Back to school

This is the 2nd of September question and answer, and, uh, Conor's going to blather on about some, some rubbish as well. Gentlemen, how are you? This is the Raw Pet Medics. We are Dr. Conor Brady and Dr. Brendan Clark, and me, Dr. Nick Thompson. And, and we are Raw Pet Medics. We do this every week, and because we love it, because God knows we wouldn't do it if we didn't.

Well, most weeks.

Ah, well done.

Don't mention, don't mention the down weeks. And we are on YouTube. Please like us and subscribe and all that stuff because it really, really helps. And we are on your podcast, so check us out on the podcast. If you want us on your dog walks, we will be there whispering sweet nothings into your ear as you scream at your dog.

Please do not say that.

My wife's going to wonder who I'm whispering sweet nothings to.

It's just a Brady and Thompson.

Yeah, yeah. We'll do the whispering. We'll do the whispering. Hello, hello, ladies.

Oh, last week was stressful, guys. Trying to get those videos uploaded from the weakest bit of Wi-Fi that's ever been available. It was like it was, I swear to God, 2002. And the thing was just tip, tip, tip, wouldn't increase. It was so stressful. So I apologize to everyone. Yeah, yeah.

Sorry if I've just triggered some people out there.

Yeah, it's PTSD. There are people convulsing on the floor with their memories of 2005. It was so mad, wasn't it?

I remember dialing up and like, you've got mail. It's like, I've got mail. Somebody's messaged me. It was so exciting.

Those were the days. It was exciting. And there were 3 chat rooms available on the entire internet. Yeah, that is what they say. Before Facebook. Praise God.

Indeed. Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah. Anything, anything exciting going on, guys? Anything you need to report?

Oh, I had a brilliant week last week. Sorry, guys, that I wasn't present, but you will be seeing a release of some great podcasts, uh, with video from Bella and Duke, uh, with some guests who are feeding raw, um, some brilliant, brilliant, um, celebs that are, you know, great backstories from wildlife photography and doing stuff across the world as far as wildlife through to athletes and their journey. And we've got an oncologist who's doing a lot of human oncology stuff at the moment and our very own dog risk Professor Anna, she won't mind me saying that she was also in on it.

We very love her.

And, you know, all of them raw feeding their dogs and talking about their journey and how they've got into it and, you know, what it's all about. Everything from tiny little wispy ones all the way up to big, huge, fluffy ones, all sitting on the sofa with us while we're doing the video podcast.

Is this the athletes? Tiny little athletes or big hulking athletes?

I'm talking dogs.

Or oncologists?

Tiny little oncologists and huge hunking great athletes.

Okay, excellent.

But they were, they were, they, they are waiting, um, the all of the say-so. So you will see the release on Bella and Duke. Um, I am just amazed. There's lots of stuff coming. Uh, we're going to be doing clinics at all of the dog fests, um, so there's a major sponsor there. And, uh, if you want a nutritional consultation, you'll be able to book in and we'll go through what's going on with your dog and what you might want to tweak, any other bits going. So if you're coming to any of the dog fests over the next month, I can see you there.

Yeah, what are the dog fests, Bren? Is this like a breeder thing, or is this like, is there major dog shows that's, you know, across the UK?

They're just major dog shows if you want to try anything from obstacle courses to just fun stuff to learning about nutrition to just having fun with your dogs. Making it really, really nice.

So, Ben and Duke are sponsoring these shows now. So it kind of goes to show the size of raw feeding now where now the main sponsors are going to be raw feeding and fresh feeding. And that's a good thing.

Yeah, really looking forward to it. So yeah, yeah. So that's, that's my news. It's been a lot of hard work just over the last week or so. So sorry I wasn't able to join you guys or even get these guys online.

We're lost when you're gone.

We're just able to get them together to actually—

I've been to save myself the hour of live, which I should have done. I spent about 3 or 4 hours weeping in the back of a caravan trying to get the videos uploaded. I shot the video in a heartbeat. I didn't even think. I just spoke and it was quite nice. I can see how people do it, actually. I can see how people do this impromptu, you know, it wasn't rehearsed. It just flowed out. I don't know if it was interesting or not, but it seemed to go down well. So got a good few views. So that was something. But yeah, just we didn't save ourselves any time without you, Bren. We are lost. We are technophobes. I blame Nick.

Nick should be able to pick it up. Blame it on me. Blame it on me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What about you, Nick? Anything going on?

Anything interesting? I got myself a new hoodie from Vinted. Have you come across Vinted? No. Vinted, V-I-N-T-E-D, right? This is not on topic whatsoever. I'm going to tell you anyway. My daughter now thinks I'm slightly trendy because I've got a Hollister. I'm told that that means it's Hollister, which is apparently really trendy. And I got it for £4 from— and it's as new. So what?

Yes, that's very cheap.

Yeah, vintage, guys. If you want some clothes of any description, from shoes to socks to jeans— jeans, very good place for jeans.

Is it just ladies' clothes they do, or do those come in men's?

That's actually very sly. Let's zoom in.

