Episode 74 - Chomping into Pet Dental Month with Dr. Conor Brady — Pet Shop Girls with Sherry (Odyssey Pets) and Carly (House of Paws) - A Podcast for Independent Pet Pros

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Attention independent pet pros, let me introduce you to the Pet Shop Girls presented by PetSmart. Pet Product News.

Hey everybody, Sherri here.

And Karlee.

And we've got a special guest for you today. Having graduated with a degree in zoology in 2002, Dr. Conor Brady obtained a doctorate from University College Dublin, where he studied the effects of nutrition on the behavior and gut morphology of mammals. He was also a guide dog trainer and created Ireland's first raw dog food company. He wrote the comprehensive book, Feeding Dogs: The Science Behind the Dry Versus Raw Debate. On top of all that, he is one part of the Raw Pet Medics trio. We are humbled and excited to welcome dog nutritionist, writer, speaker, and consult on all things canine health, all the way from Ireland, Dr. Conor Brady. Yay! Okay, Dr. Brady, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for having me, guys. Delighted to be here.

And so, Dr. Conor Brady, may I call you Brilliant?

Oh, yes. I thought you were going to say Conor there, but Brilliant is far superior. Yes, we'll use that for the next 40 minutes. Thanks.

Yes, Dr. Brilliant. Well, the reason that I say that is I am a huge, huge fan. And the thing that I love most about all of the stuff that you put out is the valuable resources that you have out there for other pet pros. And just off the top of my head, one, of course, your book. Two, what you came out with recently was your courses, all the different courses that you offer, which we'll get into. Those are fantastic. I make my team go through all of them. And then this year you brought out Ask Dudley, which is your amazing AI tool. It is like I have Dr. Connor Brady in my pocket at all times. You don't know how many pet nutrition arguments I've won with Ask Dudley. And then all of the work that you do with the Raw Pet Medics. Like you, you are a superhero, whether you wear the tights or not, you are a superhero.

Yeah. No. Well, yeah. Nice of you to say. I enjoy it.

Good.

It's good fun. It's a pastime. It's nice to be able to forge some sort of a career outta working with pets. It's not easy, particularly they grow up with an idea of working with dogs, but it's not the reality for most. It's difficult to get. So isn't it great to do something that you love every day? So my tail's just wagging when I get outta bed in the morning. So I'm lucky. I'm lucky. I wouldn't say I'm driving a very nice car, but I'm feeling good. So that's something, isn't it?

Well, okay, so we want to chomp into Pet Dental Month with Dr. Connor Brady here. Pet Dental Month is next month in February. And so what we want to talk about is a few things that we think that you can help retailers with as they position Pet Dental Month with their customers. And they're talking about all of the different products in the pet space that can help them. We know that you know there's a huge correlation between diet and dental. So I'm wondering if you can give our listeners some tips around how do they position the appropriate diet with their customers when they're talking about dental health?

[Speaker:ANDREW] Yeah, I think the keyword, back in the day, zoo animals used to suffer terribly from dental issues, and it would've been one of the main reasons they dropped off early. One of the reasons they died early, 100 years ago we're talking. And it was a big problem. Foul mouth was a big problem. And I think Fagan, I think it was an Irish guy that first came across the idea of hassle factor. And he said, yeah, we need to stop feeding them chopped up meat and they need to really use those teeth properly to clean the teeth. As you can imagine, they're not supposed to be walking around with toothbrushes. They don't have the thumbs. So we know that that's a good way of cleaning teeth and we know it works in dogs and that kind of thing. We can talk about those studies later. But for now, when you think about hassle factor and then you look at the foods that we promote for pets, from kibble to canned to even pre-made raw dog food and lightly cooked food. There's no hassle factor in those products. So nearly regardless of the products that you, your stores, is promoting first and foremost, either way you're not going to have any hassle factor from those products. I think it's a good thing if you do move towards more real biologically appropriate foods which are high in meat protein. It means less carbs, less sugar, which stick to the teeth and fuel bacterial growth. So that's a good thing that you get away from kibble and canned. Those two particular for sure the worst of culprits, but there's still no hassle factor with pre-made raw, so you still can develop those, that tartar issues. And there's a few other reasons why dogs can get tartar issues. One of them that's becoming more and more interesting to me is when a raw-fed dog comes in with tartar on his teeth and it's like, we're giving them raw meaty bones, which we'll talk about later on, but it's not working. And now we're realizing that bad GI issues— people can jump to real food because the dog is gastrointestinal issues. And if that's the case, you can get this acidity, this bit of vomiting in the morning in your kitchen, which people often ask you about, or a little bit of acid regurgitation. And the body will pump calcium into the mouth in that case to cool it off. And calcium will cause tartar. And there's a few genetic issues. So the point is there's a few reasons why your customers will have tartar on their teeth, but the most likely reason is a lack of hassle factor, that's for sure. And the solution is always the same. You need to add hassle factor to the diet. You can still have whatever diet you believe in, but raw meaty bones a couple of times a week is 100% the, the, the easiest, quickest, most nutritious solution to the problem.

And so raw meaty bones would be what you consider hassle factor? Is that— I've never heard that word before. Is that Irish?

