The Importance of Your Pet's Diet with CheckOut Veterinary

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Eight thirty eight thirteen ten Wiba and ask the experts.
Brought to you by Checkout Veterinary Online. Checkout vet dot com.
That's checkout vet dot com. Great website, by the way,
if if you've heard us talking about checkout vet, if
you haven't had a chance to stop on in and
experience at firsthand, if you're curious about how it works,
the website checkout vet dot com does a really nice

(00:22):
job of kind of putting it all together. The convenience
and of course the comfort at checkout vet for you
and your pet. Again that website, checkout vet dot com.
Look at it right at twenty seven to ten Prairie
Lags Drive in Sun Prairie. They're telephone number six oh
eight three one eight sixty seven hundred. That's six oh
eight three one eight sixty seven hundred, open seven days
a week, nine am until five pm. That first visit,

(00:44):
that first exam at checkout Vet. It will be free
and really good news. They are accepting new patients right now.
So if you've been looking for a vet, looking to
find a new vet, or got a new pet in
your life looking to get them into checkout vet. They
do have openings right now for new patients. I got
too to pick up on MC call six So eight
three eight sixty seven hundred, head on over the website
check out vet dot com. And joining us this morning

(01:06):
is doctor Marty Greer, who was recognized as Veterinarian of
the Year from Westminster Kennel Club and Doctor I, I,
I'm realizing you've got a lot of fans out there.
How you doing this morning? Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:17):
I do you do?

Speaker 1 (01:20):
It's not surprising, It's not surprising at all. But I
was telling you. I sent you a text. I was
getting ready earlier this week for for a meeting and
one of my one of my colleagues said, oh my gosh,
I know doctor Greer. She is so amazing and talking
about about your work with with reproductive reproduct animal reproductive

(01:44):
issues and other things, and she's like everybody I know
takes their pets to see doctor Greer. I said, that
is so yeah. I know. I will I'll tell you
more about it off the air. But I'm like that
that is very very cool, and uh, you know, we
talk about folks that I get a chance to get
to know you and get to know the team at
checkout VETT. It's a great day to do that. It's

(02:05):
also a great day if you've got a question something
you've always wondered about, maybe you wanted to ask a veterinarian.
Guess what, We've got a chance for you right now.
Give us call six oh eight three two one thirteen ten.
That's six eight three two one thirteen ten. We'll get
you right on the air with doctor Marty Greer of
checkout Vet. Another way to reach us is via email.
If you head on over to checkout vet dot com,

(02:25):
you cansumit an email there, or of course you want
to sign one to me Sean at wiba dot com,
or of course just go over to wiba dot com
and send an email through the website. And one came
in through that very way from Roger. Roger writes in
he says, I'm a longtime listener, a first time email
or I recently saw something on social media that brought
up a question I've always had and I was hoping

(02:47):
you could shed some light on it. The post claimed
that old dog poo used to turn white, but doesn't
seem to anymore. This got me wondering is this story accurate?
If so, why did that happen? And has there been
a change in the dog food to explain this. If so,
these changes, are they for the better? I appreciate it

(03:08):
for any information you can provide. Thanks for all you do,
and that comes from Roger and doctor what is the is?
He mentioned he sensed this, and I thought, he's right.
I haven't. I haven't noticed the white stuff anymore. Something's changed,
hasn't it.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
It's you know, I think that's accurate, because you're right,
it doesn't seem to have that shocky look to it
anymore that it did used to. When it would lay
out in the sun for a while, it would kind
of get shocky and white looking. And I don't really
know what the answer to that is. I think it's
a really interesting observation. But yes, there have definitely been
changes in dog food, and presumably for the better. Most

(03:45):
of our companies now are doing a better job every
year of researching and improving the quality of dog food
so that what we have today isn't what we had
twenty years ago. Now there's some question that maybe there's
some changes that aren't as good, but you know, there's
definitely changes that have happened. And there's three major companies, Hills,
which makes science diet and prescription diet, Royal Canaan which

