Re-Release: Leap Years, A Game-Changing, Anti-Aging Supplement for Dogs

In honor of this leap year I am re-releasing one of my favorite episodes:
 When my dog Chance began to show his age, I was desperate for a solution that would restore his youthful spirit. That's when Leap Years, a revolutionary anti-aging supplement for dogs, entered our lives and transformed Chance's golden years. In episode of the Baroo Podcast, I  sit down with the minds behind Animal Bioscience—CEO Nick Sinclair, Chief Veterinary Officer Jenny Rentko, and holistic veterinarian Dr. Heather Oxford. We discuss the incredible advancements Leap Years is making in canine longevity and share uplifting stories from pet owners who've seen their furry companions thrive. 
 Leap Years has  recently become the first  daily supplement clinically proven to slow the effects of aging in dogs.

Resources:
Shop -  Leap Years 
Clinical Trial Results - https://leapyears.com/results/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Dogs make the best companions for humans. This podcast aims to help make humans better companions for their dogs. Welcome to the Baroo Podcast, a modern lifestyle podcast for dogs and their people. I'm your host, charlotte Bain. I've been caring for other people's dogs for more than 15 years and, while I've learned a lot in my career, I definitely don't know at all, so I've collected an ever-evolving roster of amazing dog people and I learn new things from them all the time. Hi you guys. Thank you so much for joining me for another episode of the Baroo Podcast.

Speaker 1: 0:49

In this episode, I talk about Animal Bioscience, a new anti-aging company for pets, originally founded by David Sinclair. David Sinclair is a professor in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and one of the world's leading researchers on aging and age-associated diseases. I chat with Animal Bioscience CEO Nick Sinclair, chief Veterinary Officer Jenny Ranko and Dr Heather Oxford, a holistic veterinarian who specializes in mobility and anti-aging in our pets. I chat about Animal Bioscience's new supplement, leap Years, which aims to help slow the effects of aging in our pets. My dog, chance, has been taking leap years as part of their compassionate use program for close to three months now, and I am pretty thrilled to say that we are already seeing some improvement in his mobility and his cognitive function. So let's just jump into the chat, alright, you guys. Well, first of all, thank you so much for jumping on and chatting with me about leap years. I will be, I think, the first to say we have been on leap years.

Speaker 1: 2:04

My 15 year old dog, chance, has been on leap years for I think close to I'm it's three months now, I would say and I can confidently say that I started seeing some subtle shifts in him after about two weeks and I would say that mobility wise, his mobility has improved slightly, his cognition has improved slightly and overall he's just like his spirit has kind of lifted a little bit it's the only way that I can put it.

Speaker 1: 2:37

His spirit has lifted a little bit. So this is kind of pretty exciting stuff for us. He's been always doing well at 15, but he was starting to go a little bit, making some poor choices, I would say cognitively, and slowing down aches and pains and whatnot. So we were really excited to get started on this and the fact that we're seeing these shifts like so quickly after getting started on the leap years is kind of mind blowing. So before we start talking about the science of leap years and a bit about how it works and kind of what it is. I want to jump into how, what the inspiration was behind leap years and how you all kind of got together to create this fabulous supplement for our canine companions.

Speaker 2: 3:28

Excellent. Well thanks, charlotte. So Animal Biosciences was created as part of a larger company that was addressing longevity in humans. Animal Biosciences became independent of that company and we've been looking at targeting aging and age related decline in dogs. Our first product, as you mentioned, is leap years. That came about through science that was developed through Harvard by my brother, david Sinclair, who's a leader in the longevity space, and a lot of this science started in yeast and in mice and we're shown to have efficacy in extending lifespan.

Speaker 2: 4:14

As those molecules were used to move into human trials. We established Animal Biosciences to translate that science to help longevity in pets. Over the last five years we've spent a couple of years developing the molecules, making sure that they're safe, well-manufactured, and then we spend about three years doing trials to make sure that they're effective and to prove that they work. So Animal Biosciences really grew out of our love of animals and wanting them to be around longer, and the great thing is being able to translate this science to these dogs means that the results that you're seeing we're seeing across the board with the dogs that we're treating, and it's a really great feeling to help old dogs when there's so few treatments for old dogs.

