Welcome to Dog Pro Radio Radio. Are you overwhelmed trying to run your dog training business and market for it at the same time? Let’s be honest, scaling isn’t an option anymore. If you’re not using Meta and Google Ads to market for your business, you have already fallen behind, and this year it’s gonna hurt more than it ever has before we create proven meta and Google ads campaigns that will help grow your business and get more clients in the door.

Every day that you wait is the day that your competition is taking action, and more importantly, taking leads from your business. So if you’re ready to scale, click the link below to get started. We’re offering an exclusive rate for IACP members. Get your free month of marketing today.

Welcome to Dog Pro Radio. Today’s guest is Jennifer Carter. Welcome, Jennifer. Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. Well, let me, I’m gonna tell everyone a little bit about you, and then I’m gonna let you tell them a lot about you. Okay. Jennifer is a dog trainer and certified canine nutritionist with a passion for helping dogs from both a physical and behavioral standpoint.

I’m excited to talk about a lot of stuff today, but we’re gonna talk about how nutrition intersects with behavior. Hopefully get some actionable tips out there that we can all use on a daily basis. We’re gonna talk about your passion for Cancro and how people can use that, and we’ll talk about what, I guess, whatever else we’d jump into.

So, welcome and we are excited. Well, I, I say we. Jason’s not with us today. He’s usually on here, but I guess it’s not we, I’m excited for this episode today. Yeah, we should, we should definitely do something super exciting today that he will feel envy and fomo so he won’t, you know, ditch you again. It’s gonna be huge.

Yeah. And I might not even tell him. I’m like, you have to watch the episode. That’s right. But it was amazing. No spoil alerts for sure. Well, thank you for taking the time to come on. Very much appreciate it. Uh, there’s, like I said, so much we can talk about today. But why don’t we start just, uh, tell me about yourself.

What is it you do? How did you get to where you are today? I. Yeah. So I have had a, I’ve had a, a very interesting life in the sense that I have done a lot of things in the, the course of my career time, always with working with animals as a hobby, a side gig, you know, and you have the what pays the bills, and then you have what you really enjoy doing.

And something snapped in me as I got older and I had less of a tolerance for things that, um, didn’t bring enjoyment anymore. And, uh, segued myself closer and closer into the space where I enjoyed my time and my efforts. Um, and that included animals. So I’ve had personal dogs my whole life, and I’ve worked with other people’s dogs over the course of my life and the way of training.

But like I said, it was always a side gig. So, um, I did segue, uh, I was involved in nine 11, uh, when that happened. And I felt like I sort of was spared in that moment because I was made for greater things. And that’s where the beginning of finding my true space began. And I just started working with animals in a very different way.

Um, my whole background is focused on that. Uh, I have a bachelor’s degree, uh, and I have two masters and I’m working on my PhD right now. And all of that academic has always been in that space with the idea I was gonna do something with it, but never really did. But now, um, uh, now all the tables have turned.

I spent a number of years working for a fresh dog food company as the, um, canine nutritionist, marketing, you know, other duties as assigned. And, uh, it was a small company and, um. We tried to educate people about, uh, feeding their dogs fresh food versus just a hundred percent processed food. And I learned a lot in that process.

Uh, I learned that this is really where I wanted to be, and then I started to, um, personally work on, okay, my, I don’t know how to shut this off. My phone is digging. I’m, I’m so popular, apparently. Um, you’re always popular when you don’t wanna be. Right, exactly. Uh, come on now. Um, they know I’m doing something important.

So anyway, um, basically what happened was, in my learning situation with that fresh food company, I started to really understand what was important to me. And that started to segue into very specific areas. Um, I’ve always been involved in sports personally, so doing dog sports. Made sense to me because I got to do that sport.

They gotta do that sport. We did something together. Nutrition, I’ve always been involved in nutrition in the human space because of the athletic side of me. But then to apply nutrition to the dog really became, uh, an easy transition. So I love that. And then I started to peel the onion back even further where I started to look at nutrition and behavior.

Uh, most recently, um, my dog experienced a CCL tear full CL tear, a full meniscal tear and a ilio. So as pole, which took us out of the competing space for over a year. And basically that allowed me to focus on nutrition and rehabilitation and. I started to learn how these nuances and nutrition were really important.

You can’t set it and forget it when it comes to feeding a dog. There’s all these applications and I really dove into understanding how you can take nutrients fresh, a hundred percent process, no matter what it is, and translate that into the dog to reach the outcomes that you would like to have. And that is a journey not everyone likes to take.

I will tell you, half of you just fell asleep just now. I understand. Um, I said the, the word nutrition like four times and you guys fell off the wagon there. Um, so welcome back. We’re gonna talk about, uh, exciting things, but, um, but yeah, that, that’ll tell you about me. I’ve spent a lot of time in academics.

I spent a lot of time with, uh, uh, experience and observation and working with what I’ve learned in the books. To firsthand experience with the dog. So, um, I, I value that, I value the opportunity to be taught by dogs, to be taught by people, and to have some feedback. Awesome. I’m, there’s so much fun stuff to talk about.

I think just one thing I’ll throw out, I’m certainly not a nutritionist very far from it, but I think anyone who’s ever bored by the topic, what I would say is think about the fact that our bodies are completely made from what we eat. And I, you know, I take my own nutrition pretty seriously and, and my, in this same with my, you know, for like, nutrition for my kids and my dogs as well.

But everything we eat is what’s creating us right as we grow, as we, you know, shed, you know, shed cell, everything’s being replenished and is it gonna be replenished with Fritos? Or spinach. I mean, that should be a kind of an easy choice, right? But same thing with dogs. So, uh, I can tell you I won’t be bored today.

I’ll, well, me neither. I’ll be very, you know, I’ll bring it up. Energy for everyone basically. Yeah. Uh, this is a rabbit hole I like to be down on. Um, I tell this to my clients all the time. The body knows what to do. We just have to create the environment for it to do it. Uh, honestly, and you know, it’s the same as the dog When you’re training them, they get it, but if they’re not in the environment where they can receive that information correctly, well then it doesn’t work, right?

So, I like to work smart, not hard. I like to set myself up for as much success as I possibly can have, whether I’m feeding a dog or whether I’m training a dog or working with an athlete. Um, all those things. If you work smart, then you set yourself up for success. You set the dog up for success. And you have something to tell that client at the end of the day, you know, and how they can keep that momentum going for themselves when that dog goes home from you or, or whether they transition to training with their handler instead of you, whatever that looks like.

Alright, well, I’ve got some big picture questions for you and then I’ve got some nitty gritty small picture questions, I guess are very, you know, very niche. Uh, why don’t we start with, if you’re talking to someone, you know, let’s, let’s say our audience, everyone here owns, everyone owns dogs. What’s the perfect diet?

Now, obviously that’s gonna be different based upon the dog, but overall, do you like raw? Do you like home cooked? Do you like kibble? What it is? What is it you prefer? And then let’s go from there. So we’ve all started feeding kibble. We all did. Even myself, I currently prefer a raw frozen diet. Uh, if you’re gonna do commercial, if you’re gonna make a homemade diet, then I like a homemade diet that has been audited.

And I say that very specifically because you cannot eyeball a balanced diet and you will miss very crucial minerals and vitamins. And that’s what gets the veterinarians very upset, is when they come in and they see a dog that’s malnourished in some way. And I say that not by not having enough food, but not having enough right food.

It creates disease in the body and it is a very bad thing. But if you have an audited homemade diet, well that’s the best thing that you can do. It doesn’t matter if it’s cooked or it’s raw, it doesn’t matter. It means you’re using fresh ingredients. You know, they tell us as human beings that you should eat the least amount of processed food.

They tell you to stay out of those aisles, only go down the fresh aisles. I don’t understand why. I know everybody says this and you’ve heard it a lot. I don’t understand why they only recommend a hundred percent processed food for dogs. Why? If they touch fresh food, death is imminent. That makes no sense to anyone.