I want to see whether that's an original Hollister little thing. Let's just zoom in. Can we really see? That looks like one of those iron-on little—

could be, yeah. It's going to rain and the label will fall off.

Yeah.

Shall I show you what a real Hollister one looks like? I'll go and get my Hollister jumper.

I'm told that's what the kids really like. They think Hollister is the way to go. So I'm down with the kids. Okay. Up yours. Yeah, that's good. And hello to Michelle from Oregon. She's joining us on YouTube. Oregon, I would love to go to Oregon.

Good morning.

It must be good morning over there.

It would be good morning. Yeah. Michelle says it looks great. Michelle, I love you and we'll give you a very big hug in my Hollister shirt when, once we meet. Oregon is up near Yellowstone country, which is Where was Yellowstone?

West Coast?

It's up on the north near the Canadian border and slightly to the west. Yeah, it's up there.

Is that where Mark Roberts is mushing his dogs in the wintertime?

I think he's on the East Coast, isn't he?

No, he's New York State, I think. New York State. Oh, is he?

If you all remembered my talk about Yellowstone National Park only a few months ago, and I said there was 10,000 reindeer or oops, elk going through Yellowstone National Park. How many wolves can 10,000 elk feed? What sort of wolf population?

What if they decimated every single one and had it for dinner?

If you just let it be, what sort of— how many wolves would pursue 10,000 elk? They keep themselves in some sort of check.

You were listening to my talk, guys, I assume, because I've said this twice already.

Surely it's not going to be that many. 200?

200? 250? 100, 100, goes up to 120. It's in— keeps themselves around that. Anyway, there you go. Yellowstone. I really want to see Yellowstone. I really want to see those wolves. I really want to see those giant moose or elk. Is there any difference? I'm sure there is, but I don't know what it is. What's the difference between a moose and an elk?

I'm not sure. What's the difference between a buffalo? What's the difference between a buffalo and a bison?

They are different animals.

You can't wash your face in a buffalo.

Oh, that's—

I think you're supposed to say that with an accent when you come out with the—

Bloody hell.

Isn't that—

you're supposed to say it with an Australian accent at the end.

I don't know. Or you could do it London accent. You can't wash your face in a base.

Yeah, Michelle, we had a question. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, stick with it, Michelle.

Welcome to the show.

We will do it with subtitles one day.

This was— we are Raw Pet Medics. You'll find us on patreon.com/rawpetmedics. Nick might have said that already, but we do appreciate all the patrons that are there and we do the little extra bit on the side. We take the questions from there. And so thanks to you guys. And so we'll queue up a few questions for tonight and we'll do a few extra ones on the side after a quarter to 8 or so. So thanks to everyone in there that really helps us tune in every week and I spent a bit of time preparing. And on that note, guys, I do have a little something here prepared. An interesting little case study.

It just so happens.

Yeah.

On my way here.

I should have put with Conor Brady.

Yes. That's this one. This one's a doozy. Hang on there. Let me get to my screen. Hang on there, Brendon. Get rid of that. Get rid of this. Here we go. Nearly there. Okay. Yes, guys, check this out, right? I had this gorgeous little— I had this lovely lady, this case study, this client a couple of days ago. And this is a graph of a Chihuahua puppy. Okay. Now, I can't tell a lot from looking at that, but let me fill the listeners in on what they're looking at. And for people on podcasts, this lady has a Chihuahua puppy about 5 months old. Who suddenly went very, very lame and very wobbly, just wanted to sit all the time, back legs would flop around the place, you know, didn't want to run, very lethargic, very worrying all of a sudden. And they bring the dog to the vet and the vet has a look around and they're not happy with the shape of the dog, you know, a little curve to the spine, clearly not developing the way she should. When previously she had been okay. You know, she had a couple of months of decent health and then this. So they did a couple of graphs and I don't know if you guys can see anything from that graph. I mean, do things look straight and normal? It wasn't hip dysplasia because you can see the little hips. I'm not sure if you can see my pointer, but those hips are really stuck in there. So they look good. And you need to zoom in. Yeah. Yeah. So that's as much as I can zoom in. But what the vet kind of found was that the bones were paper thin. And in places, there was just the joint material that was needed to connect A to B just wasn't there. So like, it's like the bones and the skeleton hadn't quite developed properly. There was something up, something seriously up with these joints. I'm not quite sure what it was. But that was the diagnosis from these two X-rays. Now, I can't tell any of that because I'm not a vet. I don't understand. There's a second scan here. I don't know if that's gonna be any more useful to you. So that looks like to me like two tennis balls on the top left there. Anyway, so that was the diagnosis from the vet.

So when the vet sees these kind of things— Say the diagnosis again.

There was joint issues in the dog. The femurs were too, they're paper thin. You can see through them. So there wasn't enough bone density.

That's an X-ray.

You know what, maybe there was more scans and I didn't get them because I mean, there's no point showing me these things. These are no use to me, but they come in the email sometimes as if it might be helpful to me. And but I don't, I don't understand those sort of scans. But the vet said like the bones are very thin, things aren't developing right. What are you feeding this dog? Enter the issue.

