Canine Nutrition Essentials with Nelly from The Combine Dog

🍴 Curious about how your dog’s diet and supplements impact their health? In this episode of Straight Up Dog Talk, Em is joined by certified canine nutritionist Nelly from The Combine Dog to break down the essentials of canine nutrition.

💡 You’ll learn:

• How to build a more balanced bowl

• Key tips for selecting supplements

• What to look for in your dog’s diet

• Why small changes can make a big impact

  
  

Whether you’re raw feeding, kibble feeding, or somewhere in between—this episode is packed with actionable tips to support your pup’s well-being.

🎧 Tune in now and stay tuned for part two, where Em and Nelly go even deeper into the world of raw feeding!

Guest Info:Follow Nelly on Instagram: @thecombinedogLearn more at: www.thecombinedog.com

Stay Connected:
💛 Follow Straight Up Dog Talk for more insights and updates on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.

#caninenutrition #doghealthtips #caninewellness #rawfeeding #straightupdogtalk

This episode is proudly sponsored by our partnership with The Combine Dog.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
This episode is brought to you by a partnership with The
Combine Dog. The Combine Dog, led by Nelly, a
certified canine nutritionist and Wellness advocate, is all
about harmonizing dog and human lives through natural Wellness,
canine nutrition, and meaningfulinsights.
It helps dog guardians build stronger bonds with their dogs
while fostering healthy, enriched lifestyles for both.

(00:22):
Welcome to Straight Up Dog Talk,the podcast for pet parents.
Pet guardians and pet professionals come together to
dive into real issues in Dog Guarantee.
From controversial training methods to sensitive health
topics, we're getting raw and real about what it means to care
for our canine companions. Join us every Wednesday for
unfiltered conversations, expertinsights, and personal stories

(00:43):
that will make you laugh, cry, and grow as a pet.
Here, no topic is off limits andno question goes unanswered.
You won't get one perspective here.
You'll get them all because every dog is different, and
every human is too. You can follow along on
Instagram, TikTok and Facebook at Straight Up Dog Talk or by
visiting BWW straight up dogtalk.com TuneIn from any of

(01:05):
your favorite podcast platform. Welcome straight up dog talk.
I'm em and we are back again with another amazing guest.
This week. We have Nelly from the combine
dog to talk to you. Oh, canine Trisha, how are you
doing today, Nelly? Good.
How are you? I am good.
I've decided to have this conversation because nutrition

(01:25):
has been kind of a little side passion of mine for the last
couple of years. I've learned a lot about
bioavailability and what's good and what's not good to put in
your dog's body. I think that it's really
fascinating that we rely so muchon our veterinarians to have a
lot of information, but the truth of the matter is

(01:46):
veterinarians are not nutritionists and they don't
always keep up to date with the food and what's good and what's
not good and how we should be feeding our dogs that.
I remember when I was a vet techand granted, you know, guys,
this was a while ago, this was early 2000.
It was eight. It was a vet for 10 years.
Then eating your dog raw food meant your dog was going to

(02:10):
become violent. Your dog was going to become
fit. Your dog was going to have
idiopathic aggression pop up outof nowhere.
Now educated people are having conversations about when dogs
were living in the wild and the dogs that are still living in
the wild actually catch and eat,digest all of the things.

(02:32):
So I know what I have learned isthat organ meat is really,
really important and really goodfor your dog bone and then the
actual meat. So I have some things that I
want to talk about with you today with get your opinions on
some things, but these will alsoeducate the listeners because
we're about some things that arekind of different.
I know that you specifically feed your dog Yenko a raw diet,

(02:57):
correct? Really good about breaking it
down on your account and talkingabout why you do what you do and
how you do it in a cost effective manner.
One of the first things that I want to talk about is grain.
OK, this isn't like a huge debate, right?
Grain free, not grain free, blahblah.
But again, let's go back to thiswhole out in nature thing.

(03:18):
Your dog is not going to go foraging through a rice field.
In my community there's a lake and I always get so upset
because there's a sign that saysplease don't feed the ducks
bread because that's not speciesof plum.
It's not like we have bread growing out of a palm tree.
What they should be eating is like leaves and worms and and

(03:40):
stuff like that. And minnows.
Exactly. So the other day, funny enough,
I was talking to someone about chickens and he was like, I
think chickens eat like corn andstuff.
And I looked at him like, wow, Iguess it's not taught to us, but
there is this disconnect betweenUS and nature and what is
appropriate or a plant to be given versus a human versus a

(04:02):
dog or a cat. There's species appropriate and
then what Hibble is, which is a cost effective way to feed a dog
that is giving them something, but it's not nutritionally sound
for them in the long. Run.
I completely agree with you. That is something I did not
realize until this last couple of years when I really got into
it. First of all, the labels aren't

(04:23):
regulated. They're literally anything in
dog food, including wood shavings.
Well. Or yeah, well, but that could
happen with tea. You could buy tea, Lipton tea,
and you're like, well, what is in this?
And it could just be tea shade. It is very interesting to dive
into how do we get meat at the supermarket and how do we get

(04:46):
meat at a farm? Getting it from a rancher
directly, What's the differencesand where is the benefits of
getting it from this rancher that he could literally tell you
this food was this, towel was this.
It's very different. And I think because of
convenience, we just let it happen.
I think that it is an ease. Let's just buy it off the shelf.

(05:09):
This is what we've been doing for years.
And unfortunately there are someof them out there that are
literally just buy products of things.
They don't even contain real meat or anything in them and
people don't understand. So in my education, what I have
learned is that first three ingredients should be the meat,
the organ and the bone. That is the first three things
that you should look for. But grain is technically a

(05:32):
filler from what I understand. Yes.
OK. And that's the other thing too,
is that there are a lot of dogs that have sensitivities to
grain, to flowers or certain trees, allergens like peanut
butter for some people. So you have to think about that
too. So if grain is a filler, then
it's not a necessary thing. Also it's actually kind of hard

(05:52):
on their stomach which absolute nonsense.
Insane. It does things to my vet tech
brain that I'm like oh shit. Because when a dog gets sick and
you bring your dog into the vet's office, what does your vet
tell you to do? Well, they tell you to get Royal
Canin hydrolyzed protein. It's going to make them better
or. They tell you to spend 3 days on

(06:13):
chicken and rice, but there's somuch starch and rice and it's so
bad for your dog. It's glycemic index.
It's really high. It turns into sugar, Yeah.
Yeah. And from what I've learned from
other people over the year is that sugar, flour, starch, all
of those things combined together are pretty much in 98%

(06:35):
of dog foods out there. And that's contributing
potentially to the cancer. Numbers in dogs, correct,
there's a lot of different considerations.
One thing that I am really into glandular therapy is when I got
in dogs, they tell you stay and neuter them right, And that's
something that they now really regret doing to my because what
you're literally doing is takingan organ away from them that

(06:59):
provides hormones that provides signals to other organs to
perform as we literally take it out and sometimes we don't even
wait an appropriate time. There's other methods now that
help in they're not able to reproduce.
There's different methods now that exist so that we don't have

(07:20):
take away those hormones that they need.
This parallel made a lot of sense to me, and so hopefully
this will make a lot of sense tothe listeners, especially if
you're a woman, you're 28 years old, you have all kinds of
issues. You get masses on your ovaries
and you get infections all the time.
And the doctors say you have to have a hysterectomy, you can't

(07:42):
have kids. You are losing all of your
hormones and you're immediately dumped into menopause.
We're doing that to dogs when they're 6 to 9 months old.
When it's vital, their testiclesand their ovaries send signals
to their glands to alert other systems in their bodies.
And so it does affect their behavior, it does affect their

(08:03):
bodies. Now their bodies might be
finding something that they don't really know what it is.
And so it develops cancers, it develops illnesses, it develops
these things. So there is glandular therapy
where for example I feed my dog testicles, I feed my dog
pancreas, I feed these things tohelp supple what he is with.
OK. You're saying I know that there

(08:24):
is an alternative spay, Yeah, for female form if they're an
alternative neuter as well. OK.
So basically I'm assuming that it's like tying the tubes or
something. Something to that I don't, I
know that it's it's available. I know that it's very hard to
find a vet that is capable of doing that.
Got some vets coming on it laterthis year.