Speaker 1: 5:07

Right, okay, collaborate.

Speaker 2: 5:13

Yeah. So when Animal Biosciences was owned by the parent company, we were establishing a pathway to therapeutics and drugs rather than supplements. We threw a mutual friend. We got introduced to Ginny, who at the time was running a small and large animal hospital here in Massachusetts. Ginny joined as a consultant, advising us on the animal health industry in general animal health and helping us establish what sort of things we needed to look for in our program of developing these molecules. Safe to say that a few years into that, Ginny decided that our company was a lot more exciting than running a hospital, and that was in 2019 when Ginny came on board.

Speaker 2: 6:04

Oh gosh right before the pandemic yeah. Yes, and we've had some tumultuous times. Our company increased in size, then decreased in size. At one stage it was just Ginny and I literally working out of our home offices through the pandemic and getting this company off the ground. But with investment from some great angel investors and a lot of hard push, we've been able to take it from that all the way through to the company that it is today, so it's been great. I'm sure Ginny has plenty to say about that.

Speaker 3: 6:39

That's right About coming on board. Sure Well, nick tells the story of how we began to work together, but from my perspective as a veterinarian, you don't often get a chance to impact the profession in a broad way, and the whole business about changing the paradigm of aging and looking at senior dogs in a new way giving them a longer health span was so exciting that this is really something new for the whole veterinarian profession as well as pet parents. But it was such a great opportunity it was hard to resist.

Speaker 4: 7:21

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 7:22

So, Dr Heather, how did you and Ginny and Nick all connect?

Speaker 4: 7:29

Oh, that's an interesting story. I met, actually, david Nick's brother through a client of mine in 2019. And David started talking to me about this new company that he was founding called Animal Biopsychiatry, and just informing me about what their vision was and what kind of research they were doing and what they were looking to try to do for companion animals in the near future. And he then put me in touch with Nick and Ginny, and then they further educated me in the product that they are developing, and I've just been somewhat obsessed with anti-aging medicine for humans and pets ever since then.

Speaker 1: 8:24

I love that, and you're the reason that you are the one that introduced Chance and I to the products, so supplements. So we are grateful to you for that one, oh thank you.

Speaker 4: 8:39

I'm just so happy to have something that is showing so much improvement in our pets, I can imagine.

Speaker 1: 8:47

So can we talk about how it works and what exactly it is? Can we talk about the science behind it In ways, in terms that maybe those of us who aren't scientifically minded would understand?

Speaker 3: 9:02

Make you an answer to that.

Speaker 2: 9:05

Sure. So lip use is a two-part system that works at the cellular level. So it works in every cell in your body. As we age, there's an enzyme in every cell that declines. It's as we age. From about middle of mid-age this enzyme declines and every cell needs this enzyme to function properly.

Speaker 2: 9:33

And if you remember back to your science days of the, mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell and generating energy within the cell. This enzyme exists within your mitochondria and as it declines, your mitochondria starts not functioning as well as it should and it leads to mitochondrial dysfunction. Now the things that go on in your mitochondria are things like energy production or efficient energy production, repair of DNA mutations and those sorts of things, and dealing with mutations within the cell. All happen within the mitochondria, in and around the mitochondria. So as the health of these mitochondria decline, so does the health of the cell, and if it's every cell in your body, so does the health of the entire animal. So one part of what we do is replaces this enzyme, this coenzyme, which is called NAD. The other part to our two-part system is a thing called a sandalitic. So sandalitic are cells in your body that essentially should have died and don't. They stick around. They're often known as zombie cells.

Speaker 1: 10:44

Right.

Speaker 2: 10:46

And these zombie cells float around. Now it's good to have some zombie cells in your body. They're there for immunity, they're there for wound healing. They do have some purpose. But if there's too many of them they actually cause levels of inflammation and they secrete proteins and other things that can even inflame the cells around them and make them sandalitic cells or have senescence.

