dog. I need six hands, but it stays next to the dog.
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B
Okay, that's really good to know. Yeah. Because I think the one we have is from BioShield. Do you know that company?
- [19:11]
A
Don't know that one. So I'm not sure. I don't know that particular brand, so I'm not sure, you know, how theirs works. But the thing with the fleas gone, that company, they've been so good. The guarantee doesn't come from us. It comes from them.
- [19:25]
B
Okay.
- [19:25]
A
And they've been really good. I know the owner of the company, he's got all the science and the studies behind it. So I've been really happy with the company because they really do stand behind it. But if you. If you call them and say, okay, I've had this on and my dog's got fleas, the first question is going to be one, do you take it off? And two, did they have fleas when you started? So you want to do everything you can to get everything as clean as possible and then put it on so that next year you hopefully are not dealing with that.
- [19:51]
B
I mean, it has been a real struggle. And, you know, like I said earlier, I mean, it's against my morals and ethos and everything to give them these pills. I just. It has been so hard to get rid of them. In our last house, I was putting diametaceous earth on our rugs because I was concerned that maybe there was eggs on our rugs. And, you know, around the house was putting it all around the house and leaving it for a couple hours and then vacuuming it up. And I. You know, actually, in our last house, they. They weren't. They weren't having as much of an issue with the fleas as they are in this recent house.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So we're also getting rid of. I think I told you this. We're getting rid of. We have plastic turf in the backyard right now, and which you wouldn't think would be ripe for fleas. But I don't know where else they're getting them from.
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A
Carpet.
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B
No, we don't. We have concrete floors, and then we have wood floors upstairs. So we don't have any.
- [20:36]
A
Yeah, yeah. So we got flea infested once in New Jersey. My daughter bought a kitten off of Craigslist, brought him to visit for Thanksgiving, and we had 10 dogs and five cats at the time. And she left. But she left us with the gift of a house infested with fleas.
- [20:54]
B
Oh, no.
- [20:55]
A
So it wasn't my yard because it was winter in New Jersey. And so I ripped the house apart. I sprayed all the animals. I cleaned everything. We didn't have carpets and washed all the bedding and hot water, like all the things that you're supposed to do. And week after week, I was doing this. I'm like, I can't get rid of these fleas. I like, thank you very much. I can't get rid of these fleas. And so our person who helped clean the house came one week, and I said, patty, we are ripping this house apart. I don't know where these fleas are hiding, but we are going to find them. We moved every piece of furniture in our family room. We had a couple of really nice big recliners that rocked and whatever. And they were leather, so they, you know, not a problem with that. Lifted the chair up, and underneath that chair was this big ball of dog and cat hair.
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B
Oh. And there were.
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A
And a thousand fleas jumping around. And I went, found it. And that's what it took. You know, a lot of times it's. We haven't done enough detective work to figure out where are they. Like in New Jersey, a lot of people have basements and crawl spaces. Oh, my gosh. If you are ignoring that, forget it. I mean, they love living under there because you also get mice and things that live under there, and they bring them in. So the, you know, the little woodland critters are. That's. That's the problem for our barn cats because they're around mice and squirrels and bunnies and everything else. But we don't want to use the chemicals. The big problem right now is we're finding a lot of the songbirds. The babies are dead in their nest nests because the mama and daddy birds are building nests out of pet hair that's treated with chemicals. And the chemicals are killing the baby birds.
- [22:42]
B
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- [24:35]
A
It is so good.
- [24:36]
B
I like to do a scoop of the vanilla and a scoop of the caramel and it's just such an easy way to support skin, joints, muscle recovery and gut health in just a few seconds a day. And honestly, it tastes really good too, which makes it really easy to stay consistent with. Go to paleovalley.com Real Foodology or can you use code Real Foodology at checkout for 15% off? Oh God. I just the effect that these chemicals are having on our lives and on our ecosystem is so heartbreaking, which is exactly why I don't want to use them.
- [25:06]
A
We did a survey started by a woman who started, also started the class action lawsuit against Bravecto because her dog was given one dose at a year of age and he's like 6 and still can't walk in a straight line and has chronic seizures. I mean he was in ICU for many days. He fell down a flight of stairs having a seizure and shattered his leg. She's been through the wringer. So we, she got a bunch of holistic veterinarians together and she said we need to do something about this. And so we did a survey called Project Jake. And we got a few thousand responses on the survey. And we asked people, have you used any kind of flea and tick chemicals on your pets? If they said no, it was like, thanks for, for participating, we don't need any more. And if they said yes, then it went through a whole list of questions as to which ones they used and what if they had seen any side effects and what side effects they saw. Two thirds of the respondents saw side effects.
- [26:01]
B
Of course we did.
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A
So, you know, and we, we took that to the FDA and actually got a phone call with them, which that was shocking in itself. For an hour we had a team of experts presenting our information and that, that's a very statistically high number. And at the end of the conversation they said, thank you very much, this is very interesting. We don't think there's been enough side effects reported, so we're not going to do anything. And the problem is only 1% of side effects adverse events get reported to FDA. It is so low. And it's like, well, okay, you have 200,000 and you know, you only get 1% reported. So that means there's a lot out there.
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B
Well, I think the problem is that many people are not making the connections.
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A
Exactly.
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B
To the drugs that they're giving their dogs.
- [26:45]
A
Exactly.
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B
Because I've noticed, you know, when I, when I started digging into this, thankfully was a long time ago, I got my first dog outside of my home when I moved out of my parents house like 15 years ago. And I started looking into this back then because I was trained in the more holistic alternative world. And so I was looking into everything I was doing not only for myself but for my dog. And so I felt very lucky that I caught, caught onto this pretty early.
- [27:08]
A
Yeah.
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B
But when I started talking about it and telling people you're, you're literally giving your dog, you're feeding them a pesticide the messages I was getting back from people were like, oh my God, what I'm giving, I'm feeding my dog a pesticide. And I don't blame them because if you don't look into it, you know your vet's not going to tell you that.
- [27:25]
A
When somebody that's in a position of authority says here, this is very safe, we'll give it to your dog and you won't have to worry about fleas and ticks for three months. Now they have an injection that lasts one year.
- [27:38]
B
Oh, I heard about that. And that really.
- [27:40]
A
And the problem is if your pet has a side effect, there's no antidote. You can't get it back out once you put it in. Whether you put it on topically, give it orally or inject it, you can't get it back out. And there are no antidotes for these. All you can do is treat the symptoms. So like Jake, who had this horrible, horrible problem after being given the drug. He was in ICU for 10 days before he could even not be seizuring. 24 7. And we had a little dog in Belgium, little cocker spaniel, eight weeks old. Guy bought two cockers, took them in for their puppy visit. And the vet gave a dose of Nexgard while they were there. And the neck, within a couple of days, little OBI started having seizures. And his owner was amazing, very analytical mind. And so he kind of did the same thing, contacted this group of holistic researchers and veterinarians and he actually came up with a detox, detox protocol for OBI that took over a year. For a year he was on five different anti seizure medications. Now he's down to one. It's been three years, but it's taken that long for this dog's system to try to recover. But he's, he's going to be a seizure dog for the rest of his life. And I watched a webinar on this. It's another one that made me smoke come out my ears. It was a poison control center, the U.S. poison Control center for Pets. And there was an article that just came out from the European Poison Control center and the Netherlands Poison Control Center. And all three of them said, oh, we think these isoxazoline drugs, pesticides are very, very safe because we've had very few reports of problems.
- [29:28]
B
Oh my gosh.
- [29:28]
A
So the European one said, we've only had one report in the Netherlands and 79 in all of Europe in nine years. Which is pretty funny because the Netherlands. Do these drugs kill dogs? Group on Facebook has over 57,000 members. You can't tell me there's 57,000 people on there because only one dog had a problem in the Netherlands. I don't think so. And so when I was watching this webinar put on by the Poison Control center, the guy said, well, the case he Presented was a 30 pound dog that got the 30 pound dose and also ate his brother's 80 pound dose and he happened to be a seizure dog on top of that. So first of all, why the veterinarian is giving a neurotoxin to a dog who already has a history of seizures. It says right on the label that these are associated with, you know, neurologic side effects, particularly in animals who already have seizures. So I fault the veterinarian for this. Jogs should never be on it. But the guy from the Poison Control center says, yeah, the cases that we get are like the overdose cases. So it, let's say you like flake out and say, okay, I'm just going to give them one dose. I mean, you know, I'm just going to make these fleas goes go away. And your dog starts having seizures or has, you know, bloody vomiting and diarrhea or whatever side effect. You're not going to call Poison control. You're going to go to your vet and go, I think this is a problem. And they may or may not agree that it's related to that because half of them are like, oh, it can't be. That didn't happen in the first. Even if it happens in the first five minutes, most of them will say it didn't. It's not related. So, you know, the. When we see these reports that are sent out to all the veterinarians saying it's very safe, we've only had 79 cases in nine years. You had 79 cases of overdoses where they ate the whole box. You didn't have 79 cases of side effects. Because if we look at the EMA and the fda, we've got hundreds of thousands.