Yeah, no, this is— well, this is the one that's used in the papers, in the zoo papers, that they have to eat meat on the bone. Now, the most— in the 1980s, a lady found that the big cats were dying of colitis all the time. They're dying of bad gastrointestinal issues. And she said on top of the fact the meat has to be on the bone, you need to include the hair and the hide of the animal as well, because that actually reduces colitis and gut issues to near nil in big cats once they get the— so it's the proper probiotics, prebiotics. We talk about plant fiber and stuff for cats and dogs. How much of that do they actually need compared to proper animal fiber, which is collagen, which is most parts of animals, hair, hide, nails, teeth, bones. That stuff is hard to digest, but that's what forms a good poo in a wolf. And for when you're a high meat eating animal like cats and dogs. So anyway, so hassle factor comes from the idea of feeding the whole piece. So when we talk about raw meaty bones, like that would be, there's a number of different ways to feed dogs. You can feed them pre-made raw dog food, which is ground up or lightly cooked, whatever way you do it yourself. But other people feed DIY where they just feed piece chunks of meat on the bone, like a chicken thigh, a chicken leg to a Labrador, no problem. Duck necks are a wonderful kind of Somewhere between meat and bones. There's a lot of bone in the duck neck. It's about the size of a large carrot. It's the ideal bone for so many dogs, for, from cocker spaniel up to a Labrador. A Labrador makes mincemeat of anything small. Those small little bones won't clean a Labrador's teeth. He needs a bit of hassle factor. He needs like a lamb neck, lamb ribs, slightly larger bones for the larger dog, smaller bones for the smaller dog. The little Yorkie you have there would do well on chicken necks. Chicken wings, smaller pieces that he can get his teeth around and swallow. No point giving him a big beef bone. He's just going to look at it going, what do I do? Do I climb on? So I think like you could spend all day talking about the perfect bones and people worry because of the— a lot of fear coming from the vets about bones. But to stay on track of the conversation, raw meaty bones would be like from chicken necks, duck necks, turkey necks. Turkey necks are huge. Wings, those harder pieces, ribs, necks, and those meaty bones, dogs chewing them helps clean their teeth and they need to be raw. Meaty because they need the sinews to clean between their teeth. There's a great study. First of all, the two major safety studies, just to give people some peace of mind, there isn't any study showing that feeding raw meaty bones to dogs is bad for teeth. None. There's no studies out there that the vet is going to hold up and go, this is why we don't feed bones to dogs. It doesn't exist. Okay. It's all in the opinion of the conventional veterinary sector. We have hundreds of vets in the Raw Feeding Veterinary Society. One vet has 30 vets working for him, all raw promoting, all raw meaty bone promoting, no dental issues. I've got 60,000 followers, Habib has millions. We're not seeing dogs suffer these issues. So the people that feed meaty bones aren't seeing the issues. That should be enough of a tell to tell you that the people that don't feed bones are seeing all the issues apparently. So raw meaty bones are very, very safe for your dog, very safe. There's a great study from '68, 1968, still relevant. They followed 200 beagles for 6 years and they gave them pretty inappropriate bones. They gave them beef bones, beef femur bones, the leg bones of a cow. They're big, heavy, like the dinosaur bones lying around the garden. They chop them into pieces. Really dynamite-y bad advice. If you read any raw meaty bone articles, like, no weight-bearing bones, particularly from the big animals like beef and pigs. They're just too hard, they're too big. And animals like a Labrador or even a beagle will— one of two things will happen. They'll put enormous bite force on this lump of bone that doesn't want to break. It's designed to hold up a half-ton beast. They'll put enormous bite force on it and eventually their teeth will slip off the bone and clash. And it's that slamming together of the teeth, it drives the bottom teeth up into the top teeth. And because their teeth don't meet because they're carnivores, they slide past each other at the back. That's a pure carnivore thing to happen. Omnivores, we grind from side to side, but dogs don't. So that's how you know he's a carnivore. It's not for digesting plant matter that his teeth can't cross each other. So that when that happens at speed, it rams up here and splits the tooth. And when you get a split in your tooth, that's a major problem for a dog nasal tooth, and it's a huge bit of work to get that tooth out. So that's a fracture you don't want, and it comes from giving dogs the wrong type of bone, these big beef bones. Sometimes they're dried out, so they're cooked, which is the worst bone to give. So a cooked bit of cow leg bone in a pet shop— if any pet shops are stocking those, guys, you need to stop. You need to read a raw meaty bone article, and you'll see that cooked is absolutely out, first of all.

When I heard you on Rodney's podcast and you talked about that, and I reached out to you afterwards and I said, is cured cooked and you said, yes, that's heat treated. Yeah, I went into my store the next day, I got rid of all of them. I would never carry another cooked bone.

So few people do that. The worst bone is these big, huge serrano ham bones. They're yellow in color and they're wrapped in plastic. So they were cooked before they peel the meat off for hanging and delicatessen. So it's been cooked, the meat, obviously, or else we couldn't put it in sandwiches. And so it's been cooked. This is a pig leg. So it's enormously strong, reinforced with loads of iron and zinc and really hard that to break apart. And then after they finish with it, they bake it dry and clean and then wrap it in plastic and you keep it in your pet shop for sale. That is absolute dynamite. If you're going to pull— if your dog's going to suffer impaction where they get lumps of bone in their guts and they don't digest, it's from those bones. So when conventional vets say they're seeing problems with bones, not with raw meaty bones, they're not. And it's difficult to convince some of them that that's the case because they're so sure. But you didn't see the dog eating a raw meaty bone and that's what happened. There's no way. It was a cooked bone, or the dog got into a bin outside KFC, whatever it was, it's cooked bone issue. Anyway, they followed these 200 beagles for 6 years, feeding them these inappropriate hard beef bones, and they didn't find a single tooth fracture in 200 dogs over 6 years. So I'm like, I like these odds backing up what we're all telling you. And then a study in 2016 by Wade et al. These studies are on my website, I can send them to you anytime you want. My email address for the front desk is info@dogsforastudy.com. Karen will just pop you across the studies. But the one in 2016, same thing, big hard weight-bearing beef bones. That's how vets are doing the study. They're using the wrong bones anyway. But clean the dog's teeth. 2 feeds cleans like 86% of the calculus off their teeth in 2 feeds. So in 1 week, you can just reduce your need to see the dentist like instantly in the dog. So that should be the first course of action for anybody saying, now unless the dog's in pain, nothing worse than a toothache. Nobody wants that. If the dog is uncomfortable, of course, see the vet, get a dental if that's what you have to do. But if that's not the case, it's definitely not the first step to do. No, the first step would be brush your teeth. Let's clean them up and see what we can do at home. Yeah.