(08:45):
So hopefully this is a discussion that we'll be able to
get really into because I reallywant to know.
I'm not up to date on medical technology and information
anymore. But eventually I'm going to get
another dog and I want to make better decisions when it comes
to this kind of stuff because I think for so long it was the
spay and neuter, spay and neuter, spay and neuter.

(09:06):
Campaign. The other thing is you have to
look at it from the other side. There's this breeding thing,
right? You don't want to have an
accidental bitter contributing to what is happening in the
shelters. So I want to do the right thing,
but I also want to do the right thing here.
There's a lot you have to consider well.
That just taps back into something that I talk about a
lot, which is being a responsible pet parent.

(09:27):
If you know that your dog is in heat, she does not need to go to
the coffee shop. She does not need to go on a
walk around the block where the three male intact dogs could
potentially jump the fence or get out of the front door or
something where they could get to her.
She can stay at home while she'sin heat and you can find other
options because you're just setting yourself up for failure

(09:49):
at that point. If if you're putting yourself
into those situation, it's same with male dog.
You have to be able to have a handle on their behavior.
If you see somebody walking downthe sidewalk struggling with
their dog or all of a sudden your male dog is real interested
in that other dog that's over there.
He'd just need to turn around orgo a different direction because

(10:10):
there could be some kind of conflict because the other dog
is reactive or maybe she's in heat and now you've got an even
bigger conflict. So I think it's just being smart
about a lot of thing. A minute ago we were talking
about getting meat and how we get meat and where.
So this is my big topic that I wanted to talk to you about
because I have been watching so many videos about dehydrating

(10:33):
organs and creating your own dogtrees, which I think is so cool.
And I'm so going to do it this year.
I'm going to start doing it. I found a couple dehydrators on
Amazon. I'm trying to figure out which
one's the best one. I was told, OK, OK, we're going
to have a long conversation about this, that, but I was also
told silicone trays. Yeah, not the wire trays.

(10:56):
Get silicone trays. I would get the wire trays but
then add silicone. OK, so like I have an air fryer,
OK, And my air fryer has like the metal trays or whatever, but
then it has like a silicone one that goes underneath the metal
trays. So I'm assuming it's just like
that. Similar.
It goes on top just so it doesn't stick to it.
OK. All right.

(11:18):
I'm good with that. And also I know the juices, so
you got to catch all that. That's fun to clean up, but it's
worth it, right? So somebody else had sent out a
post, I think it was loosely healer, She's another trainer,
and she sent out this whole thing on dehydrating your own
food. I was talking about it this
weekend because I was telling mysister about it.
There's this local meat market and I was going to go to this

(11:40):
local meat market and she said, well, my friend goes there and
she buys all her meat for her dogs from there.
It's a local butcher, but it's the one that's known in town,
and she said that her friend spends an absorbent amount of
money at this place. Tell me, how the heck where do I
find the person that slaughters the cows?

(12:00):
Where do I find the people that do the deer people?
Give me the listen, give me the give me the beef.
I don't care what it is. I just want the organ meat that
they're going to toss out anyway.
So how do you find those people?So the combine dog started by
making dog food and doctors. I don't know if you know.
That I did know that. Yeah, so I used to do single,

(12:22):
dehydrated, single ingredient treat.
There's a lot of what you said, right.
So when you start doing raw feeding or dehydrating, it gets
a dip. You're kind of like, well, I got
all the cow stuff, let me go to a lamp and then go and then
camel and kangaroo. And it's fun.
It's funny, but it's true. The more create like Beaver.

(12:42):
I mean, everything that you can tell me, yeah, Yanko has tried.
I'm like, yeah, let's get it free and go, let's try it.
It could get pricey when it getsto those kinds of animals like
yak and bigger. So that's that.
But the dehydrating is really awesome because you source to
meats depending on where you getit.
If you get it from the supermarket, you just know the

(13:05):
story from the supermarket. But you could also go to local
farmers markets and if there's ameat person there, talk to them
and develop relationships with them.
You could even Google any type of farms that have cattle or
lambs or goat and reach out to them.
They will literally be like thisis my next kill Hunters.

(13:26):
Also hunters are a big interesting thing too because
when you think about their hunting a lot of times people
don't know that they can only hunt 1 deer in a season
depending on where you are. And Iowa, why it's so good?
Because we have and we have deerhunting all the time and
pheasant and some other things. But it shouldn't be hard, I just

(13:48):
don't know where. Just reach out on Facebook
Roots, I'm sure there's a group that's Iowa hunters or whatever
and make friends with them because they will literally give
you the goods and you learn a lot from them.
I learned from the hunters that I've spoken to that there are
certain places they can only get1 deer and it's really
interesting how they go about catching that deer or or

(14:11):
whatever animal it is. I know that the person I'm
thinking about hunts with a bow and arrow.
They don't. So it's really interesting to
hear you think like, oh, they'rekilling all the animals and no,
they're not. They're very meticulous as to
what they kill and the observation that they have.
They look at this animal for at least half an hour before they

(14:32):
shoot it. If they're thoughtful in.
It, I know what you're getting to about the lotteries in
Wyoming, Montana, I think both the Dakotas and you literally
cannot go hunting unless you getpulled.
And it might be for a moose or it might be for a deer or it
might be for an elk gazelle, butthat's it.

(14:53):
And you're allowed it A1 or the two.
Or maybe you get lucky and you get 1 of each and you can go out
and, and do that. When I went to Wyoming a few
years back, the people that I talked to about the lottery and
how it worked, those people, yeah.
On being able to correct kill that animal, we'll process all
of that meat and use every single bit of it for their

(15:16):
meals. The person I was there with,
their grandfathers, was making some kind of Stew and they asked
me, have you ever had gazelle? And what?
No. And they're like, well, you are
tonight because that's what's inthe Stew.
And I was like, OK, they don't think that it tasted any
different than venison or something like that.
It was a little bit milder, I would say than than venison, but
I liked it. I thought it was good.

(15:38):
It was definitely a different experience.
Same thing with dogs, right? I want to give them a different
experience. I have been feeding Sunday.
I feed both of my dogs eat very different things.
OK, because Toby has pancreatitis so he cannot have a
raw diet because his stomach is.No high fat.
Yeah, it just, it can't do it. So he actually eats Open Farm

(16:00):
Denison diet, which is what I was told the best for dogs who
have sensitive stomach. We also use our Pet Matrix
supplements. Since he's been on the Pet
Matrix supplements and the Open Farm, right a year and a half
now, he hasn't had a single pancreatic flare up in a year
and a half. So I'm very, very happy with
where he's at. Also, he seems to be aging

(16:23):
backwards. He's somewhere between 13 and 14
years. Old he's not and.
He's like what? He's got some spunk in him now.
I'm like, okay, all right, I cantell.
Also, the poops are smaller, which is another thing that we
can talk about in a minute because that's pretty important.
Fitz gets dog friendly peanut butter smeared on the bottom of
his bowl and then frozen. And then he gets his pet Matrix

(16:44):
supplements because it's powder sprinkled on to it.
And then I kind of like rotate around and coat the bowl and
then he gets sundaes if he's eating out of a bowl that day.
Fitz only eats out of the bowl. If I have to go to physical
work, it's eats out of the bowl and so does Toby.
Everything is hand fed in this house because we use it for
training opportunities all day long on our walks in the