(04:08):
makes Wealtham and the Royal Canaan prescription line of foods,
and Yukanuba and Pedigree in that whole line of foods.
That's actually the largest pet food company in the world.
It's not Purina, and third is Purina and they have
again a veterinary line and then over the counterline. Those
companies all do research on diseases in dogs and cats,

(04:28):
and then they have provided us with therapeutic diets which
don't have any drugs in them. So I don't want
anybody to misunderstand that there's no drug in any of
the therapeutic diets. But they are prescription because they are
prescribed specifically for certain conditions that dogs and cats can have,
so heart disease, intestinal disease, kidney disease, liver disease, bladderstones,
kidney stones, allergies. There's a huge array of therapeutic diets.

(04:53):
There's hypoallergenic diets, and there's hydrolyzed protein diets, and so
there's all these things now that we can do for
our pets with diet, and by doing so, there's arthritis,
you know, there's things that we can do without having
to put our dogs on or cats on drugs, on
true therapy by using a therapeutic diet. And so we
do get pushback from clients that say, well, why do
I have to have a prescription from a veterinarian and

(05:15):
it costs more, Well, it's maybe ten percent more to
buy that food than it would be to buy regular food,
but sometimes it's even less expensive than what you're buying now,
So I think it's important that we talk about that.
The other thing that I am going to mention here,
which is sort of off topic but not completely, is
that there's a new kind of bladderstone that's been found
in dogs and cats. It's called CTT. It's a tartrate

(05:39):
stone that seems to have originated from some of these
fresh based diets, so the ones that you buy them
aren't kibble. So I want people to know about it.
Nobody used to see these stones at all. In the
University of Minnesota at the Vet School in Saint Paul.
They are really truly the epicenter for all things bladder
and kidney, and dogs and cats have started to see

(06:01):
this kind of an orangish yellow, multilobulated stone in the
bladder and the only thing that they could trace it
back to when they did a chemical analysis was the
preservatives and some of the pet foods that are fresh,
so then not the kibble, not the canned, but the
stuff that comes in the role in the refrigerator. So
I think it's important that people are aware of that
so that if they do have a problem with a bladderstone,

(06:23):
that they know and their veterinary knows that should be addressed.
So I know that's not exactly the question that you asked,
but it kind of led to why do we have
differences in our food? And you know, people feel like
the fresh diets are better for their pets. They may
or may not be, but they're certainly more expensive. And
it's mostly the small breed male dogs that we've seen
this bladderstone in and I think it's partly because large

(06:45):
breed dogs they're so expensive to feed the fresh food
that most people are feeding kibbled for the larger breed
of dogs.

Speaker 1 (06:51):
Really interesting. As we talked this morning with doctor Marty
Greer of check Out Veterinary, don't forget. If you've got
a question for doctor Greer, we'd love to hear you
from you this morning. I'll get to pick up pone
DIALD and we'll get you right on the air. Six
eight three two one thirteen ten. That's six so eight
three two one thirteen ten. Don't forget. You can also
email questions Sean at WIBA dot com. We'll answer them
right here on the program. You can learn more about
doctor Greer and check out Veterinary on their website check

(07:14):
out vet dot com. That's check out vet dot com.
Don't forget that first exam, that first visit is free
at checkout Veterinarygin. The website checkout vet dot com accepting
new patients right now. And doctors. We talked about nutrition
and u and animal health. When it comes to food,
we talk about some of those some of those prescription
diets and those you know, and I know that there's

(07:35):
a lot of when it comes to quality food, there's
a lot of options out there. A lot of this
stuff is far cheaper than than dealing you know. I
know when I talk with UH, with the mds out there,
the people docs, they often they often talk about you know,
food as medicine and talk about lifestyle medicine and diet
and those type of things. I'm guessing the same stuff

(07:56):
for humans holds true in pets that you know, making
these modifications are eating a proper diet can really not
only improve quality life, but reduce issues as far as
overall health issues as they age.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
Oh for sure. And you know, I think as humans
we're a lot better at managing our dogs and cat's
diets than we are our own, because it's really easy
to you know, to say, this is how much you're
getting for how often I'm fitting you, this is how
it goes. But then you know yourself, You're like, okay,
well I had dinner and I'm getting a little hungry.
I'm just going to have a bull of ice cream,
or you know, the little things that we do. We