Before there was kibble, dogs did not, I, they didn’t cook their food. They didn’t go down an alleyway. You didn’t see six dogs hovering around a fire that someone else built for them holding their food on a stick going, don’t eat that, Bob. It’s got bacteria. It’s disgusting. Your dog puts stuff in their mouth, unimaginable things in their mouth.

People, I don’t know what to say. The last thing they’re thinking about is, wow, does that have salmonella? They don’t care. Um, their bodies are set up with very, very acid stomachs for that reason. Physiologically, they’re built to kill bacteria and pathogens. That’s what, now you are not, don’t put that in your mouth, but, um, they’re, they’re built for it.

Okay? Now, does that mean, you know, everybody says, oh, your dog’s a wolf. Well, your dog’s not a wolf. It’s far from a wolf. It hasn’t been a wolf in very, very, very many, um, uh, you know, hundreds of years. However, your dog is also not roaming around all day long looking for food. Your dog isn’t exercising the way a wolf would be exercising.

You know, little Trixie sitting on the couch, and that’s what all that Trixie does all day. Well, okay. You know, you have to watch calories. You have to watch what they put in their mouth, you know, so my preference, just folding back on that is fresh versus a hundred percent processed. But I do. Understand that there is a price point associated with that.

I do understand that there’s a lifestyle associated with that. And in my practice when I talk about nutrition, I try to take into account what people can do. It needs to be sustainable. Whatever your plan is, it needs to be sustainable. So I can’t tell somebody, oh, go feed this and they’re gonna go broke and they can’t feed their kids because they’re feeding their dog a frozen, commercially made raw.

There has to be some kind of flexibility. So in my opinion, we could take anything you feed and we can add the right elements to it that will make that food better. So nothing’s off the table. Really, nothing’s off the table. I would prefer if you didn’t walk into a store and buy old Roy off the shelf.

The only reason I say that, and no offense old Roy, um, is that it’s devoid of nutrition. And you’re just wasting your money. I’m just thinking about you, money wasting wise, right? Um, that what you are feeding just doesn’t have enough to even stand on its own. Um, so I like how you say, no offense, I mean, your product is a waste of money and devoid of nutrients.

No offense, it’s, yeah, I’m, I’m with you. I may or I may or may not have strong feelings about certain products. Um, I don’t know. Uh, it could, it could be true. Um, at the end of the day, really what my goal is, is that we take a look at that dog, the one that’s in front of me, the goals of and lifestyle of the person who’s handling that dog.

Okay? Is it an athletic dog? Is it a couch sitting dog? Is it a dog predisposed to certain diseases? Right? And how can I help as a nutritionist, help that person pick the right food, the rightest food that is within their means, that won’t create harm. Process, but will advance the dog to allow that dog to thrive and do what it’s intending to do in its lifestyle.

Um, if it’s a working dog, if it’s a couch sitting dog, all of that IE take into consideration. So let me ask you a question on that. You mentioned to get, if you cook yourself at home to get the diet audited, and I would agree, I mean that makes sense. Of course, you know, why not. But how do you handle the argument that we feed ourselves without getting our diet audited?

We use common sense to feed ourselves. We just choose a mixture of foods and we consume them. Why can we not do that for our dogs? A couple of reasons. One, you can tell when you’re not feeling well and you can give yourself feedback when you’re need something, you can address a craving if you have it.

You cannot, with your dog, they won’t tell you. So what that looks like is deficiency or overages turn into issues. Those issues are misrepresented ’cause the dog can’t speak to you about them. And by the time an issue actually shows itself that dog has been deficient or had an overage for a very long time because the body is forgiving.

Okay? So I hone in on puppies where the body is not forgiving. And older dogs where the body is not forgiving an adult dog, the body is pretty forgiving. Okay? So feedback is one of those reasons you can’t tell when you don’t feel good because your dog isn’t gonna come in and say, I’m zinc deficient. Not gonna happen.

What’s gonna happen is that dog’s going to eat weird things or they’re gonna have outward expressions of that, that you are gonna end up misinterpreting. Okay? Most skin disorders are gut related. This is an issue. Okay. Most veterinarians that I have run into don’t even look at the gut. They start to apply medicine.

So now you’re taking a root cause you’re not fixing it and you’re managing it when it could be fixed. Okay. Um, hold on, I’m gonna plug in real quick here ’cause I think, I just wanna make sure my phone is not dying at a, at a rapid pace. Um, I don’t wanna lose you all. We’re on, we’re right here. We’re right on the cusp of excitement.

Yes. Um, the other reason is, is that people are also very sick these days. And, um, you can’t walk around saying that we don’t feed ourselves this way when there’s cancer is at an all time high. Diabetes is at an all time high. We are not feeding ourselves well. People, we’re not, we’re juggling, we’re robbing Peter to pay Paul.

We are breaking our bodies and. If we feed our dogs, sometimes the way people feed themselves, you’re breaking your dog at the same time. Okay? So it’s not always, and, and I, there’s never a always or never, okay? There’s never extremes. But if you have a family that’s feeding themselves on a hundred percent processed food, and they’re feeding their dogs on a hundred percent processed food, they’re gonna end up with the same diseases.

Okay? If you have a person that’s not active and their dog’s not active, you end up with obesity across the board for people and for dogs. So you can’t, there aren’t people out there that are having a lifestyle like X and going out of their way to feed their dog a fresh diet. It’s not happening like that, right?

So, okay. So we just have to be mindful. That’s all I’m saying. There’s no perfect system. I’m not saying that if you don’t feed your dog a balanced diet every day, you’re killing your dog. I would never say that out loud. It’s not true. Okay. There is a point, a tipping point where if deficiencies and overages are not addressed over time, they break the body.

They do it for humans and they do it for dogs. So what I’m saying is, where do you wanna put your money? Do you wanna put your money as an investment in yourself as a person and an investment in your dog upfront? And avoid some of these things that the dog may be predisposed to or, or have access to, like diabetes, uh, because of lifestyle?

Or do you wanna pay for it in the end when your dog is sick or you are sick and your tendons are ripping and your dog’s tendons are ripping and your muscles are not, um, they’re atrophying, they’re not growing anymore, and your breathing changes and your liver is exhausted, it will happen. It, it happens every day.

But we don’t associate that as human beings through our diet. We don’t, we say, Hey man, this works. You know, like I don’t die every day. Oh, okay. But you live for a hundred years. Maybe if you’re lucky, your dog lives for 10 if they’re lucky. So things are happening to them at a much greater rate. And I speak of decline than humans, so the human body is very forgiving.

So apples and oranges, guys, apples and oranges a little bit there on, let’s apply what we do for ourselves to our dogs sometimes. Okay, so digging a little deeper there, you know, all of us, I, most of our listeners are dog trainers, of course, and have clients. And if you’re talking to your clients and you say, Hey, maybe you wanna think about what food your dog is eating.

And you talk about home cook meals, most people are probably not gonna want to go find and hire a nutritionist. Some will obviously, right. But many won’t Some. Yep, yep. Do you have books you would recommend or podcasts or where would you tell someone to go learn about this before they kind of try to jump in themselves?

Yeah, it’s hard to say about books ’cause people have different, you know, biases about how to feed, honestly. I mean, um, Dr. Becker’s book with Rodney Habib, um, you know, those kinds of books on fresh food, how to use fresh food, what it’s used for, what kind of nutrients. Um, there’s a lot of books out there. I would say look for books that are from, uh, reputable sources.

I, I, I would do that. Now there’s a balance, right? Somebody’s reputable source may be, uh, uh, veterinary nutritionist, right? But those are usually paid for by. Kibble companies. So yes, although they are reputable, uh, and maybe knowledgeable, um, they also have their biases too, right? There’s no perfect answer.

I wish I could just hand you a book and say like, if you read this, it’s gonna be life changing. I think it’s, it’s starting the process of learning. Now you have to be very careful online. You have to be very careful. People are very passionate about this. Um, there are sides as everyone knows. You’re either on the raw side or you’re on the kibble side, and never the twain shall meet and, um, don’t, uh, I don’t recommend going toe to toe online with somebody who feeds Purina.