Well, before we go any further.

Yeah.

Always to anybody who's listening out there, remember, a vet gets a test and 9 times out of 10, they've got to create a story to justify that test. Because that's what they'll do if there's an abnormality.

But they are obliged to tell you if the, if the X-ray or whichever test is normal, they are obliged to tell you that it is normal.

They should, but human nature is many of them will look at, you know, if there's just high urea on a test, they'll generate behind it, I think there's an issue with the kidneys, is an example. So always, always you can ask for a second opinion on those X-rays or on any test results. Don't be afraid to ask that question.

Very good. Good point.

That's interesting. That's interesting, particularly where we're going with this. Sorry.

Anyway.

Yeah, no, that's— keep doing that. Keep doing that. And because I'm going to want advice from the two best vets in the world. I want advice as to what you might do to help things along in this puppy because there's more issues to pop up here. So the vet was alarmed and said, look, you know, what are you feeding the dog? And of course the lady says, I'm home cooking for the dog. And dun dun duh, you have harmed your dog with the diet you're feeding. So just to give a recap, this is the information that we had on the 4th. This is the information that was presented. The 14th of April, the pup was picked up, 5 weeks of age.

5 weeks, that is not good.

5 weeks of age, not good. So there's the first warning. And then the second one, fed Hill's Puppy Savory chicken and rice. I mean, you know what I mean? You wouldn't give it to a prisoner of war. So that was, that was a week of its life till 6 weeks of age. And then the lady who is better versed in nutrition than obviously the breeder went, switched to home cooking for 3 weeks. Okay. For from the 21st of April. So the pup was on home cooking. I'm about to show you the recipe. And then there was the 12th of May switch to raw. Now these 2 things the 21st of April for 3 weeks and then about a month on raw. These 2 things alarmed this conventional vet with very little nutritional training. And she said it is highly likely that these diets were deficient in— insert bone-need nutrient— calcium, vitamin D, you know, whatever, and all the other bits and pieces, and that these diets would have been deficient without looking at the diets, that these things were deficient. And to jump immediately back to Royal Canin at least savory chicken and rice, whatever you call those products, you know, but a puppy, high carb, low protein, dry food, bereft of joint nutrients. And that would be the prudent course of action, okay? So the dog had been on raw for about maybe 2 months and then went suddenly lame early July, and that's where the shit hit the fan. So the vet was pretty sure it was diet related. And so I did a blood test and these are the blood tests there. I didn't leave any vital information there, I didn't. And these are the blood results. Can we blow that up, Brendan? Yeah, this is for people on podcast. What we're looking at here are two slightly high readings. One of them is calcium reading, which is at the max. You're allowed 11.8 milligrams in the blood, and this dog had 11.8 milligrams of calcium in the blood. So the calcium was high, which is unusual. So I said, okay, what's going on there? And then the phosphorus was quite high, 8.4, when the maximum would be 6.6. The maximum, you know, in 95% of the population would be 6.6. Anything over that, there's a warning. Hence it's in red there for people that are looking at this. So phosphorus, blood phosphorus was high and blood calcium was high.

And a little, you know, if you're looking at your own bloods, because you can ask for your blood results from your vet, Okay. And you just want a guide, a rough guide without worrying about the markers as to whether they're in the red or not. Roughly, you're looking at a 2:1 ratio of calcium to phosphorus is more normal.

Yeah.

So you'd see two parts of calcium. So if you divide the calcium number by the phosphorus number, it should be two. So it's a 2:1 ratio.

Yeah. Cool. Okay, so a little bit, it's a bit of a quandary here. What's going on? What is causing calcium and phosphorus to increase? Phosphorus, as soon as you hear about phosphorus, you start thinking about creatinine and bone and kidneys and all sorts of stuff. But this is a young pup, you know, 5, 6 months of age when this is happening. Why is calcium and phosphorus high? And then I asked to see the diet. I say, show me this diet that's so atrocious that made the vet very alarmed to take those bloods. Check out the diet she was feeding this pup. Just looking at this diet, you know instantly this is a very well-read person. This diet is phenomenal. You just know by looking at it. For people on podcast, for people listening on their earphones, this homemade diet, the girl, the lady's over in the US, so it's in pounds, but you know, 2 pounds of minced turkey, 2 pounds of minced beef, 1 pound of beef heart, half a pound of liver, you know, 2/3 of a pound of salmon in canned water, half a pound of turkey giblets, 1 pound of mixed veg, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, apples, celery, whatever, a sweet potato, half a cup of cottage cheese, 3 eggs with the shell for that bit of calcium, and then in goes whatever, a few chicken feet a week. Okay, so that's the sort of diet that this dog was on. I don't know how anybody could look at that and say that would be excessive in calcium. Deficient in anything. I don't know how you could pick a single vitamin or mineral just looking at that, guys. That diet, when I ran it through my formulator, as we'll show you in a minute, is slightly deficient in only one nutrient. And there's no point in even asking you if you can guess it because you probably won't guess. But I can tell you straight off the bat, that diet is phenomenal. You just know by looking at it. What a caring owner to go through all that effort to make for that. And it really bothered me that the vet turned around and said that was the problem. You should feed Weetabix with a cow's toenail in it. So that really bothers me. What do you think of that diet, guys, for a pup?