- [31:20]
B
Oh, I believe it. Because we're seeing this across the board with medicine. I mean, we see it with vaccines. Like a kid will have a side effect, you know, within 24 hours. And they're like, there's no way it could be the vaccine. I'm like, what? What do you mean?
- [31:31]
A
Yeah, which planet do you live on?
- [31:34]
B
Like, this is the only intervention that this kid has had in the last 24 hours. I mean, it's just, it's mind blowing. Do you think a lot of the Seizure disorders that dogs have are related to the pesticides that we're giving them. Them.
- [31:46]
A
I think the new seizure disorders that we're seeing now, if animals have been given these pesticides. Absolutely. I mean, we do have idiopathic epilepsy, which means we have no idea why they. And it's more common in certain breeds. So I was asked to speak at the Pointer national specialty one year. I was like, all right, I better look up all the things that pointers are. You know, what are their genetic problems? And genetically, they're a breed that is very prone to seizures. Okay, got it. So we do see it in certain breeds. We have a dog with hydrocephalus. He's only had one seizure in five years, so. Yay.
- [32:22]
B
Is that swelling of the brain?
- [32:24]
A
Yeah, it's water on the brain.
- [32:25]
B
Oh, yeah. Okay.
- [32:26]
A
And so there are a lot of breeds. The little bubble headed breeds is what I call them. But, you know, they've got short faces and round heads. So like the Frenchies and Frenchies, Boston's English toy spaniels, which is what we have. You know, their brains aren't formed right. They're genetically predisposed to have some problems, you know, some mobility issues, some tremors, some seizures. And so we kind of expect that in those breeds. But I look at that and say, well, that's a breed that's predisposed to having neurologic problems. Why would I throw a neurotoxic pesticide on board? This makes no sense.
- [33:05]
B
Okay, well, I'm so glad we had this conversation because I've been wanting to have this with. With someone who actually is knowledgeable in this space because I talk about it a lot on my Instagram and I get all these questions from people and I don't know how to answer it.
- [33:16]
A
Well, I can guarantee you can call up 20 traditional veterinarians and they'll go, no, I use it on my own dog. It's fine, no problem. It's not touching my dogs.
- [33:23]
B
Yeah, well, and then meanwhile, their dogs are probably having all these side effects that they're just not correlating to the pesticides.
- [33:28]
A
Well, it's really interesting. I do a lot of work with a man named John Sarver. His company is Gyms Dogs, and he designs playground equipment for dogs and for dog parks. And so he is a. He's a huge proponent of a good dog park. Bad dog parks are really awful. Good dog parks are really good. Dogs are social. They like to play with their friends. Like if, like, our dogs would never survive in that Environment. But my, my daughter has one who is great in that environment. And for people who live in apartments or live in the city, having an outlet for your dog to get off of flesh, it's a great thing. But John is very, this is how he found me. He's very, very into treating our pets holistically. And so he goes into dog parks, wherever he's traveling around the country, he always goes to new dog parks. And he, he says, I can tell you instantly which dogs are on chemicals, which dogs have been over vaccinated because they're all drooling excessively, they've got red inflammation, lame feet, itchy ears, you know, itchy skin and you know, so like they, they're, they have a toxic environment. And he said a lot of them, they just, they kind of hide behind their owners. They're not as playful, they're a little more withdrawn. And so, you know, he's not a veterinarian and he'll just walk up and start a conversation with the owner and go, so what are you using for flea and tick prevention? And you know, as soon as they, they, you know, tell him that they're using a pesticide, then he, he starts on his whole spiel and tells them to go to my website. But he's really changed how a lot of these dogs are being treated because he said, I see the toxic effects all the time and people just aren't putting one plus one together to get two. And they don't connect the dots in their. Veterinarians don't connect the dots of some of these chronic. I can't imagine. I mean, you're about to have a child. Can you imagine your pediatrician saying, here, feed your child this pesticide so he doesn't get bitten by a mosquito.
- [35:26]
B
Oh my God, no. I mean, I would never. Yeah, it's crazy. Well, and it's the same thing. I think about that all the time. You know, I think with my parents generation, it was, oh, it's just the dog, you know, And I mean, those dogs are also my children. Yes. And I don't want to be treated. I want to treat my dogs the same way that I'm going to treat my child. Obviously human dog, different species, but I love them all the same. I want them to live long, healthy lives. I don't want to be exposing them to these toxic chemicals that could give them seizure disorders or give them cancer. So I keep telling my husband, I'm like, I refuse to give them those pesticides because God forbid if I gave them a seizure Disorder or they got cancer. I mean golden retrievers are getting cancer at 8 years old now.
- [36:06]
A
They're, they're at the top of the hip parade for that.
- [36:08]
B
Yes. And I was reading, I read this recently that before we started doing all these interventions and we were giving them kibble, which we're going to talk about. Oh God, just the bane of my existence. Which is basically like ultra processed food for dogs and for, we're over vaccinating them and giving them these pesticides that golden retrievers used to live until they were 17 years old. Yeah, on average.
- [36:28]
A
So yes, in the mid-70s the average life expectancy for a medium sized dog, aka golden retriever, was 17. It's now 10. So we have so much more at our disposal for diagnostic testing and for treatments and our pets should be living longer. We, but yet we've cut their lifespan in half.
- [36:51]
B
So that should, what are we doing?
- [36:53]
A
That should tell you a lot, that we are doing a lot of things wrong. And like if we look at human longevity, it hasn't been cut in half. It's probably gone up by a few years since then because we have more diagnostics and we have more capabilities.
- [37:08]
B
Although I was going to say it's also going down right now for humans too.
- [37:11]
A
Is it?
- [37:11]
B
Well, when you look at our, based
- [37:13]
A
on the last few years, that's not a surprise.
- [37:15]
B
Nice. Yes, exactly. Unfortunately. But yes, that is a whole other rabbit hole.
- [37:21]
A
We're another rabbit hole.
- [37:24]
B
Yeah, it's really concerning. And so. Okay, so let's talk, let's dive into kibble and ultra processed foods for dogs. How I want to know how the pet food industry mirrors the broken human ultra processed food system.
- [37:37]
A
Oh, it is so bad. Well, first of all, the two biggest pet food companies in the world are Nestle, Purina and Mars. So those are human food ultra processed companies. And so their pet food sales are about 32, 33 billion each. And really interestingly, if you look at their company's income for the past few years, their pet food is what's supporting the companies. They're putting more money into pet food because their pet food is growing and their human food is going down. Which probably has to do with RFK Jr saying hey, ultra processed food is really bad for us and you know, we need to take these things out. So if we, if we look at it from the lens of, okay, this is who's making most of the food that's being sold. So the next company below them is Hills, which is Colgate Palm Olive and they sell like 6 billion. So that's a huge jump in between.
- [38:37]
B
And aren't those companies buying out a lot of the veterinarian clinics now?
- [38:41]
A
Mars.
- [38:41]
B
Mars, okay, it's Mars.
- [38:42]
A
Yeah, Mars.
- [38:43]
B
Which is also concerning.
- [38:44]
A
They've bought our imaging, biggest imaging company. So Radiology, Ultrasound, CT. They've bought the largest veterinary lab, diagnostic lab for the country. And I think they own 2,500 veterinary clinics in this country and they also own them overseas. And two thirds of specialty and emergency clinics are corporate owned, owned, not all by Mars, but by corporations. So this is going to take us down a different path of corporate veterinary medicine. So we've got to get back to the kibble. But corporate veterinary medicine is a very, very, very bad thing for our animals and for us. I saw a veterinarian post online yesterday again, smoke came out my ears, my head is on fire a lot.
- [39:33]
B
I feel you the same.
- [39:36]
A
And this veterinarian was having a meltdown because she had her schedule for the day and she had a couple of clients that was, you know, on the schedule to come in and an emergency came in and they put the emergency in her slot and then moved her, you know, more routine things over to somebody else to handle while she handled the emergency. And the emergency was an older person that had mobility issues and had a caregiver with them. And it was a senior dog who was having kind of the equivalent of a human stroke. But basically it's called vestibular disease. So they're off balance, they're nauseous, it's like an inner ear thing. They're rolling, they can't stand. And so she made up this whole protocol for the dog to spend the night and get IV fluids and all these diagnostics. And you know, it was going to be $1,500 and the owner opted for a shot of anti nausea medication and take the dog home. And she blew up and had a conniption. Like she lost all this income from these other two cases that were gonna be good income producing. And if this person wasn't even gonna treat the dog, why did they bring it in? And I'm like, why are you even in the profession if all you care about is where is your compassion? Like, maybe that was all the money the person had to get in the door, choose the, you know, treatment that might help the most that they could afford. Like, yeah, it's this. When did we lose our compassion and become all about. I mean, part of it is there are $400,000 in debt when they come out of school and they're you know, working these corporate jobs where they don't have enough help because corporate just keeps cutting staff. You know, I mean, it. They're, you know, and then you have protocols that you have to follow, and you have of minimum quotas at the end of the month. You didn't do enough stool samples this month. Well, I did all the ones that needed to be done, thank you very much. You know, it's. You didn't give enough Lyme vaccines, you didn't give enough this, you didn't run enough lab work, whatever. And, you know, that's not how medicine is supposed to be practiced. It's supposed to be individualized, and there's supposed to be a conversation between the caregiver and the caretaker of, what can you afford? What can you handle? Like, I do a lot of hospice care work, and when we take into account a hospice care plan, it has to be, what does the animal need for comfort? But also what does the caretaker need for comfort? You know, if I have an older person with a large dog that they can't lift, and so the dog is, you know, not able to stay clean and not able to get out and not able to get up, that's a whole different conversation than the, you know, the Pocket Yi. So anyway, that. That went a whole different way, so. But it's because you ask about Mars. Yeah.
