Transcript
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Welcome to the Starlight Pet Talk podcast, where we'll talk about and explore ways to help pet parents and future pet parents learn everything they need to know to have a happy and healthy relationship with their pet.
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So sit up and stay for Starlight Pet Talk rescue, adoption and pet parenting done right.
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Just visit our website at wwwstarlightpettalkcom to order your merchandise today.
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Welcome to Starlight Pet Talk.
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I'm your host, amy Castro, and I have to say, in all the years that I've worked with people and pets, and in my own personal experience with my own pets, I've never heard anybody say that they wish their time with their pet was shorter.
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I think if most of us had our way, our beloved pets would live forever, or at least as long as we do.
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And although we know that's not possible, what we do have control over is doing everything we can as pet parents to make sure that they live the longest, healthiest lives that they can.
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So my guest today is Dr Gary Richter, and I'm really excited to have him here today.
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He is a holistic veterinarian, author of several books, including Longevity for Dogs, an individualized approach to helping your canine companion live longer and healthier.
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And he's the founder of Ultimate Pet Nutrition, which is a place where pet lovers can go for premium, veterinary approved solutions for their furry friends.
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So, dr Richter, thank you so much for being with us today.
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Oh, thank you.
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I'm thrilled to be here.
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Yeah, I'm really excited because the whole thing about pet nutrition obviously it's nothing new and obviously it's been something that's been important for a while.
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But for me, working in animal rescue, it's always been that juggling act of trying to do provide healthy food and the right things for pets but at the same time be able to do that in quantity.
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And I've kind of maybe lived that same way when it comes to my own pets and I know that I can definitely do better.
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And that's why I was hoping today that we could talk about some of the things that pet parents can do to improve.
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And that's why I love the title of the book Live Longer and Healthier because I think it is not just about the length of a pet's life but the quality of it.
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And you had said the other day when we were talking before the recording, you kind of laid out a couple of key areas that pet parents do have that control over, and the first one was nutrition.
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And it sounds like a dumb question.
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So why is nutrition so important?
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But I guess it's.
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Why is it so important for our pets and what kind of mistakes have pets parents been making when it comes to nutrition, or what kind of changes could they make to improve the quality of their pets nutrition?
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Yeah, that's a great question and I think that to a certain extent, it's an intuitively obvious question why is nutrition important?
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But I also think that people don't they don't often give it as much sort of credit as it deserves.
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You know I think a good way for people to think about nutrition is think about your car for a second.
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So, like your car, my car, they're all designed to work on a certain type of gas, a certain type of oil, various other types of fluids, and if you put those various types of gas and oil in the car, it is going to run as well as it is mechanically designed to run.
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If I put the wrong kind of gas and the wrong kind of oil in my car, the car will probably still run, at least for a period of time.
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It's not going to run as well as it should and it's going to be much more likely to break down over time.
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That is exactly what happens with nutrition.
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The only difference is that, as a biological system, our bodies, our pets' bodies, are a lot more forgiving than, say, our cars are, which means you can get away with doing the wrong thing for longer, but at the end of the day, those proverbial chickens will come home to roost and things will start to break.
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And when we start to think about, you know what is optimal nutrition for an animal or even for a person.
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You know the place where you start is what did that?
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You know we'll call it a machine, a biological machine, which is our body.
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What did that machine evolve to thrive on?
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What types of nutrients did it evolve to thrive on?
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And you know I mean.
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The one thing that we can say without question is that every animal on the planet evolved eating a fresh, whole food diet.
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Nobody evolved to eat processed food out of a bag or a can.
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You know, we all know from our own health that the more processed foods we eat, the more problematic things tend to be for us.
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You know, if you're eating a bunch of preserved garbage, if you're eating fast food, whatever it may be, you know you don't have to have a PhD in nutrition to know that that's potentially going to be problematic for you down the road.
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The problem when it comes to animal health is that is exactly what everybody is being told to feed their dog or their cat.
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You know, feed this bag of kibble, feed these cans of dog food or cat food.