Is there enough vitamin E in there?

Oh, Brendan, you old cad. This is why we keep you around, Bren.

I was going to say NHS. There's not enough nuts, herbs, and seeds for my liking, but also some spices in there would be good.

What sort of spices, Nick? What sort of spices are you talking about?

You'd be putting turmeric and fenugreek and little bits and pieces, whatever's looking good. I think that's a great way to go, and that's where you're going to get your vitamin E from. You don't need much vitamin E. Yeah, um, tocopherols, very powerful just at low levels. So I would go with, uh, I would go with Bren on that. However, what is the bioavailability of eggshell? You know, everybody goes crazy about eggshell, but indeed, you show me the bioavailability figures. I have looked high and low and I can't find them. And because essentially it's just chalk, it's like calcium carbonate. And, and you don't absorb that very well. You absorb it very well from plants which have bioavailable, bioabsorbed calcium from soil through fungi and root metabolism and all that kind of stuff. But not so well from blooming eggs. You can get it from bone because it comes in with cow, with, with, with collagen and all that sort of stuff.

Protein. Yeah.

I'd be happier with the calcium intake from the chicken foot, frankly, than from the eggshell. But otherwise, yeah, yeah.

Beautiful. Yeah. I mean, as a— yeah, like, I mean, how big was that Chihuahua, by the way?

And what age?

5.5 pounds.

Okay.

5 pounds, 2 kilos. And what age? 6 months when the lameness kicked in.

That's pretty big for a puppy, I'd have thought.

Chihuahua.

Yeah, I could be wrong. I didn't— I don't know my notes.

Maybe 2 kilos. So that's a 2 kilos Chihuahua, which is quite a lot of food for a week.

Oh no, no, she would just make it all up in a tub and then divide it.

Yeah, yeah.

No, it wasn't like that. Yeah, I think Nick's— but I think that's a good thing with the eggs, with eggs with shell. It's always a question is, you know, eggs with shell is a poor man's substitute to the real mukbang. Koi, and that is meaty bones. You know, it's not just fresh calcium, and the bioavailability of that calcium is a big question for sure. You want fresh calcium. I mean, dairy at a minimum, but like when you're talking like cottage cheese, we'll add a bit there. But the raw meaty bones is fab, and it comes with good calcium and chondroitin, collagen, hyaluronic acid, all the other cool stuff. So there's no replacement for meaty bones. But she gives them down the bottom a couple of chicken feet a week. It'll probably keep the wolves at the door, and when you test the product, it does. So look, that was the diet. The point was, I just thought, that's wonderful. And if I was to show you the ingredients of the puppy food they wanted to put put the dog on where there's only 4 or 5 ingredients and it's wheat, corn, soy, you know, a 1% pig womb and, you know, and a vitamin and mineral pack. It's just ridiculous. So I can tell there's no point in kind of in wasting too much time here. But if you can, you guys see this little— Yeah, you can on the side. This is what it looks like from a mobile, guys. If you go to DCBholistic.com, there is an awesome new tool available for you guys. You'll go here, there'll be a homepage for you to click on. This is the kind of development area. So it's going to be a little bit slower.

But just say that— say the address again.

Dcbholistic.com.

Okay.

Yeah. And I didn't put in my little picture. This is just a test environment here because I was messing around. But there's lots of different things this can do. But just for today, I just want to show you this diet formula. So you correct you create your pet profile, age your dog, activity, weight, whatever, and all that kind of stuff. And it'll work out exactly how much that dog needs per day. Okay, but even sexier is that you can click into tools. There's lots of tools there. You can ask Brady questions, you can ask Rita Hogan questions. But this diet formulator is relevant today. So if you've got multiple pets, there'll be a choice here, but I'll just click the Duds profile. This lady's talking in imperial measurements, so ounces and pounds. You can choose a health requirement. Cancer diet, kidney tweaks, Dalmatians. If you, if you tick the low purine button, you can hover over the ingredients and find out what's high in purine, what's low in purine.

You can tick a box saying I'd like my puppy not to be lame.

Yeah, yeah. 6-month-old Chihuahua with a sore left leg. So, so skip the health requirements. That's another day. And you can do US meat or UK meat. UK meat has its own version of nutrient databases, but it's only about maybe 30-40% complete. But, you know, you can prioritize UK ingredients if you're from the UK, stroke Ireland, stroke Europe, because there's a French and German database I found as well. So then you go down here and this lady has, you know, 6-7 ingredients from memory. There was beef mince. Let's just say it's the 10% fat beef mince and you added in 2 pounds of that. And there was turkey mince, wasn't there? And we add in this. Let's just get this done live on air. Uh, let's say turkey mince is always lean, so I don't think about 2 pounds of that. Then there was, uh, some organ giblets, turkey giblets.

I seem to remember, which I was very impressed.