- [42:33]
B
No, that was your fault. No, that was great, though. It's just, you know, it's interesting how, because I got into food because I'm an integrative nutritionist, and so I've, you know, I've been on the human side of things. But it's very interesting to see how the parallels between medicine and nutrition also mirror not only the human side, but also on the pet side. Yeah, it's very similar. Everything's become corporatized. To your point, it's less about the morals and values and what we're supposed to be doing. It's less about individualized care, and it's more about just like, okay, how many shots did you give this month? Or, you know, how much. How many tests did you give out and how many emergencies did you, you know, were you able to fund?
- [43:12]
A
I've read a lot about pediatricians. Like, you know, in your practice, you have to have a certain percentage of vaccinated children. Yep. Anyway, so back to food. So we've got these big pet food companies and that really control the market. Thankfully, there are so many good companies, small companies coming on, but, you know, trying to keep their heads above water is a little difficult. Why? I don't own a pet food company. Don't wanna. So, so the large food companies have a lot of waste. And where does all that waste go? So there was a great article years ago up in Wisconsin, an open truckload full of Skittles overturned on the highway.
- [43:59]
B
Oh, I remember this, actually.
- [44:01]
A
And the Skittles were on their way to a dairy farm to be fed to dairy cattle. It's like, why would we feed candy? I mean, it's just, you know, pure sugar and a bunch of dyes to our cows who are making the milk that we are drinking. Which pasteurized milk is another whole thing. Oh yeah, we have a dairy cow and we have our own milk because of that.
- [44:24]
B
That's amazing.
- [44:25]
A
But you know, so what do these companies do with all these waste products? Well, we can send it all off to pet food. What. What do the farmers do with. With cows that die on the farm? Can't send them off to the slaughterhouse for human food. They're dead, they're decaying. They go to pet food and they're not refrigerated on their way from the farm to.
- [44:47]
B
Really?
- [44:48]
A
Yeah. No. So if you Google Earth rendering plants in their parking lots, you will see large mounds of carcasses sitting out in the sun, baking. And FDA in the laws, it says that food can only. Pet food can only consist of animals that went to slaughter. It cannot consist of animals that died other than by slaughter. So, like died out in the field or whatever.
- [45:17]
B
Why is that? That's strange.
- [45:19]
A
So the law says we can't use those decaying animals, right?
- [45:22]
B
Oh, gotcha.
- [45:23]
A
Okay, so the law says.
- [45:24]
B
I was thinking opposite. Got it, got it.
- [45:26]
A
Law says we can't use the decaying animals. Animals in food, except they all go to the rendering plants and they're put in a big vat and they're cooked down. And then parts of the fat is rendered. Fat is skimmed off and that's used for parts of food. And then the sludge that's left is dried to make meals. So that's where we get meat meal, meat and bone meal and poultry meal. If it was all birds that went into that pot and then that is used to make the dry kibble pet food. Now the problem with this is one FDA says, well, we choose not to enforce that. We. You know what? You want it all to go to a landfill? That would be horrible. Well, I'd rather a landfill than my pet's bowl, thank you very much. So that brings up what else is in that rendered suit. So in 2023. There was a lawsuit against Rachael Ray Nutrish Dry Pet Food because somebody tested the DNA of what animals were in that because they wanted to see if it matched what was on the label. It didn't match. There was horse DNA and dog DNA, horse and dog. So there was a little lawsuit over that.
- [46:42]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [46:43]
A
Now I've got a bunch of veterinarians who guarantee you're going to take that snippet, you're going to post it as a reel, and there's a couple traditional veterinarians who are going to go, she lies all the time.
- [46:53]
B
I'm like, really?
- [46:54]
A
The lawsuit's not a lie. This is a fact. This is a fact. So the other thing is that euthanasia solution is in rendered products because those animals that are dead, some of them were actually put to sleep with euthanasia solution. And the head of the largest rendering group in the country gave the keynote speech at the feed Control officials meeting a few years ago. And in his keynote speech, he said, it is virtually impossible to have a rendered product without some euthanasia solution in it.
- [47:26]
B
I believe it.
- [47:27]
A
Well, I do, too, but I get shouted down every time I say that. But if you go on truthaboutpepfood.com and just put in pentobarbital in pet food, about 20 articles come up talking about, oh, here's another recall. Here's the.
- [47:44]
B
The.
- [47:44]
A
The FDA found it in there, but decided it was not actionable because it wasn't in a high enough amount to cause a problem.
- [47:49]
B
That is.
- [47:50]
A
So how much euthanasia solution is okay for your dog?
- [47:52]
B
None. Zero. I want none.
- [47:54]
A
Yeah, pretty much. So, you know, so. And then, you know, a lot of these pet foods have the dyes in them, you know, FD&C, blue, yellow, red, green. Like why your. Your dog can't even see those colors.
- [48:07]
B
And it's a brown pellet. So why are we.
- [48:09]
A
It's a dead, dry brown ball. Yes, exactly. That is, you know, sprayed with fats that go rancid as soon as you open the bag. There's so much bad about it. And unfortunately, the influence of the big pet food and big pharma on veterinary medicine is huge. So a couple of years ago, we had a big thing where a lot of animals were dying eating a particular brand of food. Food. And I was speaking out about it because I'm like, oh, my gosh, we have a thousand animals in one month where the people are reporting the same exact thing. This is a problem. And so, you know, I was going live Just telling people, hey, keep your eyes open. Like if your pet, you open a new bag and you pour food in the bowl and your pet's like, I really don't want to eat that. Well, don't doctor it up with a bunch of chicken off your plate and make them eat it because they're trying to tell you there's something wrong. Like their sense of, of smell. We have 6 million scent receptors. They have 200 million. You know, they can tell.
- [49:09]
B
Yeah.
- [49:10]
A
So, you know, I was reporting that one of my classmates sent me an email and said, you should lose your license. You should not be allowed to call yourself a veterinarian because you're speaking out against this big pet food company who has done so much for veterinary medicine.
- [49:22]
B
Like, oh, okay, so you don't care that they've just caused over a thousand dogs to die.
- [49:29]
A
And, and the problem is that, you know, when people come in with an animal with those symptoms, they're very sick. The veterinarian goes, oh, he must have caught a bug. Oh, he must have a virus.
- [49:41]
B
Oh, antibiotics.
- [49:42]
A
He must have an infection. Yes, we'll give him antibiotics. And so there again, that correlation between I gave a pesticide and now my pet has all these weird symptoms. I fed my pet this food and now he's doing this. And nobody wants to put two and two together. And if we're all in denial, then we're never going to fix the problems.
- [50:04]
B
Exactly.
- [50:05]
A
And so somebody has to say, hey, maybe we should take a look.
- [50:10]
B
Well, and it's so heartbreaking. I think about this constantly with our pets because they can't tell us anything. They can't communicate it to us.
- [50:16]
A
No. And they'll, I mean, if that's the only thing put in their bowl, they're gonna eat it.
- [50:21]
B
Exactly.
- [50:22]
A
If that's their only choice. And the kibbles are sprayed with palatans, which is, you know, hey, this is going to make it addictive. It's going to make it taste good. They know the umami that cats like and that dogs like, and it's like, yeah, we're going to put that on there.
- [50:35]
B
Well, it's the same thing they're doing with ultra processed foods. Like, we're going to put, you know, the yeast extract, the MSG things are going to make it really highly palatable. So you can't stop eating it. Yep, it's the same thing. Copy and paste.
- [50:46]
A
And propylene glycol is used as a preservative in pet food. They finally outlawed it for cats because they're like, oh, look at that. It makes cats die.
- [50:55]
B
Wow.
- [50:55]
A
So they finally outlawed it for cats. Cats. But, you know, we have to have enough animals die before they go, oh, maybe we should look at that.
- [51:01]
B
And propylene glycol is also the same thing that they use to de ice planes. Just gonna put that out there. And they're putting it in our food.
- [51:08]
A
Yummy.
- [51:09]
B
I know. So what is the deal with prescription diets? Because I get a lot of questions about this, and I would never feed my dog that. But, you know, I'll get messages from people. Or even my mom was dealing with this years ago, where she was like, the vet said, this is the only food that my dog. Dog could eat. And I'm looking at the ingredients of this, and it has the meal in there. It has all the, you know, the renderings and all the canola oil and crap in there. What is the deal with the prescription diets?