I just, I, I just don’t recommend it. It’s just not a fun experience. Um, there’s just, you have to, you have to open up the portfolio and you have to find books, and you have to read about them, and you have to read with an open mind no matter what you’re reading. Even if it challenges your biases and you didn’t even realize you had them.

I do it all the time. I have people that come to me and give me a book and I read it and I have a very visceral response to it. You know, I’m like, oh my gosh, I can’t believe this is in print. Um, but what can I learn from that? Knowing what you don’t like is just as important as knowing what you like and you have to try different things.

Okay? So you just an open mind. Get out there, start to pull down some books about fresh feeding, about homemade diets. Uh, Dr. Judy Morgan has a homemade diet that’s audited. You know, maybe you just go with someone else’s audited diet and you try it with your dog. Um, and the other thing that I also recommend, and this is what I do in my practice, is I do a bunch of wellness testing before I start to make changes.

I try to learn about my dog’s situation as much as I possibly can before I start to apply something. So that’s the other recommendation is that, you know, you just start to think about how you can use technology and science to better understand your dog. And that could be microbiome testing, it could be allergy testing.

And I say allergy. I, it’s a, uh, intolerance, testing is a better word. Um, people are more familiar with the term allergy, but it’s not a true allergy. It’s an intolerance that expresses like an allergy Does. Um, uh, the, uh, the gut microbiome test will tell you what’s going on in the inside of that bacteria and the gut and the small intestine and the stomach and all that, what that looks like.

And then there’s mineral, uh, hair tissue, mineral analysis, testing that’ll tell you if there are deficiencies in minerals that look back 45 days versus a blood test, which looks at that moment, right? So when you start to put those test results together, you get a better picture of your dog, and then you can say to yourself, okay.

These ingredients, I’m gonna stay away from these ingredients. Might be helpful. Now, what does the diet look like? Should it be a cooked diet? Should it be a raw diet? I’m just gonna tell you, I had an 18-year-old chihuahua who would not eat raw. He would not the texture of the raw, because he was kibble fed in the earlier times of his life, he did not care for it.

He didn’t know what to do with it. I could not feed him raw, but I could feed him a cooked food because it had texture to it. So you have to look at the dog in front of you, and you have to be as purposeful as you possibly can so that you’ll be successful. Remember I said earlier, work smart, not hard, right?

So this goes back to there are plenty of nutritionists that are DVMs, that are board certified, that people have had great experiences with equally cruddy experiences. Okay. There’s a million people out there calling themselves a nutritionist. I’m just gonna say it. You have to do your homework. You have to learn about who you’re hiring because some of those people are great and some of those people are not great.

And you know, this is, it doesn’t have to be me. It, you can find the person that you resonate with. But you have to find somebody who is active in the industry keeping up their learning as they’re going open-minded. Because not everything is for everyone and has your dog at the heart of every success and goal, okay?

And they’re willing to talk to your veterinarian. I talk to veterinarians all the time. I work on medical teams with every DVM on that team for success of that dog. So when you say the success of the dog, I would assume you see ma, you’re called in for a variety of reasons. Uh, I would assume sometimes you’re called in from a behavioral standpoint.

Sometimes the dog is just sick allergies. You, you know, you name it. What is like, what’s a common reason you’re called in and I guess what are some things people should watch out for when we talk about diet can affect many things with the dog? When should a trainer maybe look at one of their clients and think, hey, behavior?

I mean, we all know the obvious ones. If the dog is diarrhea constantly, well that’s pretty obvious if the dog is obese, pretty obvious. Yeah. What are some times you’re called in that might not be insanely obvious to the average trainer, but might be to you? Yeah, so, uh, great question. Thanks for that. Um, I usually get called in for the three sess sports.

That’s a number one. Dogs too thin. Not gaining weight. Need to maintain muscularity hurt, you name it, right? Or just performance issues. Skin is the second one where my dog’s itching, spin on aquil. Nothing’s helping. I’m going to strangle the dog, going to strangle my vet. Somebody needs to help me. I’m losing my mind.

And um, well I had, I had the third one skin and I had my third one, skin sports, and I had my third. Well, the third one’s gone. It’ll come back. Um, okay. But, uh, the other one is usually digestion of some sort, right? Where the dog is just in duress. I get puppies that have had diarrhea for two years. No one can fix it.

They’ve been on everything. Uh, antibiotics. Oh, oh, sickness. I, that was my third one. Sorry. I knew it would come to me if I thought about it. Um, and those dogs are sick and some of. The sickness category runs from a person who is a hail Mary, right? They should have done this a long time ago. Their vet told them to change.

They every, they knew they needed to change, but they didn’t. And now they’re in a Hail Mary situation and their dog’s really sick, and it feels like this is their last ditch effort all the way to, you know, the sickness of, wow. My dog just has indigestion all the time. Fraudulence, you know, there’s unlivable, you know, a partner in the house because we’re just, we’re eating poop, we’re eating grass, we’re eating anything, you know, all those.

So you could see the, the depth and breadth of it can be great. I tend not to, uh, I tend to, um, refer out cancer dogs. I, I don’t work with too many cancer dogs. Every now and again, I will work with a cancer dog who’s. Whose, uh, folks have realized that keto diets and, uh, aggressive cancer, uh, activities are not for them, and they just wanna do a best diet.

But I give a caveat that this is not a, the cancer diet that I would choose for my dog if my dog had cancer. That’s an agreement that the pet parent and I make together. Uh, and I’m very open about that. So, you know, it’s, the gamut is big. So, uh, honestly, um, behaviorally, I usually have a hyper dog. A dog that’s not learning, a dog that’s plateaued, a dog that’s aggressive, a dog that’s guarding, uh, I get a lot of those, um, that come right out, up front.

And I look every time somebody comes to me, whether it’s a training question or whether it’s a nutrition question, I always start with, what are they eating? Because it makes a difference. And like you said in the beginning, food is the foundation of all things. Mm-hmm. If the base of your pyramid is not solid, it’s coming down.

I wanted to take a quick break to talk to you about our friends. Aurora Cold weather should not stop us or our dogs from staying active and enjoying daily outside time. Aurora, the most trusted, heated apparel brand in the US has been the number one heated apparel choice for dog trainers and owners for a decade.

You can face chili walks while staying toasty with aurora’s battery, heated jackets, vests, and gloves. They even make a heated vest, especially for dogs. Visit aurora.com. That’s OROR o.com to find the perfect heated apparel for you and your pup. Even better, you can use the code IACP to get 15% off your new heated gear back to the episode.

Absolutely. I’d love to spend some time on behavior, but if we could back up just for a second. I’m curious. So you mentioned cancer and I have heard with humans, various studies, one showing that women undergoing treatment for breast cancer, if they change their diet, their survival rates skyrockets. Right?

Not like a percent, you know, or two higher, but you know, very, very, uh, substantial. Are, do they see the same thing in dogs? Absolutely, yes. And, and the thing with cancer that I enjoy, uh, the one thing that does show itself to be very educational to someone like me is how herbs play into that. How natural resources, in addition to food also change the course of events.

I started this conversation with you, Matt, with the idea that the dog’s body knows how to heal itself. We have to create the environment for it to do it food. Whatever goes in the face of that dog, whatever that dog is around, the things that they have access to, the things that have access to them, okay?

That all matters. And cancer dogs specifically because they’re immune deficient, usually their body’s fighting so hard, their body’s tired. You have to feed that dog as if they’re fighting a world war. It’s not a maintenance diet anymore. And you have to look at what’s going in their mouth because sugar feeds cancer cells.

Where’s that sugar coming from? You have to break it apart. And these, you have to be mindful, and that’s the same when you we’re talking about a behavioral dog, you’re talking about a rehabbing dog. All of those same questions have to come to bear because what you’re putting in the mouth of that dog is either helping or exacerbating.

So that’s a, a, a really big point, what you just said there. And from a human standpoint, I heard a pod, I can’t remember who it was, but heard a podcast on that topic where the person is a doctor explaining that everything you eat, you should see it as basically it’s medicine. That your body is full of cancer at all points in time, and the food you eat is what’s creating, it’s the antioxidants that are going to get rid of those free radicals and clean them up.