Speaker 2: 11:10

So molecules have been identified to start taking or to take these senescent cells out of the body and that's done in a pulse dose, so it's not taken every day, it's taken once off and then again once off and it clears out these sandalitic cells. So the combination of clearing out the sandalitic cells that cause inflammation and consume this NAD molecule so as it's declining, the sandalitic cells are also eating it up, using it up. So when we clear out the sandalitic cells and the inflammation and then add the NAD in, that NAD is going to all the good cells and it's being used up to revitalize the mitochondria and the good cells. When we revitalize every cell, we see that across the body. So that could be muscle improvements, because it's revitalizing the muscle cells and making them more efficient and work better, can increase blood flow as the mitochondria get more stimulated more mitochondria. We can see it, as you said, in cognition. We're seeing results where these molecules can be affecting the mitochondria in the cells in the brain but also affecting blood flow to the brain.

Speaker 2: 12:26

So we don't necessarily, with these molecules, target any one disease. What we do is target the underlying cellular processes that we decline as we age and we can revitalize those cellular processes and hence we see revitalization of the animal. So it started as a. We think we can increase activity in dogs, give them a little bit more energy or a little vim of vitality and, as we've done our trials, we've actually been increasingly surprised of what the total effect is. It affects sleep, it affects activity, it affects what we see as motivation. The dogs want to get up more. Even if they're declined and aged, they have more want to get up. So it's been a very interesting journey and the science has shown to prove itself effective as we've moved through it. So it's been great.

Speaker 1: 13:27

What has been one of the most surprising things that you've discovered, that something maybe you didn't expect in your trials.

Speaker 3: 13:36

Yeah, I think you know we've done this double blind placebo controlled trial in older dogs. So these are pet parents who bring their dog to the hospital to enter this clinical trial and so we compare dogs that get a placebo to the dogs that get the treatment. And, interestingly, in the beginning this is a six month trial and in the beginning there seems to be a placebo effect, meaning that anytime a pet parent gives something to their dog, maybe we perceive that they're getting better. So we were very interested in that. We were surprised. You know how do you get a placebo effect in a dog clinical trial?

Speaker 3: 14:16

But over time the two groups, the control group and the treated group really change, meaning that what you're observing, charlotte, in your dog is similar, that this joie de vivre, this this Nick describes it this motivation to be moving more and to have more engagement. I think the most surprising thing for us was that dogs are more engaged with their owners. So sometimes when dogs get older, they may sleep more during the day, may have restlessness at night. The other thing that we see is that it has an impact on the circadian rhythm of dogs. Now the circadian rhythm is when you sleep and when you awake. So we're seeing that dogs sleep more soundly and then during the day they're more active than they had been, when sometimes the older dogs get mixed up about day and night. So yeah, so that's. That was a very interesting finding as well.

Speaker 1: 15:20

That's fantastic. So what about you, Heather? What are some of the most amazing results that you've seen in your clients that are on leap years?

Speaker 4: 15:29

Well, I have seen I was a bit surprised. I felt confident that the product was going to work, but I was. I was a bit surprised by how quickly it worked. Yeah, and in the older patients so my, my large dogs that are on it, that you know, our 14 to 15, I've even got a 17 year old patient that's on it. They, yes, and those patients, the older they are, it seems like the faster the owners report some sort of change to me, which is really, really cool.

Speaker 4: 16:15

So I've seen dogs start sleeping through the night within seven to 10 days of being on it. I've seen, I've had one owner tell me that their dog was running through the backyard like a horse, you know, like, seem to have good coordination. And, yeah, and this is a dog who's, you know, fairly wobbly and has, you know, decreased coordination. Clients tell me that in their dogs, who were previously not eating breakfast anymore for months, within 10 days of starting leap years, they started having a voracious appetite in the morning, which leads me to believe that they're probably getting better sleep. Maybe their hormone regulation is improving and that's what's improving their appetite, possibly.

Speaker 4: 17:14

And then I had the probably the most extreme response that I've had, or the most extreme observation is in a 15 year old, smaller dog who had yeah, so, who had lenticular sclerosis, which I don't know if you're familiar with that, but that is the bluish, hazy change that happens in the eyes of older dogs. So, right in the black pupil it stops being completely crystal clear, black and it starts changing to like a haziness. It's not the same as cataracts, but that's just an aging change that happens in the eye. And the client sent me a before and after picture which was 10 days difference, and the, the haziness in the eyes, definitely seems to be decreasing. So it was something completely unexpected, yeah, yeah, and I, I don't know we I don't think we'll ever be able to figure out if it was completely the, the supplement that's doing it, but it is. We know that it's an aging change and we know the supplement is targeting those aging mechanisms. So it could, it could quite possibly be the reason for the reversal in the eyes. I'd like to think so.

