Nourishing The Bond with Dr. Gary Richter

Renowned veterinarian  Dr. Gary Richter joins me to chat nutrition, longevity, and wellness.  We also talk honestly about what is realistic, sustainable, and safe for your pup so you can make better choices without getting shamed or overwhelmed. 

• Diet, exercise and lifestyle as the core pillars of longevity 
• Shifting the question from what brand to what kind of food 
• Why highly processed pet food can undermine health over time 
• High carbohydrate kibble and links to weight gain, inflammation and dysbiosis 
• Advanced glycation end products and Maillard reaction byproducts from high-heat processing 
• Fresh food formats such as raw, lightly cooked and freeze dried 
• Why homemade dog food needs a properly balanced recipe 
• The gut microbiome, serotonin and the gut brain axis in pets 
• Common early wins after a diet upgrade such as better stools and less itch 
• Feeding aging dogs and why cooked food may be easier to digest 
• Longevity science basics including autophagy and how Leap Years approaches cycling support 
• Sustainable steps like mixing fresh food with kibble and prioritizing what you can keep doing 
• Safety considerations for raw diets and the role of high pressure pasteurization 
• Letting go of the misconception that fresh food is unsafe or nutritionally inappropriate 

Resources for Dr. Richter : 

https://ultimatepetnutrition.com/

https://www.instagram.com/petvetexpert/?hl=en

if you enjoyed this conversation i'd love it if you'd follow the show, leave a review and share this episode with someone who loves dogs. you can find links to everything we talked about today in the show notes and i'd love to connect with you on instagram at baroopup. if you have a story you'd like to share you can email me at charlotte at the baroo.com.

Transcript

Welcome And Why Food Gets Confusing

SPEAKER_02 0:04

Hi, and welcome to the Bureau. I'm Charlotte Bain. The way we feed our dogs is one of the most consistent ways we care for them. It's one of the clearest expressions of love, but it's also an area that's filled with so much confusion and really strong opinions and a lot of marketing. And that's why I wanted to have my guest on today, Dr. Gary Richter. He's a veterinarian, an author, and one of the leading voices in integrative pet health. Today we talk about what really matters when it comes to nutrition, how to cut through the noise, and the small choices that we can make that will create a meaningful difference in your dog's long-term health and his well-being. So let's just jump into this chat. Hi, Dr. Richter. It's so lovely to have you on the podcast this time. I tried to get you on uh a few years ago when I started this podcast. I think it was around like 2022 or 23, but I think you were deep into launching your last book, which was Longevity for Dogs. And you were super busy, so we weren't able to do it. So I'm excited to have you on today.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Glad we made it work.

SPEAKER_02 1:11

I'm glad we made it work. Yeah. Per Dr. Heather. She's always so great. She's the best. So I wanted to jump in with you because when people ask me or when they're thinking about nutrition for their dog, oftentimes they ask, what brand of dog food do you feed your dog? Right. I think that's the first thing that people think of when they think about nutrition for their dogs. And then if their dogs have some sort of issue, maybe allergies or something pre-existing, then they often ask a little bit deeper into ingredients. But my question for you is from your perspective, since we're really focusing on the human-animal bond, what role does nutrition really play in the dog's overall wellness and their overall well-being? Meaning, how much does food shape not only their physical health, but their quality of life?

Nutrition As The Longevity Foundation

unknown 2:05

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

It's a great question. You know, you mentioned a minute ago the books I wrote a few years ago, longevity for dogs and longevity for cats. And, you know, the I I I spend the first roughly third of those books discussing kind of the cornerstone of longevity in animals, and this translates to people as well. And really, really what that comes down to is three things diet, exercise, and lifestyle. You can talk all day long about all of the various things that are going to help you or your pet live longer, all kinds of fancy things, supplements, peptides, regenerative medicine, what have you. If you don't have diet, exercise, and lifestyle sorted out, none of it means anything. So to your question, nutrition is it's it's it's everything. It is it is the ground floor of health and longevity. So I mean, truthfully, you know, I think you're correct in the sense that people ask what brand of food should I feed? But I think really the question that they should be asking is what kind of food should I feed? I think that's that's the more appropriate question.

SPEAKER_02 3:19

I think that, you know, for humans, we've kind of got that locked down. We all know that we should be eating more fruits and vegetables, we should be eating, you know, less carbs, more protein, perhaps, and all of those things. But where do you think the disconnect is a little bit for not for everyone, but for humans and pets? Because oftentimes, you know it doesn't even occur to clients of mine, you know, that perhaps they should be there are simple steps that they can take to improve their dog's bowl.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Yeah. Yeah. It's a great question. And I I very much appreciate the way you you you sort of presented that in the sense of like in humans we kind of have this lockdown and like we do and we don't.