I have giblets. Oh wee, I hope I do. I do! Look at me! Yeah, buddy! How much turkey giblets? Half a pound of turkey giblets. What's that? What's in a pound? 8, 16 ounces. So 8 ounces. Why does anybody use pounds and ounces? Why would you bother?

The entire 330 million Americans all do. So you can't—

they do. I can't— I can't—

I can't quibble with that too much.

Yeah.

A pound of beef heart you can make. Look, it also— if you're cooking your diet, you can add in— add them in cooked or steamed and it'll adjust. And I'll explain those adjustments to you another time. I just don't want to bog it down. But it does adjust the nutrient content depending on what sort of water is present to suck away certain nutrients. So anyway, look, it's a start. Then there's— let me just get through some of these ingredients. Then there's fish. We go down to the salmon, lots of different types of salmon, and we can go to tinned salmon. What type of tinned salmon? Check this out. Pink salmon in water. Yes, please. How many ounces was it? Don't know.

12. You've not done brand by brand.

I'm really disappointed. Yeah, someone said that in my feed. Someone was looking for brands of some treat and I was like, what? I'll die. Turkey giblets, calf liver. Did we do liver? Let's just put in some liver.

You should offer for a small fee that treat companies can upload their nutrient profiles.

Wow.

Yes.

Oh, that's good. That's good. Any other ideas? Keep them coming, guys. Spit them out in the air.

Only £1,000.

An ingredient. A food product.

Yeah, this is— that's a great idea. So here we go. Celery, for whatever reason, who eats celery? My God, it warns you with its foul taste. I hate it so much.

I'll tell you what, though. I've just started putting celery salt on my steak. And it's just before I cook it, rather than using salt, salt, I use celery salt. It's very good indeed. Except my wife complained it was too salty yesterday.

So, but there you go.

Yeah.

Have you ramped up your meat, your meat stuff? I've got carrot and apple to put in. Have you, are you eating more meat these days, Nick? You're on a serious health boost. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, loads of meat.

Loads of meat.

We're having liver tonight. That's going to make half the people listening and watching vomit silently into their own mouths. And everybody else is going to go, oh yes.

Liver. What about the kids?

What's that?

No, we sneak it into spaghetti bolognese. Ellie will do chicken liver.

He's just given the game away there.

They don't watch this rubbish. So we put chicken livers in this. We say we— Ellie does. And then you mince it all up and they're none the wiser and it makes it really rich.

Interesting.

Yeah, interesting. Try it.

Here we go. 3. So now I've got eggs. I'm supposed to be able to put individual eggs. I've done something wrong there.

Let's just put in eggs with shells. Eggs with shells.

I have to add in the eggshell separately in my— check out my supplements category. I've got some.

Jane asked, is it the same if you grind up the eggshell versus you just put them in as they are?

I have an answer. I have an answer for that. Yeah, it's not. There you go. That was quick.

I didn't need ChatGPT to work that out.

Yeah, screw you.

I used my brain.

Why can't I add my shells? Add my shell, dickhead. I'm live on air. No.

Yeah, but if you do a 25-gram egg, how much of that is shell? Is that going to be—

No, you put in 3 shells. See, look, I've got a whole shell, 5 grams. You add that. Oh, it won't add it. I'm really cross. Okay, look, I'm just going to break this egg.

Have you got a limit on how many ingredients you're allowed?

This is going on a bit. I'm sorry, I didn't prepare.

No, no, it's okay. It's okay. Chicken. It's like Blue Peter, actually.

Yeah. Yeah. Where's my chicken feet? Oh, meat with bone.

I want to know who's the child and who's the animal.

There you go. I'm going to put in, I'm going to put in bloody 12. What's the treat? What are chicken feet? Let's say half a pound of chicken feet or whatever. Okay, look, it doesn't matter. The point is you've got all your ingredients there. Look, nobody's going to make dog food that complicated. Bloody hell. That's a serious effort. I was proud of her. 9 pounds of food it makes. Because I've selected here this dog is whatever I made up a dog, 300 grams a day he needs. But the main thing is the calories they need per day, not the amount of food. So this breaks it down for you. It tells you 9 pounds of food. And because my Excel thing, I've bummed that up. I just—

100 grams a day. So what's that, a 10-kilo Chihuahua now?

I know I'm using dudes here for this. I'm not using— Okay, I'm not using the ladies.

Just run with it for now.

Just run with it for now.

Yeah.