Can I jump in here? I tell people all the time that a raw bone is the best dental chew you could ever buy. They come in looking for the dental chews that are in the bags, those green ones, but, but I tell them about the raw bones and they look at me like I'm crazy. But I actually gave raw bones to my cattle dog that has now passed, twice a week. Yeah, I gave it to him twice a week for at least half of his life. I never had to have his teeth cleaned, and he died with the cleanest teeth I've ever seen. It does work.

Yeah, definitely. There was a third study that came out recently, and it showed that feeding these ridiculously wrong big beef bones cleaned their teeth. No surprises. But what they found was it didn't remove the tartar at the gum line, and that's an interesting finding. And what that tells me is, yes, you're feeding the wrong bones. Dogs need to pull up duck necks where it's full of sinews and chewing apart and ripping pieces off and like that. They do that at a carcass. They do it with their teddies, but there's no grind there. So if they had a whole duck that they were taking apart, their teeth would be polished in minutes because they would be pulling up because they can't chew sideways because they're not omnivores. So that sinewy, raw meaty bones, the bone needs to be right for the dog. Very few dogs can be eating a beef bone easily. So if you were giving appropriate bones, like if a Labrador was let out a chicken carcass now and again, and you could buy these for half nothing. You find a butcher that's taking apart his own meat, which is fewer and far between now, sadly, as they move towards central slaughtering and those disgusting, horrible, concentrated kind of feed operations that are leaking into the UK and Ireland now as well. It's harder to find these meaty bone pieces. So that is an issue for pet shops to stock up on. But raw dog food manufacturers are stepping up there and you can buy— they'll sell you £1 bags of duck necks. That'll be 4 or 5 duck necks in a bag. It's better for you guys that you buy them in a 20kg box or a 10-20lb box. You can break them up yourself if, and take them apart if you have the licenses to do that. It shouldn't be too tricky. But there's a number of different ways for you guys to sell raw meaty bones as a solution, as opposed to dental sticks, which are made on sugar and salt for teeth. So that stuff is made by the same people that gave you the issue. It's just a ruse. And so you can sell raw meaty bones, you can sell the solutions to them because raw meaty bones are not available to your customers from their local butchers. Local butchers, who has that? And most of these people are living in cities and towns without butchers. Butchers are the people that sell you meat in packets because the meat comes to them in packets from the meat processors. So very few butchers out there actually taking apart— there's more over here in Ireland and there's a few in the UK, less in the US I hear— of actual people stripping down carcasses out the back, one carcass at a time, to service the village. It doesn't happen. So that means the meaty bones aren't available to customers, but that's an opportunity for pet shops to provide them and the information that goes with it. A single page PDF.

How often do you recommend somebody feed a raw meaty bone to their dog per week?

If I was feeding— if they were— if the client was feeding dry or canned food, they need raw meaty bones every week. So one feed at least, two would be the advice, two, two times a week, because they won't do two, they'll do one. So if you tell them three, they'll do two or one. So I would be saying at least feed twice a week raw meaty bones, particularly if you're on the wrong diet. If you're on raw diet, you'd probably get away with it once a week. To give them a bit of a cleaning. But because dogs love them so much, I think what people are forgetting as well is that people think bones are just about cleaning teeth, but bones have a whole other kind of— let's look at the behavioral point.

They're entertainment for the dog.

Yeah, exactly. That was just going to say behavioral enrichment. So if you're in a zoo, it's like, what if you— in fact, it's law to give pigs a biting stick in these disgusting environments that they grow up on. They have to have something to chew. Chickens have to have something to peck because chewing— and rats the same, if you've got lab rats, they have to have something to chew. So chewing releases dopamine and it calms these animals down. Do you think that's not the case for a whole prey-eating animal like a dog? But that aside, burying bones and digging them up and they're covered in soil, that is a really natural process for dogs. They love them. They sit down when they're eating them, their heart rate goes down. So I think from a behavioral point of view, some people have tried to say that eating meaty bones will make them aggressive. And I think there's actually a tiny bit of truth to that in some instances. And that would be, the thing is bones are deeply nutritious, right? So they're full of glucosamine and chondroitin and collagen. Hyaluronic acid, glucagonclotinone, vitamin C. All the stuff that you need for building joints is in a bone, and dry-fed dogs don't get any of that. They just take all that away, and then when your Labrador's walking like a coffee table at 7 years old, they sell you ground-up cartilage in a capsule back. And it's— no, you should have been giving that to the pup from 3 weeks of age when he was building his joints, and every day since. So dry-fed dogs are nutritionally starved for joint-building compounds. They're like dilapidated old buildings and they need those bricks. So if I was a dry-fed dog and my owner suddenly decided to present to me a raw meaty bone, my first bit of fresh fat in years, fresh, good quality, not chemically preserved, horrible fats, but good quality fat, omega-3, vitamin C, which isn't in dry food, all these vital nutrients. And I can smell them in there and I'm eating my raw meaty bone and thinking, this is just so good for me. And in that instance, a 3-year-old toddles over and tries to take it away from me. That dog is going to be more likely to react. I would say that is a shame that that dog has been— that that situation even exists because my dog's back garden looks like a dinosaur graveyard. It's like he doesn't give a damn about bones. They're just the most insignificant part. It's like bread in the bread bin. It's just like, yeah, all right, it's bread, who cares? He doesn't even know how spoiled rotten he is. But that's a good thing. And that's the normal way to house an animal like this. But denying them the nutrients to the point that he protects them is desperately sad. We know 90% of bites from dogs happen from pet dogs and 90% of them are inside the home. So it's tragic, it's tragic that your own dog is doing the damage but there's a bloody reason for it. These are the most aggressive averse animals on the planet. They take some amount of abuse before they react. They're total group living animals more so than we are. So when a dog is biting I just think that's tragic and that's it. Or snapping or growling, I would say wow he really wanted that bone, what's up with you? So anyway, if there was any truth to that, that's where it would be. But we're not seeing any of that either, let me tell you. So yeah, the nutrient side of things is often forgotten. And now you don't have to buy glucosamine and chondroitin. If you're on a raw-fed diet and 10% of your diet is bone, you don't need glucosamine and chondroitin tablets when you get arthritis. If you've got arthritis, you've got inflam— itis of the joints, inflammation of the joints. More glucosamine and chondroitin is not going to sort it out for that raw-fed dog. You've already given them copious amounts of it. You can't just force more across the absorptive membranes. The body goes, oh great, more chondroitin. It's been pooing it out. It doesn't need that. It needs something else. Your money would be better spent on checking out your omega-3 profile or putting in some green-lipped mussel or looking for something else, as opposed to being sold these ridiculous cartilage— like, they can charge you a euro capsule, a dollar a book, a capsule for this chondroitin glucosamine tablets. It's ground cartilage. It's odious that they can cause the problem and sell you the solution at the same time. That really annoys me. That's why I hate those dental tubes. Chews. No, you had your chance and you caused it. You're not getting into my shop.

