Transcript
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Hey there, friends.
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We've talked about pet nutrition before, but this week we're diving into a question many pet parents are asking how can I get more help in figuring out the right thing for my pet when it comes to nutrition?
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Well, there's a lot of conflicting advice out there, and figuring out the best diet for your pet's specific needs can really be overwhelming.
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So today we're gonna be talking with certified canine nutritionist, Elizabeth Casas, and she's joining us to break it all down and help you decide if personalized guidance is the key to your pet's healthiest life.
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Stay tuned.
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You're listening to Starlight Pet Talk, a podcast for pet parents who want the best pet care advice from cat experts, dog trainers, veterinarians and other top pet professionals who will help you live your very best life with your pets.
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Pet professionals who will help you live your very best life with your pets.
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My guest today, Elizabeth Casas, is a certified canine nutritionist and integrative pet health coach driven by a passion for empowering pet parents with straightforward, effective solutions for optimal pet wellness.
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She has expertise spanning nutrition, optimization and holistic approaches that helps guide pet parents towards measurable success.
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Driven by values, years of corporate experience, Elizabeth helps pets and their pet parents thrive through workshops, coaching services and speaking engagements All right.
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So, Elizabeth, welcome to the show.
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Thank you so much.
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Very happy to be here.
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You know I had mentioned in my teaser of the show that we have talked about nutrition before, but I think it's one of those subjects that you can't talk about enough because it's so important.
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But why did it become so important to you?
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How did you get started down this path of becoming a nutrition coach for people?
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So I started about.
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It's almost seven years ago.
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I had my beautiful cat Lumiere.
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He's a Berman and we got him when he was nine months old.
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He was supposed to be a show cat.
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He was the most beautiful cat you have ever seen and he has always been very healthy.
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When he was about four years old he started growing up.
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He wasn't eating, he was getting dehydrated, he was just under a chair.
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He wouldn't come out, he was just really sick.
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Took him to the vet.
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They did some blood work.
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They did some you know some tests, urine samples, and it turns out he had pancreatitis.
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So the veterinarian goes okay, so keep him in, we're going to give him some fluids because he's highly dehydrated and then we'll call you later and see how he's doing.
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So a couple of days passed and they call me and they said okay, he's eating a little bit, you can go home.
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We're going to send you with a prescription diet specific for pancreatitis, and then you should be good.
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So this prescription diet was probably twice as much as any other food, right, but you would do it because it's for your.
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You know you love your animal and it's the only solution that they give you.
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They also gave me some nausea medication, so I went back, I did everything they told me to do.
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He was not great, but he was a little better.
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He was eating the food begrudgingly and then, about maybe a week or two later, he started throwing up again and he started, you know, having issues and pain taking back to the vet.
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Pancreatitis is back.
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This happened a couple of times and then the last time he just said he's not getting any better.
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The only thing we can do is just keep him comfortable until he passes.
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Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do, you know.
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My first question is what did I do?
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Like what?
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Why does he get pancreatitis?
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They couldn't give me an answer, and my kids at that time were eight and nine years old and they were, of course, devastated.
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This is their pet, this is their best friend that they've known forever, and I've decided to take him out.
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I'm like there must be another solution, like it cannot be that my cat is going to die at four years old.
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He's too young yeah took him out.
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I had a vet, a friend who's a veterinarian in columbia and, uh, he believes in food and medicine.
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It's a combination of the two.
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So he told me, just keep the nausea medication, get him some boiled chicken breast so he doesn't have fat, and give him probiotic yogurt to help his gut.
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And we did that and after a week or so Lumiere was fine again.
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He had no more issues.
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After that I started looking at nutrition and real food.
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I found out the reason he had pancreatitis was because the food had a high level of fat.
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And then I started you know, you start going into this rabbit hole of looking for things and learning about nutrition and I started cooking for Lumiere at that time.
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I then got my puppy, felipe, who's a rescue, and I always gave him cooked food.
