Diarrhoea

Good evening, everybody. We are here and we are going to be talking about diarrhea this evening. I am back from my travels and from my, from my, uh, food poisoning last week, which I think inspired the boys to do the diarrhea thing. So thank you, boys. You're so sensitive and so, so compassionate and childish. Yeah, but, uh, it's, it's it's heartwarming. We are the Raw Pet Medics. We are Dr. Conor Brady, we are Dr. Brendan Clark, and Dr. Nick Thompson, back from his jollies and his food poisoning. And we are on, um, we are on Patreon. Patreon, uh, look for us under Raw Pet Medics. Thank you very much for our Patreon supporters who give us a little donation every month so that we can pay Pete and Victoria so that we can publish all this information to the world. Our podcast is doing really, really well. You can find that on any platform that you care to mention. And here we go. Here's Bren. I just have to forget to— I have to switch my phone on because otherwise Pete's going to kill me. Uh, both Bren and Brady are ill. Okay, now this is, this is God smiting them down for taking the mick apparently out of me last week. Okay, so gentlemen, I would suggest be careful who you, uh, who you take the mickey out of. Um, this afternoon I was listening to a lovely podcast by, uh, by Brett Weinstein on the Dark Horse Podcast, which I have published onto the Patreon. So all our Patreon people, please jump onto that. It's all about vaccines. Fascinating. Amazing, amazing, amazing. Inspired by Dr. Brady here, who said, please, you've got to read the, uh, the— yeah, and it's absolutely brilliant book. So when he had this guy Forrest Moretti, who's the author, on, I thought, this is an absolute must. And it is a are brilliant. They discuss vaccine in, in some considerable depth, and it's, it's an eye-opener. It really is an eye-opener. Right, I'm going to put my phone down, and I hope Pete is not too unhappy with me there. And one of the things that they said, that Forrest Moretti says, um, never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes. And he says the reason there is that number one, you're a mile away when you criticize him. And number two, you've got his shoes.

Nice one.

Dad joke. Here we go. You can tell he's been on RD.

How about that, guys?

I like it. That's a good one.

Isn't that brilliant?

Yeah, that's a good one.

I'm going to remember that one.

So there we go.

We're talking about diarrhea because I had food poisoning. I wasn't nauseous, although all I could do on the Monday was wander about, listen to podcasts because I couldn't lie down, couldn't sit down. I wandered around with a bucket in my hands to vomit into, I hasten to add. And I just, I just literally for about 6 hours, I just paced up and down the kitchen listening to podcasts. I couldn't do it. I couldn't read, couldn't sit, couldn't eat particularly. And that was it. That's all I could do. So I got through loads of podcasts.

I was just going to say, it actually sounds like quite a nice day if there was a if there wasn't lots of people in the kitchen, because then you feel like you're getting in the way. It's just a bit weird because you've got your earphones on. But I was the opposite. I have— whatever I've had for the last 3 or 4 days, I had it previously 2 weeks ago. I shook it off. Rita Hogan was over here, we went down to the local health shop together and picked up a few bits, and I shook it off. It was— I thought it was something in my kidneys. Never had kidney pain before in my life, but I could feel my kidneys were sore. So, excuse me. Anyway, shook it off and Rita left. And then the last 4 or 5 days I've been in my room, not eating, lying on my bed, sweating, coughing, terrible migraine, which I never get, and, and sore kidneys. I'm lying in the fridge. Today is the first day with the help of painkillers and ibuprofen.

Wow.

Yeah, that's— I'm actually able to get up and walk around. So I was the opposite of walking around the kitchen, I was just lying in the bed. But I would say that that's probably where my wife wants me, because if I'm wandering around the kitchen, she'd be like, get out, go to your room if you want to be sick. Yeah, I've got a funny— listen to this, right? My head was killing me and I was trying to put off, you know, you take everyone's advice and there's so much advice you just don't end up doing anything and you end up just sitting there going, I'll be fine in a day, I'll be fine in 2 days, day 3, day 4. Anyway, my head's splitting, so I'm sitting there during the day and I took a bag of frozen veg out of the freezer and I put it on my head and I thought maybe this will help me in the back of my neck. I'm sitting there watching the laptop in bed, and, uh, you know, I can feel my neck's getting a bit damp. That's all right, the thing's defrosting. I couldn't care less. And I think, you know, more about it, it's getting near tea time, and I'm smelling the stuff. I haven't eaten anything in 4 days, and I've— the smells are coming up from the kitchen. I'm like, oh, Elaine's cooking something nice. I said, oh, I think she's cooking a dal or something. There's something with a lot of onions in it. And, uh, I said, oh, it's definitely a curry. And the smell was gorgeous. And I had invented, because I haven't eaten in so long, all this thing. I know exactly what that food is. I Oh, she's getting the jar from the press. That means she's actually gonna make the poppadoms. She's gonna put the mangoes. So I invented all this in my head. And then after a while, as my back got wet or whatever, I thought, oh God, what's this? And I took off my head, okay? Elaine always has a bag of chopped up onions, chopped up mushrooms in case of emergencies. And I'd taken the onions and left them on my head and they'd completely defrosted over the 2 hours of watching the movie and the whole bed reeks of onions. And so Elaine came in today, the patient was just gone with me. And she goes, He stinks of onion and it's all sweaty. That's disgusting. Sweaty onion pit of misery. So I'm going to have to do some serious scrubbing.