Yeah, I know. I have— we obviously, we have customers coming in all the time asking what's the best dental chew, and they're looking for a package. And I'm like, let me take you to the freezer because that's where the best dental chew exists. It's a raw meaty bone.

So yeah, I think deer antlers are just dry, hard. They look like you're asking for trouble with the deer antlers. I don't know much about that in the things, but people like yak bars, I don't know about them either, but is there a solution at all that people like? Hard, dry pieces of beef hide, maybe not rawhide. We're all pretty put off that since Habib did that awesome video. Maybe hard, dry meat might be a little bit of a chew. It's not going to wrap itself around the teeth too easy, but I think that that part of the—

Don't the enzymes in the meat break down the plaque and tartar too?

Oh, I did not know that. If that's the case, I've never even heard of that.

That's actually something that Dr. Becker talks about, that when we're looking at dental health, that the raw meat, like in a raw meat diet, raw meat is the only thing that has the necessary enzymes to break down that plaque and debris. Where the opposite with kibble, right, full of carbs, turns to sugar. I always explain that to my customer as it's a wives' tale in the industry that we've been told they need to eat crunchy food to clean their teeth. I always tell my more. That's like me telling you if you go and eat Doritos for a lifetime, you don't have to brush your teeth, right? It doesn't make sense. And then I say that because that kibble is so high in carbs and sugar, think about when you eat a great big cupcake full of icing, like your teeth don't feel clean after that. They hurt because you've got so much sugar. So yeah, Dr. Karen Becker talks about that.

Oh, I'll check that out. Yeah. Karen, I think there's probably truth to that. There's a few— there's lots of enzymes in fresh food. It's one of the advantages of eating fresh. And when you lightly cook your food, that goes away. It's the first things to go. Enzymes don't like anything over 40, 50 degrees. So that is interesting. And so the fact remains, like, lightly cooked food is still easier to digest. So even though you destroy those enzymes that help you eat meat, eat food, even when you lightly cook, it's still easier to digest. But the enzymes relating to taking tartar off, I never even heard of that being an issue. So I'm going to contact Karen about that and I'm going to ask more juice on that. That's a gem. So yeah, that's cool.

Hey, now the score is even because I was surprised that Dr. Karen Becker didn't know about Canadent.

Oh yeah.

For our listeners, real quick, Canadent is a seaweed supplement. So let's talk about seaweed supplements real quick. What—

which is yours, right? You created the Canadent.