- [51:34]
A
So that's a really interesting marketing issue. Yeah. So the term prescription diet is trademarked by Hills.
- [51:44]
B
Of course, it is the only one
- [51:46]
A
that is allowed to be called a prescription diet. It is. Hills and all the others are allowed to be called therapeutic diets. The interesting thing that people don't realize is there's nothing prescriptive in there. There's no medications. It's not. There's nothing special about that. And there's actually been lawsuits brought. Like, you know, Hill's CD for cats with urinary issues. Well, there's also Science Diet. Same company, urinary care for cats over the counter. The prescription diet is twice as expensive. And when you compare the ingredients on the two, it's like. That's the same. Like, it's so close. Yeah. It's like. Yeah. So it's. They teamed up. So this started Dr. Mark Morris. Mark Morris, I think, is who did it. It was a veterinarian from New Jersey. Years ago, a seeing eye dog had kidney disease. And so he designed a diet for the seeing eye dog with kidney disease. And then he started using it for other patients. And then it got really, you know, like, more people wanted it. So he hooked up with Hills Rendering Company.
- [53:00]
B
Ew.
- [53:01]
A
That's where it originally started. Hills was a rendering company. He hooked up with them to make a dry kibble version of this kidney diet. And that's how it all started. And then they went to the veterinary market and said, hey, this could be, you know, we'll call it a prescription diet. We'll trademark that, and you'll make money. Because the only way they can get it is to come to you. So if we think about a prescription, prescriptions are made to be used for a short period of time. You get antibiotics, you take them for two weeks. You get an anti inflammatory, you take it for two weeks. Although in veterinary medicine, your pet gets started on those, you're probably gonna be using them every day for the rest of their life, which, that's another problem as well, because we're not looking at trying to heal things, we're just killing symptoms all the time and say, oh, we'll just put out the fire, eh? But you didn't fix it. So that's how the prescription diets started. And they're supposed to be used for like a month to get things under control and then you put them back
- [54:03]
B
onto their normal diet, whatever.
- [54:06]
A
But we have animals that stay on them for life. And people are told exactly that, oh, he has to eat this for the rest of his life. He can't eat anything else. We've got these hypoallergenic diets, all these different things. Now there's a million different ones. But again, we're not solving any problems. We're using really poor quality ingredients for these things. They're really no different than diets that you can get over the counter. And again, I'm going to have 400 veterinarians screaming at me for saying this. I actually had the New York State Veterinary Board come after me years ago because I told somebody online that their cat didn't need to stay on that urinary diet for the rest of its life. So here's our problem with cats. Cats are desert dwellers by nature. They don't drink much water. Like they're made to make a very concentrated urine and to not drink much water because their moisture comes from what they eat. Mice, 75% moisture. Squirrels, bunnies, rats, 75% moisture. We feed them dry kibble, 6% moisture. They make a very concentrated urine. So crystals precipitate out in their bladder and make sludge. And then they have very painful urination and they get urinary obstructions because they have all this, this sludge in there that makes a cork on the way out. So how does veterinary medicine deal with this? We give them a dry kibble that has acidifiers in it, of course, in the hopes that it would dissolve it. But if that doesn't, and again, we're sticking with dry kibble. Why, why are we not looking for a high moisture diet for these animals who are supposed to eat that? And then we deal with it by saying, well, you Know if he keeps obstructing, we'll just cut his penis off and make him into a girl and then he has a bigger opening.
- [55:46]
B
Is that really a thing they do with cats?
- [55:47]
A
Oh, yeah. Oh yeah.
- [55:49]
B
Oh my God. So that's so sad.
- [55:53]
A
Well, exactly. So we're, you know, our, our way of dealing with it is not to solve the underlying problem, it's to make a bigger hole. Yeah, like, no, like the cat is still painful and miserable because he's got all these crystals that are very irritating in his bladder. Like, we need to flush the bladder, we need to have a very dilute urine. And, and you're good luck convincing your cat to drink more. But you can put more moisture in the diet by putting them on a species appropriate high moisture diet.
- [56:22]
B
So it's just common sense.
- [56:24]
A
Yes, it, it's common sense. And the problem is in veterinary school, very little time is spent on nutrition. So when I was in vet school, which was in the age of the dinosaurs, in, in our internal medicine class, the only prescription diet or therapeutic diets at the time were hills. And so when we talked about kidney disease in dogs and cats, it was, they all get kd. You know, they made this great Alphabet system. They all get kd. There was never any instruction on, well, we could make them a homemade diet that is lower in phosphorus, that is going to make them urinate a little bit more. We're not taught how to do that. 99% of the veterinarians would have no idea how to formulate a homemade diet for pets. Really. Interestingly, when we first moved to North Carolina, my mom had a 17 year old schnauzer and the dog got to the point where she needed to be helped over the rainbow bridge. And I said, well. And it was during COVID so I said, well, let me see if I can find a house call that. And I found a house call that. And she came and she was from Eastern Europe, so that's where she was trained in school. And so I gave her a couple of my books, which I write a lot of cookbooks for dogs. And so I explained who I am and I said, you know, we're, we're very holistic here and I design diets for dogs. And she's like, oh, this is so cool. And we got into conversation and she said, oh, well, in the European, Eastern European schools where she went, you have to learn how to formulate diets for every species. Not only dogs, but cats, chickens, cows, horses. And so she worked in the feed industry over there for a Time, Long, long time. Formulating diets for livestock. And I said, oh, my gosh, we would never learn that here.
- [58:12]
B
Yeah, that's wild.
- [58:13]
A
We learned about a lot of drugs and we learned about a lot of really over the top diagnostics and, you know, crazy weird diseases, but we don't learn, how do I make a species appropriate diet to heal something?
- [58:28]
B
Again, it's the same with doctors here in America. They get taught to match a symptom with a pill.
- [58:33]
A
Yeah.
- [58:34]
B
And not actually treat it at the root cause. So let's talk about that, because this is your expertise. Well, first, before we dive into what a species appropriate diet looks like and how to build that for your cat and your dog, if we're looking for something that has a label on it, what do you want to avoid that's on that label? And then what do you want to look for?
- [58:51]
A
Okay, so you. Absolutely. First of all, you probably don't want to buy your pet food in the. The grocery store.
- [58:57]
B
Oh, no, I think it's all Purina and Mars.
- [59:01]
A
It's in the center of the grocery store, which is where all the ultra processed food is. So that's. She got a clue right there. I did a great video years ago in the grocery store. And like, we used to try to do this stealth. We would go off hours so that I didn't get kicked out of our only grocery store, but I would go in the pet food aisle and look at, read ingredients and then look at the cost of the food per pound. Like, you know, people will buy those little tiny cans and they're like, well, it's only 99 cents. You know, it's also three quarters of an ounce. So you're paying $20 a pound for really bad food. So I used to do this, and then I would take my cart and I would go around the perimeter of the grocery store and buy the fresh veggies and the meats and the livers and, you know, all this stuff. And then, you know, calculate that out and go look for $2 a pound, I can make. And this was a few years ago, but for $2 a pound, I can make this really healthy, diet it for my dog, or I can spend $20 a pound for like really ultra processed, really horrible stuff. Like, we need to think about this.
- [60:01]
B
Yeah.
- [60:02]
A
So things that you. First of all, the words holistic and natural have zero meaning. So just because the bag says holistic dog kibble. No, doesn't mean anything. Natural doesn't mean anything either. You know, helps them live longer. There's Been lawsuits over that. Where's your studies on that? So how can you prove that you want to avoid anything that's not a named meat? So if it's a meat meal or a poultry byproduct. Which poultry? I don't know. Which meat? I don't know. Could be anything. So those are the rendered products. If it says chicken meal, okay, that's going to be whole chicken, but it literally could be the whole chicken, including feathers, feet, head intestines, and poop in the intestines. Like the whole chicken. Where do you think all the avian influenza killed chickens go?
- [61:01]
B
Oh, yeah, they go, the dog food.
- [61:02]
A
Oh, yeah, they're all in dog food because it's going to be cooked and it kills the virus. So it's all fine. But it literally. They smother the chickens with a nitrogen foam and then. And it's the whole chicken. Like the whole. A million chickens in a vat, you know, nobody is taking. I mean, the dogs can eat the feathers. That's not the issue. But there's some nasty stuff in there. But it's cooked. Yeah. We process our own chickens. And my daughter had all these feathers and she had this idea, like, I'll put them in a pillowcase, I'll run them through the washer, I'll run them through the dryer, and I'll put them on Facebook Marketplace, because people will use them for crafts and decorating things. Yeah, nobody bought that. So she's like, I have all these feathers. So she has two dogs and a cat. And she said she had feathers everywhere in her house. She said, I've got to get rid of these feathers. So in every meal, she has big dogs, she would put a handful of
- [61:50]
B
feathers, the dogs would eat it.