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These are highly processed foods that come with all of the baggage that highly processed foods come with, and we see the effects of that play out in these animals over years, whether it's skin issues, gi issues, onset of disease like arthritis or cancer or premature aging.
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All of these things can originate from a poor diet, a suboptimal diet.
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So really getting started on the right foot or at any point that it is possible to change and get these guys on an optimized, fresh, whole food diet is absolutely the foundation of not only good health but longevity in general.
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Yeah, and I think, as a consumer, when you're looking at whether it's the commercials or the packaging, it's the same thing with human food.
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You know.
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There are things that advertisers will say that kind of trick you into believing that this is something healthy.
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Look, it's beef flavored or it's beef, and it's like okay, well, there's a big difference between beef and beef flavored.
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It's all natural.
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Well, yeah, there's poisons that are natural too.
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So, you know, how is a person supposed to kind of filter through that and find what's best for their pet?
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Yeah, unfortunately that's a really difficult landscape for pet owners, in part because and it pains me to say this, but my profession is not necessarily making that landscape any easier for people.
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You know, when I was in vet school, what they taught us was put the dog on a kibble that they do well on and leave them on that for the rest of their life, or at least until they need to go on a prescription diet when they're older.
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That's a disaster, you know, and it's a shame, but I mean that is the way that a lot of the veterinary profession operates.
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There is not a lot of education as far as nutrition goes amongst veterinarians and there is not a lot of guidance that most people get from their veterinarians about what they should feed, which unfortunately puts the burden on the pet owner to do their due diligence.
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I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to understand that you don't want to necessarily trust the person who's selling you the product to tell you why that product is superior.
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You know that's just common sense.
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I mean manufacturers, they have a product to sell, so what they're going to tell you is not necessarily the whole picture.
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So that means we as consumers have to educate ourselves about what optimal nutrition looks like, what's good, what's not so good.
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There are certainly resources out there for people to avail themselves of my first book, the Ultimate Pet Health Guide.
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There is a very, very long and involved discussion about optimal nutrition and how to get from A to B with dogs and cats and you know that's certainly not the only resource out there for people.
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I think people just need to take an active role in their pet's health care and particularly their pet's nutrition, and not necessarily take the word of either what's going on in the pet store or the commercials that they see or, unfortunately, sometimes even what their veterinarian has to say.
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And I think the quality of the research too is really important, at least in my experience.
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It's kind of like the television commercial that says well, you know, it's got to be true, it's on the internet, kind of thing.
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You have to look at the source of the information when you're out there researching and I know I've tried to do at least my due diligence in the recent years and even when you do and you kind of get in your head, all right, well, I'm trying to avoid these certain things in my pet's food, and then it can become very tricky to find well, okay, it doesn't have this thing, but it's got the other thing that's on my list that I'm trying to avoid.
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Is there kind of a hardened fast from the standpoint of looking at ingredients that you'd say, hey, you know, you want to definitely at least start by avoiding these certain things in your pet's food, or is it not that simple?
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Oh well, I mean, sadly, nothing's that simple, but there are absolutely things that you can look out for, things that you should, if at all possible, avoid.
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Certainly, you want to avoid things like any kind of byproducts, so meat byproducts.
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You want to avoid anything that is termed meal, so meat meal, chicken meal, what have you?
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The problem with those ingredients is you honestly have no idea what's actually in there, because every batch of that stuff is that's made, can be made from different things, so you really just have no idea what is or is not present in those sorts of things.
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Also, I would recommend that people avoid feeding foods that are very, very high in carbohydrates.
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Carbohydrates are not bad by definition.
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By that token, grains are also neither good nor bad by definition.
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I know there's a whole lot of concern out there about grain.
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We can talk about that for days.
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There are plenty of properly formulated grain free foods out there that are just fine.
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Generally speaking, they're going to be fresh, whole foods.
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There are also foods out there that have grains in them that are also fine.
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So that, unfortunately, is not a very it's not a black and white situation either, but, generally speaking, what you want to look for is you want to look for a food that has ingredients in it that sort of makes sense to you as a human Meat, vegetables, plus or minus grains, depending on the food.