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There was always the question am I doing it right?
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I did a lot of investigation and then finally, about a few months ago, I decided to get a certification as a holistic pet health coach and a canine nutritionist, and so that gave me a little bit more of the tools to be able to help my pets.
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But also I wanted to help other pets because I remember during that time I didn't know what to do, and so I wanted to be able to help people and educate and share the knowledge on how to make decisions when your pets need a little bit of help, right, and there's so much information out there but it's very hard to know what's right, what's not right.
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There's so much conflicting information and I find it shocking sometimes that I mean I love my veterinarians and they have, but the go-to thing is put them on a prescription diet and most of that food, if you look at, I'm sure you have right, it's not good quality food.
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It might solve the issue because they've eliminated that one thing that's causing most of the problems.
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But nutritionally it's not good food and, like you said, it costs a fortune.
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And for those of us who have more than one pet, unfortunately my cats are not picky eaters, so they love eating the prescription diet and now everybody's eating it and I'm feeding the whole household this three times the amount of regular cat food food, and half of them don't need it.
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It's just, it's kind of maddening.
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And then you, you just kind of say, what do I do?
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Right.
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And so the thing is, veterinarians are wonderful, but they were never taught about nutrition.
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You have to understand that.
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Their understanding of nutrition came from the sales rep from Hills that said you know, if you have obesity, get this, if you have pancreatitis, if you have kidney issues, and that's all they know.
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There's some veterinarians that are starting to learn about nutrition, but there's also people like me and others that are learning about how to make sure that we give a balanced diet, because what's very scary is, if you look at the back of the food labels, it just sounds very scientific and it's like we can't give that.
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I need to buy the food.
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I can't make it at home.
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The reality is that it is not that scientific.
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It is just food.
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Is food, is healthy food, what we eat is what they can eat.
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There's certain things can't, but it is not as complicated as people are making it to be.
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And there's something you said there's so much information out there that is conflicting and what's happening is just becoming very polarizing.
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It's like you have to eat raw and the raw eaters say there's nothing better than raw.
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And then there's the ones who only feed kibble and veterinarians you can only feed pet food and the you know the lightly cooked people.
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You can lightly cook it and it becomes like my way or the highway, when the reality is all animals.
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They're like us, right?
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Keto doesn't work for me but it might work for my friends.
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You know I might be, I might have issues with milk, but my son doesn't have issues with milk.
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Pets are the same.
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Some of them have more sensitivities than others, but they will thrive in food.
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I personally give my dog a combination of lightly cooked and raw.
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Some dogs do very well in only raw and some dogs don't.
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So the key here is to understand what's going to work for my specific pup and feed the dog or cat in front of it.
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Right, yeah, and you know, when it comes to pet parent education and I know I mentioned this to you when we had our conversation before the recording is that I spend a lot of time um, at least once a month sitting at a local pet store with our adoptable pets, and I see people walking out who look like people of means and I you can't try necessarily judge a book by its cover, but look like people of means, and you can't necessarily judge a book by its cover, but look like people of means or you have a conversation with somebody and they seem relatively intelligent and then they walk out the door with this bag of garbage over their shoulder.
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You know why is it that?
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Is it simply that the pet labels are too confusing?
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And so I don't know.
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I kind of feel like people don't look Like they just go for it's all pet food, it's all approved by blah, blah, blah, or it says it's nutritious, or it says it's got meat or whatever it is, and so they don't really read the nitty-gritty on the label, like, why aren't we doing a better job already?
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It doesn't seem like it should be that hard.
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Well, because it can be confusing, right, and pet food manufacturers are very good at convincing you that the best thing to do is to eat their food.
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So they put this really fantastic picture of a cut of meat and then it says with meat, and you trust it?
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You believe it Because, like, why would they lie to you?
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The thing is they don't have to tell you many things as long as they're balanced and complete according to AFCA.
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And it's just confusing, you know, and sometimes we also fall I fall under the convenience role, right.