Speaker 1: 18:40

I will say that I forgot to mention that the other day. My dog always gets very excited when he meets a dog on a walk, right, and it just. He loves dogs and he has from the get go and he usually gets a little bit of a zip in his step if he meets a new dog. He met a new dog on the walk and then took off running full. But he's 15 years old, full bore, I'm not kidding, like he was two years old. He's staring at me right now because he knows I'm talking about him. He fit like he.

Speaker 1: 19:09

I had him on leash and I he almost pulled me over. He was going as fast as he possibly could down the block and around the block and I was like, oh, you are going to really be hurting like the next day. But he actually he wasn't, he was totally fine. It was pretty incredible and I can only I mean, the only thing that I can think of is that somehow the leap years have this effect on him and, as you can tell, I'm a huge fan. Well you, know.

Speaker 3: 19:36

It's good to hear this because this has been our observation and and these are, you know, in our clinical trial, we're monitoring cognition, we're looking at memory, we're looking at executive function, and what you're describing is what the pet parent is seeing as as a result of improvement in these areas.

Speaker 1: 19:56

So do you think that that's like them? Do you think like it's a cognitive reaction they just forget that they're 15 and they're just generally feeling so good as it or it's like literally a physical physically he can run In that way that he hasn't been able to run for for the last ten years, or his brain is just sending him a signal that well.

Speaker 3: 20:17

I just that's a great question and you know, mitochondria are in every cell and it was starting to tell. Talk about the mitochondria in the muscle. So if you have Active cells in muscles and you have active cells in the brain and active cells in the heart, you know this is an end result of of all of these things, that this is what we're talking about. Is this new idea about cellular health and that the cells are in every different kind of tissue in the body?

Speaker 2: 20:45

So it's hard to answer your question, but I think it is an observation that is readily made and it's it's really interesting that a lot of the pet parents that we speak to and In our clinical trial have observations of quality of life measures. So we don't specify those in our trial. We ask them to pick a measure that's important to them and then report on that measure later. Might be my dog used to jump on the couch and they can't jump on the couch anymore. They used to run five miles, now they're down to one. I'd like them to be back to five miles again and we're finding significant difference in these key measures in quality of life. And it's interesting to see that you know the things that make a difference, whether it's engagement or the things that owners really notice, because owners know the most about their dogs than than anyone else. Right, they're pet parents after all. Of course we know every the most about our, but it's it's it's as we assess that or as we, you know, get the feedback from this.

Speaker 2: 21:49

Everybody is noticing a distinct change in quality of life and, as you say that the Vim or the the want to go and have some activity. It's not just I'm able to have the activity. They actually show signs that they want to be more active. So it's interesting. It's not physical or cognitive? I think it's a combination of both and I think you know, the same way that any aging dog or caring for any dog, throughout its lifespan, there's a lot of factors to it. There's, you know, how much exercise they get, what the nutrition is like, what sort of enrichment, or you know stimulation or neurological Stimulation they have affects the dogs long term. Right, can you say that? You know activity affects cognition. For sure, if you're active all your life it's less likely to be cognitive decline in you in your elderly time. So is it. Is it relational, causational? Can't really say. But do we see an effect in all of the things, be cognition or activities, 100%? And they seem to go hand in hand. The more engagement, the more activity. The more activity, the more engagement.

Speaker 1: 22:58

Okay, so they feel each other, yeah, yeah yeah, well, we've got.

Speaker 2: 23:03

We use tracking devices To show the activity of the dogs on the trial, so they wear a tracking collar and we we measure it over time and what we found at baseline or the placebo dogs, is they're restless at night. They engage with their owners in the morning a little bit. They're restless during the day. They engage in the afternoon. Their restless after that. We found with our treated dogs that they're they sleep more soundly and then their engagement and their activity when they're in with their owners goes up significantly. So we're actually seeing more engaged, more activity associated with owner time or parent time. And then the flat line during the day they're sleeping a lot more soundly, they're not pacing and restless or the owners are not engaging with them. And again in the evening we see another spike and the activity goes up relative to the engagement with the owners. So we can actually correlate data for activity directly with Engagement. So again that, are they more engaged so they're more active, or are they more active because they're more engaged?