And you either have food that’s cleaning up your body, or you have food that is making it worse on a daily basis. And there is no in-between. It’s either cleaning it up or making it worse. Every single thing you eat. And for myself and for our family, that was a very life-changing thought where you are like, well, the dog is thin, or the person is thin.

I’m sure they’re fine. But thin people get cancer all the time. Right. And thin dogs get cancer all the time. Yeah. It, it, it doesn’t have a preference. Yep. You know, it, it’s just a matter of. Degradation of our tissues in our body that make us susceptible. Right? It’s around us all the time. We have salmonella, we have e coli, we have all of those things in our body all the time.

But if the body is susceptible, then those pathogens, those cancer cells, they take, they’re opportunists, they’re take advantage, and there they are. And now they have the ability to overrun what usually keeps us balanced. So at the end of the day, it’s about balance.

Oh, I heard a in the background there. There you go. She has something to say about it. Apparently she feels strongly. Well, why don’t we shift into behavior? I, I think all of our listeners are probably intrigued here. Uh, what, what are your thoughts on how nutrition affects behavior in dogs? Yeah, so, you know, there is, there is a tendency in our Western medicine approach.

To throw drugs at things, right? To manage symptoms. We feel anxious, we feel, um, uh, panicked. We feel fear. We feel all of these feelings, and instead of embracing those feelings, we mask them, right? Because we don’t like feeling them. I’m talking as a human. I would rather not have a panic attack if I could avoid it.

How do I avoid it? I take this little pill that makes me not have the same response as I normally would, right? It doesn’t fix the problem though. All it does is make me not feel the symptom, okay? And that should resonate with a lot of people because we do it to ourselves. We overexert ourselves. And what do we do?

We take Tylenol. Why? Because we don’t wanna feel the pain, but the pain is the flag that tells us we need to slow down. We need to stop. We need to care for ourselves and support ourselves, right? Dogs don’t know how to mask stuff. They’re honest creatures. They feel it, they show it. That’s what they do. I feel scared.

I’m trying to tell everyone around me. I feel scared. What does the person see? What do they observe that then triggers them to say, my dog feels scared. Okay. Is it a an honest fear or is it irrational? Well, what we feel is irrational may not be irrational for the dog. Right? Okay, so now we have to unpack that.

We have to see in this circumstance, how does the dog respond? Right? What is the trigger? Can we find that trigger and can we help them learn to cope? Just like people, how, where are your coping mechanisms, right? Where we can teach the dog to learn to cope in those same situations so they can get through it.

When you mask something with drugs, you never know when it’s gonna show itself. You set yourself up for a situation where when that drug wears off, boom, there it is again. ’cause you haven’t fixed it, okay? That’s where food comes in. We can add things to the diet that naturally help the dog’s body secrete the right hormones, the right chemicals, good feeling brain chemicals that we bathe their body in, right?

So that when cortisol goes up, we can counteract that. But we don’t use drugs. We use food, we use herbs, we use plants, right? We use what is around us, the way that we understand it. So don’t get me wrong, there is a place for drugs. I’m not anti-drug. Okay, there’s a place for them. But that’s a short-term solution.

You have to have a long-term plan, okay? Because when you want those drugs to really work, if you’ve abused them, they don’t work. You have to keep escalating them. So if you are hedging your bet, you start off with drugs and you say, okay, that’s my short term plan. We’re gonna try to give comfort to this dog.

But then we look back and we say, our long-term strategy is we’re gonna change food. We’re gonna add these ingredients, we’re going to change environment, we’re going to do different rituals, we’re gonna do training, right? You’re gonna teach coping mechanisms for that dog. And when the drugs go away, their body is writing itself.

You’re fixing the problem. You’re healing, right? So that’s what you have to do. You have to look at root causes. Why is this happening to begin with? And really try to root it out. And it could be a deficiency or an overage in the diet that’s actually causing problems. So could you give us an example? You, I mean you mentioned high levels of cortisol.

Let’s, can you give us an example of a dog, it doesn’t have to be a real dog, but just, yeah. Something in their diet that could create an issue, you know, be from a behavior standpoint, and then what would be done to fix that? Just so we can all kind of picture exactly what you’re talking about. Yeah, let’s just, let’s tear it apart for a second.

You’re feeding a food that’s got a a ton of synthetic vitamins and minerals, right on paper that looks like something that is completely balanced and nutritional, right? When you do the math, when you do the testing, it comes out that there’s enough of all of that stuff in there. The dog should have no problem, okay?

But this particular dog does not, their body does not take in synthetic vitamins and minerals. Like they do real food, whole food sources. But you don’t know that. How would you know that? So, ’cause I can’t tell you, wow, I feel low on my vitamin D today. They can’t say that. Right? So you start to see behaviors, ’cause they’re trying to speak in the way that their body allows them to speak.

They have limitations, so they can only express themselves the way that they can, whether that’s actively barking, I don’t feel well, I’m lethargic, I am ripping apart my skin. I, um, I don’t feel as, uh, as well as I did before. I’m getting ear infections. I’m getting, um, UTIs, I’m, that’s their body screaming.

Something’s out of balance. And I, this is how I can tell you that it’s happening. It could be that all of a sudden their muscles, they’re not hydrated enough. Their muscles have lactic acid buildup and they’re in pain, or their ligaments are overextended and they’re in pain. So you go to touch them and they come around at you because instinctually a dog is going to protect itself when it feels vulnerable.

Doesn’t matter if it’s the owner, the neighborhood kid that they have always gotten along with or, or in daycare that they’ve gone to every day for the last eight years. All of a sudden they’re snapdragon. That dog comes near them and they’re like, get away from me. Or they’re trying to teach everybody to stay away from them by screaming and putting them in the floor and they get a call from the daycare.

Well, you know, little, little Trixie is uh, a real something today almost took out two dogs. We had to separate them. Well, that’s odd. She’s never done that before. These dogs, she’s known for years. Okay, guys, this is where you have to go back and you have to say, this is what I do. What is happening with that dog?

Right. And I start at the foundation of food. I look at the diet. Huh? Okay. I see a whole, I see a diet full of a whole bunch of synthetic vitamins and minerals. Something’s amiss. I start to do testing. I see in my testing that the dog’s vitamin D levels are low. Okay. Noted. I start to see that bacteria levels are unbalanced in the gut.

Okay. Noted. What I try to do from a food standpoint is I start the process of creating an environment in which the dog can heal itself. I start to add in those things that fixes those deficiencies, fixes the balance of the gut, and the dog becomes less triggered. I maybe change the protein to a protein like Turkey.

Which has chemicals in it, you know, from Thanksgiving Day where Uncle Sam is sitting with his hands in his pants on the couch and he is falling asleep because you fed him a ton of Turkey that day. Tryptophan, it’s the, it’s the age old joke about how Turkey puts people to sleep. Tryptophan actually works to relax a person, the dog.

It’s a good thing. So what if you were to change the protein to something like Turkey that has tryptophan, in addition to taking out some of those synthetic vitamins, right? Making a simpler diet with less ingredients, maybe less in tolerances, and you start to work towards simplifying this dog’s intake and monitoring what you’re seeing on the outside, right?

And it’s just a very simple soup to way nut, you know, soup to nuts, way of breaking down the puzzle that has now become this dog. The dog knows what’s happening in the sense that they don’t feel well, they just can’t communicate it. So behaviorally, you’re gonna see those kinds of things. Um, uh, I have learned in a number of classes that if a dog is reactive at the neck, it’s usually, uh, a, a neck issue, like a a person issue.

They’re reactive to people because they’re having a neck issue, and that’s where we handle them at the neck. If you see a dog reacting to other dogs, it’s usually a hind end issue. Now, am I telling you definite? If a dog is reacting to another dog, it’s a hind end issue? No. But does it give you a place to look?