SPEAKER_02 3:59

Hopefully. We do and we don't.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

We all know that the more fresh whole food we eat and the less processed food we eat, the better. Yeah. But yet many of us don't live that lifestyle. True. So it's like we know, but we don't know. It's like, you know, everybody that smokes cigarettes knows what those things will do to you. Right. But they do it anyway.

SPEAKER_02 4:21

Right. Yeah, I do, I do personally have a potato chip problem. So I will say that.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

Everybody's got their weak spot.

SPEAKER_02 4:27

Not a problem, but it's definitely a weak spot.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

Everybody's got their weak

Why Processed Food Can Backfire

SPEAKER_00 4:31

spot. So the way that I often sort of present this topic to people when it comes to their pets is think about think about the body, your pet's body, your own body, as a biological machine. And like any other machine, your body is designed to run on a certain type of fuel. So if I look at my car, my car is designed to run on a certain type of gas and a certain type of oil and all kinds of various other fluids that have to go into a car to make it run. Um, and it's all very specified. Um and, you know, can you put the wrong kind of gas in a car and have it run? Um, you can, but it's not gonna run very well. Um, and there's a pretty good chance at some point the car's gonna break because it's because it's not being used in the way that it should. Now, the good news for all of us is a biological machine is a lot more forgiving than a mechanical one. You know, if I put diesel fuel in my unleaded car, it's not gonna be too long before that engine doesn't run anymore. It's amazing how long people and animals can live eating junk food, and that biology somehow manages to make it work. Right. But if we're talking about optimizing nutrition, if we're talking about optimizing health span and lifespan, then we got to have a different conversation than like what's adequate, what's what's gonna get by. So, you know, again, looking at this biological machine, this biological machine was designed to run on certain nutrients as a function of evolution. Humans evolved eating, and and the body then learned how to thrive on a certain spectrum of nutrients, as is the case with every other animal on the planet. You know, an ideal nutritional spectrum for a person is a little different than a dog. It's a lot different than a cat.

SPEAKER_02 6:28

Sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

So really, what we're looking at doing is approximating what that particular body, whatever body it is, is optimized to function on. So, number one, no animal evolved eating food out of a bag or a can. So we're not designed to eat processed food. Processed food has all kinds of issues with it that cause problems. So you mentioned a little bit when it comes to dry food or kibble, it's an enormous amount of carbohydrates. So dry food is usually somewhere in plus or minus 60% carbohydrates. Now, dogs are certainly uh able to utilize carbohydrates, um uh usually somewhere uh they're kind of optimized for maybe around 15% plus or minus carbohydrates in their diet. Certainly not 60 or 70 percent. Cats are obligate carnivores. So legitimately, their bodies have no use for carbs whatsoever. And yet a lot of cats are eating dry food, eating 60% carbohydrates.

SPEAKER_04 7:32

Right.

SPEAKER_00 7:33

We all know what happens to our bodies as humans when we eat too many carbohydrates, and our bodies are far more adapted for carbs than dogs or cats are. So now you're gonna wind up with things like weight gain, inflammation, gastrointestinal problems, dysbiosis. You know, you can go on and on about what these high carb loads are gonna do. And you also have the problems with highly processed food that they are created in such a way that nutrients are lost in the processing, that compounds like advanced glycated end products, myard product reactants are created. We know from the research that these products create inflammation and cause cancer.

SPEAKER_02 8:19

And what and what specifically are those, those are big words that I just want to make sure people know what those are Sure.