- [61:52]
A
The dogs chowed down, no problem. And she's. So then the next part of the experiment was, now when I go clean up the yard, I'm going to be cleaning up poop. Full of feathers. 100% digestible.
- [62:01]
B
Oh.
- [62:01]
A
And they are actually a very good source of trace minerals. Oh. And like, if you think about what our dogs or cats would eat if they caught something outside, they would eat the fur, they would eat the feathers, they would everything. They usually the intestines, they'll eat the stomach contents, but they leave the intestines. So, I mean, we see that with our barn cats. Anyway. That was way off topic.
- [62:21]
B
No, I mean, it's interesting.
- [62:22]
A
Yeah. Where the heck was I going before that?
- [62:24]
B
We were talking about labels. So what do you look for?
- [62:27]
A
So I'm like, I really don't like to see the chemical stuff. Soup on the label.
- [62:32]
B
Yeah. So.
- [62:34]
A
And there are, and what that is, it's the vitamins and minerals that they have to add back in because it was all killed in processing. Like, you know, oh yeah, most of the nutrients are gone. Just put them back in. So I don't like to see that. And there are better and worse ones. So in 2018 and 19, we had a huge recall with tens of thousands of pets again that died from kidney failure because there was too much vitamin D. Vitamin D in the vitamin mineral mix.
- [63:02]
B
Oh man.
- [63:03]
A
And excess vitamin D kills the kidneys of dogs and cats. And you know, it takes a few thousand animals have to die before the veterinarians go, God, we're seeing a trend. Why are we having so many animals in kidney failure all of a sudden? And then, you know, the qu. That's how the questions start getting asked, like, oh, we're seeing all these problems. What, what is going on? So if somebody finally asked and then food finally got tested and it's like, ah, oopsie, yeah, that's a big problem. And the vitamin mineral mixes, there's only a few companies that make them and most of them are sourced in China and somebody made a calculation error in that particular batch. And so it was a recall across hundreds of foods because everybody uses the same mixes. So. So I don't like to see all that stuff. I'd really, me personally, if I'm formulating, I'm trying as hard as I can to get 100% of the vitamins and minerals that they need coming from whole foods. That's what I want to see. And if I have to add, like, if we look at minerals, we want to avoid things that are sulfates. If we see something that's a protonate that's going to be chelated a little differently, that's how it's bound together to amino acids. So you know, that's going to be more absorbable and a better form for our pets. I like to see whole foods. So if I, if I'm buying a beef based product, and for me personally, I'm buying human grade made, gently cooked or raw if I'm not making my own. And so I want to see specific
- [64:32]
B
brands that you like.
- [64:33]
A
We have a lot of brands that we like. So there's two places people can look for that they can look on our website. We don't sell all the foods that I like because some of them are refrigerated and frozen and I'm not shipping that Stuff we ship freeze dried. But truthaboutpetfood.com Susan Thixton. She puts out a list every year. And in order for a company to get on her list, they have to provide all of the bills of lading for every ingredient in their food, where it came from, whether the animals are humanely cared for, humanely slaughtered, whether the vegetable matter is organic. And she even gives you a breakdown on what it would cost to feed per day. So excellent. It costs, you know, she gets donations for the list. So, you know, give her 10 bucks, you can get the list, she puts a new one out every year.
- [65:22]
B
And that was. What was that again? Truth about.
- [65:23]
A
Truth about pet food.com and if a pet food company manages to get on, they can't buy their way on. And if they manage to get on that list, believe me, they advertise that they're very proud of it because that means you're doing everything right.
- [65:37]
B
Awesome.
- [65:38]
A
And so my list is much shorter than Susan's but it's these are the things I would be willing, these are the foods I'd be willing to feed my pets. So a lot of them are things that you can find in independent pet stores. If you walk into a pet store that's not part of a huge chain, it's not a big box store, and you see refrigerators and freezers full of food, you're in the right place because that's the fresh food. And those are going to be people who are more educated in what is going into your pets. So I really like supporting the indies. But a lot of these companies you can also order directly online and then it comes on dry ice. And in our garage we have a dog food freezer, a cat food freezer, and two people food freezers.
- [66:23]
B
We might have to do that too.
- [66:26]
A
It's totally worthwhile. Not everybody has that kind of space. Or if you travel with your pets a lot, that's where freeze dried comes in. Freeze dried is or air dried. So awesome. We used to have a motorhome and if we were going to be on the road for six weeks, I can't take enough frozen food for six weeks for all the animals we had. So the freeze dried food is great because you just add warm water, add bone, broth, broth, and so you're looking for whole food ingredients. So let's say it's a beef product. It will say beef muscle, beef heart, beef liver, beef kidney. It names all the different things and then it'll have all the vegetable matter and what you're looking for is to avoid a lot of starchy things. Our dogs and cats have zero requirements for carbohydrates in their diet. Like if you look at the list of requirements for, these are the amino acids they need, these are the vitamins they need, these are the minerals they need, and then this is how much protein they need, this is how much fat. And then under carbohydrate, it's zero. So they do need a fiber source. So in nature, that would be the stomach contents of the animal they're eating because they've usually eaten some sort of grass or the fur and feathers. So in pet food, we're not allowed to put in the fur. Although there are some companies that like, we buy whole ground rabbit, whole ground quail, so you can get it, but they'll use like dark leafy greens, broccoli, that sort of thing for that fiber source that the pets need.
- [67:59]
B
What about sweet potatoes?
- [68:00]
A
I feel like that's sweet potato is used a lot. I don't use it. It's really interesting. I had a pet food company. I use it in specific circumstances. White potatoes are not good. Peas. Legumes really shouldn't make up a big part of our pets diets. Grains, they have no need for grains. That's a big myth. Just don't. When your vet says and you had to have grains to the diet, There was that study.
- [68:27]
B
I'm sorry to interrupt you. We'll come back.
- [68:29]
A
The dilated cardiomyopathy study.
- [68:31]
B
Yes. That keeps getting brought up because our dog eat grain free. And my thinking is that our dogs wouldn't be eating grains if they were in the wild.
- [68:39]
A
No kidding.
- [68:40]
B
So why would we be feeding them?
- [68:41]
A
So let me bust that myth right now. The study was a letter to the editor in the veterinary journal by a specific nutritionist who is funded by guess who?
- [68:55]
B
Purina or Mars.
- [68:56]
A
I'm gonna assume Purina, Mars, Hills. All of them. Which, you know, most academic nutrition. Most academicians are funded by big pharma and big pet food. I mean, it's just the way it goes, you know, Gee, that research isn't biased at all. But she and a couple of other academic veterinarians wrote a letter to the editor saying, why are we seeing so much dilated cardiomyopathy in pets who are fed grain free foods? And then wrote to FDA and said, we want you to have people report cases of dilated cardiomyopathy, but only the ones that are seen in dogs eating grain free boutique exotic foods. So beg boutique exotic grain free foods. Now, if you only look for one thing, you only find one thing. How about we say, hey, why don't, why don't we look at. And FDA actually made a statement based on 500 cases that were reported. And it's like you have no research to back that. There was no scientific study, there was no peer reviewed article, there was a letter to the editor and a request from somebody to look only at these cases. And FDA put out a statement. And then about five years later, FDA very quietly put a statement at the top, said we have found no connection between grain free foods and dilated cardiomyopathy in dogs. Didn't announce that, didn't send that out. Just if you look up the FDA grain free cardiomyopathy thing, there's that little statement at the top now. But the veterinarians, again, this was one of those myths where they latched on like white on rice and said, you gotta feed grains to your dogs.
- [70:43]
B
And then meanwhile all the dogs are getting diabetes and they're.
- [70:46]
A
And obesity and chronic inflammatory disease. Disease. And the, these independent pet store retailers who spent so much time educating pet parents on feeding a species appropriate diet, a meat based diet without all the grains, without all the starches, had people coming in and returning the food and saying, no, I need those bags with the grains in set the industry back so far. And part of it was at the time when this article was written, letter was written, Grain free food owned about 43% of the market. It was cutting into the margins.
- [71:28]
B
Of course it was.
- [71:29]
A
And the company that was cutting into the margins was Champion Pet Foods, which was Origin and Akana. They had done a really good job marketing. They were a big, big, small company and a lot of people were feeding the food. And like in my first book, before I knew any better, that kibble just was horrible. I actually said, I love this company. They, you know, they had 17 different named meats in their food. Like, yes, it's still a kibble and you still need a starch to hold it together. But they were going in a better direction. And at the time Mars wanted to buy Champion, well, Champion's stock plummeted when the DCM debacle hit the airwaves. Everybody was returning the food. Nobody bought the food anymore. They laid off 30% of their employees and Mars bought them for pennies on the dollar.
- [72:28]
B
Isn't that interesting?
- [72:29]
A
Isn't that interesting? That's really interesting. I don't know, nothing to see here. I don't know. People can't connect the dots and I'm just a conspiracy theorist.
- [72:40]
B
But you're in a safe space.