Yeah, that's, that's our product. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Myself and a business partner have that business for— it's been going about 10 years. We've been running Canadent among a number of other products. When people think about seaweed and they hear the word seaweed, they think kelp and they say kelp and it's okay, which when you say kelp, what are you thinking of? Because true kelp is this seaweed called Laminaria, Laminaria digitata. It's the seaweed that grows straight up in big forests and the seals swim through it. Okay. That's the one that's very high in iodine. So when you're talking about iodine and we can talk about that later, it always comes up, is iodine safe? And I would say fresh iodine wrapped up in seaweed is of no consequence to your dog. The studies, the warnings and the worry is about isolated iodide coming out of a conical flask. That one can impact your thyroid. So if you're making dry food and you're adding iodide in as a powder to your food, you need to be very careful about what you're doing in that. I would never recommend it. It's not good stuff. Natural iodine wrapped up in fiber and whatnot doesn't have the same impact on the body at all. In fact, it comes out in your urine, studies show. So we know this because we look at the Japanese and their safety maximums for iodine is 5 times higher than the US and EU, which has a similar rate. I think whatever our figure was, 600 microns, theirs was 3,000. And that's their safety limit. And they eat way more than that because they eat so much seaweed. And how are the Japanese doing? Absolutely fine. Islanders are the longest living people on the planet. So it's like the natural iodine issue, because it's bound up in fiber, doesn't have the same impact on the thyroid. So when people start thinking about seaweed, they go straight to kelp. And I would say, look, that's one type of seaweed. It's one type of brown seaweed. There's 10,000 seaweeds in the ocean. There's more seaweeds in the ocean than there is herbs on the planet. And each seaweed contains all these cool compounds that we're just discovering, like fucoxanthin, These are really potent anti-cancer chemicals. And I'm not just saying that flippantly. Check out the amount of studies. Type in kelp for cancer on my website, DogsForStudy, and just see all these studies. There was a huge review study recently, just dozens and dozens and dozens, anti-cancer, anti-proliferation, anti-tumor, bump, bump, bump, bump, example after example. Every seaweed has its own little cool unique, like you've got red seaweed, green seaweed, some are nutritious, some are really high in fiber, some are high in calcium, and people are promoting them as a bone replacement. And it's like, what? Where did you get that from? Actually, I'm going to go off and I'm going to pause the seaweed conversation just to talk about that calcium bit. The temptation when it comes to bones is that people want to sell the replacement. They're too worried to feed bones, so they sell calcium supplements. Calcium supplement is just calcium carbonate. It's limestone grounded up into powder. It's just calcium. It's not glucosamine, chondroitin, collagen, hyaluronic acid, all the other stuff the bone is. It's just calcium. Same with eggshell powder. Yes, it replaces the calcium you lost if you take bones out of the diet, if you're making raw But eggshell powder is just a tiny bit of what bones were. You're missing all the other stuff that I mentioned. And it's the same with people now talking about calcified seaweed. It's just— it's nonsense. It's just one seaweed that's higher in calcium. That's not replacing bones. So but there is many different advantages to using different seaweed. So we have a range. We got into bed here with a seaweed scientist, lovely guy, knows more about seaweed than anybody. And he would say, oh, did you know that they used red seaweed in the famine in Ireland back in the day? Because it contains kynic acid. And we're like writing these notes furiously going, what is that? And this is one of the reasons why people eat so much of this red seaweed. It's kind of sweet, grows off California, but grows off Ireland and a few other places. And it's a delicacy in most countries, but it contains loads of kynic acid and that's an anti-helminthic. Worms don't like it. So during the famine in the 1850s here in Ireland, they used to eat, try and eat a lot of that to keep the worms away. So I just love little solutions like that. And another time he'd say, this is excellent for mucosal membranes. And I'm thinking, ooh, and people started commenting that this particular blend started helping their dog's weepy eyes. And then a year of development, just trying out different supplements and trying them to people here, free, free seaweed, try that. And now we have a weepy eye product, which we called Oculus Prime, which I love the name of that. And we have a couple of other things like when you've got gut issues, you can add in seaweed along with a few other bits with a biofunctionate we call that, and it helps with some gut conditions. But by far the most popular product we have is CaniDent. And the reason for that is because so many dogs have a tartar issue. So it's the easiest cross-sell to most people coming into the shop because first of all, you can talk about the deeply nutritious fact seaweed is like this nutritional booster full of vitamins, antioxidants, and cool compounds that exist only beneath the waves. You get that spiel out real quickly and it's deeply nutritious. And particularly if they're dry fed, they need that nutritional boost or canned food, but raw also needs it. You need iodine in the diet and amongst a number of other things. So when you're making your own DIY, you put in a bit of 2 grams per 10 kg, per 20 pounds of dog. That's a good dose, 1 to 2 grams. The dose we could talk about another time. If anybody's interested, they can email me. I can chat to them anytime. But so on nutritional basis, they need that. So, but the other side is that 8 out of 10 dogs are walking around with some form of tartar on their teeth. And so now you have a solution if they're worried about bones or even if they're not. CaniDent answers loads of those questions. It's a mix of 3 different brown seaweeds. It's got a money-back guarantee, which the shop can promote. So you can say to your client, we will give you your money back if this doesn't work, because 99% of the time this is going to help it. Bar the dogs with terrible GI issues and the genetic little mishap that can happen, which is really rare, the vast majority of dogs, this works. And you can see the reviews, they're just constantly, I cannot believe this works. And it does. A couple of weeks and you'll see that tartar coming off. Use it every day, sprinkle it on the food. And it's, it's like bloody magic. So it's been around for about 30 years, it's been heavily promoted, but only in the last 10 years since the studies started coming in can you— and there's lots of studies to support it— you can just leap on with it now. Type in brown seaweed tartar, you'll see the studies being done. And so yeah, so we love our one, it's really clean. You got to do your analysis all the time, heavy metal analysis, which we have that covers the product and a few other benefits. Clean Irish waters, there's no industry over the western side of Ireland, so it's clean water and Seaweed likes to pick up heavy metals and whatnot. So you have to be careful you're not getting in stuff from countries that don't have such a clean kind of— even the Pacific seaweed sadly has to worry about Fukushima. Even when that happened, now it wouldn't be much of a worry not to feed it, to be honest. I'd say they're probably over-worrying, but it's still enough that people would say, hmm. So where you get your seaweed from, a lot of it comes from countries that you probably wouldn't eat. You have to be careful. You have to be careful the agriculture isn't spewing out a whole heap of heavy metal pig slurry out into the ocean. You've got that in the Gulf of Mexico. Big, big problem. So yeah, good clean seaweed is just, it's like the number one thing. So we used to sell it in sachets. Now it comes in compostable tubs and you have it on the counter and it sells like hotcakes. It's cheap as chips. It's $20 for a smaller tub, which will be enough for a cocker spaniel for 2 or 3 months. So, and it's really effective. And the images that we were using, that was a bit mean, but it was effective. It was like You want to spend $300 on a dental scrape for your dog? A general anesthetic? All dogs can't be going through general anesthetics. You want to be avoiding that. And also now we've got loads of studies to show massive impact on kidney disease, heart disease, because it's hugely inflammatory to have an infected mouth. So it's like the bacteria under the tartar— tartar is just hard yellow, that's all, it's hard calcium— and the bacteria underneath that hidden away, and they're trying to invade the gum line constantly. So your body's constantly hosting an immune reaction. That's what that red line on the gums is. It's sore, but it's a constant attack. So animals with dirty teeth have a constant draw on immune system. They're more prone to infections and disease, but also all that crap has to be cleared away by the kidneys, which is the traffic jam of kidney disease. So if your dog has kidney disease, they have to have perfectly clean teeth. They've got heart disease, they have to have perfectly clean teeth. You know what I mean? If you want to avoid disease in older dogs, they have to have perfectly clean teeth to avoid the GAs. So cross-sell for everyone and every single dry-fed dog, canned dog. So I love it. It's putting my kids through college. Every single article I write, I put in an ad for Canidam because it's the most likely supplement people are going to need and it bloody works. So I can totally stand over it, which suits the brand. You don't want to be selling stuff that doesn't do the job. So yeah.