(17:06):
backyard. Which is the way we do it.
Yes, exactly, and I don't think enough people understand it's
not that difficult to put your dog's portion of food in your
training pouch and carry it around with you for the day.
It really is not. And I like Sundays because it
breaks very easily. And let's be honest here, I ate
a piece of it. It tastes like beef jerky and

(17:28):
the the only thing in it that I don't necessarily like, because
this is something else that I'velearned, is that seed oils are
not good for dogs. Well, it has it has sunflower
oil in it. Seed oils are not good for
humans or anyone. So it does have some sunflower
oil in it. I don't know what the percentage
of is, but I will tell you what that dog, he has more energy

(17:49):
than he already had, which was alot, but his attention span is
much longer. I think that has to do with the
thing from Pet Matrix, which is their neurological supplement.
And then he is hot. I know that that's from the diet
and I know that that's from all of the activity that he has, but
he is just a beast. And for the first time in his

(18:11):
entire life this last year ish that he's been on Sundays, he
eats all of his food. Every single time before, when
he was on Science Diet or Blue Buffalo or whatever other brand
we were using, he wouldn't eat it or he would pickily eat it or
I would have to mix stuff into it to get him to eat it.
And I switched him to Open Farmsfor a while and he liked it

(18:34):
okay. But man, I'm willing to pay a
little bit more extra for the Sundays just because it seems to
be working well for him. My goal would be to get him on a
raw diet, but I don't think thatit's fair to give him raw food
and not give Toby raw food. I have this horrible like, oh,
I'm so sorry, Toby, you only getthis like whatever.

(18:54):
Plus for training ease, it's theSundays.
It's excellent for training. Ease.
So what I do, Janko is on raw, he does hunt away in the morning
and then the raw that I make himfor dinner.
And that's been a journey because he he didn't used to
accept raw. He didn't like raw.
So I was a process. My food company was cooked and

(19:17):
when he was a puppy, his gut microbiome was weird.
We're not doing this raw thing and it took a while for him to
develop. That's how I like to see it, the
ability to eat raw. He doesn't really eat 100% raw.
His bones are dehydrated or freeze dried.
He's very picky with poultry. What I did want to say though,
is that hearing what you're saying, you are feeding the dog

(19:39):
in front of me, which is awesomebecause some people literally
just buy one bag for two dogs. I've.
Never done that actually, which is kind of wild now that I think
about it, because even back in the day I had, I had all
different breeds. And while a lot of it was
Science Diet, that's what I fed for years and years and years
because Science Diet would come and educate a lot of the
practices they come in. They tell you all the things

(20:00):
that they do. I say a school program, I'm not
going to lie, I love that they have the facility where they
have homeless animals and they feed them and train them.
And eventually a few years in orso, people wait on a list to
take those dogs into their homes, which I think is
fantastic, right? But there's still stuff in those
foods that's not good for dogs to be eating.

(20:24):
And somebody who has really started to learn about what's
good and what's not good. My newest obsession is telling
people not to feed their dogs greenies.
Not only do they have too much starch that converts to sugar,
you're literally putting plaque on your dog's teeth with the
greenies. It's not actually doing
essential work. Like when you eat a marshmallow.

(20:47):
Yeah, sometimes it sticks all over.
That's what it is, basically. Yeah, exactly.
Oddly enough, none of my dogs have ever liked greenies, so I
stopped giving them years ago. But I learned that this year.
And that could become addicting.Your dog likes the taste of
sugar, so that could become addicting.
Let's talk about flour. That's another one that I had no

(21:07):
idea was such a thing. Bleach flour, it is not OK.
Now I know that some people use oats or almonds and and they put
them in their food ninjas and they take the raw oats or
almonds or cashews or peanuts and they make their own.
And that I totally see as a different situation.
But they have to be raw. They can't be processed.

(21:29):
And again, not natural. Your dog's not going out and
finding flour buckets in the fields and eating out of the
flour. But so tell tell the listeners a
little bit about why flour is bad for your dogs, because this
is one of the areas that I find pretty fascinating.
First things first, your dog doesn't naturally have enzymes

(21:52):
like we do. When we eat something made out
of flour or carbs, we have an enzyme that starts digesting
that. We also have a long digestive
tract. Dogs don't have the enzyme or a
long digestive tract. So for them, it basically
doesn't digest. It just sits around in their

(22:12):
stomach, sits around in their intestine, sits around in their
gut microbiome, makes the gut microbiome angry.
It bleeds their inflammation. Yeah, inflammation.
So it's just not something you would give your dog.
And so when you start looking atgreenies, it's interesting to
see what people do for not only convenience but also for read.

(22:37):
They're basically making your dog sicker so you can take them
to the vet. And I want to make a really
quick point here because if you come in this far, I don't want
people to think I am judging anybody for what they're feeding
your dog because some people cannot afford.
No Sundays is expensive, right? I'm not even going to joke
around about how expensive it is.

(22:59):
Here's the. Thing and you talked about it
with being a responsible dog guardian.
I don't like the word owner to be that one either.
Has like power over here in the.Possession thing.
For me to be a responsible dog guardian is looking at your
finances and saying this is whatis the best dog food I could
afford with what I could pay. Do research based on that.

(23:21):
I'll tell you that I'm pretty sure you'll find something
pretty awesome out there. There are some companies that do
really good stuff depending on the size of the dog that you
have. You can't really compare a
Chihuahua that's 5 lbs 2. 60 dog.
That's exactly my situation. I've got a 12 LB Chihuahua and a
62 LB mixed breed and they eat 2totally different things.

(23:44):
The only thing that's the same for them is their supplements.
Nothing else is the same. Right.
You're doing the work, you're considering the dog in front of
you and you're also considering what is the best meal I can eat.
It's amazing to see what adding blueberries or adding gibble
straps, that's the easiest way for you to add some nutrition
and some variety to their meals to their bowls.

(24:06):
Because that's the other thing. The dog owner goes and buys a
bag of Karina or whatever but doesn't consider what is in it
and really doesn't consider how it makes the dog feel.
It could be causing inflammation, or they could have
allergies, and it might not evenbe something that the person is
even thinking about. Here's another funny thing too.
I've learned that there are certain vegetables that I can't

(24:27):
give to Toby because of his pancreatitis, because they just
RIP up his gut. Well, you can't eat cucumbers,
Peppers. You can give your dogs Peppers
can't give them to Toby. He can't have anything that's
rough because it just ricks his little gut up.
And then, then, then we have diarrhea and bloating and
vomiting. And that's fun for anybody.
But he can have green beans and he loves them.

(24:47):
So you have to be really mindful.
Just like people have allergies,lactose intolerance, peanut
allergies. I'm allergic to cinnamon, which
people are like, what? Yeah, I'm allergic to cinnamon.
I hate the holidays because anytime I walk in somewhere I
like, I can't be in here. I got to go.
I need my EpiPen. It's in the car.
But that kind of stuff that whenyou have an allergy or a food

(25:11):
intolerance, you're more likely to read labels than other
people, even when it comes to your dog, because you don't want
that same thing to happen to your dog, right?
Let's talk about poop because I think that that is the one thing
that I did not even think about.I mean, the vet tech, right?
We look at your dogs poop under a microscope and we look at the

(25:33):
bugs and we look at the viruses and all the meat stuff under the
microscope. It's actually pretty cool.
The little fecal slides are pretty cool to look at.
You would not believe the thingsyou can see under a microscope
and dog poop. But the biggest wake up call to
me when I started changing theirdiets, when I started making

(25:54):
sure they had the right amount of supplements, because that's
another point here, people over supplement their dog.
We got into the right pattern. I watched my dogs poop piles go
from these massive because Toby,my little 12 LB dog, was having
poops just as big as spits. Was like massive, huge poops.
And why that is, is because they're not processing all that

(26:17):
extra garbage that's in their food.
So when I watch their poops go from runny or inconsistent, even
solid huge tiles of poop till maybe 2 little pieces each now I
was shocked. But the only bad thing about it
is Toby's a poop eater. So I have to be on the ready
anytime anybody poops because Toby will eat it otherwise.