It gives you a place to look, and that’s the, the food is the foundation. You look there. You make some changes, and then you start to look at the dog’s body and you get them some support, whether that be chiropractic or acupuncture or body work. Just a simple massage, stretching. Um, you look at their gait, these are the things that trainers should be looking at.

When a dog comes in for training and the, and the person says, my dog is completely healthy, you need to look at gait. I guarantee you, you’re gonna see something. And eventually that’s gonna show something because if they’re in pain, they’re gonna act a certain way. So you mentioned a few times so far when you start your evaluation, you see what kind of, what diet they’re on, and then you do some testing.

I’m curious to dig a little deeper there. So my wife and I do function health if, if you’re familiar with that. Yeah, yeah. Where they do a crazy amount of, you know, testing of your blood and look at all nutrients and all of these different things are, is this basically a doggy version of function health?

Like what does it look like? It, it kind of is. And what’s a rough price point for someone hearing that? Like, is it just entirely dependent on their vet or are there good companies you can contract with for that? Can you walk us through that a little bit? Yeah, I don’t, I don’t always go through the vet. Um, I’ll, I’ll be honest, um, there are some companies and things that you can do that you can send away for a kit and it comes to your house and you do it yourself.

Um, I always move from least invasive to most invasive when I’m looking at testing. Um, because you wanna rule out the least invasive approaches first. Um, there are testing that I do just, I do wellness exams. I promote wellness. So I like people to think proactively, not reactively. Don’t wait until something breaks and then try to fix it.

Let’s try to get in front of it before it breaks so that it never breaks, right? So let’s try to just be out front and they should do this with themselves too. So, I do hair, tissue mineral analysis, mineral analysis, tests at least once every three years. I do, uh, microbiome tests every six months usually, and you can get these things on sale.

So not everything is cheap. I won’t lie to you. Okay? So you can pick and choose what would be most impactful for the dog in that moment. You don’t have to do it all. Um, hair, tissue, mineral analysis tests are rather expensive, but they tell you a lot. You’re doing a homemade diet that’s not been audited, I would definitely prioritize that.

’cause it’s gonna tell you if there are mineral deficiencies before it gets to the blood. Okay. Um, you can do blood tests. Blood tests are a snapshot in time. And that moment, that’s what it looks like a week from then it might not look like that. Did the dog eat first? Was it a fasted test? What time of day was that test?

There’s a lot of questions involved. And when you’re doing blood tests, um, a hair tissue mineral analysis test looks back 45 days and it looks at what kind of minerals, uh, or pathogens or toxins have been deposited in the hair follicle. ’cause that’s what our bodies do and it tells us a lot. Um, blood tests are important.

Don’t misunderstand. Blood tests are important. Um, I. There’s, there are testing like VDI as a lab in California that does testing for vitamin D. It does intolerance testing, it does B12 testing. So if a dog’s having an digestive issue, you wanna know if there’s, uh, deficient levels of B12. If the dog is a sporting dog, um, or a dog that has been neutered or spayed really early in their life, a vitamin D test is super important.

Um, vitamin D is directly related to calcium uptake, phosphorus, and those three things together really determine the health of the physical body, the bones, the ligaments, the tendons, muscles, all those. Can I ask a, a quick question on vitamin D? It was just popped into my head. So we, you know, we know humans, different humans produce vitamin D very differently, right?

For some people lighter skin you produce it much quicker. Do you see, are there differences in dogs as well based upon skin? So they don’t, dogs don’t skin, they can’t make vitamin D like we do through the skin because their skin is covered. It’d be like you wearing a tracksuit all day long, completely covered up.

You wouldn’t be able to make vitamin D either. Um, so they need to have it in their diet. It can either come as a synthetic vitamin D three or you can get it through vitamin D, rich, rich whole foods. Okay. So they make liver absolutely zero from they get the sun, zero from the sun? Yes. Interesting. Yeah, so you, you can’t count on that.

Um, they, they’re just covered in a different way. Um, even though dogs that have short fur, they still, bodies still can’t make it from the sun. They’re just gonna burn because they don’t have fur to protect them. But they’re not translating that into vitamin D. And I’ll give you example with my dog.

Personal experience. She does not take up vitamin D, synthetic versions of vitamin D. She ha was d deficient for a very long period of time where I had to supplement her diet and I couldn’t understand why it kept happening. And it was because the source of that vitamin D was synthetic. The moment I changed her to a frozen raw diet with more than one organ offered in the diet, her body could take up that vitamin D without issue.

So if you don’t test, you don’t know. You just don’t know, you see. So there isn’t a test for everything, unfortunately, but there are some tests out there that are reliable that can give you some feedback about what’s happening in your dog, um, and, you know, help you to make good decisions. Inform. Do you have, do you have a list on your website or Facebook, anywhere of tests you recommend where someone could look and see all of this information in one place?

I don’t at the moment. Um, I, I, in my past I’ve written a lot of blogs for other. Folks, like other companies I’ve worked for that have laid out sort of these wellness, uh, approaches, uh, that gives me that’s a good idea. Uh, Matt, I should do that. Um, I should sit down and write them out. Yeah. Let me know.

We’ll get it shared somewhere on the IACP Facebook page or, you know, definitely get it out to people, people somewhere. Anyone can always write me an ask. And honestly, I I, I always am responsive. I, you know, you don’t have to have a consultation with me to ask me a question. You can always ask me a question.

Um, you know, I’m on your dog’s team. So honestly, I. I end up giving a lot of my knowledge away for free because I’m on the dog’s team. That’s, at the end of the day, I wanna help a dog. And so, so there it is, right? I’m gonna do what I have to do to help dogs. Um, but somebody who’s watching this, uh, I’m, I’m sure that will give you a way to get in touch with me at some point.

Just write absolutely. And ask. And if you have a specific situation, write me, I, you know, I’m here to help. That’s, I was given this blessing of having the ability to be a good nutritionist, uh, not to keep this information to myself. That’s not what blessings are for. So, um, I’m here to share them what I learned.

Alright, well, could we shift a little bit and maybe talk supplements for a minute? Sure. So, I mean, there’s so many that, you know, of course we could talk through. I, I guess I’ll leave it to you. What are some things you think are important and where I’m, where I like to dwell a lot of the time is things that are useful to the most people or the most dogs.

Right. Obviously there’s extreme cases, but Right. What is something you think that for people listening that maybe every dog should be on, or the vast majority of dogs. Yeah, that’s great. So I, I come at that the same way as you do actually. I, I try to get the best bang for the buck. You know, like when I, when I tell people to use a supplement, it usually has three or four things that it’s addressing, not just one.

Um, it shouldn’t be where you’re opening up your house. You can’t out supplement a poor diet. Okay. I’m just gonna say that right off the bat. You cannot just say, oh, I’ll just give my dog a multivitamin. I say that because it’s all synthetic. It’s all synthetic. So if your dog’s not taking up a vitamin for some reason, pummeling them with more synthetic vitamins is not the answer.

Okay? I will say that a large percentage of vitamins come from overseas in a place where they’re not regulated that well. Okay? That includes human vitamins too. They’re not coming from the United States. There isn’t a lot of regulation on supplements. You have to be aware about that. So with that, you have to be very choosy because with that can come toxins, heavy metals, they can be in there and you are taking them and you’re pummeling your body with something that shouldn’t be in your body.

Okay? It’s even worse for the dog because if you think the human vitamin thing is unregulated, it’s the wild west when it comes to giving something to the dogs, okay? Because there are a lot of people out there that just don’t care. I hate to say that. I don’t think they wake up and they’re try to be evil every day, but when it’s out of sight, it’s out of mind.

So you don’t care, right? Um, nobody’s following up. So, so that’s up to you as the trainer, as the pet parent to advocate for your dog. Okay? Advocate for your clients’ dogs. Help them be smart. Help them be informed. If I were to say you should give no supplement all the time forever, that is my, and that goes against everyone.

I know there’s people out there in supplement companies that are like, damn you, Jen. Um, but I’m just gonna say the reason you give a supplement is to fix something, to support something, okay? There’s got to be a reason why you’re giving it. Which means at some point you need to allow the body to come to its new normal, and you need to see if that something is fixed or fully supported at that time.