SPEAKER_00 8:25

So when glycophates is that kind of like glyphosate is a glyphosate's uh that's a whole nother problem. Glyphosate is glyphosate's an herbicide. Um weed killer. Um because because crops that are fed to cattle are sprayed with glyphosate, and then the cattle eat the glyphosate the crops with the glyphosate, it winds up in their tissues, and then it winds up in the tissues of um of whoever's eating that product. And that goes for people as well, if you're a meat eater. Um the what I'm talking about is is when you take, you know, because somewhere, somewhere in its early history, if we look at, you know, what goes into kibble, it's fresh ingredients at some point, right? Sure. Um and then these ingredients get cooked at very high temperatures and very high pressures, and chemical products get created when things like proteins and carbohydrates are are under those kinds of temperatures and pressures. And you wind up with these molecules called advanced glycated end products or myard product reactants. The Maillard reaction is a, is, is a, it's kind of a very well-known product. Um, it's the reason why people like things like grilled meat. So like when you I see when you char proteins and carbohydrates and you get that really yummy, like kind of burned barbecue sort of flavor that everybody really likes. Sadly that stuff will kill you. Um, you know, we know that those compounds are really bad for you. Similarly, advanced glycated end products, there's not really as easy of a sort of corollary to discuss there, like burnt meat, but nonetheless, the research is very, very clear that these chemical compounds that are just part of the processing are pro-inflammatory and pro-cancer. You won't see advanced glycated end products on an ingredients list because it's not an ingredient. It's a byproduct that just happens when these things are processed in the ways that the way that they are. Every pet food company in the world knows that these compounds are in these foods. They're just not going to talk about it because it's convenient marketing for them. So those are some of the some of the problems that happen with eating processed food. It's the same thing with us as people. When you're eating highly processed food, those are some of the things that you're consuming and that are really bad for

Fresh Food Choices And Balance

SPEAKER_00 10:53

your body. So coming back to your original question of like what should people feed? What we want to feed is a diet that is optimized to whatever this particular biological machine is designed to run on, which is always fresh whole foods. Now, the specific nutrient profile, like I say, it's going to be different for a cat versus a dog. Dogs are a little more carb tolerant than cats are, although dogs don't really need carbohydrates in their diet from a biological standpoint.

SPEAKER_03 11:25

Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:26

So there's a lot of different fresh food options out there. There's things that you can buy, there's lightly cooked food, there's raw food, there's freeze-dried food. People can also make food for their pets if they are so inclined and have the time to do it. The one caveat with making food is that it's very, very important that people walk work off of a properly balanced recipe.

SPEAKER_01 11:53

Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

So we know that these animals are getting all of the nutrients they need. You cannot just put meat and vegetables in a bowl and call it good.

SPEAKER_02 12:01

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:01

It just doesn't work that way.

SPEAKER_02 12:03

Um calcium is an issue, correct?

SPEAKER_00 12:07

That's the perfect example of people put meat and vegetables in a bowl and they think they're doing a great job. And my first question to those people is always, where's their calcium coming from? Right. And then you get the blank stare.

SPEAKER_03 12:19

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

The other thing that people will often say is, well, you know, every meal that I eat is not perfectly balanced. Why does it matter for my dog or my cat? It's a great question. And the answer lies in the fact that we as people, we tend to eat a wide variety of food. So while it may be that every meal that you eat is not perfectly balanced, Lord knows that's certainly true for me.

SPEAKER_02 12:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

But the hope is that in the aggregate, you're getting everything that you need over time. Because our dogs and our cats have a tendency to eat the same thing every day in the long term, if there's something missing from that diet, that deficiency is going to amplify over time. And while it may not be that your dog's going to get, say, like rickets from a vitamin D deficiency, we also, just to use vitamin D as an example, we also know that vitamin D plays a very, very important role in immune surveillance and cancer prevention. So your dog's chronic vitamin D deficiency could lead it to get cancer later. And these are the things that we're trying to prevent with appropriate diet.

SPEAKER_02 13:31

Right.

Gut Microbiome Links To Behavior

SPEAKER_02 13:32

And in addition, we've also there's been some research done, at least in humans, with like the gut brain connection, right? So, and the same is true for our pets. How does like the poor nutrition contribute to your thoughts on like anxiety and perhaps reactivity or you know, low energy?

SPEAKER_00 13:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:54

Things like that.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

That's an outstanding question. So, you know, for people that are not aware of it, the gut microbiome is an incredibly critical piece of overall health. Approximately 70% of our immune system lives in our gut. If your gut's not happy, your body's not happy. And if you doubt that, find somebody that has IBS or Crohn's disease and see if they're a happy person. Right. That's a really, really tough uh kind of hand to have to be dealt with because it it just affects the body in so many ways. So there's this thing, as you mentioned, called the gut brain axis, which basically means that things that are happening in the gut are affecting and changing what's happening in the brain, and vice versa. So, as of, for example, the bulk of our body's serotonin is produced in the gut by gut bacteria. Serotonin, if you're not aware of it, is one of those chemicals that helps us feel calm and happy and not stressed out.