(26:40):
It's so bad about it. It's I'm pretty sure that came
from his origin story. I'm pretty sure he was kept in a
crate and 75% of his meals were poop.
I've just never been able to break the habit.
I've tried everything everythingand he he won't do it.
Some people like put a muzzle onhim.
I'm like 14 years old man going to put a muzzle on him.

(27:00):
If he has a stomach issue that that's on him at this point.
I tried. So I'm very very mindful when it
comes to when they got to the bathroom because I try to make
sure he doesn't get it. I keep a bucket in my backyard,
have a big backyard, keep a pooper scooper and a bucket with
a lid, has a trash bag in it andevery day I go around however
many times and I pick up the poop.

(27:22):
I used to have to change that bag once a week.
Now, I still change it quite frequently in the summer because
it does stink and bugs grow in it if you don't change it.
But in the winter, I usually leave to empty it like once a
month now, which is crazy to me that we went from having a bag
of poop every week to a bag of poop every month because they're

(27:42):
actually benefiting from the nutrients, correct?
And they're processing the amount of food.
Yes, bioavailability. Let's talk about
bioavailability. I love bioavailability, so let's
talk about how bioavailability relates to.
Poop go back to the flower thing.
So remember, it's giving your dog inflammation and it's
sitting in their digestive trap forever and when they find poop

(28:05):
it out, it's massive. They didn't absorb any of that.
And if anything, it's absorbing water.
They're not absorbing any of thenutrients that the flour or at
that point even the meat. They're just surviving at that
point. You could give them cardboard
and they're going to it out the same way.
They're not really absorbing anything.
When you give them a whole food diet or as close to a whole food

(28:30):
diet as you could get. Their bodies are going to take
all the nutrients because it's available to them.
I did a video on it on YouTube that you could go check it out,
which is about milk and how raw diet is like fresh milk versus
table, that it's like powdered milk and you have to mix it.
It's dehydrated, it's powdered milk, it's nutrients are removed

(28:52):
and for you to absorb it, you have to add water to it.
And even then you're not going to absorb what fresh milk is
going to get. So when you think about it like
that, adding table scraps, I know that this isn't an easy
topic for people because it's like out my pocket.
I got to do things, but it really does their health, their
Wellness, their attitude. Believe it or not, kibble could

(29:15):
manipulate the way that they feel hormonally because they're
lacking certain hormones becausethey're not absorbing all those
nutrients that they need to function.
Which is I think another point too, which you made earlier,
which is that gives them variety, right?
I sure as heck don't want to eatthe same thing every day.
I'm not in college anymore. I don't want a peanut butter

(29:37):
sandwich and ramen every day because I'm broke, right?
I don't want to do that anymore.I'm not.
I'm not in college anymore. So don't treat your dog like
they're in college. Do a little bit better,
especially. What is it?
I think they call them Dinks. Dual income.
Dual income, no kids dinks. Oh, really?
Yeah. Well, dual income, no kids
dinks, but they have dogs and they spoil the heck out of their

(30:02):
dogs. OK, so let me be clear, because
this platform is very much abouteducating and about pointing out
how social media portrays certain things on the Internet.
So listen up. Thanks for what we're talking
about here. It Yeah, it costs a little bit
more money. Yes, it takes a little bit more
effort, but make sure that if you are willing to spend the

(30:25):
money, you're putting it in the right place.
Well. I mean, I rather spend money on
making my dog stood food becausethen it becomes fun.
It became a for me. I literally like I'm gonna make
my dogs food and it gets addicting.
You have kangaroo today. That's interesting.
I can't wait to play with the kangaroo.
Honestly, you have to look at it.

(30:45):
It's something that it's far foryou.
Look at it as something that's gonna enrich your mind because
not only is it going to be awesome and beneficial for you,
you're learning a lot about whatthese students do for your body,
but then what it does to your dog, their body.
Like you were saying, the poop tells you so much about how

(31:06):
they're absorbing the food. And it's weird because when
you're a child, you're like, oh,poop shit.
I'm there with a doggy bag. I break the poop.
It's just sorry, that's gross, right?
But I'm gross. You're.
Like collecting information. Yeah, I'm collecting
information. Exactly.
And I learned so much from doingthat from my dog.
If I introduce some new food andI see it, it literally tells me,

(31:29):
OK, well, he wasn't able to digest this.
This is not something I want. Yeah, exactly.
You could see a whole piece of spinach, you can see blood, you
can see sticks, you can see cardboard.
You could see all of the things that your dog got into in that
afternoon or maybe the evening before because it all comes out
in the poop. And if more people paid

(31:51):
attention to their dogs poop, wewould have less emergency
surgeries, we would have less parvo getting to the point where
it's killing puppies. We would have all kinds of
things that would be much more detectable because most people
don't pay attention to their dogs in the way that you and I
do. Let me reference our blog here.
I Co wrote a blog with you for your blog and we talked about

(32:13):
all the silly things that we do to entertain our dogs.
But you and I are very much alike when it comes to how
invested we are in our dogs. And we both have that sciency
mind and we're both looking for information and we're putting in
our theories and we're fact checking ourselves and we're
reaching out for that information.
And that's why I'm saying if youare, if you're out there and

(32:35):
your dual income, no kids and you want to spend money on your
dog. Yes, spend it on the food.
Spend it on the food, spend it on the food and spend it on the
right supplements and get the bully sticks, get the chews, get
the natural things that are goodfor your dog and don't just go
buy 1500 lick mats. I'm not saying I do.

(32:57):
I use lick mats. Trust me, I use them.
I put them right, but that's notthe only solution.
Right here. They're they're, yeah.
Lickmat said. Everybody's like enrichment and
they're like, oh, Lickmat. And I'm like, no, OK.
I'm a certified canine nutritionist, but I'm also a
canine Wellness expert, so I am first aid and CPR trained and

(33:19):
and I have this background in mental health for dogs.
I studied architecture. I love watching because I
learned so much from watching. It was just something I was
trained in. And so a thing that I wished
people would learn when you havea dog, or any pet for that
matter, is to learn to observe and digest what you're watching.
Listen to what you're watching because it tells you a lot.

(33:43):
Yeah, lick mats help, but there's also other ways to
enrich your dog. You get your dog's bowl and feed
them somewhere that they have never been fed before because it
changes the smell of their food.Because it's in a new
environment. The air vent could be different.
There's so much happening and you don't know to the level of

(34:03):
their mind is like, wow, this isso cool and this is so different
and they need that. Also with dogs, their sense of
smell is 1000 times more than what ours is.
Somebody explained this to me atone point and they said that to
compare human scent to a dog scent.
No, there's nothing. There isn't, but the closest

(34:24):
example I got was put bacon in the microwave, let it cook, and
then open the microwave. And that smell, that level of
intensity is the very bottom of the dog's nose spectrum because
not only is their sense of smellincredible, but they are
smelling all of the smells at the same time.
And they can pick out and buy one.

(34:46):
Like they can pluck out the scent and make, OK, that's over
there. Oh, that's over there.
They have a gland in their mouthfor them to taste the smell,
which is. Which is what makes their teeth
chatter exactly, and that actually makes the air flow
faster so that they can smell the scent more clearer.
I learned that this year. I thought that was so.
Cool. Whoa.