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Most foods are going to have a certain amount of vitamins and minerals added into them, which is completely fine, but that's really what you're looking for.
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There's a lot of stuff in there that just looks off or hard to pronounce, unless it's vitamins, because vitamins can be a little hard to pronounce.
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But as far as food ingredients go, I mean look for stuff that you would consider eating.
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So kind of keeping it basic, keeping it to things that you would eat as a human being and trying to avoid the meals on the byproducts, because we don't really know what's in that and so that's just kind of an unknown factor in there.
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That at least gives people a place to start and still leaves the door pretty well open to having options.
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Because I think that's a challenge is, sometimes you listen to other podcasts or videos about nutrition and sometimes people can get so hard lined about it that it's like, okay, obviously I'm going to have to now raise my own chickens to feed my dog, and not everybody's willing or able to do that, so that's very helpful advice, thank you.
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You bring up an interesting point that I think is worth highlighting, which is when it comes to anything that you're going to do for your pet, whether it's nutrition or anything else I mean, whatever you choose to do it needs to be sustainable.
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So I am more than aware of how much fresh whole foods cost, and if you're somebody that has like two big Labradors, it may not be financially feasible for you to feed a fresh food diet exclusively.
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So my recommendation to people is find the best thing that you can do that is sustainable in your life, and that might mean feeding some fresh food and some processed food, because that's just the reality of what has to happen.
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Just like for me, it's not a situation that every single meal I eat is perfectly balanced whole food.
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If I go out and eat garbage food from time to time, it's not the end of the world, it's not a.
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It's not an all or nothing thing.
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So you feed as much fresh whole food as you can and do the rest with whatever becomes necessary, but just make sure that it's sustainable for you to do.
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Yeah, that's great advice.
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You know, I've been doing some experimenting myself and even with my own pets.
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Right now I'm feeding, for I'm focusing on the cats for the moment.
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I've gotten some different options.
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Well, by the time you feed four cats, whatever it was, that would have maybe lasted a normal cat, like I sometimes will say to myself well, this would work great for me if I only had one cat.
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But, because I've got four, this is going to cost me a fortune and this cat's are going to be costing more to feed the cats than in my family.
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And you get all gung ho in the beginning and then the bills start adding up and you're like, yeah, this isn't going to work.
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So that's a great point and I think the ability to mix it a little bit kind of like when we were doing some healthy male order meals and it's like, well, better to do it three days a week and then, if you can't do it five days a week, it's better than not doing it at all.
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So yeah, and that's exactly the thing you do.
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You do as much as you can, and that's probably a good time to you know if it's within sort of somebody's ability to do so to have a conversation with a holistic veterinarian or a nutritionist or somebody that's a little bit more knowledgeable about this kind of stuff, to give you a little bit of guidance about sort of the best way to do this in a sustainable fashion.
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Yeah, definitely.
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So, moving on from nutrition, another thing that you had mentioned and I know this is also something that I have kind of questioned as life has gone on is vaccinations for pets.
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You know it used to be.
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It was not questioned.
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You gave them everything you got from the time that they're first able to get those vaccines until the day that they die.
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And there's just been a lot of information that has come out and a lot of people are questioning what vaccinations does my pet really need and do they really need it forever?
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So what would be some thoughts on that that would be helpful for pet parents to make some of those decisions.
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Yeah, let's talk about that.
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So I'll preface this by saying that I am not anti-vaccine.
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I am, however, anti-ovavaxine.
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Probably most pets are over-vaccinated.
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What I mean by over-vaccinated is that they're being vaccinated for diseases that either A they already have immunity to, or B the odds of them getting exposed to or so astronomically slim that there's probably no point in them being vaccinated.
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Without question, puppies and kittens need to be vaccinated full stop.
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There's no discussion there.
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Anybody that has ever seen a dog get parvo will understand the necessity of why animals need to be vaccinated.
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However, the reality is that most dogs almost all dogs that are properly vaccinated for distemper and parvo as puppies, will actually retain immunity to those diseases for years, if not potentially their entire life.