SPEAKER_02 14:57

I didn't know that it was produced in the gut. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, a lot of it's produced in the game, which makes sense. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:02

Yeah. So the entire class of pharmaceuticals, the SSRIs, drugs like Prozac, what have you, the whole purpose of those drugs is to increase the amount of serotonin in the central nervous system. I'm not suggesting that anybody that's on one of those medications can fix everything with diet, but what I am saying is that there's a lot of connection here. When you look at studies that have evaluated things like Alzheimer's disease, there has been a direct link to gut issues with Alzheimer's disease. That's not to say that Alzheimer's is completely controlled by gut health, but there is a connection there. So people just need to understand that when you're putting the wrong food in your pet or yourself, not only is it about sort of the nutrition that you're getting, but it's about the bacteria that you're feeding in the gut. And if you're feeding the wrong bacteria, so for example, if you're putting way too many carbohydrates in the system, you may be promoting populations of pathogenic bacteria that while they may or may not be causing gut issues, vomiting, diarrhea, constipation, they may be causing more global issues within the body that you're not even aware of, inflammation, cognitive issues, what have you.

SPEAKER_02 16:18

Yeah. Yeah. So what are for like let's start with this. What change when you witness someone start to feed their dog a healthier diet, what are some of the changes that you can see that one can look for? You've touched on it a little bit, but just to give someone a little bit of encouragement, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

Yeah, for sure. I mean, there are things that that frequently people will see in fairly short order. So for starters, I mean, I can't tell you how many people over the years I've had come into my office where the pet has had chronic gastrointestinal issues, chronic skin related problems. And people, you know, my office, as as you're probably aware, we do a lot of integrative medicine. And and, you know, we we we have a tendency to either be people's first stop or their last.

SPEAKER_03 17:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

So either they're either they're super proactive as far as integrative medicine goes and we're their veterinarian, or they've been to every specialist they can find, haven't gotten resolution, and we're like their last hope.

SPEAKER_02 17:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

So, you know, people come in, they've been to internal medicine, they've had God knows how many thousands of dollars worth of diagnostic work, or they've been to dermatology, and the same thing has happened, and they've just not gotten any relief. And not every time, but sometimes you put these pets on an appropriate, fresh, whole food diet, and within a matter of weeks, things dramatically change. The diarrhea stops, the vomiting stops, the dull, sort of dry hair coat suddenly looks shiny and hair starts coming back in. Pets get less itchy. Um, and and it always makes me chuckle a little bit when these kinds of things happen, you know, that suddenly that pet owner thinks I'm a genius.

SPEAKER_02 18:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:11

When in reality, I mean, to me, what I offered was the lowest of low-hanging fruit. Like, let's improve your pet's nutrition. Like this was not Nobel Prize winning science that we just flexed here. Right. It's what it's quite frankly what every what every pet owner and what every veterinarian should be thinking of as the ground floor of restoring health anyway, but sadly we don't.

SPEAKER_02 18:37

Right. And I think, you know, if you if you're the last stop, you know, they've been to several veterinarians who aren't offering that as a solution or even a first step. So that's where the disconnect there is, or you know.

SPEAKER_00 18:49

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 18:50

Can we talk about aging

Aging Dogs Need Diet Tweaks

SPEAKER_02 18:52

dogs? I recently lost my boy Chance, who was almost 18 when he passed. Yes, thank you. He was on, he came into my life at about nine months old, and he had all sorts of, you know, gastrointestinal issues and allergies and all sorts of things. And in the beginning, we tried like the best kibbles and all of those things for like a year and a half until someone suggested trying and nothing was working, trying. He was even hospitalized uh a couple times with I think it's called HGE, where he was that's no fun. It was very, very scary.

SPEAKER_03 19:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:24

And so we switched to a raw food diet when he was around two, saw dramatic improvement, and he was on that until he was about 11, and he just kind of didn't want it anymore. Like he just I tried shifting the the flavors, you know, the the protein and all the things he just didn't want. I didn't like the texture, he didn't like anything. So we switched to a lightly cooked diet, and he was on that for the for the rest, the remaining of his years. Um can we talk a little bit about like appropriate, like how how feeding our fresh foods and how uh being mindful as your dog ages on maybe some of the changing needs that can help the aging pro help move the aging process or slow the aging process.

SPEAKER_00 20:08

Sure. So I I I mean, you bring up a a really interesting point in the sense of there is no one diet that dogs should be on. I mean, all medicine should be personalized, individualized medicine. And it's not at all uncommon as people or animals get older that their digestive system works a little bit differently. Raw food, by definition, takes more metabolic energy to digest than cooked food. I once had a an acupuncturist who told me that honestly, like if you really wanted to eat what your body wants, you would just eat soup because that's essentially what your body has to turn it into anyway.