And I saw that you've done— you've made some changes with your shipping. And so can retailers in the US and in Canada. Can we— did your changes in shipping make the difference for us? Can we get it here?

Yeah, you've always been able to get it from us. Yeah, I've got 3 Canadian stockists.

Yeah, like, I know when I looked before, it was the shipping that was killing us, and so I was, I was hopeful that because the shipping—

I can't tell you that the shipping's improving. Like, we have a nightmare with the shipping. Something has happened to the US Post in the last 4 or 5 years which has made individual units from us to the US, which was a big part of my business for a while. It's getting less attractive now because there's too many people complaining and couriering it out is slightly more expensive. So people want the cheaper shipping, but they don't want the ramifications of it. So we have a couple of big people like Judy Morgan stock it in the US and so that harvested a huge amount of them. They're big doing good. But so the dream is that we just get one enormous kind of shipped stuff over by the pallet, which is what the dream is. The smaller boxes, it means orders can't be tiny. Small orders, you're going to get annihilated on it. But there are smart ways to do it. So you push the box up to 20 kilos. So whatever the maximum weight is for the cheapest rate, which is 19.9 kilos, you make sure that— well, like when you're talking to the likes of us, we will make— we will find the very cheapest way to get that out to you. But often it can involve getting that order up. Small orders is difficult across the pond, but large, easy.

Where do people go? Would they go to Dogs First?

DogsFirst.ie, and there's a wholesaler button in the footer. Just scroll down, wholesaler button, apply now, and Karen will see your details and she'll just press okay, and then you can browse the shop. And we have a whole heap of other stuff coming. The seaweed products is one cool thing at the moment. I know we're going to keep it dental, but the— this— these two or three other products we have coming to us are also dry. One's a yeast product which is patented. It's completely unique, awesome solution for yeast, a natural kind of type of probiotic that kills stuff on the outside and, and a number of other little bits and pieces. So we are going to open up more things to hook those stockists. And everything we do is about small business. It sounds trite to say that and everyone talks that crap, but I come from a small business background. My dad had a small little paint shop all his life, and so I can see the value in keeping small businesses onside, and it's always been good for my business. And in fact, most people that buy my stuff, it'd be small business related. So it's thanks to groomers, it's thanks to trainers. It's— so I'm more than happy to develop a few new products this year. And that's— so get in whilst they're— get the wholesale going, and we'll get the order size up to 19 kilos, which isn't the whole amount because most of the supplements are 300 grams in weight. If you're going to get the range in, or even close to it, you might just start with 3 or 4 of them, the most popular ones I'd start with. And we have a product there for anal gland issues which has a money-back guarantee as it's definitely going to help his anal gland issues. I can't believe that product works and it's just a type of seaweed fiber. So it's better than a gluten kind of, oh, throw in some muesli or psyllium husk because this is also anti-inflammatory and a couple of other benefits. Real simple solution, but it's a good little plaster on gangrene while you find out why the dog had anal gland issues. But anyway, sticking to the teeth. Yeah, that kind of product, love it. It's just cool.

Sherry, you look like you have a question.

I don't. This is just, So much information all at once. I'm just letting it flow over me.

I love it. There's so many little nuggets though. And I know when you've talked before with regards to CaniDent and the type of seaweed, it has to be brown seaweed. I remember you saying that. Yeah. So it's not just any old seaweed, like don't run out to your lake and grab seaweed to stuff down your dog's throat. That's not gonna work. But it has to be that brown seaweed kelp.

Yeah, you can't like— you can feed any seaweed to your dog and they'll benefit from it. And it's that easy. You stay away from the ports, stay away from any traffic, any boat traffic, but somewhere clean. You'd be lucky to have a clean lake because there's no throughput of water. So sadly, unless you live up in the absolute back of beyond, lakes are probably not the best source of seaweed because they'll build in heavy metals. But like the sea will be better. Any coast, if you're near the coast and the tide goes out, so you don't harvest the stuff off the beach, there's a number of ways to harvest seaweed. That's the first thing. It needs to be from fresh, clean water. And the second thing is it can't be dried with heat. So a lot of seaweed— the reason ours is successful is because we don't dry with heat. And that's really, really important. It's laborious, increases the cost of your product, but it preserves the unique little compounds in there that don't like to be heated. And so we know that the fresh seaweed, that dried seaweed is the number one way to do it, dry seaweed in powder. and it in treats is notoriously unstable. So when you try to put this seaweed into cooked treats, it doesn't seem like it'll still have a bit of an effect if you use a lot of it, I'm sure, because it won't kill all of it. And you use dry temperature to make your treats and that kind of stuff. But still, it doesn't like being processed. So that's the danger that sometimes if somebody is selling, oh, we'll sell you horse seaweed, brown seaweed, there's a number of different species, Ascophyllum serratus. There's like loads of different brown, but 2 or 3 of them in particular. And I'd be disinclined to tell you which ones they are at the moment. And, but Ascophyllum will be a very common one, and people can buy a kilo sack of that for very, very little. But it is definitely going to be heat-treated seaweed. It's perfectly fine for increasing the nutrient content of if you're making kibble or if you're feeding horses or something. Absolutely. But for teeth cleaning effects, you'll see it won't work. So that's something to keep in mind. So I would, if I was people, if I was, you want to tell your customers, oh, you just go down, if you're particularly a shop near a coast and you promote this idea, or give them out free samples. How cool would it be that you've got pieces of dried seaweed there and you dry it in your garage, you just hang it, hang it on a hook and it dries out over 2 or 3 days and it becomes hard leather and then you just pound it down into a powder and your dog will eat it, cats will eat it. They'll particularly eat it if they need the nutrients inside it, but most of the time you just mix into the food, don't give them a choice.