Hope he hasn't got some bacteria. Have you ever heard the one where if you've got earache, the old-fashioned thing was to, I think, cut an onion in half and hold it to your ear? Have you ever come across that?

Is that a dad joke?

No, no, no, no. Serious. Yeah, old-fashioned treatment for earache.

No, no, but I know another half an onion trick. My dad used to play a lot of poker every Saturday night, and there were 7 lads, and every 7th Saturday it'd be in your house. Yeah, when the poker was on, we were not allowed into the kitchen/dining area, kind of main part of the house in an Irish house. I mean, it was hard not to go in, and the lads would be in there all night. They'd smoke cigars, drinking whiskey, and when Dad's tidying up at 3 o'clock in the morning, he'd cut half an onion and put it in a plate of water, a plate full of water and half an onion. And when he came down in the morning, there was no smell of cigarettes in the kitchen. And this is all through the '80s. We wouldn't even know that the lad's been smoking in the kitchen. This onion water just soaked up all the garbage out of there. Yeah. And it smelled like a normal— now it smelled a tiny bit maybe, but I wouldn't have known. And Mum made him do that every single time because she couldn't stand the smell of cigar smoke in the kitchen.

I love that. I love that. I love that. I love it. Okay, Bren, how are you, my friend? You are suffering as well.

I'm on the drugs. It's fine. I've had the supplements. I've had everything. I'm just about surviving. I've got me nice warm duvet down here. Oh, lovely.

I'm in a sweating phase, by the way. That's why I have my shirt open. I'm going to have to open my window.

Sorry. I'm in the chills. I've got loads of layers on.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, listen, that's me permanently. I've got a t-shirt. I've got a vest under there as well. I'm permanently cold.

That's because you run your house at about 10 degrees C. Anything.

He's exporting the heat to the grid.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it's a penny a kilowatt hour. Yeah, yeah, worth every, every penny. Very much so. So, Bren, how are you feeling, and how long you been in it, and how long are you going to be?

Oh, nowhere near like Conor. I literally started coughing. I thought I'd just picked it up because I took a day off. You know how you take some time off and then all of a sudden comes down? It hits you. And I just thought, oh, a bit of a cough last week, everything was doing fine. And then all of a sudden I thought I'd got over it. Back to work yesterday, bit of a lingering cough, that's about it. And then today I woke up and could, you know, it was just like dragging myself out. So it's just Yeah, on came the drugs and everything else before I could actually get out of the house. But there we go, this is what it is.

Does Chris— can Chris take over the management of the goats all fine and dandy when you are out?

No.

What happens to goats when Daddy can't get up in the morning?

They eat grass.

Yeah, where do they sleep? Goats sleep at nighttime.

Oh, they've got little huts. Yeah, well, you see, yeah, they've got little huts that I've got for them, which are sort of the right size for these, um, sort of, uh, raw iron— no, sorry, the, the corrugated iron, um, uh, pig pens that you sort of see that people can move around for outdoor pigs. Just the right size for, um, goats to move them around on pasture, so they get to be out on pasture all the time rather than being in a barn. So lovely, fabulous.

Yeah, greetings to Joey Kent who's joining us all the way from the US of A, who's coming over actually next week. Those, uh, uh, he and Krista are coming over and they said they're going to be in London, invited me over, and it's just like I'm just so chock-a-block and London is such a pain to get to. Yeah, so Joey, apologies, and have a really fabulous time.

And it's interesting to see Patricia Lawler there on YouTube. My mom used to do the half onion trick in the fridge to de-pollinate.

Look at that.

I can't believe that that's a common— like, well, listen, the fact is it works. There's no doubt about it. But it's like I keep on saying, it's like the Febreze ad where the person's going around their kitchen spraying like the dirty laundry. It's like, just wash the laundry. Like, you know, the dog comes in, walks footprints everywhere, and the dog's shaking itself in the kitchen. She's spraying Febreze everywhere. My God, that's the wrong thing to do.

Well, thank you to Chris Gill, who's afraid not to get in on the act and on Facebook has put, Conor, we need to put slices of onions, place it on the soles of your feet inside your socks. Not because it's going to de-pong your feet, which I thought when I started reading it was going to say, but apparently it will sort out your cough. No way. Oh, wow.

That's worth a go, surely. Yeah.

I mean, deep on your feet.

I mean, it draws out toxins through your feet if you believe the hype.

Wow. Onion socks. Just put a load of onions in the bottom of your feet and walk around in them for a while. Elaine's going to love this.

And then tomorrow she'll email you and go, you fell for it.

Yeah.

I love it.

Sorry, not this again.

So it's a new flavor of cheese and onion. Yeah. Is he beet and onion?

Tasty, very good. Right, boys, listen, I'm going to take the lion's share of this tonight, but please do jump in. I'm sure you've got loads to say, but you're both a little bit under the weather, so I'm going to take the lead initially to talk about the Thompson Stool Score. Now, there are other— there is one more, there's the Bristol Stool Score, and that's a kind of a posh poster of it, but also there is quite an interesting culinary version, which is the, uh, I think some gastroenterologist was leaving Bristol Hospital or something like this, and so what they did is they made a cake for him, and that is the cake just there.