SPEAKER_02 20:49

Yeah. And you think about aging humans, we often automatically start just wanting soup.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

Yeah, right. Because like your body basically has to cook and liquefy everything before you can assimilate those nutrients, anyhow. So, like as pets get older, sometimes raw food just it's a lot for them to have to digest. And if they're not digesting it well and undigested food is getting into their intestines, then they're gonna wind up with a tummy ache and they're not gonna want to eat, they're not gonna like it.

SPEAKER_03 21:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:18

Suddenly you put them on something that's cooked, so it takes less work for them to deal with and they're happier. So that's great that you, that you made that shift. So, you know, as I mentioned earlier, from the standpoint of health and longevity, you know, diet, exercise, and lifestyle are really the cornerstone of all of this. And you can't you can't expect to have uh, you know, your pet live its longest, best life if you don't have those boxes checked. And clearly you did something right because your dog made it to 18.

SPEAKER_02 21:50

He had all those boxes checked. Yeah. He was my business partner. Yeah. He had tons of friends, tons of walking. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

Yeah. And that's really that's really what what needs to be what needs to be done. Now, um the reality is is, you know, you know, biology sort of is what it is. And I think, you know, the the maybe the the metaphor of of of comparing you know a biological machine to a mechanical one, sure. It sort of falls apart a little bit when we get into aging. Because, you know, so theoretically speaking, if I replaced parts on my car as they wore out, my car will run indefinitely. As long as I just keep fixing the stuff that breaks, then it'll run forever.

SPEAKER_03 22:41

Right.

SPEAKER_00 22:42

A biological machine has has programming in it that doesn't allow that to happen. So like this aging process, um, it's something that quite frankly science is really only just beginning to really get a grip on. And that's, I mean, if you know that's conversation we can have about sort of the science of of aging and longevity and things of that nature, because that is an absolutely fascinating field.

SPEAKER_02 23:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

But um you know, as as has been explained to me by multiple people in the um in the longevity science field, if you expect as a human to live to be 125 years old and you think you're going to do that with diet, exercise and lifestyle alone, you got another thing coming. Right. Because you're fighting against this biological programming of aging. Now we can slow that process through you know appropriate nutrition and exercise and lifestyle and supplements and things of that nature. We can also speed that process up artificially by feeding the wrong things and creating undue stress or like you know you take a human as a for example and if somebody is obese and a chain smoker, you're speeding that person's aging process up by by stressing the body in that way. So we can speed it up, we can slow it down, but you're not gonna profoundly slow it or stop it without the aid of technology and modern science.

SPEAKER_02 24:19

I see.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

You just can't do it. I mean like you know you think about it this way with the exception of the everybody that's alive right now, every single person that's ever been alive in the world is dead. You know, there's a reason for that. Nobody's nobody's cracked that code yet and the and the interesting thing is is it's our generation that's probably going to do it.

SPEAKER_03 24:41

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

Like the science is bananas right now what what is being looked at like it is absolutely not unreasonable to think that people our age are going to live to 125 plus.

SPEAKER_02 24:55

Right.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

It is not out of the realm of of reality.

SPEAKER_02 24:58

We had on previous seasons of the of the podcast we had the leap years scientists on to discuss yeah he's a good guy. So that chance my dog chance was on leap years for yeah the last like and I saw a significant change. Whether uh do you want to touch on what that technology was just so people can it's like I can't remember the name of it.

SPEAKER_00 25:21

We're should be taking it to apparently yeah so Leap Years is a product that was created the head of the company his name is Nick Sinclair. Nick's brother is a guy by the name of David Sinclair David is a very very well known longevity researcher at Harvard. You look up Nick Sinclair and you're gonna have plenty of reading material to keep you busy for a while. Yeah anyway so Leap Years is kind of built on a lot of the technology that David has created and really so there's multiple ways to approach longevity but the way that Leap Years does it is there's there's two sort of basic processes in the body. One of them's called AMPK uh one of them is called mTOR. It's not really important to get into the weeds of what all of that means but the long story short is uh the long story short is is that you know from a systems repair perspective the body has to do two things. It has to be able to create new tissue like when something gets injured or damaged we have to be able to fix it. But when there's injured or damaged or aging cells or tissue we also have to be able to get rid of the old. So it's out with the old in with the new so think about like if you were going to renovate a house, you can bring in all the new building materials, the wiring, the drywall, the plumbing, what have you before you do that, you have to get all the old crap out. You can't just put the new drywall on top of the old drywall it doesn't work that way.

SPEAKER_04 26:51

Right.