- [72:43]
A
Well, I have a shield of armor that's given to me from someone up above, so I know I speak the truth and I don't worry about it.
- [72:51]
B
I love that
- [72:53]
A
you got to get your shield from somewhere. So I have very thick armor and so I'm not worried, you know, and if people want to call me out and say that I'm lying, I just say, look at the stats that are there. We have dogs with heart disease. We take them to the cardiologist and they know I'm a veterinarian and they give me the same line and I'm like, really? Have you done your homework?
- [73:21]
B
Yeah.
- [73:22]
A
Like, where is the. So the big thing with golden retrievers? It's a taurine deficiency. Where do we get taurine? Oh, yeah, that would be meat grains. No taurine. But it has the building block amino acids that the dogs can use to convert to taurine. Cats can't do that. So cats have to have taurine in their food because they're obligate carnivores. Cats only need 2 to 4% non. So they should. Meat, bone and organ for cats should be 96 to 98%. And the other 2 to 4% is that fiber and some, you know, water soluble vitamins that we get from vegetable matter. For dogs, it's 10 to 15%. That is not meat, bone and organ. And so why are we feeding them kibble? That's 50% carbohydrates.
- [74:11]
B
I mean it's. Oh, it's so heartbreaking.
- [74:13]
A
Why do we have so much pancreatitis? Why do we have so much diabetes? Why do we have so much endocrine disease? Why do we have so much chronic inflammatory disease? We're not feeding them correctly.
- [74:21]
B
And then the vets will tell you, oh, no, it has nothing to do with their diet. It's everything to do with their diet.
- [74:25]
A
The only diets that you should feed are the ones made by the three big manufacturers who have board certified nutritionists on board and make sure that their foods are complete and balanced.
- [74:34]
B
Because it's dangerous to feed your dog.
- [74:37]
A
There were studies done in Europe. Another great book, if people really want to dive into this, is feeding dogs by Dr. Connor Brady. He's an Irishman, not a veterinarian.
- [74:48]
B
Had a dog live for to like 20 on his farm. Or am I thinking of somebody else?
- [74:53]
A
No, that's somebody else. But, but he wrote this. He's a, he's a researcher. So he's a. He loves to read scientific studies. He's a research nerd. And so in his book Feeding Dogs, he quotes all these different studies. And so there was one in Europe where they tested because these foods are marketed as complete and balanced. And the veterinarians say, no, these are the only ones that are complete and balanced. You couldn't possibly make your own food that's complete and balanced. Well, when they tested it, over 60% of the Kibbles were not complete and balanced. They didn't match what it said on the label, and over 90% of the canned foods were not complete and balanced.
- [75:26]
B
Shocker.
- [75:27]
A
So we can bust the myth of these are the only ones that are complete and balanced. No, not so.
- [75:33]
B
Okay, so what does a complete balanced meal look like for, for a dog? And I guess we should also do cats as well.
- [75:40]
A
Okay, so AFCO says that the minimum protein requirement, and I'm not going to get the numbers exact, but the minimum protein requirement for dogs is like 18 for an adult dog. When we give our dogs free choice, they go for 50% protein, 45% fat, and then the other 5% is their carbs fiber.
- [75:59]
B
Have you ever seen that clip of that woman on a. She's on some talk show and she's like, my dog is vegetarian. He loves salads. And they're like, let's test it out. And they put meat in front of the dog and the salad and the dog goes just crazy for the meat. And the girl's like, no, it was bad. Like, no, you're supposed to go to the side.
- [76:18]
A
You're not allowed to eat that.
- [76:18]
B
It's the funniest clip I've ever seen.
- [76:21]
A
That would be. We should do that with our dogs. I'm thinking I, I'm thinking I need to do that clip.
- [76:26]
B
She's like, with the. He, he always chooses the salad. I'm like, I'm so sure that your dog is choosing a salad.
- [76:32]
A
Mine will eat a salad. But let me tell you, they're much happier to, to have their, their, their nice meat based diets. So cats are obligate carnivores. They, they need meat in their diet. When, when clients would come to me and say, my cat's a vegetarian because I'm a vegetarian, I'm like, you're not my client. I will not treat your cat if you are feeding it as a vegetarian because he's going to die some really horrible disease because cats are not vegetarians. Go get a hamster. Like, no. And I had, you know, it took a, it took a few cats dying with these clients. Who were you know, so adamant that they wanted to feed them vegetarian meals. And, you know, they died from things that cats. I, I don't care. You know, Mother Nature is so good. God is so good at doing what needs to be done and saying, this is what, what you need to eat and do. And, you know, these are the things you need. What makes us think that we can take a bunch of chemical soup and put that in some vegetables and that's going to make up for all the things that we're missing from nature for our cats. It doesn't work. Yeah, it just doesn't work. So don't be a vegetarian dog. Don't be a vegetarian cat. Dogs are more like facultative carnivores. So they could survive being a vegetarian,
- [77:55]
B
but they would be very.
- [77:57]
A
They don't thrive. It's not what God made them to do.
- [78:01]
B
Yeah.
- [78:03]
A
So we need to feed them the way that they need to be fed. So if I'm making a diet, I am going to start with a lot of fat and protein, calories. Now, people freak out because, again, the veterinarians promoting this for years, high fat diets are going to cause pancreatitis. Oh, yes, we see a lot of pancreatitis, but we're seeing it from the high carbs. The pancreas is working overtime. It's like, oh, my gosh, I have to make more insulin. I have to make more enzymes to break down all these carbohydrates. I'm working overtime time. I don't think I can do this. And finally it gives up for cats. I used to this great analogy with cats. When you feed kibble to cats, they, instead of sitting down and eating a meal, like, I caught the mouse, I'm going to eat the mouse. They become grazers and they're also indoors, so they're not getting to hunt and pounce and do what cats are supposed to do. And so their only exercise is to go from the sofa to the food bowl. They eat the dry kibble, they go back and lay on the sofa. Their blood sugar goes up from eating all the carbs. Their pancreas says, holy cow, shoots out a bunch of insulin. Their blood sugar drops back down. They go up, gotta go get another hit from the food bowl. And so our cats are back and forth and that's the only exercise they get. And we have a bunch of obese cats with pancreatic problems.
- [79:27]
B
Oh, it's so sad.
- [79:28]
A
It is. We're doing it all wrong. That's why we're not getting 30 year old cats. Cats and 20 year old dogs.
- [79:34]
B
Wow. So what should cats be eating? Actually, my podcast producer is going to love this question. If he wanted to make his own food for his cats or. Oh, well, he can go to the website if he's going to buy packaged stuff. But what, what would he do?
- [79:49]
A
We have a bunch of recipes for cats and dogs, free downloads on the website. I haven't written a cat cookbook yet because cats are really picky and cats don't like leftovers. So if you're going to cook for your cat, you're making small batches.
- [80:01]
B
Okay.
- [80:02]
A
But things that we don't think about and we kind of go, ew. But are so super good for cats. Hearts and livers actually super good for us. My daughter, when we process chicken, she takes all the hearts and livers for herself. She's like, good for you. She's like, this is like having an energy shot. Yeah. Because it's, you know, she tends to be anemic and stressed and she says, my energy shot for the day, my livers, my raw eggs, my raw milk and my hearts. I'm like, wow, we eat a lot differently than we used to. Yeah. So for cats, we are looking at that 96 to 98% meat, bone and organ. But they do have requirements for some fatty acids that we need to get in there. B vitamins that we need to get in there. So nutritional yeast is actually something that is a good add in for cat food. It's actually much harder in my mind to balance cat food homemade than it is dog food. You can do it. And there are some really good recipes and there are a couple of supplements out there that you can use to balance homemade meals for cats. There's a lot more on the market for dogs for balancing homemade meals than there are for cat. Cats are very overlooked. They're really overlooked, but you can do it and we have recipes for them. My book, keeping your pets naturally healthy has 42 recipes in it for different disease states and a lot of those are for cats as well. So it is possible. But again, for cats don't cook big batches. They have to have their food served close to body temperature. And really our dogs should too. So if you're feeding a refrigerated product or frozen product, you need to thaw it out, you need to get it up to room temperature or body temperature. There's a lot of different ways ways you can do that. Some people microwave, probably not the best way, but you can also take the frozen food container and sit that In a bowl of hot water.
- [81:58]
B
Oh yeah, that's a good idea.
- [81:59]
A
You know, just a lot of different ways you can do it. Me personally, I take the food out early and let it sit on the counter for a little bit. I'm not worried about bacteria. Let it sit on the counter until it's up to room temperature. Or if I've just made food, I. If I'm making just gently cooked food. I really like the slow cooker because it's at a lower temperature, it holds all the moisture and you don't lose as much of the vitamins that are in there, especially if you feed the juice as well.
- [82:27]
B
And this might be a silly question, but do you use the same slow cooker that you use for your food too, that you use for the dogs?
- [82:33]
A
Same thing.
- [82:33]
B
Okay.
- [82:34]
A
It's human. Everything is human grade, organic in my case, organic, you know, free range, grass fed, blah blah, blah, blah.