And do they need to continue with that supplement? So that could look like either a break and watch and learn and observe, or it could be stopping it completely and moving to a different company or different sourcing. Okay. Our bodies acclimate all the time. If you give the same thing, just like if you eat the same thing every day, right?

Your body’s gonna acclimate to that and you’re gonna build up intolerances to it. It’s not gonna work like it did when you first took it. And I know everybody on this call has taken something and it’s been like, wow, that worked spot on baby. And then they plateau and they’re like, wow, it’s just not working anymore.

I’ll just stop taking it. So diversity is key. Okay. I’ll give you an example. A joint supplement. I could say to somebody, go and get a joint supplement. Do you know how many joint supplements there are for your dog? Okay. Your definition of what is a good joint supplement. And mine could be completely different.

So I’m very specific and when I talk to people, I talk about the ingredients within that joint supplement. That’s what you’re looking for. So it’s not by brand per se, it’s about what are we trying to do and what are we using to get there. So is it turmeric, is it uh, green-lipped, mussel? Is it, you know, we, that’s what I’m talking about.

What are those ingredients? And what I tell people is find the ingredient that is non GMO organic, if you can. Try to find the ingredient in that supplement that is trackable. They have third party testing. Okay? Their, maybe their product has been through nasc review. Okay? So, and Nasc is the, a private governing body that has sprung forth in order to, um, help regulate some things.

So at least if the person is making claims, they’ve actually proven that those claims are true, right? And they’re not making false claims. So, you know, if, if a supplement isn’t MASK certified, is it no good? No, I’m not saying that at all. But these there are, ask for third party testing. You know, ask, uh, you know, ask for more information.

Don’t just take it at face value. The chances of you walking into Walmart and buying a supplement that is good for your dog is slim to none. Okay. Slim to none kids. You, you have to source it a little bit. I wouldn’t buy supplements on Amazon. I’ll just be honest with you. I would go to the company’s website because there are a lot of fakes out there, unfortunately.

Right. So you just have to, you have to be smart. Um, you had asked me in the beginning, Matt, what would be some that I would recommend that every dog be on? Uh, there are some breeds that are predisposed to joint issues. I the moment that dog drops on the ground from birth, there’d be some kind of support for joints.

Okay. Uh, shepherds Labs. Right. Can you give us something you like, like do you like da sequin? Are there others you’d like cosequin? Are there others you’d like better? Yeah, I have my preferences. Sure. Uh, uh, and this is through experience and observation. I like the product, Jo. I won’t lie to you. It’s, uh, JOPE.

It’s not cheap. Um, but you get what you pay for at the end of the day, right? Uh, you need kind of, I’m gonna take some notes here. Yeah. It’s kind, you need, uh, three months on it in order to really start to see stuff. It does. It’s not when you’re fixing things with nutrition that it’s not flipping a switch.

It’s not a chemical fix. Okay. You have to let the body build up and, and use that nutrition appropriately. Um, I like the, I like the product joke. It’s got three ingredients in it, and those ingredients have been tested. There’s research behind it. It has been developed by veterinarians. It checks a lot of boxes for me.

Um, uh, they don’t mind that I call them up and I put them through rigorous conversation about their product. They’re willing to answer questions. Um, I like that. That’s another box check. Yeah. Um, I, I use treats that are, uh, single. If I can, and the reason I bring it up in our supplement conversation is because I can supplement vitamin D through liver treats because vitamin D is in liver, but you don’t know how much vitamin D is in liver unless you ask the company.

Right? So that’s the kind of question you have to ask. Um, I use CBD, we were talking about behavioral dogs. I use CBD, I use CBD with THC in it, and I use CBD with just hemp in it. I use them both and I use them together. Um, but I get them from reputable sources. I don’t go down and I don’t get them from big pharma.

I, I don’t, I get them from companies who do third party testing that I can see. And, and there are some companies that I have used that I still don’t like because I don’t like what it did to my dog. So some of it’s trial and error, you guys, uh, you know, I, I won’t say that there’s a perfect fit because I don’t know your dog.

Um. I have tried different products with my dog, and I found some of them to be great, and I found some of them to be toxic, even though they’re a good product, you work with another dog and that product works great, but it just doesn’t work for my dog, and that’s okay. Um, that’s why we have diversity, right?

Is joke the only supplement I give my dog? No, it’s not. Um, I do bone broth, I make it myself. Um, bone broth has amazing healing properties and why I love it so much, and I do have a blog on this, on my website, on how to make it if you’ve never made it before. Um, I love it because it also heals the gut. It heals the body in other ways, not just support supports the joint.

So you get that, you know, bang for your buck at that point. Um, and you should drink it too. I, I genuinely don’t give a, a probiotic. I don’t go and I, I don’t buy a ton of probiotics in powdered form. I like to use Whole Foods when I can. So I use sauerkraut. Yes, human grade sauerkraut that you go in the store and you find in a jar that’s got cabbage and sea salt or Himalayan salt, no onions.

Make sure there’s no human flavors in there. And my dog eats sauerkraut off a fork right out of the jar. I love it because it’s got enzymes, it’s got probiotics and prebiotics. All the bacteria eats the sugar out of the cabbage. It’s a keto vegetable and it’s crunchy and it smells, and dogs love it. Not all humans love it, but dogs love it.

And they would love it if they knew how good it was for them. Exactly. And it starts working right away. It doesn’t need to be activated. It starts in the mouth. So you know. My, my tendency is to go to Whole Foods when I can, but I used a ton of supplements in rehabbing my own dog, a ton of them over the course.

But circling back, I took three week breaks so I could look at the new normal to see if it was working or not, and I only introduced those supplements when I needed them. So here’s a great anti-inflammatory supplement called Volt rx. It’s all herbs and it’s wonderful if your dog is on fire inflamed for a various number of reasons.

I used it in the, under the, um, auspices of controlling joint inflammation as she was healing from the CCL tear. But it doesn’t, it’s not a joint inflammation. It doesn’t enter the body and goes, let’s go to joints. It targets inflammation and wherever there’s inflammation in the body, it’s going to target that.

So if there’s inflammation in the gut, it’s going to help fix that. But I like it. I like it. That’s a Dr. Marsden product, and I like that product very much. And so there’s a tongue out there. And you had mentioned earlier that you don’t think the average dog should be on supplements, and it sounds like your recommendation is, of course, whole Foods and eat healthy.

Yep. Yep. But these are up two. I, I wrote ’em down, Jo and Ultrex that you like. Yep. Uh, what about others? So I mean, fish oil, you know, omega threes. Yeah. That something obviously that is good for you. Yeah. Good thought. Um, so fish oil, I like small fatty fishes. Uh, not every dog likes the taste of fish, so you can use algal oil.

I stay away from seed oils. Seed oils are inflammatory. So like I said, when we talk about inflammation, we don’t talk about. You know, this only affects that it creates inflammation in the body. It can create inflammation anywhere in the body. Um, so I stay away from things that are inflammatory, um, like seed oils, uh mm-hmm.

Dogs aren’t meant to eat seed oils. They’re, they’re highly processed. And when they exist in their whole food form, a dog would never put them in their mouth. So they, they wouldn’t get, well, I don’t think, I don’t think a human would either. Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. Although we’re willing to put things in our mouth sometimes that, that aren’t good for us.

I, I know personal, I, I could, that’s a whole other podcast, but, um, yeah, my dog eats better than I do. Uh, that’s for sure. But fish oils, olive oils, okay. Really, honestly, um, anything that actually grows on the earth, you know, existed, did not start in the lab is really a good spot to start. Um. And I try, just like you say, to, to start off with a whole food diet that’s really nourishing, which minimizes the need for all of these supplements at such high levels, right?

Um, but yeah, uh, definitely fish oils. And then I, I consider all kinds of supplements, not just chemical supplements. Right now, Quin is a good, is a good joint, um, supplement. It’s not that it’s a bad joint supplement. Some of those supplements that come from the veterinarian have a lot of other things in them that your dog does not need.