Okay, well, I'm thinking that we want to talk about the resources too because we're coming close to our time now. I want to make sure that our pet pros know about the resources that you have available for them. So you just— the probiotics course.

I'm definitely going to expand all that as an offering, and then I'm going to lure in the stockists of my products and say, look guys, I'm going to make my courses, a lot of my courses free to view for my stockists. They'll train your staff. I'm going to bring out a staff training course, which I've already done twice for two other bigger companies. And what I'll do is I'll dangle that in front of people and I'll say, there you go, here is 6 hours of content, mash my course together. So this is what I would want my staff to be, because there's nothing worse than somebody comes in going, I don't— my vet says dry food is the best for dogs. And you're like, oh God, here goes half an hour of my life. And so that is tiring and your staff get wrapped up in that. And so I, I am going to bring out a course where quick answers to certain things, show downloadable PDFs. You're worried about raw meaty bones, there you go, take that PDF, go off and go home, have a cup of tea and read that. Don't stand in my shop reading. And you can just cut through, cut to the chase really quickly with people. And otherwise you get bogged down into a little tit for tat. So I was going to bring out this course and say, hey guys, this course costs enormous amounts of money, whatever, $200 if you're not, but if you're a stockist, you get it for nothing. So that's going to be mutually beneficial to us because I want more stockists. So Yeah, more courses. I have an introduction to Raw, which is literally just working on constantly now, which will be 3 or 4 hours of every single question about customers that are new to Raw. And that needs to be easy to access. My dream was that there'd be an iPad, something like in Back to the Future where you can use this. You come in and there's like a glitchy kind of— there's Dr. Connor Brady in the door. And then would you be able to go up and go, new to Raw, kidney disease? If I had those little courses or little PDFs or tiny booklets, That's what my dream is, to give shops content and then my name will be on the content. So it's good for me to get into somebody's hand and it'll be good for you because you don't have to answer those longer questions and it's going to be promoting the products you have in store, not going to be mentioning specific brands. So that's what I want to do for 2024. So that's the idea of the courses and I'll be handing them out, most of them. I can't think of the ones I won't be free to stockists to train their staff. So that's, that's definitely the dream. And I think the New to Raw course will be probably some of the most important. So if you've got a new staff member, it's like you have to watch that course. It's 3 or 4 hours long. It'll answer any question that somebody can come to you and say, I don't think raw is safe. And you go, oh well, check out these 3 or 4 little nuggets of information and take that PDF home with you and show it to your vet. So I think that might be the way.

We do something similar in my store. We do a lot of education on TikTok. And so we've grown 55,000 followers on TikTok.

Oh yeah.

I know, right?

Awesome. Well done.

So, but we talk about this kind of stuff. We talk about raw meaty bones. We talk about adding garlic. We talk about biologically appropriate. We do the education. And so now we have a postcard in our store that we call the Dirty Secrets of the Pet Food Industry. And it's got a dog with the shush over his lips or the cat that's, ah, but it's a bunch of different QR codes to our videos that we're, when we have Right, so you could do something like that too. You could do your QR codes that take me to the PDF about raw meaty bones, or why raw is safe, or—

you're right, the idea of printing these things out, that's like bloody Flintstones stuff. Just a QR code and that thing. Yeah, that's much better. I'm gonna steal your— any other ideas that I can take? And yes, that's just wonderful. The problem is I don't use QR. If I see a QR code, I I purposely don't do it. I don't even have a QR code. Like, you have to have the app on this smartphone that I have.

You just need a smartphone with a camera.

Yeah, I just never— I think maybe I'm the wrong generation. I just see the QR code and go, I just want the PDF. I want to be able to sit at home with a cup of tea and read. That's just— nobody wants that anymore. Everyone wants it on their phone. 85% of my traffic is phone now, 15% on laptops. Nobody is looking at my stuff on laptops. So video content is definitely the way to go. I can see the hit rate. I mean, I've been writing articles for years and Habib was just saying, nobody's reading your shit. Nobody's reading it. It's like you need to be online edutainment. And he was right. He's been right for 10 years. And clearly you can see the difference in growth because I'm writing these big, long, nerdy articles that just like nerds like you and me want to read. That's the sort of stuff. And Sherry and everybody else that's probably listening to this, we're nerds for this information. But the vast majority of people don't care. They don't want to read big, long explanations for something. They want the baby and not the birth So yeah, QR codes is definitely the way to go. I'm going to take note of that. This is good. This has been very helpful for me.

I just want to say real quick, I'm definitely a Cliff Notes person, so I would appreciate bullet points rather than reading through an entire study.

Yeah, I read, but that's just me.

Yeah, I think most people are like that.

Yeah, I agree. They want microlearning. Most people want microlearning, right? Bite-sized pieces, which is why TikTok is a great avenue to reach pet parents because I can tell them in 90 seconds or less, why do you wanna feed raw food? Or why do you wanna feed a raw meaty bone? Or why don't you wanna feed kibble? Like 90 seconds or less. But there are some people that I will read their stuff. Yours is one of them. And so whenever I see a Dog's First Post on Facebook, like I will read the whole thing. All right. We, okay. First of all, Connor, I wanna thank you for everything because this was just a huge knowledge explosion. I love it. I love it. This is my happy space. We have, we have what we do to end our show is what we call our—

Are we doing the light— the lightning round?