- [82:39]
B
You never want to put the like Purina or something in there because that would be not. I know, it's so gross. Just really want to clarify that for the listeners. Like if you're doing that, it needs to.
- [82:48]
A
This is why I'm looking for human grade food. And we'll have to talk about the human grade label. It's really hard to get because like I work closely with a company called All Provide in Georgia and they make raw and gently cooked food for both cats and dogs. All of their ingredients are human grade ingredients. They buy through like restaurant supply. They buy from Demcoda Farms for the beef, which is like one of the, you know, biggest restaurant superfood suppliers. So they buy everything that's very good but once it comes into their plant, because they don't have a USDA inspector on site every day, it is now not human grade. So there are a few companies that are made in USDA facilities and so then they can use, if they're using all human grade ingredients, they can use the human grade label. But that's very expensive for these smaller. So if you have a food pet food company that's selling less than $5 million a year, you're probably not going to be able to afford to be paying a USDA inspector to be in there every day.
- [83:53]
B
Yeah. So what's the worker on there? How do you know that you're getting good, high quality meat if they can't afford you?
- [83:59]
A
Look on their website for one thing you call them. It's really interesting. I've called some of the really bad pet food companies and asked them where ingredients are supplied from. Let Me just tell you the run around that, that you will get. Like, if. I don't even know if they're a good company. Like a lot of these pet food companies, they will put on their website. Our beef comes from this farm, our turkey comes from this farm. And they give you the website or the, you know, the location pictures of the farm. Like, they're very proud of the fact that they are sourcing very high quality ingredients. Rabbits. It very commonly is sourced from France or Spain. Venison very commonly is sourced from Australia. Okay, that's fine.
- [84:44]
B
Yeah.
- [84:44]
A
You know, it can come from overseas again if it's well sourced. But you know, some of those things, we don't have the supply here that they do in other countries for really good ingredients. So, you know, I love American made, but there are some things that we just don't.
- [85:03]
B
We don't do as well.
- [85:04]
A
We don't do as well as other countries. Yeah. So we've got a couple good companies like Hair Today is in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They don't sell complete diets, but they sell a lot of the organs. So if you're like, oh, I need a bunch of turkey hearts for a recipe. That's where you go like. And they have, they have really weird things. Like they, for the cats, they actually have ground guinea pig. Well, the dogs could eat it too. They have ground mice and it's really weird. My cats catch mice all the time. I bought the ground mice and they won't eat it.
- [85:35]
B
Oh, interesting.
- [85:36]
A
Isn't that weird?
- [85:37]
B
That is weird.
- [85:38]
A
I guess they don't like it all mixed together.
- [85:40]
B
Yeah, they're like, I don't recognize this. I need the whole thing.
- [85:43]
A
But that's where I buy my whole ground quail and my whole ground rabbit for my dogs. Just as a, you know, just change it up a little bit. And you know, yes, we do want to feed our animals all the vitamins and minerals that, that they need. But like, we had a day the other day where I just totally spaced out and forgot to thaw out their food for dinner. And I didn't even have any freeze dried food in the house. I was like, well, this kind of stinks. So what am I doing for dinner? Okay, I have canned sardines and water.
- [86:13]
B
Great.
- [86:14]
A
Start with sardines. Oh, we have a bunch of eggs. We're gonna add eggs. And I had turkey hearts. Sardines, eggs and turkey hearts is almost balanced for our dogs. And then I added a couple of my supplements that I had and I'm like, you're gonna do just fine with this for dinner tonight. And then tomorrow we'll go back to, you know, I'll remember to thaw something out. And so, you know, you know, I have like a list of things like, keep these in your pantry. And you will never be Old Mother Hubbard with the cupboard being bare. Like, you know, if you have canned sardines, your dog's gonna be good for a couple of days. If you have to, like, think about when you're in, you know, a hurricane or a natural disaster, tornadoes, and you're like, okay, I can't cook for like, I don't have any electricity. I don't even have running water. Well, if you have freeze dried food or you have some canned things available, your pets aren't gonna starve to death.
- [87:04]
B
Smart. Okay. I love that. I've done that a couple times for our dogs too, where we forgot to buy their food or something. You know, we, we, we didn't have time to run out to the store. And I'm like, I have ground beef, I have eggs, I have sweet potatoes, and I've just like cooked it up and fed it to the dogs. And honestly, I think it's better for them.
- [87:20]
A
They're not going to die overnight.
- [87:21]
B
Yeah.
- [87:22]
A
It's just, you know.
- [87:23]
B
Well, and meat is really good for them.
- [87:25]
A
Meat is very good. The biggest problem that we have, the thing that people forget about is our pets require a calcium source. Meat is high in phosphorus and low in calcium. So that's why we, we either use ground eggshells or bone meal or ground bone. So a lot of the raw foods have ground bone in them. Raw bone is absolutely fine. It is not gonna. So a lot of people feed, like chicken backs or chicken necks or turkey necks. It's absolutely fine for our dogs to eat those raw bones.
- [87:56]
B
And those bones won't splinter in them because I always.
- [87:58]
A
They're raw, they won't splinter. It's the cook that makes them brittle. So when your dog gets in the trash and eats the chicken carcass that you cook, that's a nightmare. But if you fed them that carcass raw, not a problem.
- [88:11]
B
Oh, wow. Okay. That's really good to know because I've been paranoid about the little, the splintering of the bones.
- [88:17]
A
Yeah. And if you, like, if you've never fed raw, meaty bones to your dog and you're like, well, that sounds like a really good thing to do. Dr. Ian Billinghurst, who's the father of raw feeding for pets in Australia, he has a book on how to feed bones and you're raising our dogs on bones. But we actually have a course on our website that's taught, I think by Dr. Nick Thompson in England on how to feed raw, meaty bones to your dog.
- [88:45]
B
Okay, amazing.
- [88:46]
A
So I'm gonna intro course.
- [88:48]
B
I'm gonna direct everybody to your website. I feel like, oh, God, I could talk to you for three more hours. I have so many questions I might have to bring you back on because it is in the essence of time. So maybe to. I'm going to send everybody your website, also your books, which will be great resources. I also just want to ask you one more question before we go because I get a lot of questions about this as well. Are we over vaccinating our pets?
- [89:10]
A
Yes. It's really interesting. I watched a webinar in the airport. More smoke coming out my ears last night. And the person was promote. She was talking about vaccine hesitancy and comparing vaccine hesitancy for veterinary medicine to human medicine. And there is a subset of people that they don't vaccinate themselves or their kids and they don't vaccinate their pets and you're not going to change their mind. So she was talking about how do we change the minds of those who are somewhere in the middle? Because you also have the people who are way at the other side, like, oh, my teacup Chiweenie needs 17 vaccines today. Good. Give them walled. No problem. Yeah, don't do that. So for me, it's funny, I'm not an anti vaxxer, even though AVMA has labeled me as such. They did a national post to all veterinarians calling me an anti vaxxer because I spoke out against the new messenger RNA vaccines, which is very concerning, very concerning. And I'm like, we don't have enough information on this. And so they posted my reel. And I was reading somebody else's. It wasn't even me. I was just reading somebody else's concern. It was a letter that someone else wrote about concerns. But anyway, I wear it proudly, but I'm not an anti vaxxer. I think that some vaccines have done a lot of good in the animal world over the years. Parvovirus, it raised its ugly head when I was in veterinary school in the early 1980s and we had had wards full of dogs and puppies dying from parvovirus. It was really ugly and really sad. And then once we started vaccinating, it's like, oh, we don't have so many dogs dying from that anymore. So, okay, that's good.
- [90:57]
B
And Is Parvo one of the ones that you want to do when they're really young and then they're mostly protected?
- [91:02]
A
Yeah. So that's the part where, you know, we've really botched it up. When I was in school, it was all vaccines every year, no matter what. You just send them the card every year. Just like, you know, you sign up for your dentist every year. You sign up for the vet every year to get your shots. We now know that this jumper Parvo adenovirus, which is hepatitis, the couple of shots that they get as puppies, probably good for a lifetime. And we can do titers to show that they have immunity. It's like. But the veterinarians don't want to do. A lot of veterinarians don't want to do that. So they just give it a really high price tag. Well, it'll be $600 to run the titer. It's $40 to give the vaccine. Most owners are like, I'm a little cost conscious. That sounds like a lot. But those vaccines, even AVMA and Aha say give these vaccines no more often than every three to five years.
- [91:51]
B
Interesting.
- [91:52]
A
So if your veterinarian is recommending those core vaccines any more often than every three years, that's over vaccinating. And they say three to five. Who's to say whether it should be three, four, or five? There's no science behind that, that it's just a. Well, we. We're backing off from the. Every year, no science. Do a tighter. Biggest problem, boarding, grooming, daycare, travel.
- [92:13]
B
Yep. This is what we're up against.
- [92:15]
A
You want to take your dogs to those places, and they have a million requirements. What I would recommend, if you have to take your dog to those places, say to them, I would like to do a blood titer that proves my dog is protected against these things. Will you accept that? Because it's. It's a matter of educating them. I don't. I think a lot of them are still asking for annual vaccines, and even they are.