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We are busy, we have a lot of things around our life, we have work, we have kids, we have families and it's convenient to grab a bag and serve.
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A lot of us don't even cook for ourselves, so why would we cook for our dog?
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So it's also convenient, right?
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What I'm trying to help people understand is that it's really not that hard and that you can start with a very little step-by-step and it would make a big difference to your animal.
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It really shouldn't be that complicated.
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Yeah.
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So let's talk about that, because I know I have had experience with so.
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You know, when raw started becoming a big thing, I had this beautiful Doberman pincher and I wanted to do the best by him so and this is how dumb I was back then.
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So he went from basically eating kibble a good kibble, as good as kibble can be and I made him this like completely raw food meal and of course he gobbled it down and then proceeded to throw it all back up all over the place and I said, nope, no raw food for him, it's no good.
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Obviously I overdid it and, you know, did too much at the same time.
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But what are some of those little things Like?
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If we're either trying to transition to a different way of doing things or just trying to do a little bit better than that bowl of kibble, what are the small changes we could start making?
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So there's a lot.
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There's a wide range of things that you can do.
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First, learn how to read a label.
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If you're not willing to move away from kibble, there's better kibble out there.
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I don't advocate for kibble, but I also don't kibble.
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Shame.
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If you are not ready to change world and different paths in our journey, then learn how to read a label and choose the right kind, the better kind of table or not as bad table.
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The ones that have whole proteins named in the first ingredient.
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The ones that don't have a lot, that they don't have colors or flavors because they don't really need them and they're not good for your pet.
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The ones that have whole ingredients, also like for vegetables and different things.
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Try and look for that.
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Yeah.
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The second step is just adding something natural to their bowl.
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I do advocate for one tablespoon at a time, like take out a tablespoon of kibble and bring not a whole thing of chicken, wings and raw eggs.
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There's also a process.
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Right, there's also a process.
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They are more sensitive than we are.
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So just one tablespoon at a time of superfoods.
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So learn what are those superfoods that are going to make a big difference.
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For example, sardines.
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I am a fan of sardines.
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Sardines are at the bottom of the food chain so they don't have as more mercury as other fish.
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They're little fish.
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They have a lot of omega-3 fatty acids, which are fantastic to avoid inflammation.
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They have CoQ10.
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They are really one of those superfoods that if you add, it's not going to hurt them and it's really going to help.
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What happens is when you add just one tablespoon of good food, you're feeding the good bacteria in the gut.
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What we need to understand is that 70 to 80% of our immune system is in our gut, including our pets.
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So if you feed that good bacteria, you can go wrong like it's going to help.
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Even if you're feeding kibble, it's not going to make them, you know it's not going to completely change, but it's going to help their immune system.
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It's going to help their digestion and the absorption of those nutrients that are so important.
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The other superfood you can add is mushrooms.
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I know some people believe that mushrooms are not good for pets.
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That couldn't be further from the truth.
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The mushrooms that are good for humans are good for pets.
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So it's very easy to know.
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You know, and the mushrooms that are poisonous for us are going to be poisonous for that.
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Whatever you can get in your supermarket lion's mane, reishi, any, any mushroom is a medicinal mushroom.
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This little.
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We actually did a whole episode on mushrooms for for pets.
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So if you want to learn more about some of these mushrooms that she's mentioning, make sure you go back and listen to that episode, cause that was fascinating to me, cause I, you know, I feel like I know a lot.
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I mean, I worked for a vet for eight years and I, you know, rescue animals and I have a lot of animals and I just the mushroom thing never crossed my mind until that episode and it was just wow, just never thought about all those benefits.
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Yeah, it's one of those superfoods, right, it has beta-glucans, it has adaptogens.
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Those are fantastic and just adding maybe less than a tablespoon.
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You can have one teaspoon, but replace it or put on top of their table, you do need to saute it so the goodness of the mushroom comes out.
