@RawPetMedics Tuesday Live: Q&A February 2023

Good evening, we're back, we're alive, we've had a great weekend and we're back with you to answer more questions. And, uh, hopefully, uh, you've put a few on Facebook, we've got a few to ask. Um, we are so looking forward to this evening, we are still buzzing from the weekend. Um, guys, what did you think?

Loved it. God, it was so good, wasn't it?

It was really, really good. And if you're on Patreon, have a look at the photo there. It was really good. You know, when Amy went on the stage and took a picture back at us and everybody went and raised their arms like this. Yeah, it's a great picture. Yeah, yeah, that shows you the atmosphere of the whole thing.

I think the way it was set up by DTC, Dog Training College, very professional. And like, you know, being held back while the music was there, they intro you and made us sound— it made you two sound good, which I thought was itself. And then, uh, and then they, they started music and it was like, on you come, when the music came. I can't even remember what song. Oh, because I'm happy. And then, and then it's like, and go. And it's like, oh my God, I feel like I'm coming back to walk onto a stage, which is what we did, you know. So it was cool. I loved it. I felt, uh, I felt important. It was, uh, it was nice, nice. So yeah, really liked it. Enjoyed the whole day.

Brilliant.

Brilliant.

So thanks to Dog Training College. It was a blast, absolute blast, and brilliant to see you all. So great stuff. So, and we had a great weekend too.

We had a good catch-up.

We did. We had a lovely— it was great because what we said was that it's a shame that we only meet up 2, 3 times a year, and it's because we have such fun. So yeah, you know what, we should do it more often, like every quarter we should meet up.

We always say that afterwards. We always say we need to do it every quarter and then it drifts out, doesn't it? But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's great. You get lots of things covered and then you get to have a nice meal and a chat and it's just nice. Even with the crowd though as well, you know, they're all into the same thing. They're all kind of nerds for info and it's just great to be surrounded by that because you can chat away about it and it's good to be in your tribe, isn't it? So it's just, it's uplifting for everyone, I think so. It's great, went down well, I think.

So we did have a really interesting meal on Friday night.

Oh, we did.

Do you want to say, or shall I say?

Because I booked it.

You should say. Yeah, okay, I booked it, but it was recommended by the lady who was organizing the event, okay? And these two, on my screen, they're over here, these two said, yep, looks great, yep, fine. It's called The Farmhouse. I thought, yeah, it can't go wrong with farmhouse. You've never seen anywhere that looked less like a farmhouse. Yeah, there was a Lamborghini parked outside, for example, which I don't find is that useful for plowing fields. Call me old-fashioned, but I think unless you're a certain guy off Top Gear.

Yeah, unless you're okay.

Yeah, and you've got a very flat field. So we went to the farmhouse, we sat down and and ordered drinks, and then they brought the drinks menu, and the drinks menu was the size of a receipt, this big, and had no alcohol on it. So inadvertently, we had made a booking at a— I think it was a Muslim restaurant. And so lots of lovely people who were there who didn't want to drink He didn't even want to be in a place where they served the stuff. And we were there as well. And I thought it was all right, actually. I was having a drink anyway.

We got through it. We soldiered on and we got through it. I was very proud of us.

It was a great meal. Great food.

Yeah. It's delicious.

I think, Nick, you added about 3 spoonfuls of chilli onto your—

Oh, it's horrible.

It tastes like someone's breath. Lots of Indian food. And I ordered the hottest curry they had. And my wife, I haven't even told her this, but she'll be really proud that it was nowhere near hot enough. So Ali, remember Ali, our lovely waiter, he said, right, give it to me. And he took it away and he brought it and it went up about 10,000 points on the Schofield setting, on the Schofield rating. And then it was hot enough.

I really enjoyed it.

I was sweating.

Oh, dire.

Brandon, have you got any of those pictures of the— of the— the—

yeah, no, we don't need to.

No, we don't need that.

Okay, I can't think why he doesn't want us to show it.

I'm in the background. I look like a ghoul. I look like a ghoul. It's like I'm haunting the photographs. What was wrong with me? I thought— but, uh, that was— it must have been— it must have been the light because it certainly wasn't my face.

It was the light, obviously the light. I don't think there was anything to do with the light at all.

Guys, we are Raw Pet Medics. You're gonna find us on patreon.com/rawpetmedics Uh, that is where we are. If you can drop us the price of a cup of tea or a cup of coffee each month, we deeply appreciate that sort of support. It really helps keep the show on the road. If you can, great. If you can't, no stress, we're going to be here anyway because we love it. And tonight is Q&A night, and as always, we are backing up on our Q&A system. Nick's got his fingers in the air indicating he wants to say something. What's up, Nick?

And, uh, podcast, you can find us on your favorite podcast. And how do you say that? Otherwise Pete gets a little upset.

Yeah, he's working on us. He's working hard.