(35:06):
That's literally how they see the world.
Literally. And so use that to your
advantage. That just brings us right back
to body language and why it's soimportant to understand what
your dog is doing because dogs process the world in an entirely
different way than we do. That motor cycle that kicked
three or four blocks over that we heard your dog hears that

(35:27):
amplified, that sounds like it was right outside to them.
And so when you have a dog that sounds sensitive or smell
sensitive or they're triggered by something that is movement
sensitive, they're communicatingto you.
That bothered me versus people, all of all this.
Well, I don't like that behavior.
My dogs acting bad or my dog is being defiant or my dog doesn't,

(35:52):
whatever. You're putting your dog in a
world that they are not made for.
Dogs were made to have jobs and even the dogs whose jobs were
literally to sit in people's laps and keep them warm.
Even those dogs are struggling to now to this day because they
don't have the same kind of interaction because people go to

(36:12):
work and the dog can't just sit in their lap and be attended to
24/7. Royal families had dog in their
laps to to keep fleas and flies away from them to keep their
laps warm. People think about the history
of a dog. And anxiety that that creates.
Yeah, and regardless of how mucha dog evolves overtime, their

(36:35):
body still needs the same thing.Just like people, we still need
the same nutrients. We still need the same things.
The more we grow with humanity, we're just constantly plugging
in all of this processed stuff into our diets and we're
wondering, why are people getting sick?
Why are we having so much cancer?
Why are we having all these heart attacks?
Why is everyone's cholesterol sohigh?
Why is everyone's stress and anxiety out of control according

(36:58):
to themselves? And when we talk about stress, I
think a lot of people underestimate the power of
stress, the power that anxiety has over us, over our mind,
mental health alone. Some people not even accepting
that it's not even easy to get atherapist.
To find a therapist that works for your specific issues, you

(37:19):
have to go through a lot and a lot of people don't consider.
A lot of people just take the first therapist that they get or
they don't, they don't advocate for themselves or try to do
something different. And that's, I think that's a
really hard lesson that I learned for myself after I had
my brain surgery. It took me about three years and
then I moved back to Iowa, but Ididn't have somebody who was
advocating for me because no onewas listening to me about the

(37:43):
things that I was feeling. Or I don't feel red.
I feel like a zombie. I feel this way.
I feel that way and come to findout I'm on so much medication
that I can't even think straight.
But I'm also having an allergic reaction to Diamox, which is
making me it turn into a zombie and it's having the reverse
effect on me. Diamox is a diuretic.

(38:04):
It's supposed to push water out of you.
But because I was having an allergic reaction, inflammation,
so now I'm retaining water, I'm retaining salt.
I went up to 230 lbs. And as soon as my doctor here in
Iowa was like, I don't know, I can tell if you're not,
whatever, we're going to stop. So they slowly took me off of it

(38:25):
and they took me off a couple ofother medications, too, and got
me down to, like, a base level of stuff.
And you're real amazing. Yeah.
But you know how much I weigh now?
140 lbs. Wow.
And I'm not on all of these medications that kept me all
foggy and just out of it. But I had to find doctors that

(38:45):
were listening to me, that were listening to my pain points.
And dogs can't do that. Dogs can't look at you and say,
my stomach hurts. My, my ear hurts.
They can't do that. So you have to look at their
body in order to be able to to tell.
Yep, tail to snout checking yourdogs body.
Every single day we both do bodychecks.

(39:05):
Yep, every. Kind of lump in tobys tummy and
I'm. Worried about Don't tell me
that. That's so scary.
That's so scary. It's just think of how much
later I would have found. It exactly.
If I hadn't been checking for it, I know every inch of his
body. The other thing is that I don't
know if the how how many times it's happened to you, but it's I
caught bumps and it's gone to the point because now it's what

(39:28):
7 years? Yank was almost going to be 777
years of checking. And so now when I find the bump,
I'm like, OK, well, this feels similar to this one.
You have more of a frame of reference.
I'm not going to go like a psycho to my vet, although my
vet probably thinks I am to the to that point of like mental
health and all that stuff. Also finding a vet that will

(39:49):
advocate from you. I love my vet.
Lucky though because my vet knows that I was a vet tech.
Fuck it, so. He knows that when I come in,
it's serious because he knows I'm not going to play around and
waste his time. I have caught Toby on the edge.
I know he's having a pancreatic flare up and I'll come in and
I'll be like, hey, Greg, this iswhere we're at.

(40:11):
This is what we're doing. And he's like, I don't know, it
could be his back, it could be this, let me do a few checks.
I'm like, OK. And so this is when we first
started going there and she comes back and he's like, well,
we did the snap test and he tested fairly positive for
pancreatitis. Spine looks great, blah blah
blah. He's.
Like I've never had somebody just say this, is this my dog's
diagnosis communication before? And I'm like, well, I knew my

(40:35):
dog. He's like, I know, I love to see
it. That kind of relationship with
your veterinarian is so important.
Your vet should listen to you. And if you have a vet that's not
listening to you, I'm the one that does just like your
therapist for you. If your therapist isn't
listening to you in a different one, don't stick around.
Get out of there. Yeah, but I mean a lot of time

(40:55):
convenience takes over. Some people are scared of change
too, right? Like change is hard.
It's hard enough, I understand, to go find a vet.
It's hard enough to find a therapist.
It's hard enough to find a new coffee place.
I understand those things are hard.
But sometimes in order for things to get better, you have
to change. They have to change.
Grow you have? Yeah.

(41:17):
Yeah. And it's hard.
It's, I mean that's all I've been doing for the last two
years is change, change, change,growth, growth, growth.
It's hard, but like I just said a few minutes ago, I feel like
my oldest dog is aging backwardsand that that says something to
me that shows me that I've been putting in the work.
Let's talk about supplements. OK This episode's going to be a

(41:37):
long one guys. I'll be ready for this.
So supplements I, I feel like I got really lucky.
I have a really great relationship with Tanisha from
Pet matrix. All of their supplements are
100% bioavailable and I have seen my dog go from not being
able to jump up on furniture anymore because he's old to

(41:58):
jumping back up on furniture again.
I have seen him go from having pancreatic attacks once a week
to not having one in a year and a half.
I have seen him go from a dog that didn't like to play or
engage to getting invested in enrichment and playing his
little ping pong game. I know some of you guys have
seen it from your blog and from the post that I put on

(42:20):
Instagram. Toby's wing and his little ping
pong balls around out of his cup.
Big man. He's so funny.
He's such a funny little dog. But before, because he was not
healthy, because he went from being completely emaciated and
and abused to me letting him getfat because he resource guarded

(42:40):
and you couldn't get anywhere near his fold and he wouldn't
let me just feed him and eat it.We and I've been together a long
time. We've come a long way in 11
years now. He knows when he gets his food,
it's either going to be through training or it's because I have
to go to work and he gets to eatin his area and Fitz eats in his
area and we don't crossover. They only get to eat in close
areas if I am right there and I am managing them.

(43:03):
But most of the time I don't recommend that people feed their
dogs in the same area because you never know, of course, at
any point, right? That's always a wild card.
But as far as supplements, I never did supplements ever for
any of my dogs until these two when I started asking around and
luckily stumbled on to Tanisha. Who was human nutritionist

(43:26):
transferred to dog nutritionist?And the cool thing about Pet
Matrix products is that on theirlabel it says human tested, pet
approved and you can actually take their supplements and it
will help you. So I've taken their mood
supplement and it has helped with inflammation and muscle
pain that I have, which she and I have talked about, which I

(43:46):
think is really cool. So I think that it's really cool
that they have a set. It's a set of three.
They have protect, think and move and it covers all of the
things that your dog needs and it doesn't over supplement your
dog. Now, I find that there are a lot
of people out there, a lot of content creators, a lot of

(44:08):
influencers that pick up certainbrands.
I'm going to throw one out therejust because I'm just because I
am that person and I like to call them as I've seen them.
Woof. OK, Have you read the label for
Woof? Of course.
So. Everyone can't see my big huge
eyes right now. There's so much crap in those.