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Raw mushrooms don't do as good as the salt eight ones.
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So you know it's two little things that you can do already.
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Yeah, that are starting to help your pet to have a better gut and better immune system.
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Uh, antioxidants you cannot fruit, like you know, blueberries.
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So just little things like that.
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That's a good start.
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If you're not ready, a lot of us, you know, we grew up with veterinarians and our parents telling us the dog or the cat should never eat traps from the table, only eat pet food.
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There's a history of pet food.
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Right, dogs and cats existed before pet food and they've been eating normal food before for 15 000 years or more.
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So they.
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It's just a matter of how you do it.
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So that's the next step.
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If you want to transition to another food, like going to raw or like going to lightly cooked, you have to do that gradually as well, because the acidity in their stomach has been ready for the amount of carbohydrates that they get from kibble.
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So when you move to something like raw or lightly cooked, it's going to be very heavy on your stomach.
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They usually get diarrhea.
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They do get gas.
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So you just start slowly, depending on your dog, until you get to the level where their stomach and their gut is ready to absorb that type of food.
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So it really you know you can go from choose the best kibble to a combination of the two, to a slowly transition to fresh food.
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Right, I want to go back to what you had, just because I want to make this point about the labels, because there was a time where, when I was trying to educate myself about the information on the back of the labels and all those you know monosyllabic words that I had no idea what they meant, and I think, anybody out there.
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I challenge you to go and flip that bag or that can around and literally look up what every single one of those things is and you're going to be shocked to know what those ingredients are and what else they're used for in this world and it's not for consumption.
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So definitely do that.
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But I want to address like just something as simple as one very common like A versus B ingredient, right?
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So you've got a dog food that the first ingredient is chicken and a dog food that the first ingredient is chicken byproduct.
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There's a lot of people that would look at that and say chicken, chicken, chicken.
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Right, it's a.
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You know it's part of the chicken.
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Can you just give an example of just something as simple as byproducts?
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What does that mean?
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And, without getting too gross, that is a very good point.
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When you look at the protein, you are bang on.
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You need to look at one word protein salmon, meat, pork, byproducts and meals, because you also get a meal right.
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A meal is it comes from.
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A rendering facility is a kind of where they put the beaks, the feathers, the bones.
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There's nothing wrong with that, like beaks, feathers and bones is what they ate when they were, uh, woods, and there's nothing wrong with that.
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Big feathers and bones is what they ate when they were wolves, and there's nothing wrong with the problem with it is the source.
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Where is this meal coming from?
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To the rendering facility.
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And render facility get the 3d disease, dead and disabled animals Right, and so you don't know that with that meal is coming from a disease animal, a disabled animal, you know a dead animal.
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So there has been some recalls because there's euthanasia chemical in the food, because the dead animals that are euthanized, or the roadkill animals, they go to the rendering facility.
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The same thing with byproduct it's not, it's a meal, but it's the pieces of the chicken.
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So is the beak, is the feather?
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Again, nothing wrong with it.
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But what is the source of it?
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Where is that coming from?
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Is it human grade or is it feed grade?
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If it's feed grade, that's where you're getting disease-disabled dead animals that you don't really want your animals to eat, that, so that's where it's coming from.
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So when you see that in your pet food and we don't do this, I don't think anyone does call the manufacturer and say what is your source Right?
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Yeah, right, but there is a very good.
00:18:53.349 --> 00:18:55.013
There's another source, right?
00:18:55.013 --> 00:18:58.169
You can go to Susan Dixon's list of approved food.
00:18:58.169 --> 00:19:10.429
She has a list where she's gone through, you know, if they do third-party manufacturing, so they don't know what's happening with their food the sourcing of the food, if it's human grade, if it's organic, and you can choose from that list.
00:19:10.449 --> 00:19:25.827
There's kibbles, there's raw, there's lightly cooked, there's canned, there is all sorts of this kind of food yeah, yeah, it's funny that your dog started barking at the same time I was barking, I muted, I muted myself, but then she started again.