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Most dogs that were vaccinated properly as puppies for distemper and parvo will never need a booster again.
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You can demonstrate that by running antibody titers.
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It's just a blood draw and find out what their antibody levels are to find out whether they actually need to be vaccinated, because most of them don't.
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The only vaccine that is a non-negotiable thing when it comes to dogs is rabies, because that's a legality Right.
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You don't have a choice in that.
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If anybody's wondering the reason why rabies is such a big thing is because not only is it 100% lethal to dogs, but rabies can be transmitted to people, where it is nearly 100% lethal in people as well.
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That's why the government cares.
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The truth is, if your dog gets parvo and gets sick, the government doesn't really much care because people aren't going to get parvo.
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If a bunch of people start getting rabies, that's going to be problematic.
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It could be a problem.
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Please, whatever your local regulations are as far as where rabies vaccines go, please follow that.
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Outside of that, quite frankly, everything else is on the table for discussion based on do they really need it?
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What is their lifestyle?
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Are they really going to get exposed to it?
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Vaccines as much good as they do, they are not completely benign substances.
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Vaccines, by definition, stimulate the immune system and cause inflammation.
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Neither of those things are things you really want to do if you don't have to.
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To me, the fact that on the calendar it says that a dog is due for this, that or the other thing that is the very beginning of the discussion, like, okay, here's what it's due for.
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Now let's look at the individual and figure out what does it really need or what does it not need.
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I think that's a thing that medicine really needs to work on.
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Is medicine should be personalized to the individual.
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My health care needs are surely different than your health care needs, because we're two completely different people.
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I think sometimes what happens is the medical profession just wants to do what it says to do in the chart and move on to the next thing.
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That's certainly the case if somebody's getting their vaccines at, say, like a vaccine clinic, because let's be honest that's how those businesses make money is by vaccinating.
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They're probably not going to be super quick to tell people oh, you don't need this, right Right.
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These are the kinds of things that people need to think about.
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I mean, if you're thinking big picture, long-term health plan, then you have to think about everything that you're doing now and how it may impact your pet's life down the road.
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Yeah, you got me to thinking about.
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A couple of years ago I went to India and I had to go to the health department and get some vaccines that I had never had.
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The only time I had some of those vaccines was when I was in the Air Force and I was going to be shipped off to the Middle East, and it's like now you're going to get these special vaccines.
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So what that comes down to is, like you said, it's the lifestyle and the exposure.
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A person who lives in one place and never travels to a country, that has certain diseases that maybe have been eradicated in the US, for example, they don't need those vaccines.
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But a person who's going to be traveling and being in different parts of the world might need those.
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The same goes for your pets, and I'm assuming it's regional to a certain degree.
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Oh sure, or is that not?
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true?
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No, it's absolutely true.
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So part of its regionals.
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For example, if you have a dog and you live in New England, you're probably going to want to vaccinate your dog for Lyme.
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And while here in the San Francisco Bay Area we do have Lyme, it is not anywhere close to the prevalence that it is in, say, new England and we don't really vaccinate dogs for Lyme because it's very, very uncommon and not only is it geographic, but it's also a lifestyle thing.
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I think a great example for dogs is a border televaccine, so the vaccine for Kennelkopf.
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That is a vaccine that I never recommend, unless a dog is going someplace that requires it.
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So if they're going to boarding, if they're going to daycare, grooming, and the facility requires it, then fine, we'll give it.
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Otherwise it's just not a vaccine that I give.
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The bottom line is border tele-as-a-disease is not that bad.
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It's kind of like if you or I were going to get a chest cold.
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You're probably going to cough for a week or two and then you're going to get better Big deal.
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Does that mean I'm going to go out and get vaccinated for that?
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No, it doesn't.
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Yeah, that's a good point, and I know one of the things that I think is important too for people have these conversations with your veterinarian.
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When it comes around to that annual thing and you get that postcard or now that email that says Gunny is due for these things, if you don't know what they are and what they're supposed to be preventing and you haven't had a conversation with your vet to say, yeah, she's had that for six years, do we still need to keep giving that?