(44:29):
It's not good for your dogs, but.
There's a lot of them that are supplements and you're like, OK,
it's a hard place to be. I would say that anyone could be
called the supplement, right? There's no regulation for a lot
of these. You kind of have to test the.
I'm very much going to try. And so a lot of even the raw, I
won't eat it raw, but I'll cook it and taste this, this, this

(44:51):
and this. We're going to feed it to Ying.
The same thing with supplements.I'm a believer in having
natural. I do not believe in synthetic
vitamins or minerals or anythinglike that.
The dog's body is probably not going to absorb it.
Their receptors are pretty good.They know what's natural and
what's not natural. So if it's not natural, more

(45:11):
than likely they're not going toabsorb it.
So you're just giving them sugars?
Fat well and that was one thing that I learned about salmon oil.
It's like the seed oils, dogs bodies, like you said about the
flour and the carbohydrates, their bodies just they just push
that out. So you're squirting all that
salmon oil that you just spent $35 on and it's not doing.

(45:33):
Yeah, anything for your dog. I will tell you that if you want
to give Omega freeze, just buy salmon or buy sardines.
Go directly to the source. You don't know how long that's
been sitting on the shelf. Oils go rancid.
That's my first big no oils could go rancid.
Baths go rancid really quick. And then secondly, why not give

(45:54):
them something that is availableto them right away?
If you're just getting it from the source, they're getting a
whole lot more vitamins, A wholelot more nutrients from the
salmon or the sardines that you're giving.
OK. So with that being said, what
are your top ten, if you can think of 10, top 10 thanks to

(46:14):
add into a raw meat diet? Let's say we've already got the
meat in there, we've already gotthe bone in there and we've
already got an organ in there. So we have beef and we have a
beef liver and we have some kindof bone.
I don't even know what we would have in there, but we have that.
What are you going to add to that?
I mean, off the bat, sardines, I'm not feeding this all the
time. You need to bury the diet.

(46:37):
But I think sardines and they'resuper easy.
They're $1.50. That's Trader Joe's, the canned
fresh bones, free water, water, nothing else added to it.
Pop it open, you give it to yourdog.
They're getting omegas, extra protein.
Depending on the brand, you might get some bones, but
they're fine for them to eat them.
Pick #2 dandelion or dandelion. People think it's a weed.

(47:01):
It detoxes. It has so much benefits to your
dog. Mushrooms are another thing,
magical mushrooms. There's so many different
mushrooms and they have each so many different properties that
help your dog. So like lions mean, I'm trying
to think what lions mean. I think is for a mental mind.

(47:22):
I think there's so many different ones that you could
just literally take to benefit your dog.
We have another supplement company that we've been working
with recently and I specificallypicked them because they're
called Mush Buddies and they have seven different kinds of
mushrooms in there and everything's all natural.
They have an additive for preservative and it's a joint

(47:44):
and mobility, but it doesn't have any stuff in it that I'm
not OK with. And my dogs love it.
But they have mushrooms in therefor, you know, cancer
prevention, joint mobility, inflammation, all that kind of
stuff. And mushrooms I've also learned
this year, yes, huge amounts of benefits for mushrooms and dogs.
Where do you get mushroom from? Can you find these different

(48:07):
kinds of trainer you have to go to a coop?
Are we looking at whole food? Situation here again you have to
shop around. Whole Foods has them but you
have to be lucky. You might have lions mane or
oyster or just have to go and find cotton.
Mushrooms are pretty good but they don't have the medicinal
benefits like lions mane OR I don't know why.

(48:29):
That's the only one I could think of.
I know there's reishi. Reishi, yeah, reishi is for, I
use a lot of reishi because I'm a runner and that helps with
lactic acid and to help with theinflammation in your bones and
joints. I mean, there's just so many
different mushrooms and they have so many different
properties that help specific organs of the body.
Feel like we need a mushroom chart that has all the mushrooms

(48:51):
on it and why it's important foryour dog's diet.
Now when you feed mushrooms, do you cook the mushrooms or you
just leave them lately raw and toss them in stems and.
No, I cooked them. OK, Yeah, I cooked them.
I mean, I've done different things, like I've cooked them,
but I've also dehydrated them. I've purchased from different
places that I know have good supplements for my dog.

(49:15):
Yeah, do you give the stem of the mushroom or do you take that
out? No, I give.
Okay. What's something else you would
throw in? Gold bra?
That's a good one. Goats milk.
We used Kefir Kiefer. How are the have you say it,
you're good. They like it because it's
stinky. Well, then I open that up and
both my dogs are right there. I need to get some sardines
because we've never done that. I know anytime it's stinky, both

(49:38):
my dogs come running. They're like, oh, what's that?
Well, yeah, there's a Trader Joe's goat Kabir that is great.
Trader Joe's and the Whole Foods, they don't have it here
in Cedar Rapids down. We do have a Pioneer Co-op and
that's one of those things I need to go and I need to explore
because that's another reason toget the dehydrator.
What got me started on this whole thing was I got dehydrated

(50:01):
sweet potato treats at this pet Expo that I was at for the
podcast, since I brought them home and I let Fitz eat them.
And it was the funniest thing I've ever seen because he's
trying to chew on it. He's never had anything so
crunchy. I just paid like $8 for this.
I could do this myself. And then I started researching.

(50:22):
That's what happened. So what else would you add?
The other thing that you just brought up, sweet potatoes
making them in different ways when you cook them.
It's a different experience for your dog than dehydrating them.
Yanko doesn't like the hydrated sweet potato, but he all day
will eat roasted sweet potato. OK.
Yeah, maybe it's the consistencyor the texture or the smell, but

(50:43):
it's fascinating to see. I do a lot of different
experiments with the Anko where I give him different things to
try just to see what it brings up.
In him do the same thing becauseFitz is a picky eater so I'm
like OK, well you're going to eat this.
What are you going to eat that? Are you going to try this?
Did you? Expect him to eat the shiquite.
No, I didn't. Honestly, I didn't think that he

(51:03):
would eat it. Toby is the opposite.
He's my little garbage disposal dog.
I can give Toby anything and he will eat it.
So I have to be really careful when I'm just cooking in
general, because if it's something that he can't have,
which we'll touch on here in just a second, he will go for it
anyway. But I will tell you there is one
thing. But Toby will not eat ginger.
Weird, right? It's because it's a tanginess.

(51:26):
I don't know if you're peeling carrots and he gets the carrot
peels, they fall on the floor toeat some like peeling ginger.
He or potatoes goes right for itand then he goes.
But then he just spits it out and he looks at me like and I'm
like, really? So then I cut it up and gave him
a tiny little piece of it and hejust looked at me like I was
insane. So any time he knows that

(51:48):
there's ginger, which isn't veryoften, and sometimes I do those
HelloFresh meals and they send ginger and so cooking with
ginger and Toby's like, Nope, don't give me any of that.
Fits won't need it either. But it's the one thing in 11
years that I have found that Toby is like, no thank.
You interest golden paste would be awesome, especially for an
older dog. For joints and inflammation I

(52:10):
add turmeric and ginger, but it's turmeric to help with the
inflammation. I add the ginger and then it has
pepper so that it's absorbed. I wonder if you would eat that.
Maybe it's just the one solo thing by itself.
OK, so we've got mushroom goldenpaste bone broth here on raw
goat's milk. Gosh, you've listed so many
things. The dandelion.