00:19:25.827 --> 00:19:26.971
She's a little further away.
00:19:26.971 --> 00:19:28.234
It's okay, it's a pet podcast.
00:19:28.234 --> 00:19:28.696
We have people.
00:19:28.696 --> 00:19:31.037
They're like I'm reinforcing what you say.
00:19:31.037 --> 00:19:32.525
Don't feed me those beaks and feathers.
00:19:32.525 --> 00:19:35.753
And you know, feathers are good.
00:19:35.753 --> 00:19:37.547
Just where are they coming from?
00:19:37.547 --> 00:19:50.371
Well, it not only that, but it's like okay, if you had the option, so you know, rather than thinking of them as equal, would you rather hand your dog a plate full of nice chicken breast or beaks and feathers on a regular basis?
00:19:50.371 --> 00:19:56.442
You know, probably would like to have some of that meat in there, especially for what we're paying for pet food these days.
00:19:56.442 --> 00:19:58.912
The pricing is really crazy.
00:20:00.025 --> 00:20:01.048
I need to take him out.
00:20:01.509 --> 00:20:02.191
Okay, go ahead.
00:20:03.053 --> 00:20:03.815
Yes, I'll take him out.
00:20:04.195 --> 00:20:34.307
Okay, oh man, oh man, of course, yeah, when my daughter left out right before we started, my daughter had to leave because we got a call from friends with animal control that a cat that we adopted out in june of 2023 had been picked up.
00:20:34.307 --> 00:20:43.712
And, of the thousands of animals that we've had adopted through the rescue, we've had four that we've adopted out as young animals Because you can't you know, it's such a catch-22.
00:20:43.712 --> 00:21:07.275
You don't want to spay and neuter a baby because that causes problems later in life, but at the same time, now you're trusting that the persons, even though they've already paid for the spay and neuter, you're trusting that they're going to actually follow through and we've only had four people of the thousands of people in the you know, since 2017 that have not followed through, and that's one of the cats that just got picked up as a stray, so now he's going to come back to us.
00:21:07.315 --> 00:21:07.915
So anyways, when?
00:21:07.955 --> 00:21:08.885
she when she left.
00:21:08.885 --> 00:21:17.058
She's like I shut the front gate so the dogs don't bark, because we have Amazon coming a hundred times a day out here, so, but they're still barking.
00:21:17.058 --> 00:21:21.125
Sorry about that, okay.
00:21:21.125 --> 00:21:27.769
So I want to get back to this idea because I'm thinking about the sardine thing and I'm thinking well, that's simple enough.
00:21:27.769 --> 00:21:37.085
You know, you get your sardines, you have them in the, you know, once they're open, you have them in the fridge, boop, boop, boop, one on each bowl, and it becomes part of the habit or part of the routine.
00:21:37.204 --> 00:21:42.688
And I think that's maybe one of the biggest challenge challenges for people is is changing that routine.
00:21:42.688 --> 00:22:02.915
I mean, one of the things I joke about which I joke about it, but it's actually sometimes true is there have been times where I'm in such a hurry and I have so many dogs between my own and the rescues that I have literally taken a big thing, a scoop of food, taken everybody out to the patio and just here you go and threw it on the ground.
00:22:02.915 --> 00:22:06.814
And they tend to, you know, based on their size and their mouth size, for whatever reason.
00:22:06.814 --> 00:22:10.451
It seems to work that everybody gets the right proportions, maybe close.
00:22:10.451 --> 00:22:11.815
I mean, I don't do that often.
00:22:11.914 --> 00:22:15.411
But and I know that's an extreme example You're probably like oh my gosh.
00:22:15.411 --> 00:22:21.045
But you know it's just, people need simplicity or they want simplicity.
00:22:21.045 --> 00:22:28.433
And if it starts to get complicated then it's going to be like this is too much trouble, even though in your heart you know it's not too much trouble.