And this diet is 96% complete. Okay, so I like that little figure. It's like, as if complete means anything, guys. I am never going to be the person to scare the pants off you about eating complete food every day. It's just so vets that get their knickers in a twist about diets and people that have had the pants scared off them about completeness can go to this formula. It works from mobiles. That's why I have it in mobile view. So you can see how easy it is for mobiles. And we have a little addition here. Look, we are just potassium. It's pretty much got enough potassium. But if you are short on potassium, a little sprinkle of salt will have sorted that out. When you look down at the recipe recommendations, it'll flag it for you. It tells you add a pinch of salt for your potassium, vitamin E, pumpkin seeds. Well done, lads. You nailed the deficient vitamin, vitamin E. It's 5 international units in this recipe and AFCO says 27. But actually the AFCO figure is way too high because they're using mixed tocopherols supplements which are poorly absorbed and utilized. So you can actually use way less natural vitamin E, but still it'd be a good idea to add some in. So the recipe recommendations account for that. It tells you how much you need to add in. Yeah, isn't it cool? Here's another tip. Yeah, very cool. Like really detailed. I'd be happy with that to hand that recipe out. And then cool little things like this that I've been working on. This has taken a while. And so the 6:3 ratio is 8:1. And now I'm highlighting that in red. I'm going to start teaching people, get that down. There's no need for that. but it'll flag it here and what you can do and how much of what to add in. So the point was this diet. Okay, let's go back to the lady. Okay, just to stop the promotion of my formulator, guys.

Oh, I hadn't noticed.

Oh yeah. Oh, sorry.

Yeah.

Stop the promotion. That means I've got to hide that.

It's just €10 a month for access that you can cancel at any time. Okay, so that diet was absolutely phenomenal. And then I thought, okay, so what is causing the high calcium and phosphorus if that diet is spot on in every respect? In fact, it is better than any sort of dry food could compete with. What could be causing that? And so when you start thinking this way and asking serious questions as opposed to just throwing the client under the bus and making her feel like she's poisoned her dog for life, which is what really annoyed me, I said, what else are you giving this dog? By any chance, are you giving it any supplements? And she goes, 'Why, yes, the vet recommended I give it a vitamin and mineral supplement because you're home feeding the dog and therefore the animal is going to be completely vitamin deficient.' And so my natural question is, what blows out calcium and phosphorus, lads? What nutrient do you not want in a vitamin mineral supplement?

Dicalcium phosphate.

That's it, exactly. And I said, 'Tell me, does this shit vitamin mineral ingredient that your vet recommended have dicalcium phosphate?' It's made by a Zoetis, so I'm not one to—

that's how you write your emails when you're asking these questions.

Yeah, yeah. No, I'm more pleasant than that. But check it out. Look at this. Corn syrup. Obviously you need that in your vitamin and mineral supplement because it's Zoetis and they're idiots. And then you've got dicalcium phosphate as the pretty much one of the main ingredients. Guys, dicalcium phosphate is shocking. It hammers the kidneys. It's in lots of different products. People reach for it all the time. But studies show Dicalcium phosphate spikes blood calcium and particularly spikes phosphorus in the blood. The phosphate is the problem, not natural phosphorus as we found with kidney issues. So the dry-fed dogs that do better on these lower phosphorus foods are getting less phosphate in their diet, which is what's one of the things that's benefiting their blood readings, not the disgusting low protein approach they took. So the point was the one thing the vet contributed from a nutritional point of view was absolutely what you shouldn't be putting into the dog. They ruined a perfectly good diet by adding in dicasium phosphate. The pup has been on this since the lady started home feeding, and that's why her readings are terrible. So final part of the puzzle, if it's not the diet, then what could it possibly be that can make a dog stiff and sore and all strange looking in a young pup, 6 months of age? Does anybody want to guess what else might be going on that the vet didn't talk about? Talk about?

Panosteitis.

Oh, oh good, yeah, anything more sinister than that?

Yeah, he glosses over. Yeah, yeah, I gloss over that. Let's not talk about panosteitis.

All those flea and worm products that they're putting in, maybe even some other sort of—

these things worth mentioning. What about the vaccinations? This is a Chihuahua. A Chihuahua pup gets the same dose of vaccination as an adult. I mean, an adult dog— is there puppy vaccinations, guys? Do vets use puppy vaccinations dose-wise?

Same.

Yeah, they get exactly the same dose. And let's just do the math, as they say in the beautiful United States. So a puppy— so the first dose from, from a conventional perspective will be about 8 or 10 weeks of age. So a Chihuahua puppy at 8 or 10 weeks of age will be—

This was 5 weeks. This was 5 weeks, Nick.

What?

5 weeks?

Oh yeah, but then look at what follows. Actually, okay, so can you see how many times?

Yeah, yeah, this temper has been given 4 times.

But I just want to make the point that a 5-week-old Chihuahua puppy weighs what, 400 grams? I don't know, I haven't seen— I don't think I've ever seen a Chihuahua puppy. They'll be the size of a mouse.

Half a bag of sugar.

Yeah, they'll be, they'll be absolutely minute. So what are we going to call it? 250 grams? Is that fair? Enthusiasts, anybody? We'll call it 300 grams just for round figures. Okay, so the, the 300-gram puppy, which is the size of a mouse or a hamster or something, is going to get exactly the same dose, i.e., an entire vial of DHPPV, and they are going to get exactly the same as an 80-kilo mastiff that weighs more than their owner. The same dose.

240-pound animal, 250-pound animal, and a chihuahua pup, let's say, is half a pound.

Same.

250 times bigger. It's like me getting the dose of two African elephants. That's the equivalent.

So if the dog is 250 pounds and the dog and the puppy is half a pound, that's actually 500 times the dose.