Speaker 1: 24:07

When does that aging process start?

Speaker 4: 24:10

Yeah, well, that's a. That's a great question and I think the aging process can start really at any time and a lot of the, a lot of the factors that determine aging and our rate of aging Um are different for different dogs at just as it is for different humans. So we can see our dogs start aging, um, we can. We can see them to start much younger if maybe they haven't been fed a good quality diet, um, maybe they don't have the the greatest lifestyle, like, maybe they're couch potatoes, maybe they don't get very much exercise, um, maybe they're overfed, so they're. You know, we have a we have a pet obesity problem. So, you know, we, that is a factor and that can that can accelerate aging. So, um, you know, I think the the onset of aging and the rate of aging is definitely Individual and it's based on a lot of different factors. But what we can look for in each individual pet as signs of aging would be signs of decreased strength, and that can manifest, as you actually can look at your pet and see that there are bony prominences now that you maybe never used to be able to see, like, maybe you can see the outline of their hip bones now, or their spine, yeah, which you didn't use to, and that is a sign of muscle loss or atrophy, um, and that is a huge marker for aging. And another thing would be, you know, maybe the pet is less active, their endurance is, you know, declining, so they're not wanting to take as many walks, or maybe they're not able to take as long of walks. They're sleeping much more, especially during the day.

Speaker 4: 26:01

Uh, maybe they're not sleeping as much at night. This is really common. They're kind of that sleep weight cycle gets kind of flip-flopped, so they're out most of the day but then they're like up all night. Um, there are changes in their appetite, uh, you know. So, where they're not like, like I was saying, like they're not wanting to eat as much in the morning, they have no appetite in the morning, and then they have like increased appetite during the afternoon and evening, and that seems to be all linked with that sleep wake cycle disturbance and it's actually there's actually A change in their cortisol levels, which is really important, and that's a really important hormone when it comes to aging.

Speaker 4: 26:45

So, you know, and it happens in people too, it's, you know, the sure, the, the. When we're supposed to have the most cortisol Is the morning time because we're waking up, there's some stress, um, and the cortisol gives us that resistance to stress, um, and if we're not sleeping through the night we don't have that, and so Pets and us will have, we'll have a harder time getting through our day, um. So that's that all this stuff seems to be linked and we're finding out more and more in the current research that's coming out Pretty much daily when it comes to anti aging. But those are just you know some Um, more um, you know more um prominent signs that you can look for in your pets.

Speaker 1: 27:32

Is there an age that a dog should start, something like leap years? Or have you found that it works better in older dogs? Or you should start them young to prevent the aging? What is the science telling you about that?

Speaker 3: 27:50

Well, interestingly, we see the greatest effect in the oldest dogs. Now you may say, okay, they have the most mitochondrial dysfunction in their cells, they have the most senescent cells. So when you fix both of those problems maybe they see a bigger improvement. We see that for sure. Now the question is you know when do you start something like this? And ideally you know you would start it before you see any cognitive decline or any decrease in activity, to preserve that baseline, that baseline of where they are. So I would say, the earlier the better. You know you don't have to start it in a two year old, but depending on what the diseases are that a dog may have you know someone with arthritis from bad hips, being of a certain breed, or something like that. Or you know any older dog. Once a dog is considered older, and that varies by breed, of course then I would say that would be the time that you'd want to implement this.

Speaker 1: 28:59

We've read that you're considered an older, like a senior dog starting at seven, right, and you're saying that that varies depending on the breed and size of the dog, or is it?

Speaker 3: 29:09

I mean, of course, if you're a seven year old great Dane, you're at a really elderly great Dane versus. Do you have any great Danes in your study? Interestingly, most dogs in our clinical trial. So we have several different types of studies going on, but in the clinical trial most dogs are between 25 and 45 kilograms. So that's those that's, you know. 60 to 80 pounds. So they're all.

Speaker 3: 29:34

Yeah, there's a large proportion of large dogs, yeah, so anyway, yes, that seven seems to be a magical number. You know, when we start feeding, maybe senior diets and that sort of thing, but if you, if you're a larger breed dog, it is a lot earlier.