SPEAKER_00 26:51

So the body has this balance of I have to build it up, I have to break it down in order to kind of maintain a balance. So so that's what that's what Leap Years is is is basically leveraging. So as you know because you've used it, the way these supplements work is most of the month you're giving one supplement and then for a few days during the month you give a different supplement. So the the difference between the two is is for for two or three days a month, you're giving a supplement that is encouraging the body to do a process called autophagy. And what autophagy means is that that's the cleanup. So that's cells in the body saying okay that's damaged let's get rid of it. Let's remove this cell, that cell and you're promoting that autophagy process. The rest of the month you're building tissue up. So you're building muscle you're building bone whatever you may be building but again a few days every month you got to let the body go in and pull the old stuff out so there's appropriate balance. Right. That's what Leap Years does. It's brilliant technology I am a big fan uh like I say my dogs are on it. Me too and I have I have two dogs at home. They are both lab mastiff crosses they're big fellows they're about 125 pounds a pop. One of them just turned 11 the other size you know he's he's getting there. So you know we're doing everything we can in my house to kind of slow that process and you know keep him a happy guy.

SPEAKER_02 28:28

Yeah the average lifespan as we know it for a dog that size is usually what between like eight and ten years or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 28:35

Yeah. Yeah. So you know if I'm gonna keep my fiance happy and have the dog live to 30, I got some work to do.

unknown 28:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:42

Let me know if 30. Wow that that's pushing it. But who knows? Maybe soon maybe eventually we'll see what we can do.

Small Sustainable Upgrades From Kibble

SPEAKER_02 28:49

So let's talk about some tangible things because I think right now we're kind of over I mean pet parents and people in general are overwhelmed by everything that's coming at them. So when we talk about food, they're kind of I know a lot of folks are overwhelmed by, you know, as I mentioned before like the brands and then this and then that and go, oh you should or being shamed into you should only be doing this, you should only be doing that. I want some tangible steps for people who maybe are not ready either financially or although you can do a fresh food diet that is economical as well. But financially are or or just not on that page yet to move from their kibble into a fresher food diet? What are some small steps they can take to improve their diet of their dog? And this is kind of a two parter uh and also if they're what are some things that your dog is is showing you other than skin issues or digestive issues what are maybe some small things that they might be telling your own you that you need to switch it up a little bit. Those are two very separate questions. So sorry I put them together.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

Those are big questions. Yeah I know. Okay so let's let's start with the first one.

SPEAKER_02 30:03

I got too excited there. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 30:05

Yeah right so philosophically like when I sit down with a a pet owner and I make recommendations and whether this could be food supplements pharma whatever it doesn't matter what it is. The thing that I always have to keep in mind is that whatever I'm recommending as a treatment plan, it has to be sustainable for that person. You know, so for example I can tell somebody here's 17 supplements for your dog that I want you to give four times a day. Right. Nobody's gonna do that. No. Or if I make a recommendation of I want you to feed your dog oh my goodness sorry about that. That's okay. That's what happens when your mom rings through and when your phone tells you not disturb.

unknown 30:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:49

Sorry about you need to get that it's your mom.

SPEAKER_00 30:51

No, it's fine.

SPEAKER_02 30:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 30:53

Sorry mom talk to her. I talked to her yesterday I swear it's okay. But anyway, so like you know for example, you know, if I tell somebody that I want them to feed their dog a raw food diet but it's out of their price range and they can't do it again it's not sustainable. If somebody's gonna go home and do the thing for like a week and then they can't do it anymore, I haven't done anybody any favors.

SPEAKER_03 31:17

Right.

SPEAKER_00 31:18

So this is the important thing like any lifestyle change, whatever it may be diet, supplements, meds, whatever, it has to be sustainable. So what I would say to people is you know perfect world you're gonna feed your dog a fresh whole food diet and whether or not that diet should be raw, cooked, freeze-dried, homemade, store bought, it's it's it's very individualized based on the pet's needs and the person. But if for whatever reason that is not doable and usually the reason is is it's too much money or it takes too much time.