(08:29):
just pull into the drive through and quit grab a
meal because we didn't have time to really prepare for
something that was a better decision for what we should
be eating. So absolutely, we can control many, many things
with diet. And you know they say in the emergency
rooms on the human side that up to thirty percent
of the people in the er are there for a

(08:49):
problem that they could have prevented, and that may be
drunk driving, but that maybe you ate something that you
knew you were allergic to, and regardless, you ate it,
sometimes knowingly sometimes not knowingly. So I think it's really
important that we think about nutrition as a tool that
we can use to improve our pet self. It's not
only weight control, but it's the components of the diet.
And a lot of people get really hung up looking

(09:11):
at PEP food labels because they look at the ingredient list,
They look at the things that are listed on the
back of the bag, and what they really should be
looking at is the nutrient profile. So what is the protein,
what is the carbohydrate? Is this dog's allergic to something?
Is that component either not present or they've hydrolyzed the
protein level in it, so that tiny molecule less than
ten thousand daltons that it flips past the dog's immune system.

(09:33):
About them really noticing that they're allergic to it. I mean,
there's so many things that we can do to manage
their health. It's not just weight. It's dental care, you know,
there's those dental diets and a lot of the foods
have either diets that are meant to have a kibble
that helps to clean the chart off of the teeth,
or they have sodium methyl hexyl foxtate in the food,

(09:54):
which sounds oh like, oh my god, that sounds terrible,
But that's the same crystal that they put in your
toothpaste that help cut down in the tartar and your teeth.
They can put it in dog food. Doesn't hurt them
to eat it, but it helps to clean their teeth
that they chew their kibble. So dental care. Kidney disease,
you know, kidney disease, it's huge in dogs and cats,
and we can see cats that can live two to
four years on a prescription diet for kidney problems. If

(10:17):
we catch it early and get them onto a therapeutic diet.
These cats are living so much longer than they would
on regular cat food that it's truly a breakthrough to
have those kinds of improvements. Bladderstones, we don't have to
take all dogs the surgery to take out bladderstone. Some
of them dissolve with the right diet, or we can
prevent them coming back with the right diet and prevent
that annual surgery to go in and take out another

(10:39):
bladderstone and another bladderstone. Intestinal disease really important that we
can manage a lot of dogs with vomiting, diarrhea, health
issues like that that we can manage with food. So
you know, there's so many things that we can do.
And if people would just beat compliant with their food
and not you know, sneak the little trees and not

(10:59):
undermine what we're able to do with diet, we can
really make their pets a lot healthier. And the less
money you spend with me to keep your pet out
of the hospital. Hey, you know, I'm in man. I'm
all about the sup preventive care and management.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
They give you those looks, though, doctor, they make it
so hard. I'm talking this morning with doctor Mardy Greer
of check Out Veterinarian doctor. When you were talking to
about you know about looking at the at the label
and looking at the at the nutrients.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
Do they do?

Speaker 1 (11:26):
I know obviously with people food there's those nutrition facts
boxes that I think are required by law. Is there
anything like that for in the pet food world? Or
how do we get like I'm assuming obviously it's truthful.
What you would it be then looking for and do
they Is there like an easy way to compare those
things or just something to talk to the vet about.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
It's not as easy as it would that I would
like it to be. You can see on the label
pretty easily the fat, carbohydrate, protein, and fiber in the diet.
But once you get below the ingredient called salt, anything
below that is a micronutrient, and that's typically a mineral
or a vitamin or maybe a preservative that they put
in the food, and vitamin E is actually a preservative
for pet food. That once you get past salt, then

(12:10):
those micronutrients are really hard to assess the levels of
in one diet compared to another. So that's when you
have to start either picking up the phone and calling
the eight hundred number on the package of the food
and ask their nutrition experts specific questions. And most of
the pet food companies do have somebody, and you can ask,
do you have a veterinary nutritionist on your staff? How
do you formulate your diet? How do you make decisions