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What does that do?
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Here are the things that we do.
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We either go to a dog park or we don't go to a dog park, or for us, part of the conversation is we do bring unvaccinated animals right off the street.
00:19:50.265 --> 00:20:00.904
I mean, we try to keep them isolated, but my dogs and my cats might be at slightly higher risk than your average person for catching things that other people's pets might not catch.
00:20:00.904 --> 00:20:07.471
So have those conversations with your vet and educate yourself about what's being put into your pet, just like with the food.
00:20:07.827 --> 00:20:21.116
Yeah, I totally agree, and as it pertains to going to your veterinarian, you absolutely are allowed to and, in my mind, are encouraged to respectfully ask questions of your veterinarian.
00:20:21.116 --> 00:20:22.765
There should be no problem with that.
00:20:22.765 --> 00:20:27.436
If you don't understand what something's necessary for or whether or not your pet actually needs it, ask.
00:20:27.436 --> 00:20:34.993
If you find that your veterinarian is not receptive to respective questions, then you might need to find another veterinarian.
00:20:34.993 --> 00:20:43.537
I've always had a rule in my office as long as somebody is respectful, I will answer your questions all day long, because I want you to be an informed pet owner.
00:20:43.537 --> 00:20:51.404
It benefits me as well as you for you to be informed and to understand the rationale of why I'm recommending or not recommending something.
00:20:51.547 --> 00:20:56.760
That's always a plus to build on that issue of creating a relationship with your veterinarian.
00:20:56.760 --> 00:21:10.689
I can only imagine how frustrating it can be when we get out there and we consult with Dr Google and we read all these things on the internet from who knows what sources and then maybe go into the, into the vet, with an attitude I'm not getting that.
00:21:10.689 --> 00:21:11.771
You know, I read, I read.
00:21:11.771 --> 00:21:13.135
I say blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:21:13.135 --> 00:21:17.784
You know, and I think it is important to have a respectful conversation and ask questions.
00:21:17.784 --> 00:21:22.851
Don't go in and just start like acting like you're suddenly a veterinarian because you read a few articles on the internet.
00:21:23.071 --> 00:21:46.057
Yeah, no, it's very true, and there's a lot of information out there online, obviously, and you know some of it's good and some of it's not, and you know, like I say, I mean, if you see something and it raises a question, then respectfully ask it when you go in and you know, maybe you'll find that, lo and behold, what you read was correct, or maybe the person that wrote it was a maniac, and I have an opportunity to educate you and tell you why.
00:21:46.057 --> 00:21:48.650
So, one way or the other, it's a win.
00:21:48.650 --> 00:21:51.557
Being able to make an informed decision is always a good thing.
00:21:51.826 --> 00:22:11.317
Yeah, well, one thing I would just put out there, for listeners too, is you know, as these questions come up or as you're reading things that you might have questions about for your veterinarian, you know, write those questions down, because I think sometimes we get into the office and we're getting asked a lot of questions about our pets that we might forget the things that come up and it's like, oh, I forgot to ask this or I didn't ask that.
00:22:11.317 --> 00:22:14.393
Those are definitely things that you can kind of plan for ahead.
00:22:14.393 --> 00:22:17.386
What are you going in there for, what's your appointment going to be about?
00:22:17.386 --> 00:22:23.429
And have those questions ready to go, so you can kind of be efficient not only with your time but with the veterinarian's time as well.
00:22:23.829 --> 00:22:28.147
Along that same same lines of vaccinations, what about parasite control?
00:22:28.147 --> 00:22:31.075
You know that's a big thing that we have, especially in Texas.
00:22:31.075 --> 00:22:38.288
Fleas are just rampant and it's pretty much a year round thing, or at least it feels like it is, because of our warm climate.
00:22:38.288 --> 00:22:44.314
What are your guidelines or what do pet parents need to be thinking about when it comes to worms and whatever?
00:22:44.314 --> 00:22:46.542
What else falls under the umbrella of parasites?
00:22:46.542 --> 00:22:47.468
I mean, I'm thinking about worms.