Speaker 2: 29:51

Yeah. So we recommend, I think you know, as a rule of thumb, preventative starts around midway through their expected lifespan. So if there are, you know if there are expected lifespan is 10, you would start four or five. Their expected lifespan is 16, then you're going to be starting around seven or eight.

Speaker 2: 30:13

Having said that, you know you can start earlier, that earlier than that, preventatively, you may not see any any change because it's warding off decline. It's prophylactically warding off decline as opposed to addressing something that's already an issue. Around two thirds of lifespan is when we really start seeing a decline in dogs and start seeing really significant change like the effect of these dogs. So once you're getting to about three quarters of lifespan, that's when people are really starting saying my dog is old, he's really decrepit, he's really going downhill. And those are a lot of the dogs that we treat and that's where we see the most bounce back. I guess it's all relative to baseline. The further away they are from the baseline of a healthy dog, the more we can bring them back close to that baseline.

Speaker 3: 31:07

You know, Nick, thanks for bringing that up. Aha, which is the American Animal Hospital Association, they recently put out a guideline on this business about two thirds of the lifespan. You know that you, instead of saying seven years old, or you know how old a dog is, based on numerical year. As Nick said, two thirds of a lifespan puts you in that senior category.

Speaker 1: 31:32

That makes more sense, right yeah, so two thirds of the lifespan based on their breed. Based on their breed. Okay, what if they're mixed up? Rescue? Yeah well, like my dog, you gotta sort that one out.

Speaker 3: 31:49

Get the DNA test and find out what their breeds are. Right, it's a real crap.

Speaker 1: 31:53

Yeah over there? Yeah, clearly 15. Well, that's hybrid vigor for you.

Speaker 3: 31:58

Yeah exactly.

Speaker 1: 32:01

So, how? How well, this is just so fantastic. So how can this improve the human animal bond? Right, how can this improve the quality of life of our pets? Obviously, but how can it improve our, the bond that we have with our pets and the expectations that we have of our pets? Right, I think.

Speaker 3: 32:20

I can go to.

Speaker 1: 32:24

I think that.

Speaker 2: 32:25

I think the biggest impact this has on human animal bond is really related to that, that sense of engagement. We all know all of us have experienced an old dog they tend to disconnect a little. More they're asleep, more they're not willing to, you know, follow you around, do the activities you do over your day, but you know they're more inclined to interact with you less frequently the older they get. What we're finding is that that frequency of interaction gets increased and the time that you spend with your dog increases because the dog has more energy and more time to spend, more want to be with you. Yeah, but I think the other, the flip side of that is, as our dogs age, it's very difficult to do anything for them.

Speaker 2: 33:18

We all have that sense of what can I do for my aging dog. Often we treat disease, we treat the symptoms of disease and then we there's not much else we can do we just say, okay, it's, there's a lump, let's remove it. They've, you know they've got diabetes or they've got an issue that we can treat. But apart from that, the old my dog is just slowing down. There's never been anything to actually treat that or do anything about that. Right, that ability to do that for your dog, I've found, is improves that human animal bond, that ability to be able to help them give back what they've given to you. That's huge, and increasing the activity and that that engagement in that moment and throughout the day is, you know, really makes a difference in an old dog's life. I think that's the biggest improvement for the bond.

Speaker 3: 34:14

Well, charlotte, you, you know, right, you know what it's like to have an older dog Like you're. You might be worried that the time is growing short. You may want to provide everything you possibly can to provide comfort, and that just those things in and of themselves improves the human animal bond. And when we were talking about you know what, what is leap years? And we said, well, it's more life in your dog. And then then all of a sudden it came to us and it's more dog in our lives, right, so it's right, and so that's how we get filled up with our older dog is that they are more with us and more engaged and so more satisfying for the relationship between us.