Yeah, I don't know what a baby— what's a Chihuahua puppy weigh? I'd love to know the answer.

Well, that's what we were just discussing about 3 and a half minutes ago, mate. Listen, listen.

Do you know, this is surprising. A Chihuahua puppy, yeah, 0.5 pounds, give or £0.95.

£0.25.

He's catching up with you, Nick. He's having a moment.

I'll put the brakes on and I'll produce signs and diagrams for you.

Do with crayons.

Okay. Versus an 80 kilo. 80 kilos is 160-odd pounds. So even with that, you've got half a pound versus 100. That's a 300 times.

Yeah.

Differential, and they're getting the same amount of this immunologically active. That's, that's, you know, it's like giving a baby a bucket of vaccination.

And don't forget, 1999, reactions to canine distemper antibodies cause joint disease in dogs. And this puppy got this 4 times starting at 6 weeks of age when mum's antibodies were coursing through the pup. She got it at 6 weeks of age, plus another 3 weeks, 9 weeks of age, uh, 4 weeks later, 13, and then 2 weeks, 4— anyway, 4 times later. And a week after that last one that went in with rabies, yeah, after the mega dose vaccinations, the puppy was lame, uh, a week later. And the— and did you know what the problem was? The diet that the lady was feeding. It is so preposterous that this vet concluded that diet might be the problem when tools are available to this vet to show that that's not the case. When clearly, like, joint soreness and stiffness are some of the top side effects of vaccines, usually in toy breeds because they suffer the more, as Nico was showing. I was just so incensed to learn all this. I was like, bloody hell. I found that out at the very end of the thing because you only think to ask when you've been talking to them for half an hour, you're making your way through the bits and pieces, you know. So that is my little case study.

And I was like, yeah, the problem is— I'm just going to jump in— is it's very difficult unless that puppy falls injured or dead off the needle. It's very difficult to link any disease process following the vaccination to the vaccination.

Yeah.

In fact, they actually excluded in their study on vaccinosis any reaction that was greater than 3 weeks post-vaccine.

And yet, and yet the, the, the product is designed to last, you know, either a year or 3 years, and they exclude at 3 weeks.

Where's the logic there? The figure for vaccinosis is 10 to 28 days, uh, in one of the studies there that I had in my vaccine side effect article. 10 to 28 days. So even excluding from 21 days, that's not to study. So, you know, it's crazy. So the question is, guys, you guys—

I'm just going to jump in there again. So it's a bit like buying a car that is good for 150,000 miles and having a guarantee that will expire at 200 miles. That is the equivalent of what we're just describing here. So you drive it home, you go to the supermarket, and boom, you're out of warranty on your brand new Mercedes, whatever. Yeah, how crazy is that?

What can be done on these two issues, guys? The first is the pup is in a bit of a hames and she's a bit wobbly and we don't know what to do. And the second—

oh, oh, he's gone.

He's pressed the wrong button.

God, you found the ejector seat. Thank God, because he was going on so much. So, Brent, what are your thoughts? We've got 5 minutes. So what are your thoughts? Just Let's just, let's make hay while the sun shines while he's disconnected.

Oh no, he's back.

What are your thoughts, mate?

So my thoughts are, one, it's interesting. I can see bone structure on those X-rays. I don't see them as paper thin. I think there could well be joint disease. Obviously, looking at a DICOM image would be far better. I'd always ask for a second opinion if you've got severe illness occurring. I mean, just looking at the history without even looking at the diet, you'd be querying why on earth it got so many vaccines as a young pup, especially as a small breed. And that's, you know, when they've got, if they've got multiple joint discomforts. So what we call that is a polyarthritis. They're not often leads you to suspect an immune-mediated condition. And, you know, looking at diet to try and work out where that immune-mediated stuff in comes way down the list compared to some of the other medicines and things being added in, especially when it comes to vaccines. And that's not from me, that's from people like Michael Day, a professor of immunology, as he was back then at Bristol University. You know, he states in a book from 20-plus years ago that that's one of your major concerns if you're getting polyarthritis in a young dog and you're thinking of differentials. So I totally get where Conor's coming from as to why he thinks that's, you know, should have been highlighted by the vet. And yeah, it's a shame, isn't it? I mean, we're back to the scenario of dog walks into a road, gets hit by a bus and you take it to the vet. The vet asks what you're feeding it and you say raw and they say that's why your dog's in the hospital.

Yeah, got a broken leg.

Yeah, it's just gobsmacking.

How lame was the pup? Are we talking like a 1/10 lameness or are we talking—

Wobbly little thing, like she had a neurological disorder. Oh, that's all the wobbly.

So is it a lameness or is it ataxia, that is to say wobbly? Because that's two different things actually.

I don't know, I don't have that skill set.

Did you get a vid of seeing?

No, but I know who— no, because that's just me, I'd be straying into areas I shouldn't be. So I just move them on to people. There's a good couple of natural vets that I like to deal with. There's Gemma Hudson that has Dynamic Dog who knows all about gait, but I Before you even start looking at gait and what you can do about it, it's like, what's the cause of this issue? Wouldn't that be the start of it? And addressing that little thing, or is this common? Does this happen in little dogs that they can just have a bit of a wobble and they grow out of it?