And I challenge all of you to flip over the supplement container and look for things like synthetic vitamins. Why, why are they there? What is the binder? Is there sugar? Did they add something for flavoring? Because this tastes like nothing worse than nothing bitter if they didn’t add this flavoring. And where did that flavoring come from?

Those are the things. So here riddle me. This guys, you’re trying to battle inflammation, right? But you’re introducing things that cause inflammation and you’re paying for a supplement that is trying to manage inflammation. Does that seem like a cycle of something that is never going to undo itself?

That’s what I try to bring forward to folks when they’re thinking about it. Really think upfront about what that’s gonna do to your dog’s body because you don’t wanna take the money, good money that you have to put into something else and make the make it hard. I went through this with my own dog. So you had mentioned checking the label and it made me think, have you heard of the app Yuca?

I have not. It’s not for dogs. It’s a, it’s a human app. It’s amazing. And you scan food at the store and you, and it tells you what’s in it. Wow. And it tells you, I have heard of apps like that. Yes. Really Cool. And it tells you a risk profile of different things. And so we have our kids use it at the store and then they’re like, oh, I don’t want that food.

That score’s like a 20. Why would we get that? Let’s find a better one. And it makes them, you know, wanna take control of their own diet. If there’s not one for dog food out there, you should invent it. There’s a business for you because you look at the back of treats or food and there’s 80 things in there.

Maybe some of them are okay. You have no idea unless you research each one. And who has time for that? Yeah. And it’s really hard. It’s hard because let’s say your dog’s having a nonspecific, uh. Intolerance, skin response and they’re scratching the crap out of themselves. Right. How do you know which ingredient could have caused it when there’s 57 in them?

It’s hard. Mm-hmm. It’s really hard to narrow it down and say, okay, listen, this joint supplement’s got three ingredients. It’s one of those three kids. Right. So then you can, you have a better chance on figuring out what’s causing the inflammation. You, it’s hard when you turn something over and there’s a ton of synthetic stuff and it could be one of those culprits that, you know, it could be one and it’s really hard to, to source it out.

So you hit on this a few minutes ago where you mentioned when you change diet, it’s not a, uh, a chemical, you know, change where it’s gonna happen immediately. How much time should someone give before they expect to see results? Assuming that it’s going to work about four weeks? Four weeks is a very safe time to actually say that that diet is making a difference.

Um, conversely, if you start to feed something new for the first time, it takes about four days for your dog’s body to reject it. So let’s say you decide to give a treat. Usually what I hear is the pet parent say, I didn’t see any kind of reaction. It was like a week later it couldn’t have been that. Oh yeah, four days if you, that magic number, if you introduce something new and four days later you see some kind of response in the dog’s body negatively, it very well could be that interesting.

’cause it does take time. Four days. I like that. Yeah. I try to manage expectations with folks. You know, this isn’t a light switch. That’s why I say that drugs are important sometimes because if you give a dog a drug, it chemically changes their body and that is a light switch and it relieves things immediately, which gives you time, especially if it’s a life or death situation.

It gives you time to figure things out. But for a long-term strategy, you need to have something and you need to be prepared to wait about a month to make sure things are on track because the dog’s body’s gonna be detoxing, they’re going to be taking up the new nutrients, they’re going to be adapting to the new diet or or new supplements.

And you need to give the body time to try to write itself. And that’s why we take three week breaks so that we can look back and get feedback from that dog’s body to say, is it the supplement or, or is it fixed now? And we’re good. We’re in a new normal now. Okay, so now to get really actionable here, you know, and I hit on this earlier, we have clients, we all have them.

Some that are like, I’ll do anything. I can afford it or I’ll make it work, right? So we say, call Jennifer, hire her. She’s gonna help you figure all this stuff out and you know, they’re gonna go and maybe make their own food, get it audited, all this stuff, get their dog tested, do everything you recommend.

Then we also have others who either can’t or won’t do all of that, right? And, and they’re gonna look for the cheapest or most bare minimum option. What are your thoughts there? So if someone says, I can’t do all of that stuff you recommended, how useful is it to just switch to maybe a little bit of a higher grade kibble and maybe supplement with some natural foods along with it?

Alright, we are back after some technical difficulties. So I was just starting to ask you and I’ll, I’ll, I’ll repeat myself. I don’t know what all you heard, Jennifer, but. We all have those clients, some of them who will do anything, they’ve got plenty of money or they’re gonna make it work financially and they’re just gonna get it done.

Uh, we have others who either aren’t gonna, they just won’t commit that much, or they don’t have the money for testing and for, you know, or maybe they’re just too busy to cook themselves. So I’m curious, what is something, what’s like an easy thing people can do if they can’t afford or they’re just not fully committed?

And so one example I would throw out there is like, what about just switching to a slightly better kibble and supplementing with some meats on their food or some raw eggs or cooked eggs or whatever. How useful do you think that is? Like what are some, just some easy things people can do. I, I do this all the time.

I help people do this all the time. This is a real thing and that’s why I talked in the beginning about working within the person’s actual means and lifestyle. You can’t ignore those things and it has to be sustainable. So you have to be flexible. Adding in 20% fresh food will change a very important statistic.

It will reduce cancer by 70 or 80% in that dog. So it doesn’t matter what you’re feeding, if you can add some frozen vegetables that are cooked, right? If you can add some yogurt, if you can add some eggs. Eggs are the perfect food. If you can add some goat’s milk, if you could, um. Add some meat, cooked or not, doesn’t matter.

Now I’m not talking about trimming the fat off of food and then giving it to your dog. That’s gonna create problems. Nothing spiced, of course, but some ground beef. You’re making burgers. Set aside a little bit of ground beef. Give it to your dog, make some treats out of it if you want. Um, uh, even adding cheese as snacks, you know, for training or something because there’s fat, there’s healthy fat, there’s protein in the milk.

Um, if you can add in some freeze dried liver, right? Something, if you can just freshen up that diet just a little bit. People ask me all the time, if you had a vegetable preference, what would it be? And I say it would be broccoli sprouts. You go to the store and you can find broccoli sprouts, okay? Um, or you take broccoli and you cook it up and you chop it up and you feed some cooked broccoli.

Or even if you cooked broccoli for your family, the water. From the broccoli that you cook, that’s gonna have minerals and vitamins in it. Pour that over the kibble. Make homemade bone broth. Pour that in the kibble. What you want to do is focus on, one is hydration. Your dog should not be eating a hundred percent dry food.

There has to be some kind of hydration and in a way that you can measure it. So if you pour a cup of water over your food, you know your dog is getting a cup of water every day, okay? Um, make that bone broth even better. Tastes like chicken. Tastes like beef bones. Great. So soothing. Um, some cooked vegetables when you’re making them for you, just set aside a little bit.

Chop ’em up, throw ’em in there an egg. Raw scrambled, soft boiled, any of those things. I take a hard boiled egg and I give it to my dog. She plays with it for a good 20 minutes, bats it around the house, and then when the shell breaks, she eats all the egg out of the middle. It’s fantastic. It can’t go wrong.

Eggs are the perfect food. They support life. That’s their whole job, is to support life. So it’s perfectly balanced. All the minerals and fat and protein, everything in an egg is balanced. You don’t even have to worry about it. You can just feed it. Um, if a dog doesn’t want to eat their food ’cause they’re not feeling well, scramble an egg up.

Give them something that they can put in their system that’s easily digestible, that can be used by the body right away. Well, I think that was an amazing way to put a pin in our conversation on nutrition. Was that just 20%, if I, and correct me if I’m saying this wrong, but 20% fresh food can eliminate 75% of cancers.

Yep. That’s a pretty powerful statement. So that’s, and that’s a pretty easy change to make. Small effort. It’s a small effort. Yeah. It really, really is. And liver is a great food. I know some people like to eat it. I personally don’t care for the taste of it, but liver is a really good food. It’s a powerhouse multivitamin.

So if you had to choose an organ, liver.