Could you blow that up? Oh, that's good, Bren.

Look at that. So number 1 is you've got, uh, sheep, sheep poos. Then 2 is reasonably normal, although those nuts don't look very comfortable. Then you've got a Twix, and then you've got a God knows what, and then you've got marshmallows, and then you've got kind of— they look like, you know, Rice Krispie, you know, those Rice Krispie, chocolatey Rice Krispie cakes that you used to make as a kid, look like kind of like that, which don't look very comfortable to pass. And then you've got 7, and I think the Bristol stool score is rubbish. Because you can't remember all that. It's like, what's at 3? So I've done a— well, I had to call it something, so I call it Thompson Stool Score. You can call it what you fancy, actually. But basically, it's very, very simple. A number 10 is a perfect poo, which is if you grab a pen and hold it in the middle between 2 fingers. This is advertising Lucilin, who we quite like. That was just a random— the first pen that I came across. Okay. And it means you can go like this. Okay, you can pick it up with two fingers for a starter, and there's a little solidity to it. It's a little bit like taking a nice— there's the cough, just so we don't forget that they're there. There's a little bit of give to it, like a sausage just off the barbecue. A little bit of give, but essentially it's easy to manage, really easy to pick up if you're in Hyde Park or Central Park or wherever you might be picking up poos for the dogs, which makes life a whole lot easier. That A 10. The other side of the scale, if we can take down the, the Bristol score, because that's kind of confusing. So forget it, because it's a 7-point scale. I don't like 7-point scales. I like 10-point scales, because last time I looked, I had 10 fingers. So it kind of, it's kind of a decimal scale. So 10 is perfect. A 0 or a 1 is no form whatsoever. It is literally and liquid. I always say it's like oxtail soup. Okay, so because that's kind of brownie and super, super, super liquid, so it's soup. It's way down there. Halfway at a 5 out of 10 would be chocolate blancmange. Now, you might think I'm just being a little bit graphic for the sake of it, just to be humorous and what have you. I'm not. This is a fantastic way of communicating with your vet. Once you teach your vet what your what you mean, because otherwise vets get people coming in saying, oh, it's got a little bit of diarrhea, or oh no, they're a little bit normal, or oh no, they— oh yeah, oh, really bad diarrhea, or it's chronic diarrhea. Oh no, no, no. You know, so, and nobody knows what anybody's talking about. But if you come in and say, I started the new diet and they had a 2 and now they're a 6, then everybody immediately knows exactly where they are. You know, they've raised 4 points on this scale, which means they're heading towards a 9 or a 10, which is where you want to be, really. So I think it's really, really useful. I teach it to all my clients when I'm talking about gut stuff. It's very, really good because you can put it on a spreadsheet and you just need to put a number. If you want to put a number and a color or a number and a smell or a number and, you know, maybe a bit of mucus or a bit of blood or something like that, then you can do that as well. But it's just a really simple tool tool to facilitate communication between you and your vets or your trainer or your nutritionist or whoever. What do you reckon, boys and boys?

I think that sounds very good. I think the 10-point scale is way easier to describe to people because people that don't deal in poo all the time struggle to describe it for definite. Yeah, 10 being a perfect poo that you can chuck into the neighbor's wouldn't be an absolute catastrophe, pebble dashing the kitchen. And then, yeah, so it gives people the— like you said, I've one major difference to my chart in that I don't call it the Thompson stool chart, I call it the Brady stool chart, which I think is much easier for people to remember and to like. I think so, it works for me better that way. So I use the Brady stool chart, everyone. That's the Brady stool chart.

My lawyers will be in touch in the morning. Dr. Brady. Wren, can you put up Tina Clyde's comment there?

Yeah, can do.

Yeah, just to put Brady in his place.

Just trying to pretend that it's been around for 20 years.

Yeah, whatever. Tina, I love you. Thank you. I owe you dinner or something for that. That's completely put him in his place, which is just where he needs to be, even though he's sick.

People need to, people, it's hard for people to kind of see the wood for the trees when they have the poos and it's hard for them to describe it and they don't know the difference and the different colors and all that kind of stuff and but sticking just with diarrhea tonight, yeah, definitely the first thing is, you know, what's the worst poo but tell us, Bren, diary in a dog, what's the first thing you're thinking with the dog that is suddenly explosive diarrhea, okay, not a chronically diarrhea dog, but acutely, what the hell is this?

Well, I think, you know, there's some really important bits we haven't really touched on about as well where it might be affecting. And, you know, if they're straining a lot and there's lots of mucus, is that because it's the large intestine and it's colitis, you know, acutely? Or if it's small intestine and there's just like loads of watery diarrhea exploding out without the dog even knowing it's going to happen. Yeah, definitely looking at small intestine. And then there's some really important parts here of if it's okay to treat diarrhea at home, but on caveats of certain things, and that is if there's any abdominal pain, go see your vet. If there's any blood, significant amounts of blood, I would be saying— and that could be just that the stool is watery red, and we'll talk about hemorrhagic gastroenteritis in a moment— but I would say please go and see your vet.