(52:31):
I love that you said that because every time the
dandelions start coming up in the spring, I just start
collecting them. I didn't know that people didn't
know that dandelions help prevent allergies and dogs.
Honey does the same thing. You buy local honey to help with
your human allergies. Guess what helps dogs too?
Well, not too much honey though,because there's sugar, so you

(52:52):
have to be careful how much you give.
But it does help better. It's better that than than a
bunch of allergy medications andinjections and all that kind of
stuff. And it might not do the job, but
at least it's working a little bit, I'm sure as a preventative.
I mean, Fitz has really bad allergies.
Toby's all light fits is mostly white, so that's a thing.
White dogs or allergy dogs, justone of those things that I pay a

(53:15):
little bit more attention to because I have the background in
that dandelions are great. You can go out in your yard, you
can pick the dandelions and you can dry them.
You probably can put them in thedehydrator too.
Yeah, holy cow, another thing that I can test out.
I've given it to your ankle raw.I've given it to them
dehydrated. I've seen them.

(53:35):
I'm walking around the yard picking them.
Toby will follow me and expect me to like feed him the
dandelions as I'm walking around.
So it's pretty cool because he will just eat them.
You mentioned blueberries earlier, which is, I always tell
people blueberries because antioxidants.
It's like the Gustberry. I guess it's the Gustberry.
Any berries, Strawberries, blueberries, raspberries,

(53:55):
cranberries, cranberries. Really.
Do you have to take the stem offof them?
Yeah. Yeah, depending on the dog, it's
kind of like the ginger. It's very like tangy taste.
So some dogs will be like whoa, I puree with bum bra or freeze
them freezing. Sometimes it's better.
Yeah, we use sprinkles, it's smoothies for dogs and she pre

(54:18):
packages them and putting that into molds in the freezer,
Strawberry, banana, mango with alittle bit of kefir in it.
And then we just freeze it. And now you have a little
popsicle that you can have just those simple things.
I found this really fun for me. Like you said that earlier, it's
enrichment for you. This is fun.

(54:38):
Might not always look pretty. There's so many accounts out
there, and there are some that do a beautiful job of creating
those. Yeah.
It's like color aesthetic artwork.
Yeah, it is. It's art.
There's like dried flowers and all this stuff.
But then again, here they are squirting the salmon oil on it.
There is that balance that you have to find because if you're

(54:59):
over supplementing your dog, your dog is just ejecting money
out of their rear end. Honestly, that's happening.
If you are willing to spend thatkind of money and that kind of
time on your dog, make sure you are investing in the right
products. You are such a great resource
for that because you have so much information and you always

(55:21):
have these incredible videos when you're preparing Yanko's
food and talking about why you're doing what you're doing.
It's been a huge part of my education in the last six or
eight months since we each other.
I just, I really enjoy watching it because I do learn a lot from
you. I think that it's something that
we need to be talking more about.

(55:41):
I think that if more people knewand understood, there are easy,
simple ways that you can make effective change in your dog's
health without funneling money into big box corporations that
are not healthy for your dog. Right.
Or or to sit for a whole day stressed out.
You're stressed, your dog stressed, and you're spending.

(56:03):
I would rather spend the money on months of food for my dog.
No, I completely agree. It's like when people talk about
the kind of toys they give theirdogs, right?
Immediately if somebody brings me a basket of toys and they
say, we've had these issues at the vet, these are the toys that
we usually play with. And I guarantee you 99% of the

(56:27):
time there's a rope toy in that basket throughout the rope toy.
Get rid of it. You want your dog's intestines
tangled up? Give them that rope toy back.
I guarantee that you will have some kind of an emergency.
And if you've never had an emergency because of a rope toy,
you are a lucky person for. Me.
It wasn't a rope toy. For me it was 6.

(56:48):
It's a free toy but I would tellyou please don't guarantee what
happened to me with Yanko. It literally went to the back of
the molar and we couldn't take it out.
He had to go to the vet and he was put under.
This is where it gets worse. I have a friend who was also
watching her dog and what ended up happening was her dog about a
splinter. I've seen that happen in.
Oregon. She didn't know she got the dog

(57:10):
on a splinter until, like, his face got action.
Yeah. I've seen it happen in organs
too. Again, when we talk about this
balance, right, there's a balance between wanting to be a
dog, but I'm also going to do the best that I can to make sure
he doesn't have a bad experiencewith a sick.
Again, that's everything in moderation and you do have to
know what you're signing up for.I think that it's really

(57:33):
important to understand that accidents are going to happen,
especially if you go on adventures with your dogs.
You just have to be aware of that kind of stuff, and that's
why it's really important to make sure that your dog is
healthy. So let's talk about things that
dogs should not have in regards to food.

(57:53):
There's obvious ones, but there are other things that that are
not super great for. Dogs to an extent, yeah.
The one that I really, really hate is the PUP Cup.
Really. Yeah, whipped cream is a lot of
fat and a lot of sugar. So again, balance.
My dog has had that. I did a video on it and it got a
lot of hate and it was regardinga pup cup.

(58:15):
And yeah, it's adorable. It's super cute that your dog
likes this pup cup and you're giving him a special treat, but
it's not adorable when they haveaccidents because they have so
much fat in their body or they're hyper because you gave
them 900 per cup. Wow, I never thought.
My point is learning to advocatefor your dog at those moments
because I'm a very big pushover.I don't like confrontation.

(58:39):
And so one thing that I've learned with my dog is I need to
advocate for them because otherwise it's not going to get
advocate. He doesn't speak English.
Yep, my dad get cup cups for their birthdays and then
occasionally throughout the year.
They don't get them very often, but I I also don't drink coffee,
like ever. Well, the only time I ever drink
Starbucks coffee is when they have the caramel brulee lattes

(59:01):
out for Christmas prime and thenI have 1:00 every single week.
Well, I don't drink soda and I don't.
Coffee. They have this funny citrus mint
tea. That's what I drink.
But I go and I order for my brother and they're just like,
Oh my God, can I give you a whole cup?
And I'm just like, well. OK, what's the ruling on garlic?
Because I have heard arguments on both sides of garlic.

(59:25):
I think garlic is in my top 10 musket.
So what are the benefits? It's antiviral,
anti-inflammatory. I'm not going to say that it
keeps bugs awake but it does keep them at a distance.
When it comes to can it help with heartworm, I'd rather give
the medication because it's going to take away stress not
only from me but from my feelingyou.

(59:48):
Yeah, you know that the medication is going to work.
Yeah, OK. I've had conversations with
people that are like, well, whenyou give the medication, if they
if the mosquito bites them and it has heartworm, it'll kill
that heartworm. And I'm like, no, that's not a
work. Trust me, I've had very similar
conversations working in the veterinary office.
People do not understand how medication works all the time,

(01:00:10):
unfortunately, and it can be really frustrating.
But that is why a lot of those medications, if you can prove
that you've been giving it year round, they will cover heartworm
treatment because your dog stillcan get a positive correct test
if even if they're on the prevention.
It's very, very rare, correct? But it can happen.
Right. If we're talking about hookworms

(01:00:30):
and stuff, you give your dog themedication all day long, but if
he smells poop that has hookworms, he's going to get the
hookworms, sorry to tell you. Yep.
And that's one thing that I am so glad that I don't have to
worry about other dogs being in my yard.
But we have deer, we have raccoon, we have possum, we have
squirrels, we have rabbits. Guess what?
All of those animals can have those parasite, all of them.

(01:00:51):
It's called zoonotic diseases, which means it can transfer
between animals to animals, different species to different
species. But also it can go from dog or
deer or rabbit two person. Exactly.
And people don't know that, which is wild to me.
It's wild to me, people. I had to look at what's in my
head. Oh, my goodness.
That is ringworm all over your hands.