SPEAKER_04 31:53

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 31:54

What I will tell people is, you know, look at it look at it the way that we would look at at our nutrition as a person. You know every single bite of food that I have is not ideal. You know, I'd like to tell you that I only eat fresh whole foods that are perfectly balanced, but don't be lying. You know, so and sometimes I eat things that I shouldn't eat. You have a potato chip issue uh you know like you know sometimes I eat foods that that you know nutritionally speaking aren't the greatest things in the world but just because I do that it doesn't mean that I should just throw it all away and say well I'm just gonna eat junk food for the rest of my life. So so the point to all of this is feed as much fresh food as you can and then feed the rest of it as you know like the best quality kibble or the best quality canned that you can do. Like you have to figure out what works both financially and logistically in your life that is going to be sustainable for you. Some kibble and some fresh food is way better than just kibble. So that's really what it comes down to like you know like very few of us you know get to live in that perfect world. Like you know I often tell people like if you know if I if every bite of food that I ate was was perfectly balanced fresh whole food I would probably be an incredibly incredibly healthier person than I am right now. Not to say that I'm not healthy, but the reality is is I don't have Oprah's private chef kind of money. Right. Right and very very few of us do. So you gotta live in your real world and so does so do our pets. So you do the best that you can. Right.

SPEAKER_02 33:42

You take the small steps. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:44

Yeah and then to your second question, what kind of things might you see that would give you an indication that there's a that there's a food issue. Sometimes it's obvious um you know chronic gastrointestinal issues or even intermittent gastrointestinal issues vomiting diarrhea constipation skin and coat problems dry skin greasy skin itchy skin dull hair coat excessive shedding things of this nature sometimes quite frankly it's not it's not as obvious. There's subtleties going on underneath that sometimes can be detected with with diagnostic tests, with blood tests of that nature sometimes it's lower energy than they otherwise might have sometimes it's a mood thing. You know, think about it this way uh how would you know if your dog has a chronic low grade tummy ache?

SPEAKER_03 34:37

Right.

SPEAKER_00 34:38

Like how would you know? How would you know if your dog has a headache? You know the thing about veterinary medicine is we're dealing with an entire population of nonverbal patients.

SPEAKER_02 34:49

Right.

SPEAKER_00 34:49

And not only are they nonverbal, but they will go out of their way to not tell you when something's wrong with them.

SPEAKER_03 34:56

Right.

SPEAKER_00 34:56

Uh you know an animal in the wild that looks sick or injured is going to be targeted by a predator. And our pets maintain that hardware despite many, many thousands of years of domestication. So the tricky bit is like that's the only time that your your pet's going to lie to you is about their own health.

unknown 35:15

Right.

SPEAKER_00 35:16

But the problem is is what that means is that oftentimes by the time they look sick, they've been sick for a while.

SPEAKER_02 35:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:23

And then you wind up in this situation where medically speaking you're behind the eight ball because now you're trying to treat something that if you'd been able to treat it months or weeks or years ago, you might have had a better chance of getting it resolved than you do today.

SPEAKER_03 35:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:38

So the the the end result of that to get back to your question is sometimes you get an indication that there's a problem related to diet and sometimes by the time you get that indication it's too late to do anything about it.

SPEAKER_03 35:52

Right.

SPEAKER_00 35:52

So that's why proactive preventative medicine is really what we should all be practicing for both ourselves and our pets.

SPEAKER_02 36:01

Right. I feel like that kind of leads into my next question, which is really um since we're focusing on like the human animal bond this season, how or or can the way we nourish our pets deepen the bond that we have with them you know what?

SPEAKER_00 36:22

Well clearly the answer to that is yes and and you know I I I think in most cultures in the world there is a facet of food is love.

SPEAKER_02 36:35

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 36:35

Like I think you'd be hard pressed to find a culture where that's that's not a piece of it you know you know my Jewish mom and my Jewish grandmother, boy do they love to feed people. Sure. And I think it you know whatever culture you're from it's the same. So yeah I mean and you know there's a there's like this inexorable link between between food and feeding and eating and feeding other things that that is an expression of our love and affection.

SPEAKER_02 37:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:06

You know and that's one of the ways that we show our love to our pets. You know, but of course you know our pets don't always have the sort of cognitive ability to understand what's you know what's ideal for them nutritionally speaking. And thusly it's possible for us as pet owners with the best of intention to feed them the wrong thing. Once you have that understanding and that education of how important nutrition is I mean I think it was Benjamin Franklin God knows how many hundreds of years ago that said you are what you eat.

SPEAKER_02 37:40

Yeah. You know what it's I don't see I'm Benjamin Franklin I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 37:45

You know the reality is is that cliches are cliché for a reason. It's because they're true. Right. They're annoying but they're true. You know and that's really what it comes down to is like you want a healthy body then feed that biological machine the fuel that it wants.

SPEAKER_02 38:00

Right. Right. Well that is a perfect closing closing statement I think right there. I so appreciate you. Do you have any final comments?