No, she always calls it the lightning round. Is it the rapid fire?

It's rapid fire. It's very similar.

All right, so you— we're gonna give you 5 pet things and we're gonna give you 5 people things and you're gonna give us pause up or paws down. That's the rapid fire. Okay. Homemade dog treats. Paws up.

Oh, paws up. Paws up.

Okay. Kibble.

Paws down.

Yep.

Paws down.

Paws down. Freeze-dried.

Yep.

Yeah. Paws up. Doggy acupuncture.

Awesome.

Yeah. Paws up. And free feeding.

Ooh. As in as much as you like or different types of food orientated different ways?

A free feeding as in we just throw it in the bowl and the animal can eat when they feel like it.

Oh, I have a— my dog is an absolute pig and I'm just thinking it does like he will just— I could put a shoe in his bowl and he'll eat it. Like he just, okay, I'm eating shoes now. I'm a shoe-ivore. I have to control that dog's diet a bit. I'm going to say no to free feeding, but I can see where it would be very interesting for people but not at the moment, not for some dogs.

I'm a pause down for free feeding. I want to see a feeding window with feeding times.

I can't have free feeding, you know what I mean? I cannot have certain stuff in the house because I'll eat it all, because obviously free feeding doesn't work for me either. So no, it's too risky. Oh, okay.

On our people side, pause up or pause down? Pause up or pause down to winter?

Oh, down. I was— I'm in a previous life, I was born in a hot country. My wife loves the cold. I don't.

Okay, whiskey.

Yeah, I pause up.

We figured, right? You're in Ireland, for God's sake. Road trips.

Oh yeah, big fan.

Yeah. Okay, Mexican food.

Absolutely adore it.

Okay, that's one of my favorites. Canadian bacon.

Don't know it. Is Canadian bacon famous?

No, Canadian bacon's like literally ham.

Okay, in a pack.

Yeah, you've never heard of Canadian bacon and pineapple pizza?

I think people that put pineapple on pizza should be run over in a car a couple of times.

Yeah, don't run me over in your old vintage car.

I'm actually not against— that's something my wife says. She just spews in her mouth anytime somebody puts any sort of vegetables or fruit on a pizza. It's just meat and cheese, she says. But I actually do like a Hawaiian pizza. I actually do a bit of pineapple on a pizza. Ham and pineapple is just like— that was like Irish pizza. That's the way mothers in Ireland used to always make pizza. We make obviously the worst pizza. We haven't a clue what we're doing. Really agricultural. Cultural lumps of vegetables and stuff on it. It's like, oh, carrots on pizza, Mom, no! But ham and pineapple, I'm fine with that. Absolutely. A little bit of mushroom on it.

What's funny, I will say this to conclude our episode here. Canadian bacon is— I never even learned of it until I went to the US. It is something that the Americans call ham because in Canada we just call it ham.

So do you mean when you say ham, do you just mean sliced ham or do you actually mean the rashers you put for breakfast in the morning?

You know, like sliced ham. So we have sliced ham or we just have bacon. And that's the first time I'm in the States and they're like, you want your eggs with Canadian bacon? I'm like, what is what?

And what do they mean by Canadian bacon? Do they mean rashers? They mean like—

and then I learned, yeah, Canadian bacon is literally just ham. No, I'll just have some normal bacon.

It's a thinner cut breakfast ham.

Oh, okay. Breakfast ham. I'm still confused.

That has nothing to do with Canada, but the Americans call it Canadian bacon.

Listen, for the time I've never been to Canada, but I've been to the US a number of times. And the last time we were there, I have to say they do know how to do a big breakfast. And we love breakfast in Ireland because we don't have many things to claim to fame food-wise, like the Brits. We're just not known for food, but we know how to do proper breakfast. And what's that? Potatoes. Oh yeah. Oh, we know how to do spuds. Many different types of spuds. Like the way the Northern Inuits have about 20 different words for snow, we've got We've got a big range of potatoes. Absolutely. We're all over that.

I want to thank you so much for taking the time today to chat with us and help our other pet pros out. You are, like I said, a wealth of knowledge. Dr. Brilliant. That's your new name.

Dr.

Brilliant.

I can't wait to tell the lads what you call me. I'll tell my wife and she goes, you're such a needy loser. Like anytime I see a nice comment on Facebook, I go, look what this person said. Anyway, enough about my marriage. Yeah, look, thanks for having me, guys. And listen, if anybody's out there and they want to talk about the products, I am all ears. This is what this is why we're here. So they can contact us, hit the front desk, info@dogsfirst.ie. There's a wholesaler application button on the website, but Karen will help you out, and I can help train you, your staff up into how to use these products and whatnot. And I can't wait to show you what's coming in 2024. So thanks for, thanks for letting me talk about myself. I do, do appreciate that.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Yeah, we'll put your website in the show notes so that everybody knows how to find you.

Great, great.

All right, pet pro, until next time, this was Dr. Conor Brady with a wealth of information.

Bye-bye.

Bye. That's it for this episode, PetPro.

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Changing information for you right now is if you want to have the best nachos you'll ever have in your whole life, you put pineapple on your nachos.

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Yeah, I'm telling you, life-changing.

That's what I said.

Uh, can we just say something out loud for a second? Business coaching does not have to cost hundreds of dollars a month.

It really doesn't. And yet somehow our industry has normalized paying massive retainers for someone to tell you what you already know you should be doing, but not how.

To do it.

Exactly. You should send emails.

Cool.

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You should run events. Great.

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You should train your staff. Okay. With what system? That's why we created the Pet Shop Girls Off the Record Substack.

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