00:22:47.468 --> 00:22:49.499
I'm thinking about is heartworm a parasite or is?
00:22:49.499 --> 00:22:52.469
Yeah, it's a parasite, because heartworm is also a huge thing down here.
00:22:53.310 --> 00:22:54.113
Absolutely so.
00:22:54.113 --> 00:23:07.076
I mean, I think I think again, those are things that you balance, based on exposure, based on the sort of relative pros and cons of the preventative that you're using, and based on, like, how bad is it if my pet gets exposed?
00:23:07.076 --> 00:23:12.928
So let's start with heartworm, because you know, from a major medical perspective, that's the one that counts the most.
00:23:12.928 --> 00:23:17.945
If a dog gets heartworm and it goes untreated, they are more than likely going to die.
00:23:17.945 --> 00:23:26.358
Heartworm for those of you that are not aware of it is transmitted by mosquitoes, so that's not necessarily something that you have a lot of control over.
00:23:26.358 --> 00:23:30.635
In the same way that you say do like fleas, which we can talk about as well.
00:23:30.635 --> 00:23:36.212
But of course you know mosquitoes are a very sort of climate driven thing, so it's heat and humidity.
00:23:36.212 --> 00:23:44.938
I grew up in Florida and you know when I was in Florida, if you did not have your dog on heartworm preventative, it was just a question of when they were going to get it and die.
00:23:45.357 --> 00:23:53.518
I live here now in the San Francisco Bay area where many of my patients are not on heartworm preventative and they do.
00:23:53.518 --> 00:23:56.106
Just great, because it's relatively cooler here.
00:23:56.106 --> 00:23:58.896
We have very little humidity, not so much heartworm.
00:23:58.896 --> 00:24:01.625
So it very much depends on where you live.
00:24:01.625 --> 00:24:03.711
You know you can talk to your veterinarian about this.
00:24:03.711 --> 00:24:08.315
There is actually there's an organization called the American Heartworm Society.
00:24:08.315 --> 00:24:16.977
You can look them up online and they have incidence maps on their website so you can look up where you live and see how big of a problem heartworm is.
00:24:16.977 --> 00:24:25.611
So these are all things that are in your power to do, but just realize that the consequences of your dog getting heartworm are bad.
00:24:26.092 --> 00:24:32.050
And even if you do catch it, just because I know as a rescue, we pay for it, the treatments a lot.
00:24:32.050 --> 00:24:45.467
Not only is the treatment quite expensive, you know because people will complain well, heartworm preventative is expensive it's like it ain't as expensive as the treatment and obviously just the damage that's done to the animal's heart the longer the worms are there.
00:24:45.467 --> 00:24:50.304
But the treatment can also be deadly in some parts of the process Down here.
00:24:50.304 --> 00:24:53.050
It's an extensive treatment, I mean it's several months.
00:24:53.332 --> 00:25:02.538
It's true, heartworm treatment is expensive, is painful for the dog and a dog can literally die from the treatment for heartworm disease.
00:25:02.538 --> 00:25:03.727
You know so.
00:25:03.727 --> 00:25:06.657
It's no joke, it's a very, very serious thing.
00:25:06.657 --> 00:25:12.640
So you know, heartworm, of all of the various parasites, is the one that you really need to take the most seriously.
00:25:12.640 --> 00:25:16.575
The other side of it are like fleas, ticks and gastrointestinal worms.
00:25:16.575 --> 00:25:25.897
With the exception of tick-borne disease, it's very, very rare for a dog to get significantly ill or die from fleas, ticks or intestinal parasites.
00:25:25.897 --> 00:25:30.765
So there's a little bit more flexibility from the standpoint of what you're going to do.
00:25:30.765 --> 00:25:39.371
Just as an FYI, if your dog is on heartworm preventative, they're also almost certainly getting a monthly dose of a intestinal parasite preventative.
00:25:39.371 --> 00:25:41.414
So you're covered there regardless.
00:25:41.414 --> 00:25:47.474
Again, in my area, because most GI parasites again it's kind of a heat and humidity thing.