Alright, so why don’t we switch gears a little bit. We said at the, at the start we promised we were gonna talk about Cancro and what it is you do. And you’re coming to conference this year. I am really excited to see you speak. I think it’s gonna be a lot of fun. We can’t, uh, and you’re gonna do more than speak though, so you, we can’t reveal the secrets of your talk today, but.

You can tell us a little bit of course about what it is, but then you’re also gonna be doing some other stuff at conference. Right? So do you wanna walk us through what Yeah. So Pan Cross is and why it’s important to you and what you’re gonna be doing this year at conference. Yeah. You should definitely not miss my big talk.

My big talk is basically on, uh, nutrition’s role in rehabilitation and as trainers or as other dog professionals, you are constantly seeing clients that have dogs that are in flux in some way. Either getting hurt, getting over, being hurt, you know, all of those things, getting older, all of those things. Um, I’m going to, I’m not gonna talk basic nutrition.

It’s not about that. It’s about adaptive nutrition, which is my coin term of how we take basic maintenance, nutrition, and we adapt it to that. Need of the dog. And as we talked earlier about behavior, it could be about managing behavior or making that dog feel better. Or in this case at the talk at IACP, it’s gonna be talking about healing, how we adapt nutrition so that the body can heal.

And you’re not gonna wanna miss that. Um, I have something in there for everyone. Uh, and I’m using an actual real world case study to have this discussion involving my dog, which was a full five on five CCL tear, meniscal tear, and ilio soaz pull. And my rehabilitating her for an entire year. So, uh, I have actual hands-on observations and experience anecdotal stuff for you and science behind all of that to share, uh, hopefully so that if you either know somebody that’s got a dog in that predicament or, or, um, are training a client who has a dog with in that predicament, this could be helpful to you.

Um. The other thing that I’m doing is I a, I’m speaking on at lunch on Wednesday, so don’t skip lunch on Wednesday and I’m gonna be talking about the sport of Cancro and some of you’re gonna be like, oh yeah. And other of you’re gonna be like, what did she just say? So I’m gonna tell you, Cancro is cross country running with your dog.

And then there, now there’s a few of you that say, I don’t run unless I’m being chased. Okay? So, fair enough. You can also walk with your dog or hike with your dog or bike with your dog. It’s all in the same genre of sports. The mushing sports basically overseas. When dogs are not sledding in the summer months, they still train Guys, we just want to give a quick shout out to one of our longtime IACP sponsors, uh, blue Nine PET Products.

So are you looking to level up your training classes and boost client success? The Climb By Blue Nine PET Products is the professional’s go-to platform. It’s built for clear communication, easier class management, and better owner follow through. Plus, it’s a proven way to increase revenue. Trainers across the country sell the climb right from their facility.

And I know we sell a lot of them. We use ’em in group classes, shelter programs, lots of different ways. We implement the climbs. And with exclusive wholesale pricing, there’s never a better time to get started. Visit Blue nine.com to apply today and start building a better training business. Okay, Jennifer, the story of our lives, we had technical difficulties again, but they have now since been fixed.

So you were saying a moment ago that you’re gonna have a couple courses set up, a three mile course, a one mile course, and I was thinking, I wanna see Jason Ferguson do those courses. I wanna see him. And the Savannah Heat just hiking for three miles. That’d be awesome. It’s gonna be in the morning, so, um, hopefully it’ll be the coolest part of the day.

Okay. I, I chose the morning over the afternoon because of the quality of the air. Uh, usually in the afternoons it’s, it might be cooler, but the air quality is usually still kind of harsh. So we’ll be getting up early for you, early birds, uh, if you would wanna get up and this way you’ll start your day really refreshed.

Your dog will be worked if you brought your dog, and they will be ready to relax in the air conditioning. That’ll be fun. And, um, uh, we’re gonna bring a whole bunch of gear so that you can experience a hands-free belt and you can experience a, an actual mushing harness that you can try on your dog to see, uh, what that looks like.

And I’m gonna talk during my session about the significance of having a specific type of harness for this type of workout and why that’s important.

Cool. Well, that sound, I think people are gonna love that. Everyone who’s willing to get up, that, that’s gonna be great. And then you, you had told me earlier that you’re gonna be releasing something during the conference. Is that a secret? Is that common knowledge? Yeah. Do I need to cut this right now? You guys are the first to hear it though.

I will say that. Um, so yeah, it’s kind of weird. That’s awesome because I haven’t actually said it out loud really, except to certain people, like my editor who I want to strangle. Um, I have written a book and Joy above all, joys not specifically timed for this conference, however it seems to be in time for this conference.

And I, uh, spent the last two years working on this book that basically, uh, talks about, uh, overcoming, uh, a CC Laire, uh. Meniscal tear and, uh, I pole using conservative management versus surgery. Um, I did it with my personal dog and I felt like it was really important with everything that I was learning through her to be able to share that with people who were equally struggling with this same type of situation.

The book actually manifested itself into something more of a resource because it’s gonna talk about adaptive nutrition, which I talked about in this session today, how to manage nutrition around a rehabilitating, uh, canine and. It’s gonna also talk about the supplements that I used, and it’s gonna talk about some big overarching, uh, topics like weight management and muscle atrophy and inflammation control, all of those things.

So even if you don’t have a dog that is experiencing this specific injury, you could get something out of this book because it deals with a lot of other issues that were cursory to the injury that people deal with every day. I mean, just take obesity as it is. I’m trying to get my dog to lose weight.

What does that look like? You know, no matter where you are in your journey, whether it’s preventing an injury, you’re in the middle of an injury or you’re getting over it, this book is going to be able to do something for you. Hopefully, this is my gift to, um, the canine industry, uh, in the hopes of having people understand that surgery doesn’t have to be the only choice.

You could achieve success through conservative management and you get to follow a memoir of somebody who experienced it over the last year.

That sounds like an awesome book, and I love that Dog. Pro Radio is now breaking news. This is where people come, I’m gonna have books at the conference. And, um, ICP has graciously given me an opportunity to do a meet and greet and sign some books if, if people want ’em. Um, but for me, this is just a, a real joy.

It’s my legacy that I can leave behind and that loose is leaving behind Loose is my dog. And, um, hopefully people will thrive in the face of having it. So I, I appreciate you allowing me to, to, to share with the world today. No, that is awesome. I, people are gonna, I think, really like that book, especially if it, you know, when it speaks to them and there’s so many people in that situation trying to rehab a dog.

So where can people find out more information about you? Well, where should they go? Well, there’s, you can always email me and my business is, the company is called Harness Canicular. And, um, you can go to my website, which is harness kular.dog. And, um, it’s unique enough name, it’ll pop right up, don’t worry.

And then my email is basically harness [email protected] And you can write me and you can ask questions, or if you didn’t understand something in this talk or you wanna talk further about it, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I, I would love to help. Awesome Harness dog. I don’t, I, I should have Googled that before then.

I would say yes. Um, I chose that because canicular is things having to do with the dog star. Uh, if you look up in the sky, um, you will see Kenneth Major, um, as a constellation. And the brightest star in the sky in the summer, in the summertime is called serious. And that is the dog star. And my company basically, uh, is all about harnessing spirit, harnessing energy, harnessing health, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and reaching.

To have to be, to get your dog to be the greater dog. So reaching for the dog star. That’s awesome. Now we’re gonna have to edit this to make me sound smarter. And when you say canicular, I’ll be Yeah, I totally know what that means. Knows that, who does it.

Awesome. Well thank you Jennifer. Anyone who has questions, reach out to Jennifer. She’s obviously a great resource and we’ll include some links in the description in this video here. And come to conference, watch everything and get out there and start. Yeah, come to ING to conference. That’s the biggest thing.

I wanna meet you. I wanna shake your hand. You’re doing good work. Thanks to everyone for all the good work that they do with dogs. I just hope to fold into that somehow. So, so thanks for giving me the time on your show, Matt, and, uh, I really look forward to the continued conversation. Absolutely. That’s, you know, I’ll speak on behalf of the IACP here.

We’re definitely excited to have you at conference and to learn from you. So it’s gonna be a lot of fun.