(01:01:13):
OK, It's you. Some glove.
My girl, I think. I have a conversation about this
scabies way down the side of people's necks.
Scabies because their dog had scabies and they were sleeping
with their dog all. Pressed up against them How?
How common? When I was a Med tech, I was in
Texas and so it's warmer climatedown there, so pretty freaking

(01:01:34):
common because people did not know what they were doing and
they're handling things. And parvo's really bad down
South too, because in Iowa the ground freezes and parvo can
live in the ground up to 8 feet.So when the ground freezes here,
more than likely most of it diesoff.
But in Texas that doesn't happen.

(01:01:54):
And the way the diseases work, alot of people just don't
understand stand when it comes to zenotic diseases.
One of my first pet clinics thatI worked at, this guy and this
dog literally passed back and forth, this viral bronchitis,
strep throat thing between the two of them for like a month.
And so every other week the guy and the dog were coming in and

(01:02:16):
one of them was sick and he'd belike, we need antibiotics
because now I've got it. Well, finally it took about a
month and nobody was sick anymore, but I was like, OK,
need to go home, get some bleachand we need to clean everything
and we need to hire somebody to clean the furniture.
And that's another thing that people don't think about.
Pay for the prevention, guys. It's cheaper to pay for the
prevention than it is to pay to fix the problem.

(01:02:40):
And the treatment, the heartwormtreatment is expensive.
And getting rid of fleas. Hard.
Getting rid of fleas is expensive, and if you have to
bomb your house, you can't live in your house for a certain
amount of time and then you haveto clean everything up before
you can even let your packs backin it because it's toxic.
It's so expensive and it's so inconvenient.

(01:03:00):
You want to talk about inconvenient?
Jeez Louise. Uh huh.
OK, So what else can't dogs haveor shouldn't have?
Toxic. We're talking like, what's
toxic? Grapes and onions are the two
that I know that are really bad.I I want to say something that's
not really which is rain. Since dogs are low to the ground
and their main source of learning about the environment

(01:03:22):
is their nose, they ingest a lotof heavy metals, toxic, thus all
this stuff. So being mindful of that, if you
paint, you mindful that that paint is something that is safe.
Even the stuff that you use to clean, try to make sure that
it's something that is not talking.
Because I have migraines and I cannot handle the scent like Mr.

(01:03:47):
Clean or Pine salt or even bleach.
So unless it's something really extreme at my house and
somebody's really sick, I don't use those kind of products,
Lysol, anything, because it makes me sick.
And since we're on that point, fragrances, candles, the wall
plug in things, all that stuff is so bad for your dogs, so bad

(01:04:09):
for your. Yeah.
I mean, there's there's been cases where I'm changing their
diet, let's try this and that itends up being that it was they
had freshener and that's what gave the dog allergy.
I literally just had this conversation with my dad.
That pet fresh stuff that you sprinkle in your carpet?
Don't use that. That's terrible for your dog.
It's fine. They're fine.

(01:04:30):
And then everyone is sneezing and I'm just like, Oh my God.
That you don't even consider also dish soap you're washing
when we're talking about the enrichment, right?
The bowls and some places are really hard to get into.
Always rinse everything and thendry it again after it comes out
of the dishwasher because I wantto make sure that all the soap
is off of it. I'm kind of neurotic though, so.

(01:04:52):
I do the same. Thing I did an allergy panel on
fit earlier in 24 because he hadan allergic reaction and I did
not know what it was that he's reacting to.
We've been in this house for twoyears and ever since we moved
into this house, he's been having the specific allergy at
the specific time in the year, beginning of fall, end of

(01:05:13):
spring, we're having this thing.So finally we've got it figured
out. We did the blood testing and I
got him on the Cytopoint injection, which was so good.
It helped him so much because I tried everything for him and
paws were red, his face was red,he was scratching his ears,
scratched his face so hard. He was bleeding and I was like
OK, this has to stop. So we got him on the Cytopoint

(01:05:34):
injection. Works wonders.
The blood panel comes back. He's allergic.
So many ridiculous things. Pine trees, cedar trees.
Let me tell you guys, I live in a city named Cedar Rapids.
Do you think we have cedar trees?
We have so many cedar trees. So here's the messed up part.
I that day that he got really, really bad and inflamed, had

(01:05:55):
spent the entire afternoon dusting and cleaning and
vacuuming. Then I put my essential oils in.
Now I get pure essential oils. There's no chemicals.
Thought everything would be finemy dumb ass because I didn't
used cedar oil and caused my dogto have an allergic reaction.
Guess where that cedar oil went?In the trash.

(01:06:16):
It's gone. But he was already struggling
because the trees are dying or blooming and he's having the
reaction because of all the cedar trees.
And then I added it into the house which was probably the
only area that he was getting some relief and made it even
worse. And now I just know.
At the end of February we get the cyto point injection.
It lasts for like 6 months. We might have to get another one

(01:06:38):
just in case at the beginning ofSeptember, and then he'll be
fine. It's just one of those things I
didn't know. And I think that there's a lot
of that, right? That guilt that that, Oh my
gosh, I just made this so awful for my dog.
But really, it's not that we made a mistake.
It's just that we didn't know. And that's, again, where you
have to do your research, investigate, get curious, get

(01:07:00):
into the nitty gritty. Yeah.
That's why we have podcast episodes like this where we're
really having this random conversation about all these
things. But I learned things today.
That's the goal, right? It's always to be learning
something. It was on the fence about the
garlic, so let's go back to it for just a second because I
would like to know the appropriate amount and the type.
I can't just go to the grocery store and buy that jar of minced

(01:07:24):
garlic. No you cannot.
Garlic has an enzyme in it. In order for it to be accepted
by your dog, it's better to do it freshly.
So freshly minced it or smash it, Your dog is going to absorb
it. Otherwise it becomes rancid.
It's not rancid, it just. It's the oils, yeah.
It's not rancid, it's another word, but it goes bad to the

(01:07:45):
point that your dog's just not get accepted.
It depends on the size of your dog.
I wouldn't really do more than once.
OK. All right.
Well, that's interesting. I want to do another episode
with you, hopefully in person. We can do a live episode in
person. And I want to create 3 or 4
different raw meals with you andshow people this is what we're

(01:08:08):
doing, how we're doing it, and then you could be teaching me
why we're doing it this way and all that kind of stuff.
I think that would be really funand really educational.
Yeah, no, I completely agree. I think there's a lot of
information in regards to raw and different ideologies.
I go by an ancestral diet. I use every type of organ.
So there's two different organs,There's muscle organs and then

(01:08:30):
there's secreting organs. And then depending on the organ,
it gives the dog an extra benefit.
It's super fascinating to get into it and learn what each does
and the benefits and how it can be incorporated for your dog.
When the podcast goes on the road, you can be one of my first
stops and we can just make raw meals for our dogs together and
that will be super fun. Is there anything you would like

(01:08:53):
to leave the listeners with today?
For me, the most important thingas a dog guardian is to blank
the dog in front of you. So you're training the dog in
front of you, you are enriching the dog in front of you, you are
eating the dog in front of you. Whatever you want to add to that
blank, do it. I love that.
I absolutely love that because they are, they are unique

(01:09:16):
individuals and every time you look at their needs and try to
meet their needs, you have to look at them as an individual.
I think that's so important now.Like thank you so much for being
here today and I think this was incredible and I cannot wait to
have you come back and do some cooking.
But behind the scenes, we're going to have another
conversation about dehydrators. We will share that with you

(01:09:37):
guys. I promise.
We will share that with you guys.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Straight Up Dog Talk
and we will see you guys next week.
Straight up Dog Talk was createdby Emily Breslin.
It is edited and produced under the supervision of Straight Up
Dog Talk LLC and Emily Breslin. If you're enjoying this podcast,
follow or subscribe and be sure you don't miss an episode and

(01:09:58):
leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform.
Looking for more honest and relatable dog content?
Check out our sister show Unpacked with Jerry Sheriff and
Madison Simpson. Thanks for listening to Straight
Up Top. See you next week.