What does stomach pain look like, Ben?

So they may be praying position, they may just hurt if you touch their stomach, okay, and they go, oh, you know, that's stomach pain. Don't mess. It's just a case of if they've got really serious colic, we need them out of pain. Okay. And then the last thing is if they're vomiting as well as got diarrhea, you need to check one of the differentials for that is an obstruction. And so if they've got an obstruction, you need to see your vet. You can't be giving them something and hoping that in 24 hours, well, if it's not got better, I can go and see my vet then. If it's got an obstruction, that could kill the gut off. That could be a really serious situation. So those are just my caveats. I think the rest we can talk about. You know, look, the majority, by far the majority of diarrheas, 80% plus, will resolve with some home treatments. Okay. Keeping them hydrated, probably from a dietary transgression. They've gone and eaten something they probably shouldn't have. Okay. And that is by far the commonest. After 30 years of being in practice, that's what you come across is they've gone and eaten something, they've got a transient diarrhea. Pretty much these days we're trying desperately to tell people, do not treat these diarrheas with antibiotics. I'm sure, Nick, you didn't take antibiotics even with your horrendous stomach after Egypt. I think, you know, it's something you don't need to do. The first things first: hydrate, calm, and slowly reintroduce food. Okay, so those are the things to look at when it comes to when I first see a case with diarrhea.

Completely agree with you there, Brend. It's really, really good. If you want a really, an even simpler, because if the dog starts squitting, then you're going to be fairly panicky. If you want an even simpler rule of thumb, then if the dog is bright, you may not need to go to the vets. If the dog is not bright, i.e., you know, wants to eat, wants to get out and have a walk and, you know, do all their normal stuff, whatever's normal for them depending on their age. If they're bright, you've got time, and if they're not bright, you need to go to the vet. Okay, so that's just a a very simple— oh look, there's a thingy there. Don't do it. It's amazing, if I go like that sometimes it gets at balloons and all sorts.

So for those on the podcast, for some reason when Nick does big jazz hands and stuff, the screen responds and gives him a thumbs up.

He's set his computer up so that it looks at him.

That's his new agenda.

I haven't touched it. Giving him compliments all the time. If you guys want to have a little cough, I've got a quiz.

Okay, I'm thinking, guys, before you do, I'm making Pete's job very difficult here because he's going to have to bleep out all my coughs. So I'm not sure how much longer I should stay here because Pete's going to be doing this for an hour. So I don't know why I've suddenly started coughing so badly during this, but if I keep doing this for an hour, Pete's going to absolutely rage. So I'll try once more. So yes, I'll take a coffee break while you go do something.

Right.

Just to keep it light because you guys are on your last legs. Okay, so here you go, guys. You just have to— you don't need to— this is for everybody who's watching in YouTube land and in Facebook land. Um, I'm going to give you the color of certain diarrheic poos, and you have to tell me why. You don't need to write anything down. You can put it in the, in the comments at the side if you fancy. But it's not— I'm not going to take too long. It's not going to be like one of Karen's amazing quizzes, okay, where we actually wait for the answers and what have you. It's just going to be fairly quickfire because some of these are absolutely extraordinary. Okay, so we're going to start with if the— if you see green poop, what could that be? Have a little think. I'll give you 3 seconds. Green poop. Okay, so the answer is it may just be that the dog has been eating a bit of grass. Okay, now you've got to think, why is the dog eating grass? But that's another question. So green poop may be eating grass, although you need to— if it persists, you may be thinking about maybe gallbladder or other digestive things going on.

I've got a good addition for that, Nick. Go on then. You know, they've been eating Yeah, um, you know, a great— so especially where you've got goats or sheep or something like that that are on the fresh grass.

Yeah.

And your dog goes along and eats their poop, that can really cause them to come through grass.

Yeah, nice. That's really, really good. I was just thinking, when I used to work with pigs many, many years ago, they used to produce gray poop, which is not really on my list here. And I'm just trying to think what it was. Now we're talking 30 years ago. And I think it was something like, it was like, it wasn't coccidiosis, it's like Giardia, one of those things. Can you remember? Pig medicine? Yeah, great, great pig poop.

It's not Yersinia or something along those lines? Yeah, no, it's just a really common, my view, the sort of gruel and stuff that we used to feed pigs 30 years ago before tins came in. You know, I mean, you can imagine why it was gray, you know, just the amount of, yeah, horrible stuff that used to go in there.

Okay, next one. And this, this, I, there's a little, there's a, there's a, uh, you will get a commendation from us three and a cough from them too if you get this. Blue poop. Where— how do you get blue poop in your dog? 1, 2, 3. If they've been— may have been eating rat poison. Okay, so that's really quite a biggie.

Uh, you've got a chance to get it all the way through before they've got other symptoms.

Well, who knows? I've seen dogs get food through them in like 2 or 3 hours.

So, uh, yeah, yeah, yeah, methylene blue has to come in there if you, if you keep fish. Yeah, and you've got a spare pot of methylene blue and the dog's been licking, drinking that, or do it.