- [92:40]
B
And they're asking for all of them.
- [92:42]
A
And they want influenza, they want kennel cough, they want Lyme. Even if, like this thing that I watched last night, she put up the. The map of Lyme cases in the country, and it's very concentrated across the north, northeast, and the upper Midwest. And then it kind of backs off. And then in, like, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, that whole. It's zero. And she said all dogs should be vaccinated for Lyme disease every year, no matter where they live. I'm like, where is your science behind that? You just put that map up and then told me, my dog in Colorado needs to be vaccinated. That makes no sense. Then she put another one up. She was talking about the Lepto vaccine as well. And she put up a slide. They had 36 cases of lepto in Wisconsin in whatever year it was 36 in the state. And 62% of the dogs were vaccinated for Lepto but were sick and treated, and 38% were not vaccinated. On her next statement, she said, every dog with Lepto that comes in my clinic is unvaccinated. I'm like, wait, what happened to the 62% that were vaccinated? And I asked that question at the end. Shocking. They didn't answer it.
- [94:01]
B
So, yeah, they're just flames. I. I shared. I share the same flames with you because this is something that really makes me upset because we've been dealing with this here. Anytime we want to send our dog into the groom, it's like, okay, well, to the groomer, it's like, do they have this whole list of vaccines? And I'm going, okay. But they. They have the titers for these. They're immune for them already. So why do we need to keep giving them the vaccines every single year? Not even our. Actually, shockingly, our vet doesn't even push all these every year. It's a rumor.
- [94:32]
A
Well, the bad thing is the influenza, the kennel cough, the Lepto, there's no titers for those. And Lepto only lasts a year, and kennel cough lasts six to nine months. Influenza, nobody knows because nobody's tested to see, like, you know, and it's. It's influenza is. It shows up rarely, but it'll show up in a pocket. So when it first came, came about, because this is another fairly new one. In New Jersey, we had a vet clinic where they hospitalized a few influenza cases, and then their hospital got contaminated. Like, okay, so maybe we should have, you know, a better isolation ward with, you know, better air filtration. And, yeah, you need to close down and clean up. But when something like that happens, then it hits the news media because the vaccine companies are like, woohoo. So I read an article on a veterinarian here in Texas who happens to also own a huge boarding facility, and he said that the maker of the influenza vaccine just hounded him year and years after year after year. You have to require that for everybody who boards at your kennel, thousands of dogs, you have to require that you have to require. This is a big problem. Big problem. It's not a big problem. You have to do this. And so finally he started making a requirement. But he said, yeah, well, we'll give it the day that they come in for boarding. Vaccines don't work instantaneously, and the influenza takes a series of two that are two to four weeks apart. So. So when he says, well, I compromised. And so every dog that comes in, they get the vaccine when they come in. Some show up for the second vaccine in a few weeks. Some don't. And at that point, I'm like, okay, you just became a salesman. You're making money off of something that is protecting no one. Absolutely no one. And you knew it was wrong with these things. That makes the veterinary profession look bad, in my opinion. We all took the same immunology class. We know how vaccines work. And that's the same thing. If you take your pet in for surgery, dental, and they say, oh, we require that he has all these vaccines in order to be here in the hospital, and they give them that day, that's just a money grab. If they require it for your pet to be in the hospital, then they need to require it ahead of time so that it is actually protected. Protective. And, you know, if you're getting it that day, well, let's see. His immune system is already dealing with anesthesia, surgery, healing, stress of being there. That's the wrong time to poke them with a bunch of vaccines. Don't ever, ever allow that. If they say, we require that your pet be up to date on rabies, distemper, parvo, kennel, cough, whatever it is, then you say, okay, well, we're putting off surgery for a month and a half because I'm gonna need to get in here a few times times to get all that done. Don't give it all on the same day. Vaccine reactions are much more common when you give multiples at the same time.
- [97:31]
B
Yeah, same with kids. So are there any that you say that you just really think are absolutely imperative that we get, like, rabies, for example?
- [97:40]
A
Rabies is legally required. Yeah, we kind of don't have a way around with that one. We don't see much rabies in domestic animals and people in this country, but that's partly because of the vaccines. When we look at different areas of the country, like the Northeast, raccoon rabies, Southwest bat rabies, so there's different strains. And so you have to look at what is the exposure level. I was a vet. I was actually a relief. So I Was a traveling vet in New Jersey when we had an endemic rabies outbreak in New Jersey. I beheaded a lot of raccoons to test for rabies during that time. And it was huge. We had a lot of rabies cases. And I actually had a client in a little tiny dog. And luckily it was vaccines up to date on its vaccines. But it was an old dog with heart disease. It had so many problems. It was a teenager and he was a farmer, and he let the dog out for its last pee of the night and he heard this commotion. He opened the door and the dog came running in with a raccoon attached to it.
- [98:52]
B
Oh, no.
- [98:53]
A
So he's an old farmer. He gets a knife and slashes the raccoon to get it off the dog. And it was rabid. And luckily his dog was vaccinated. So, you know, we just gave it a booster. But he and his wife both had to get rabies prophylaxis because there was blood everywhere.
- [99:09]
B
Oh, wow.
- [99:10]
A
And the dog survived it, which was great. But you know, when you're in an endemic region in an endemic time where we're having a, you know, a big outbreak, it's like, ah, it might be like, you know, it's not curable.
- [99:23]
B
Yeah.
- [99:25]
A
It is zoonotic. So, you know, for that one, I'm like, you know, do I vax, do I vaccinate my dogs every three years? No, because I know their titers last a lot longer.
- [99:34]
B
Yeah.
- [99:35]
A
And we're not in a high exposure area. So as far as vaccines go, you need to look at your pet as an individual. My book, Raising Naturally healthy Pets, the longest chapter in there is on vaccines. Because you need to know, how is that disease transmitted? Is it treatable? How often do we see it and what would be my particular pet's risk? If you have a hunting dog that you're out in the fields and streams and woods every day, that's a different dog than the poodle living in a high rise in the city. Yeah, you need to look at the individual pet. Don't fall for all dogs get X, all cats get X.
- [100:15]
B
This is exactly how my vet in California was treating my dog. Was that you got to look at the individual and say, okay, is my dog, to your point out hunting every day or are we living in a high rise? You know, what are the rabies rates look like around in your area? And you, you have to do it individually. And I think that's just, that's great advice. You need to look around at your surroundings, see what your dog could potentially be exposed to what is your dog doing every day? And then act accordingly. And I think that's the. The safest way to do it.
- [100:43]
A
Absolutely. Yeah.
- [100:44]
B
Okay. Oh, my gosh. Well, I could talk to you forever. This has been such an amazing episode. Seriously, this has been really fun.
- [100:51]
A
Good.
- [100:52]
B
So please let everybody know what your website is, you, your books, and where they can find you.
- [100:57]
A
So our website is naturallyhealthypets.com and we're on pretty much all the social media. We have a lot on YouTube. My podcast is on YouTube and the regular podcast channels. My books are available on Amazon as well as on our website. And we have just have tons of information, tons of free downloads. My, my specialty is food therapy, using food to heal things. So there's a ton of information. And we also have Dr. Judy Yu, which is a bunch of courses on different ways to treat your pets. We have courses on pancreatitis and kidney disease and food therapy. And, you know, if you're having an issue, go look for it.
- [101:41]
B
Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on. This was so great. Thank you so much for listening to the real Foodology podcast. This is a Wellness Lab production produced by Drake Peterson. Theme song is by Georgie. You can watch the full video version of this podcast inside the Spotify app or on YouTube. As always, you can leave us a voicemail by clicking the link in our bio. And if you like this episode, please rate and review on your podcast app. For more shows by my team, go to wellnessloud.com See you next time. The content of this show is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for individual medical and mental health advice and doesn't constitute a provider patient relationship. I am a nutritionist, but I am not your nutritionist. As always, talk to your doctor or your health team first. Has the news been getting you down? I'm Megan McCardell and I'm here to help. I'm the host of a new show from Washington Post Opinion called Reasonably Optimistic. And it's an antidote to the pessimism that's riddling America right now. I'm a colonist of the Post, and I've been writing about economics, technology, and public policy for decades now. So every Wednesday, I'm going to talk to people who see a path forward. I'm going to talk to inventors, entrepreneurs, politicians, and, okay, probably some wonky types like me if I'm being totally honest. Congress, to me, was a very entrepreneurial place.
- [102:59]
A
It's like Shark Tank, but a lot less glamorous. When nerds get rich and powerful, they can't help but get involved in politics.
- [103:07]
B
I want to talk about how we can get unstuck and live up to the country's many promises.
- [103:12]
A
It does seem to me that there is some awakening of a desire to act together to solve problems where they are. If we believe in this country, it's worth fighting for.
- [103:21]
B
Join me Wednesdays on YouTube or wherever
- [103:23]
A
you get your podcasts.