(12:32):
about changes in the diet, Because if the commodity market
causes of change in one ingredient, then are they going
to have to substitute another one? And how does that
affect what's in your food and the nutrient profile of that.
And I will tell you that the world small animal
Veterinary Association. So it's WSAB a World Small Animal Veterinary
Association has a really really good web page on it

(12:53):
for how to select a pet food and manufacture do.
You can go to that. You don't have to be
a veterinary and you can just google that and you
can find it and it has a whole list of
questions that you can call the pet food company and
ask them about. Some people like to have their own
homemade diets, and in some cases that's appropriate. In other
cases it doesn't turn out very well. Sometimes people will
start off with a recipe and then we have what's
called recipe drift because one day you can't get turkey,

(13:16):
next and the next time you can't get you know,
the kind of beans that you were buying, and so
you change and pretty soon the original recipe that you
were feeding wasn't really what it changed, you know, drifted
and it's changed into something else. So there's a website
called balance It via l A n CE Balance It,
and you can go to that and there's a free
service and a paid service if you choose. Or you

(13:36):
need to formulate your own dogs or cat's diet because
of some nutritional need that isn't met by a therapeutic diet.
You can go to that and get some help in
formulating a diet, and of course, you know then you
have to stick pretty tightly to that recipe. It's not
like when you're making lasagna, and if you want to
substitute one thing for another, it's not going to change
the nutrient profile. But it's really important that we're doing
appropriate nutrition for our pet So just seeing your dogs

(13:59):
skinless boneles chicken breast off the table as one hundred
percent of their diet is not a balanced diet. Dogs
need a lot more than that. And frankly, you know,
things like dark meat chicken is a higher higher in
nutrients like touring than white meat chicken. So I'm not
really sure why people drift toward buying the expensive skinless,
boneless chicken breast when they could buy chicken thives and

(14:21):
legs through them in their instant pot and get really
nice chicken in a much higher quality for the touring
amount in the food, and then have a better product
to put into their pet food. So most of us,
of course, most of us do exactly what you just said,
and that's that we're pretty good at feeding mostly the kibble,
and then yeah, they look at you with big brown eyes,

(14:42):
and then there's something else that goes into the food.
So if you have a dog that's not a prescription
diet or a cat, you can either use the kibble
or the cans version of that to make little baked
treats so that you can stay on the therapeutic diet.
But if you don't have a specific therapeutic need, as
long as you're feeding ninety percent of the kibble, center
more of the kibble, and less than ten percent is

(15:02):
over the counter snacks treats, those kinds of things are
probably okay with not upsetting the nutrition of the food,
but avoid the high fat, avoid the bones, avoid the
spicy foods, and then of course grapes and raisins we
know are toxic to dogs, so there's certain things that
we have to keep out of their diets. And then
there's also like Royal Canaan makes some very specific breed

(15:22):
specific foods for dogs and cats, and it's not a gimmick.
It's not just something that they've made up so that
you'll go to the store and buy something that's kind
of cool. But the bulldog food is made so that
they can pick it up more easily and they get
less gas in their GI track because bulldogs are gassy,
and that includes French bulldogs. We can see labrador food
that has a hole through the middle of it so
they swallow less air when they gobble their food. We

(15:44):
see German shepherd food that's more digestible, and German shepherds
are the breed that stresses through their gut. But there's
a lot of other dogs that have problems that they're
GI tracked, So we feed the German shepherd food to
a lot of other dogs that aren't German shepherds because
they do really well on it. So there's a lot
of stuff out there. There's a lot of nuances to
this that you should be talking to your veterinarian or
your veterinary technician that has training and nutrition about.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
We're going to continue our conversation with doctor Marty Grear.
I do you want to ask you about you mentioned
role at roy Ocanaan. I know you've had the opportunity
to actually see their facilities and those type of things
I want to talk about in a minute, right if
the breaks about a little bit about transparency and how
these how these uh Uh, these companies work, a lot
of them are very very much involved with the veterinarian
community and of course very much open to allowing them