The dog's been chewing a biro or something like that. So there you go. So blue poop, that's blue poop. Okay, what about orange yellow? Have a little think.

Come on, we're waiting for your comments, people on Facebook.

No, we're not. No, we're not, because we'll be here all day otherwise. Okay, so if you're seeing orange or yellow, it may be just a bit, just, I don't know, they've had a bit of squash or something like that. But if it persists, it may be thinking about liver or gallbladder issues. So just kind of keep that in mind, have a little think about that. What about red?

Turmeric's come up.

Turmeric. Yep, yep, yep. Think about, yeah, What goes in must come out. Okay. There will be some modification of it. But if it's a really strong colour going in, like if you feed really pale chicken, don't be surprised if the poos go a little bit pale. Okay. So you just have to make sure that you realise what's going in will come out. Okay. Red poop. That's pretty easy. Okay. Because Brent's just mentioned it. So if there's any red there that lasts for more than a very short time or is of any significance, if it's like the mildest pink, and it's there for one poo and then never there again, you're okay, most likely. If it recurs, then you're at the vet's. So if there's red, then there's likely blood. Okay. Okay. So what about black tarry poos? What could that be? And the answer is it's digested blood. And this is where you've got a bleed. Perhaps you've got ulcers in the duodenum, up in the upper, the front end of the small intestine, and that's being digested. And when blood is digested, it becomes black, as in black pudding. Yeah, black pudding isn't red even though it's made of blood. Okay, because you get this oxygenation effect.

So that could also be, and this is a useful note, if you've gone overboard on feeding them a blood-rich organ like spleen or liver, then you can also sometimes get that excess tarry black soft stool. So just remember, what have you fed in the front end? Is there something that could be simulating that, that a vet who's not used to a raw feeder may assume is pathological, but actually there's something else going on?

Very nice. That's really, really good. Also, with the red, if you're feeding a bit of beetroot in the front end, that may may contribute to a reddy sort of color. So just be mindful, what goes in must come out, if you're lucky. Also with black, Guinness. Now, not that the dog is going to have Guinness, although back in the day for horses, I've heard one or two trainers say if you've got a slightly flighty horse, you give them a pint of Guinness before they start dressage or something like that. That's really good at settling them down. Don't try this at home. It's just a story. But with humans, the blackness can colour stool, just to entertain you. Oh, here we go. Here's grey greasy poop. So if you see a grey greasy poop, what are you thinking? What are you thinking?

Okay, so if it's grey or greasy, some people are prescient here because they've answered you earlier on. In the Facebook scroll about the gray greasy thing. Okay, right. So you've already got pancreatitis and, uh, uh, oh, oh, sorry, my dogs are just desperately trying to keep me warm. So, um, you've got, um, you know, maldigestion, all of those sort of things coming. Lovely.

So you're bang on the money, you bang on the money. Yeah, if you've got, if you've got kind of that greasy thing and if at a push, you could just, you know, with a glove, you could, you could put it between your fingers. And if it does feel greasy, I think you're probably vet territory there. I'd get along to the vet and make sure that the pancreas is, is okay. You may have exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, or in some way you're not digesting those fats. Maybe your liver's not producing some good bile to allow the emulsification of those fats so that they can be taken up across the across the gut. Okay, so final one. What about white bits of white? Now, if I say white, you're going to say, oh, it's because too much bone. Yeah, but that's going to probably make you really firm. So it's not that. It's you've got bits of white or maybe rice-like grains when you haven't fed rice for a long time, which you shouldn't do. Let's talk about chicken and rice in a second, Brent. But if you've got little rice grains in the poop and you think, crumbs, we haven't had rice for a long time, what could that be? The answer is tapeworm. There is Dipylidium caninum, if I remember my parasitology correctly, is a tapeworm which doesn't produce kind of squarish, um, like, uh, chads in a ballot paper. They produce these— they look like rice grains, except if you catch them fresh, they will actually crawl. Okay, which rice doesn't generally do. And so, uh, tapeworms, that could be tapeworms. So you need to, um, think about your— how you're going to approach things. The official line is that you should use a pharmaceutical, uh, a wormer of some sort, Drontal, Milbemax, um, one of these, Panacur, one of these things. But personally, if people choose not to use a pharmaceutical, then I would be looking at things like Vermex and diatomaceous earth, maybe some grapeseed extract. What do you do for where people have chosen after a discussion with you, Ben? What do you do for worms to hoik them out?

Specifically for tapeworm, Yeah, I think with dipylidium, what's really important to understand is the flea part of the life cycle. So have a look. You might want to use a great DermaDog product with some certain, um, uh, essential oils in to repel fleas. You don't have it to hand?

She's gonna love you for that.

Let me see.

I should— I mean, it's crazy that I don't have them handy.