Speaker 1: 35:01

Absolutely. Yeah, it's. It can be anxiety producing when you have an old dog and you don't quite know how you can help them. All you can Um, and it kind of takes. It does take a little bit of that anxiety away. Knowing that I'm seeing these changes in him, right Right, I still know that he's old, I still know that he's 15, but seeing that he's got a little bit more vim and vigor, you know, helps alleviate some of my anxiety. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 35:29

Well, I mean, that's the whole idea is to improve what we're calling the health span. You know that it's an older dog but remains healthy. You know, maybe remains disease free or for stalls some of those very common diseases of aging. Yes, right, I was just going to say it was interesting.

Speaker 2: 35:46

When we started the journey, we were actually looking at increasing longevity. So we're going to increase lifespan, right. And then we really quickly became apparent that nobody wants to expend lifespan If health span doesn't get extended with it. It's about the quality of life. Nobody wants an old, sick dog longer. What we want is healthier dogs and if that makes them live longer, then all the better. I mean, that's the ultimate. So we very quickly set down a pathway when we're developing leap years to say how does this help your dog enjoy life more? It's not about more of it, it's about enjoying what they've got and the great. What we think is and what we're seeing in some of the dogs that have been on it a longer time is they do have a better quality of life. And you know they still get old and they still pass away. But you know that that last little bit's been. You've helped them along with that last little bit and that's what we focus on. It's that quality piece, not the extension. That's about the quality of it.

Speaker 1: 36:49

Is there any dog that this is not a good fit for? Are there side effects or dogs who might have allergies or anything?

Speaker 3: 36:58

like that. Well, that's a great question and a very important one, and both of the compounds that make up leap years are natural products and they're found, you know, if you ate enough apple skin or if you you know. So they're found in lots of food products, so they are safe, and we've tested leap years up to 30 times, you know, so that if a dog ate a whole jar of all the chews, you know what would happen, and so it was very reassuring to see that there's no effects in regard to that. So, yes, so we're pretty confident around the safety of leap years.

Speaker 4: 37:40

And the nice thing is that the leap years product can be given with most anything that senior pets are going to be on supplement wise, Like most of their issues are gonna be like joint related and discomfort related and antioxidants and things like that. And so this, the leap years, you know it's a safe product and we don't have to worry about, you know, like a major drug interaction or something like that.

Speaker 2: 38:15

Right, I think that's gonna be my next question, so and we specifically yeah, we specifically chose ingredients that A are palatable for dogs but there's no animal proteins in there at all. These are all compounds that are low allergenic we can't say hypoallergenic, but low allergenic proven to be safe in animals without animal protein. So, yeah, we made sure that we addressed that. We know that there's a lot of dogs out there with allergies of various sorts.

Speaker 2: 38:45

Right. So a very cognizant of that when formulating the product to make sure we had them all covered and sensitive temi.

Speaker 1: 38:51

my dog has a super sensitive temi. He's thriving on these. I mean he's had no nothing adverse happened whatsoever. Good to hear.

Speaker 3: 39:00

We're your best testimonial.

Speaker 1: 39:02

Well, I'm from Romeo yeah.

Speaker 2: 39:05

I've had quite a few veterinarians tell me that they smell really yummy, and they'd wanna eat them and I'm like okay.

Speaker 1: 39:12

Yeah, what would happen?

Speaker 2: 39:12

if we had to hold another podcast but what if we ate them?

Speaker 1: 39:15

What would happen? All right, well, thanks so much, you guys. Do you have anything that you wanna add?

Speaker 3: 39:22

Yeah, that's it. No, I'm glad to hear that your human animal bond has improved as a result of it. Well, we couldn't ask for more than that, so kudos to you Well thank you so much and so moving forward.

Speaker 1: 39:34

How do people come to find leap years when we found them through Dr Heather?

Speaker 2: 39:42

Yeah, we're on the web at leapyearscom and we're also on Instagram and Facebook at leapyears4dogs, with the number four Got it, so all one.

Speaker 1: 39:52

I'll put all those in the show notes and stuff, all right, you guys? Well, thank you so much.

Speaker 3: 39:57

Thanks, charlotte.

Speaker 4: 39:58

Okay, thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 1: 39:59

Thank you, thanks for having us, bye guys, bye guys. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Brewer podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please don't forget to rate and follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also follow us on Instagram, at barupodcast, and if you have a story of can companionship that you want to share with me, a comment or even a question, I'd love to hear from you. You can email me, charlotte, at the barucom. All right, you guys, let's chat next week.