(16:29):
to come in and explain how things work. We're going
to talk with doctor Greer about that in just a moment.
In the meantime, we've been over the website. Check them
out check out vet dot com. That's check out vet
dot com. Great data, start that relationship. They are accepting
new patients right now at checkout Veterinary. You can learn
more online checkout vet dot com or pick up phone
give a call six soh eight three one eight sixty
seven hundred. That's six oh eight three one eight sixty

(16:50):
seven hundred. We'll continue our conversation with doctor Marty Greer.
We will do that next as ask the Experts with
Checkout Veterinary. Continues here on thirteen ten doll wle you
IV eight fifty six thirteen ten WI b A and
ask the experts with Checkout Veterinary talking with doctor Mardy
Grier of Checkout Veterinary. The website checkout vet dot com.
That's checkout vet dot com now accepting new patients. Don't

(17:12):
forget that first visit, that first exam is free, open
seven days a week at checkout vet again. All the
details online checkout vet dot com. Great day again to
UH to make make that appointment again telphon number six
oh eight three one eight sixty seven hundred. That's six
oh eight three one eight sixty seven hundred and doctors.
We talk about different types of UH. You know, food
and the importance of quality food for your pet. I

(17:35):
know that a lot of the big names that folks know,
they're pretty open about about and they're actually quite proud
of their facilities and how they work. And you, I
know you've had the opportunity on a couple of occasions
to actually go and see and and talk with some
of these producers, haven't you.

Speaker 2 (17:55):
Yes, I've been to France twice to Royal came in.
I've been to Waltham in England where do some of
their research. I've been to Purina in Saint Louis. I've
been to Dayton, Ohio for Yukanuba. Yeah. I've been to
many of these and see their colonies where they have
house the pets, the dogs and cats that are fed
these diets, and see how they are taking care of it.

(18:16):
It's absolutely amazing the kind of care that these dogs get.
They go up to picnic tables at lunchtime, and they
go home with people and they get adopted out after
their their job of eating pet food for their whole life,
and they do some really tremendous research. So I think
people need to understand that you can visit Purina. Now.
Their visitor center did have some damage to it with
a storm earlier this spring, but many of these companies

(18:38):
are very welcoming to having you come in see what
they do for their research, how they house their pets,
what kind of things they do. When we went through
the Royal Canan plant, they were changing the dies in
the machine you know that cuts the little pieces of
food into whatever shape that they're supposed to be. My
husband had like drag them away from the window because
he's standing there watching the mechanics work on the machine.
He was just intrigued by this whole thing. So it's

(19:00):
it's pretty amazing what these pet food companies do for us.
And you know, people are like, oh, pet food is
really bad, the dry tible is terrible for my pet
and it's actually not man. You know, our dogs are
living to be older than they've ever lived before, and
we have options for therapeutic diets we've never had now.
Not every pet food company makes every therapeutic diet, so
sometimes we have to rely on one company versus another
based on what the pets needs are. But overall, we

(19:23):
can manage so many better things than we ever could
before with the pet food that we have and the
new medications and you know, the new vaccines and the
new medications, and if you're careful and thoughtful and you
work with your veterinary and your veterinary technician about how
your lifestyle of your pet works, what you need, what
you don't need, because you don't need everything, but you
do need some things. It's really important that we know

(19:45):
we can manage we can prevent free born diseases and
take born diseases, and we can prevent parasites, and we can,
you know, help with their allergies and do all kinds
of really incredible things. With the right therapeutic diets and
the right medications use directly, they can really change lifestyle
and quality and quantity of life.

Speaker 1 (20:03):
It's a great day to have that conversation. If you
are looking for a new vet, don't forget some great
opportunities accepting new patients at checkout Veterinaria, the website checkout
vet dot com. That's checkout vet dot com. Telph number
six so eight three one eight sixty seven hundred. That's
three one eight sixty seven hundred, doctor Greer. It's always
so informative. Thank you so much for joining us this morning.
You enjoy this great day. Thank you, Sean, and again

(20:25):
that website checkout vet dot com. News comes your way
next here, I'm thirteen ten Wiba