Yeah, but insect, um, you know, just something that's a good repellent The collars, the impregnated bead collars, I had great feedback from a farmer who's used the harbour hounds collars that have those beads that you showed last year impregnated. Actually, he put them on his collies and he's normally picking ticks off left, right, and centre when they come into the farm buildings. Yeah, and it's sort of like he suddenly realized that this year, even though the ticks have been bad on his puppy, which he didn't have a collar for, amazing, all of the others have been clear without using anything else other than those impregnated beads. So, so I would say first things first, make sure you sort out fleas if you've got rice grain worms. Otherwise, absolutely agree, you know, there's some great products out there to improve intestinal health and reduce the intake of, or the facilities for the worms to latch on and be able to form adults within the intestine. I have to balance that with, you know, their risk of side effects to the pharmaceuticals, the risk of who's in the household, elderly, infirm, or young children, but there are lots of things to continually do worm checks and stuff for those. Very rarely do I find those causing the severity of blockage or diarrhea just because we're on preventatives often to improve intestinal health. And I find much less worms burdens strangely in raw-fed dogs, possibly because we've improved the intestinal health and we know that the larval stages desire an inflamed gut in order to actually be taken up and passed through their munching through the liver, up through the lungs, coughed back up, and then mature as they get swallowed back into the intestine. So they're not latching on in the intestine from whatever they've eaten. There's a cycle to go through.

Amazing. That's brilliant. Uh, Conor sends his apologies. He's just coughing like a, like a coughing thing, and he has gone because otherwise Pete is going to have a fit and he won't be able to enjoy the show. So apologies from him. He's gone. That's, uh, which is, which is absolutely fine. I said that to him.

And so is the Brady Poop score.

The Brady Poop score? Yeah, that's gone. Forget about that. Yeah, if it lasts till tomorrow morning, my lawyers will take care of that. I'm joking, you can call it what you like, it's poo after all. So, uh, absolutely brilliant, right?

So with diarrhea, diarrhea, diarrhea, so, um, I've got a question, I've got a question for you, um, because this, this is something that I've got a different answer for, I'm sure, than yours, but it's always good to get many different views. And there's loads of people out there, they will use chicken and rice as the diet of choice to resolve their dog's diarrhea. So come on, as a true hardened raw feeder, where are you at when you are recovering your pet from diarrhea? What's your optimum to help them out?

Okay, so chicken and rice was what I— when I was seeing practice, you know, back in the '80s, right? Should we go that early? I was going to say the '80s. That was the 1980s.

Half a century away.

Not the '80s. My children would say, half a century ago, did you know Queen Victoria, Dad? And all this kind of thing. Cheeky monkeys that they are. And so it was 1980s, right? Chicken and rice, I think, probably works because ultra-processed food hadn't been massively established at that stage, and there hadn't been generation after generation after generation eating chicken. Yeah, it was mainly beef and tripe and Win-a-Lot biscuits and, you know, Chappie and goodness knows what. Okay, or Pedigree Chum, remember? Look, 8 out of 10 breeders prefer it. Yes. You remember that? Yeah. Yeah. Do you know how they make pedigree chum? We should do a show on how they make these kind of foods like, like Caesar and things like that. Yeah. You know, sulfuric acid and they digest.

I don't think they'd allow us in the factory to do that. Factory.

No, no, no. But no, we'll do the show from here. We'll do it. And we'll just talk about this is how you make pedigree chum and we'll get a knife and we'll slice through it and go like that.

Okay.

And we'll go, 800% of raw feeders detest it. But there we go. All very exciting stuff. Now, what— I've lost my place. What was I going to ask you? Oh yeah, chicken and rice.

Meanwhile, Nicholas, he was barely in primary school.

Yeah, yeah, Brady was in primary school at that stage, obviously. So chicken and rice used to work. Okay, because dogs hadn't had rice very much and chicken was fairly novel in the '80s. Okay, since that time, you know, chicken— there's something like 52 billion chickens on the planet now. Uh, the avian flu is trying to get through those, but that's another, that's another kettle of fish. If you're interested in that, email me and I can send you a podcast disgusting. This is either— either Cummins talks about bird flu, was it? No, it was Peter McCullough. Peter McCullough talks about bird flu. If you're following him on podcast, go to his thing. He talks about bird flu. It's a biggie. I'm not going to go further because I don't want to distress anyone.

Come on, back, back to the point.

Back to the point. Chicken and rice. Chicken and rice. No, no, never, never, never, never, ever, ever use chicken and rice. And there, I think they still must teach at vet school, unfortunately.

But that's just like, I don't need to use antibiotics because despite what you do, 80% of them are going to get better. So, you know, despite the rice, they get better.

Yes. Yeah. Well, no, actually, there are, there are many a dog who cannot tolerate rice and there's, there's a substantial number who cannot tolerate chicken. So, you know, it's like, dog was getting better. I put him on chicken and rice. And now he's worse again. And so I've gone to the vets and they've given him metronidazole, for example, okay, which I can understand where they're coming from and they're not wrong, but if it's the chicken and rice that's causing the problem, that's a shame, okay. So beware, chicken and rice is yesterday's news. What do I do? I was thinking about this this afternoon. What I do is I will ask the owner, what's your go-to copper-bottomed fabulous protein. And it might be venison, it might be duck, might be chicken, yeah, raw, might be whatever. So whatever the owner knows to be categorically brilliant for the dog, I would go for that. Even if it's venison, which is considered a little bit rich, I would absolutely just go for that. Now, I think fasting can be useful. There's some, you know, I remember Penny Watson back in the day saying you mustn't fast a dog because the enterocytes need the glutathione to keep going, you know, you don't want to die off of your enterocytes. That's the lining of the gut. But I think in the last few years, Bren, we have been looking into fasting.