Well, if somebody accidentally stood on the pup's foot, then the pup is going to be out of sorts for a few days, isn't it? You know, I think, you know, common things occur commonly, which is something I heard of a vet college and I thought, well, that's a stupid thing to say. But actually, it's really useful. If you've got a list of differentials, you've got 24 differentials for any given symptom. So the puppy's lame. So could it be cancer? Yes. Is that at the top of the list? No, it's way at the bottom of the list because of the age of the puppy. Has it been stood on?

Yes.

Is that at the top of the list? Probably is. Has it, you know, fallen off the sofa or something, you know, trauma? So that would have to be somewhere up there. So For me, it's always about putting things in context and I think getting a vid. Okay, so we look at videos of dogs walking all the time and you don't. You're looking at the biomechanics, you're looking at the biochemistry of it. We're looking at the biomechanics of it. So there's perhaps a slightly different approach there, but I think just putting a kind of a list of what, you know, falling off the sofa is a hell of a lot more common than vaccinosis. I think vaccinosis is way on the list, and with that number of vaccines in that shorter time, in that tiny, tiny little puppy, it would have to be. However, if you went to a vet college, it would probably not be on the list of 24 most common differentials.

That depends on if it was a single leg or it was a, you know, a limb, or it was— but if it's got polyarthritis, there's all sorts of other things like infections and things like that that they'd be looking at, and You know, there's a differentials list that sort of comes in at that point.

What about them? What about like, you know, is there anything you can do if you did think it was like some sort of vaccinosis? Is there like— I'm sure if Rita Hogan was listening, she'd be shouting at the telly saying there's lots you can do here. But is there— what do you reach for, for helping the dog to purge? Is there a way to— is there— are there supplements that anyone's ever used that can help the dog recover?

Absolutely, Conor, that's an absolutely Absolutely brilliant question. And it's 1945, so can I suggest we produce a cliffhanger and take everybody over to Patreon, Patreon, and we talk about vaccinosis? Because vaccinosis is a big deal. It's a big deal in the homeopathic world because we see it all the time, because we look for it all the time. And it's a big deal because it's not really very well recognized with our conventional colleagues. They are not wrong. It's just you only see things when you have eyes to see. Yeah, those things.

Yeah.

Okay. Yeah.

So I'd suggest why don't we have a little chat about vaccinosis? And congratulations, we've done zero questions on this, on this Q&A this week, which is a new record, which is a record. We'd have to do minus one.

Yeah.

Uh, question.

Well, I'm asking you questions. I've got questions. So that's, that's working.

Okay, let's do that. Let's, let's jump over over in Dupuytren's stenosis.

Yeah, absolutely, guys. Look, that was a good illustration. If you do want to find a little bit more about how to make up your own diet because you want to do it yourself rather than have a done-for-you diet, there are some great done-for-you diets out there. I'm not going to mention any companies, but I know a great one. And there are— but you can design your own diet, DCB, holistic.com.

Thanks, Conor.

That's another £100. How many times do we get £100 every time we mention DCB?

I'm not going to clear. That's £200.

And so if you really are interested in DCB holistic.com, that's £300. Could you, you know, make sure that you log on to DCB holistic.com? That's £400. I might make it to £500 by the time we get to the end of this. No, no, that's enough. That's enough. Hilarious. I would just say that it's always worth doing a bit of variety, playing around with some of those figures. They're a good guide. It will be a lot easier than you imagine at first to do it yourself with diets, just as it was for you to feed yourself your tea tonight. Okay, so don't panic too much. Think about variety. That's how you will get a great diet.

Totally agree. Variety for me is, you know, if you formulate the perfect diet, do not live on it for the rest of your life. Yeah, that's, that is the, you know, I need to put that disclaimer in. Even Conor would agree with that.

Yeah, I want to put that disclaimer in. I've always said that. I just, I hate when people get bogged down with this, but they're coming out of it with pet food PTSD, depending on what group you're listening to, or you're coming off the back of the vet's advice, and it's so confusing for people. So So this is like a, it's like moving people to methadone before we get them off it.

How about that for next week? Pet food PTSD. That's a great topic. We do that next week.

I thought you were saying moving to methadone.

Oh, methadone. Yeah, great.

Obviously that.

Anyway, let's do next week on methadone.

It's great.

Yeah, totally go there. Yeah. Pet food PTSD next week. What do you reckon? Yeah, I think it's a brilliant idea. Trauma from the whole pet food industry.

The biggest traumatic statements and myths you've heard about feeding and what to do about it or something like that.

I think that's a rich vein. That's absolutely brilliant. Right, let's jump over to—

Those of you I'm going to see at the Dogfest because they've already booked, I look forward to seeing you at the weekend for the first one. And yeah, just keep looking out for those posts and I'll see you at each Dog Fest for the next month. I mean, it's just a crazy month of your dog festing. Dog fests.

You dog fester.

Enjoy.

All right, take care, guys.

Bye-bye.