Freeze Dried Raw Safety Explained

SPEAKER_00 38:11

You know I I I think the the the sort of final comment that I'll have because we didn't maybe really touch on it is is you know like figuring out you know what food format in the fresh food format should should one eat. Right. Or one feed their pet really and like I say some of it some of it's about you know what's what's sustainable for you as a person. You know some animals will do better on raw versus cooked. I think I think it's important to realize like if you live in a house where there are small children or there's somebody who for whatever reason maybe is immune compromised maybe raw food is not the best choice. Properly made raw food these days there's not that big of a pathogen concern.

SPEAKER_02 38:58

Right but it grosses some people out also I have clients who just won't do it.

SPEAKER_00 39:02

Yeah it absolutely does it grosses some people out again like if there's somebody in the house that you know you know they're on chemotherapy or they have autoimmune disease or whatever it may be like even if the chances are low, like that's that's not a risk that you want to you want to take. And the other thing I'll throw out there just as a food format is I'm a real big fan of freeze dried.

SPEAKER_01 39:24

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 39:25

And the reason why I like freeze dried food is because it's processed at very very low temperatures, it retains all of the nutrients that fresh food does but it also along the way it picks up a lot of the convenience of kibble in the sense of doesn't need to be refrigerated. Literally all you have to do is pour it in a bowl and add a little bit of water. It's freeze dried so it weighs nothing. So from the standpoint of like if you're going to travel with your dog, it's super easy to throw it in the car. You don't need a cooler so there's all kinds of convenience and thus hopefully sustainability from a person's perspective that it's easier to do. You know the I work with a company called Ultimate Pet Nutrition that we make free-dried foods. There's clearly many brands out there but I think that that's a really really good option for people who maybe feel like they don't want to get into dealing with like frozen raw food in their freezer and their fridge and all of this it's just too complicated. I think that's a really good way to go. But again at the end of the day this is all very individualized based on what your pet does best on. So you just have to sort out what works best for your pet and for you.

SPEAKER_02 40:31

I will say that most of my clients are now on a freeze-dried uh diet um and that's worked out really great for the majority of them. I have a question about freeze-dried when during the freeze drying process and you know a lot of it is freeze-dried raw is essentially what most freeze dried or is all freeze-dried food freeze uh raw or is it just yeah I think when you're looking at the cooked stuff uh a lot of times that winds up being dehydrated rather than freeze dried and there is a there is a specific difference between the freeze drying process help get rid of some of the potential pathogens I guess is my question.

SPEAKER_00 41:10

If there were yeah that's a that's a really excellent question. And while to an extent the answer to that question is yes, the way that the pathogens are really handled um when when fresh food is made properly is through a process called high pressure pasteurization or HPP. Essentially what that means is you take that you take raw food and it goes into a machine that puts it under enormous pressure. I can't remember the equivalent but it's it's like tens of thousands of feet underwater kind of pressure.

SPEAKER_02 41:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 41:51

And and what happens under that pressure is it literally fractures bacteria. It crushes them to death but it does it at low temperature. So like nothing's getting cooked, nothing's changed from the standpoint of the nutritional value of the food, but you've destroyed the pathogens and then what happens is is that that that raw food then winds up getting freeze dried. So then you wind up with with pathogen free food that's never been cooked. So that's the way that ideally speaking that gets done and and you know that is one other thing that I think it's important for people to realize if you're going to make raw food at home clearly that step's not going to happen and and pathogens are a much bigger concern if you're making raw food at home than if you're buying it from somebody that's doing HPP. So that is just something that you need to be aware of both from a pet safety but also a human safety perspective.

SPEAKER_02 42:48

Right. That makes sense perfect sense. My last question for you is if what is one misconception about dog nutrition that you wish people would just let go of?

SPEAKER_00 43:04

Oh God it's hard to come up with one probably the one that that that irks me the most and this more often than not comes from comes from veterinarians is that fresh food is neither safe nor nutritionally appropriate so interesting yeah no it doesn't make any sense except when you realize where veterinarians are getting their nutritional education from the I appreciate you taking the time to chat with me today.

Final Takeaways And Listener Support

SPEAKER_02 43:39

This has been a great conversation I gotta call my mom.

SPEAKER_01 43:42

Yeah you gotta call my mom if you enjoyed this conversation I'd love it if you'd follow the show, leave a review and share this episode with someone who loves dogs. You can find links to everything we talked about today in the show notes and I'd love to connect with you on Instagram at BarooPup. If you have a story you'd like to share you can email me at Charlotte at the baroo.com. Thanks for listening to the Baruch and let's chat soon