I think I've just heard a novel protein calling in the background.

Oh yeah, sorry, sorry, Pete, sorry. The window's open because it's middle of, well, it's kind of nice weather. In fact, I've had to pull down the blind here. Here's me going off the point again. It's beautiful out there. Here I am sitting in this dark room just to talk to you and you, Clarkie. So happy I am not. But there we go. We'll be out there soon enough and we'll get the dogs out and what have you. Anyway, where were we? Chicken and rice. Chicken rice. So forget chicken and rice because it's not a goodie. I will go for whatever, you know, to be really, really good for that particular dog. Should you cook it? Probably not. Can you? Very lightly, yes. Even if it's raw, even if it's got bone in, very lightly, low heat, yes, you can. Okay. I think there's quite a lot of follow your nose. In addition to that, and you'll probably back me up on this, we're thinking about slippery elm, we're thinking about marshmallow, we're thinking about maybe deglycerized licorice extract. Chamomile is fantastic, even chamomile tea. Yeah, if the dog's kind of, you know, don't want to eat anything, you can maybe mix a bit of chamomile tea, nice and strong, with a bit of bone broth. Bone broth is in itself full of glutamate to feed those lovely enterocytes. So, um, would you fast? I think fasting is probably a good idea. It's not compulsory, it's not absolutely necessary, but you know, and if you've got a tiny little Yorkie who's, you know, 1.2 kilos big, you want to be careful about fasting for too long. Also, we didn't say it earlier, it's if you've got a very, very small or very old or an otherwise very frail dog, you want to go to the vet a little bit quicker than you would with a hale and hearty spaniel like Artie on, on Brent's lap there. Okay, so the trick really is read the dog. Yeah, don't go to Google and read la la la la la. Is my dog okay? Yeah, okay, let's give it overnight and see how we are in the morning. And we'll go for something bland. Maybe we'll go for a fast overnight. You know, that would be my gut feel. However, people do panic, don't they? Bren, they do panic, and when you panic, you can't think straight. Okay, so, you know, you might have to talk to your mates, and they will say, no, no, yeah, listen, you know, heard Raw Pet Medics the other day, and Bren said about this and this and this. And therefore, if in doubt though, get to the vet.

Yeah, and I think, you know, the one thing that I would caveat this whole feeding chicken and rice to— yeah, I agree, you know, that's what we were taught, and You know, people went to lamb and rice, you know, as a novel protein back then and all sorts of things. It's loads of fat. Honestly, the primary thing you need to do for your dog when they've got diarrhea is rehydrate them.

Rehydrate them.

Oral rehydration. Yeah. Give them some electrolyte salts. So nothing more concentrated than a teaspoon to a pint, roughly, works out as a Himalayan salt or Cornish sea salt to a pint of water. You know, that can be a start point. You can do the same with bone broth. I love bone broth, as you know. Yeah. Thank you to Calmly and Boil and Broth who've supported us in the past.

Very nice.

Yeah.

Or you can make it yourself. You can make it yourself.

You can make it yourself. Absolutely. And freeze it so you've got it at the ready. And it's a useful just place to start. So I would tend to say plenty of fluids, that's your start point. Then start to add in some bone broths. Usually by 24-48 hours, I'd be expecting the diarrhea to have eased right off. You may not be having any feces passed though by that point because they're not straining anymore, etc. Nothing's gone in. So then you've got to start with a light protein. And even if you are used to— and I don't want to alienate raw feeders out there, but, you know, there are some that need to lightly cook foods. If you need to lightly cook foods, a little bit of scrambled egg, a little bit of, you know, some sort of light poultry, you know, that side of things is a place to start. I don't see that being a particular problem. The likelihood of your dog being sensitized in that first couple of feeds when they've got an upset tummy is really low. I mean, yes, it can happen, of course, but I could cross the road tomorrow and get knocked over. Is it going to happen? I hope not. Could it happen? Of course it could. Let's not deal in small possibilities. Let's deal in what is going to deal resolve 80% of our cases. And if that's the case, you know, I would want them to be eating a little bit of protein, you know, 24-48 hours after they have been starved. Absolutely agree with the herbs. Slippery elm, a go-to must if you've got, or tree barks, it also gets sold as for some people. I think we haven't mentioned, and I do love to mix in that powder mix that I would do on that first day. Montarilla mite clay. So the green edible clays, slippery elm, usually those are wonderful things just to help salve the gut that little bit. So you can get those really readily, inexpensive. I would then start to look at a fiber source just to try and moderate what's going on through the gut. You know, now there are vegetable options there. From chia seeds through to marshmallow.

Marshmallow is nice as prebiotic.

Yeah, anything like that. Yeah.

Yeah.

Of course, you know, with our carnivores, you could mean that, that, that becomes skin and fiber, you know, that side of things, skin and hair as your first initial meals alongside bone broth just to get them moving again. So those are the go-tos. A good probiotic You know, there's some great ones out there. We've used Phytospore in the past. There are some great soil probiotics from various places as well. I think, yeah, that's Phytospore. Now, Megaspore is the human alternative that's still available.

Phytospore you can't get a hold of. Sorry, I was teasing you there. I'll show you the Megaspore though.

There's one tub left in the— but there is a great alternative, which is Restore Flora. So Megaspore is brilliant as a sort of long-term probiotic, but there is actually, if you've got an acute diarrhea, then do think about, by the same company, something called Restore Flora. And Restore Flora is S. boulardii, which has its properties against Giardia and those sort of things. Alongside Bacillus subtilis, um, uh, HU58. That Restore Flora is a must to take with you to hot climes where tummy bugs are a risk, um, you know, from India to Egypt, um, you know, they are— it's certainly worthwhile having on board. So if you want to mix your own, good probiotics, so some sort of fermented food mixed with green clays tree barks and bone broth, I think replaces those quite expensive syringes of paste that you can buy. But of course, if you don't want to make your own, there are those pastes out there. Do watch out for the ingredients. There are a number that have palm oils or canola oils that they use to mix into those pastes, but the majority will be a green clay of some description and a probiotic. Antibiotic.

Okay, um, just talking about, uh, just to close, Bren, because we're over time, but yeah, um, just to say, uh, a client of mine used to work on the airlines, flew all over the, all over the place, and she swore by the following, uh, um, thing to do whenever you go abroad and you're, you know, you're thinking, oh, I might for food poisoning and what have you, because we had the conversation about food poisoning. Obviously, this is middle of last week. And she said, my dad, who was also, you know, working abroad a lot back in the day before, you know, grapefruit seed extract or, you know, all these kind of things that you can take to prevent things, he said a glass of whiskey or brandy last thing at night before you go to bed will see you right as a cleansing. Can you believe it? I could not believe it. Seriously. So, and she said the one time she didn't do it, she got food poisoning, which is n equals 1, really bad science, but makes a great story.

And starts you off on the alcoholism.

Yes.

Yes.

That's right. That's exactly right. So yeah, I just thought that was quite a funny story. So let's say goodnight to everybody right now. Sorry.

And next week, Q&A. Okay, so we're going to come back to a few things. We're going to do the month roundup of Q&A. So do join us, hopefully all three of us back on form. Sorry if we've been a bit brainfuzzed tonight. Nick's been the one on form. I haven't been brainfuzzed.

In electric, my friend. You're the fuzzy one.

Indeed.

No, you've been good. It's been good. It's been good.

Great. It's been really good to get through those. And so this is going to be our All You Need to Know series. We're going to start picking out a few diseases that you need to know more about and that we can give you some information on. Alongside, we've got our nutrient series that you can dip into, which are all about individual nutrients Nick, you missed out on Colleen last week. And then we're going to have our guests. We've got some good guests that are in the pipeline. So we're not going to give those away. Those are teasers, I think. And then from there, what do we— oh, and the Q&As. So that rounds up our months. So that's where we're going to sort of like try and try that for the next few months.

Wow, Bren, it's almost like a proper show. I know.

What's going on?

What's going on? We're forgetting our amateur roots here.

Oh, and I, I would advertise, um, um, so I am going to be speaking at, um, the Natural Dog Expo. Um, if you've missed out this year, maybe book for next year. It's a sellout. So thank you for all of those of you who are coming. Um, look forward to seeing you there. Um, they're going to be plenty of opportunities. We were talking about this over on Patreon with Conor last week. So, and Nick's joining us for quite a lot of opportunities that we're speaking through the year. So do look out on Patreon for where we're going to be next and hopefully in a town near you, maybe even Harrogate. Hey, Nick.

Oh, I'll tell you what, I was in Harrogate. Here's me saying we need to go. I was in Harrogate at the weekend. My daughter had a Lego thing up there. And so therefore I had a day while she was doing the Lego thing. And I like nice towns, but Harrogate takes the biscuit, okay? And this is a guy— I was raised in the Cotswolds, I know what chocolate box looks like, and I lived in Bath for 10 years, and so I know what, you know, really historic lovely towns and what have you. I was absolutely smitten with Harrogate. Great people, great food. I had an amazing sashimi, sushi, while I was there, which is not very Yorkshire, I believe. But it was very, very good.

No, it's very Yorkshire. We just can't afford the gas to cook the food. You just get it raw.

Aye, lad. Aye, lad. Do you want your fish raw? It'll be a lot cheaper. That's it. That's how they do it. That's a terrible accent, but it's nice to take the piss out of Brendan.

But there we go.

Yeah, that's why they like to shoot because they think it's cheaper, but actually it's more expensive. And I'm just going to do a little advert for me. I'm going to be at— here we go. Let me just look at this. Do, do, do. I'm going to be at the Tetbury Pet Shop on May the 22nd, uh, at the Goods Shed in Tetbury. And, uh, we're gonna have a right old night there. Um, lots of question and answer. It's going to be light and, um, you know, we're going to be getting through lots of really, really good stuff. So there you go, a little bit of pushing, right? Let's go, let's go to, uh, Patreon and just and see what we can do, Brent. Yeah, so don't know what's going to happen in Patreon, but something will happen.

Definitely something. Good to see you all. Take care, guys.

Bye-bye.