He's doing some great work. You're going to work with us three. Yeah, that, you know, he's patience of a saint, I think is the accurate description. Anyway, so you can pick it up. I normally use Apple Podcasts, but you can use Spotify, you can use, you name it, you can find it. So if you like podcasts and you're sick of seeing us, then you can you can just put us on your podcast and have us when you're walking the dogs or other—

Michelle, Michelle Barg-Chadon, I don't know how to pronounce that. I'm sorry, Michelle, I just butchered your name. Any stain escapades during this meal? That tells us that Michelle has been watching the show for a year and a half and she remembers my shorts. And I still have those shorts. I won't throw them out. My wife won't let me wear them, but I'm just too attached to them. It's like that old pair of underpants that you just can't get rid of.

Which I was posting with stains on them.

Well, yeah, no, if the stains are probably at that stage, let them go. But a little bit of wearage, a little bit of kind of few threads, they're on your trousers, who cares, you know? But, uh, anyway, that's my jocks. So listen, uh, guys, we have an awful lot of questions to get through. Uh, can I just come out straight out of the traps with one which was kind of interesting?

Um, no, I was gonna— I was gonna say one that, that's not a— that's a question that's not a question, if you don't mind. I'm going to just, just say this just to get out of the way because, uh, lovely, um self-confessed silver surfer contacted me today and said, what about this business about vegan dogs living longer? Can you do something about that? And I thought, that's really interesting. So I had a little look at the Andrew Knight paper, 2022, and the first line— I'll tell you what the first line is— was alternative pet foods may offer benefits concerning environmental sustainability and the welfare of animals processed into pet foods. Now, right from the off, I'm really, really on the front foot there, and I really, really disagree with both of those. However, I've just read the most amazing book called The Great Plant-Based Con by Jane Buxton, B-U-X-T-O-N, and I, and I'll put it on to Patreon after this. And I've asked her to come along to come and discuss the, the, uh, the modern industrial vegan diets. If you just— if you don't want to eat meat and you don't want to eat anything, fine. But modern industrial diets, which is what we're going to feed our dogs, yeah, we're not going to feed them lettuce, we're going to feed them industrially produced product. And I really have a problem with that. And I would love to get Jane to come on because she's done a vast amount of work on the human side of things. So, and then we can contrast it with that, with what we know about what's happening in the vegan food system. Because we all watched Mike Davis, didn't we, at the London Vet Show? Ben, you may have even watched it twice.

I have seen him a couple of times on that.

Yeah, on, on, and that was his take on veganism. So I think it's a really, really big topic, and we are going to be talking about dog dogs being vegans. Okay, what you want to feed yourself, totally up to you. We're going to talk about dogs because I think that's really, really important. And that's what we do. That's because we're called the Raw Pet Medics, not the Raw Human Medics. Conor, over to you.

That study you're alluding to there, which we do need to do a whole night on vegan diets. We touched on that Knight study when it came out. Knight is an advocate for these sort of studies. This study is on the pyramid of quality of studies is the lowest you can do. It's a survey of people, okay? So they asked vegans, did they think that their dogs were healthy? And the vegans said yeah. And so they just thought this is fab. It made the front of the Vet Times because the vegans thought their dogs were living longer. How they managed to assess that and what they were comparing it to is not mentioned by the paper. And, uh, so that they banded around the figure vegan dogs live 2 years longer. That was the headline on the vegan websites, vegetarian websites, Vet Times, they all push this on the back of a survey. Now that was a survey of 2,500 dog owners. Surveys that don't make the front of the Vet Times are surveys with 16,500 dog owners that show raw-fed dogs have less gastrointestinal disease, pups born of raw-fed mothers have less atopy, and all those findings. Raw dog food is incredibly safe. They didn't quite manage to publish that one, but they published Knight's study. Here is a quote from Knight himself. We'll come back to it another time. In a verticong from NICE, they found in their— talking to 2,500 dog owners, about 10% of which are feeding raw dog food, not a lot— they found the raw meat diet appeared to have marginally better health outcomes, he said. But those dogs were younger and it gives them a health advantage. I just love that. The raw meat diet appeared to have marginally better health outcomes. Yeah, and how they measured them was just absolutely ridiculous. You're right, let's do a NICE on vegan pet foods and talk about that. There's so much to cover.

And the thing is, if they've got a 2-year increase in longevity, how did they do that in a 1-year study? Because his study was a 1-year study.

Do you think they will live longer? I think they will live longer. By how much? 2 years. Oh, I'll write that down. That's good science.

Good science.

So look, we've got a number of questions here we've got to get through. We're quarter past here already.

So yeah, go for it. Go for it.

First one, owner of a spaniel, Happy Tail, as she calls it, which I think some of these are going to call swimmer's tail as well. What is it? Why does he have it? What can you do?

Well, it's an inflammatory disease. It's basically overworking of the muscles at the base of the tail. Limber tail, lumber tail, I've heard it called all sorts. Basically, the tail becomes limp and almost is clamped next to the anus straight down. They won't lift it up. They find it really painful to lift it up. If you try and lift it, it really hurts. Found in a lot of working breeds, particularly, especially if they've got a longer tail. So Labradors are particularly bad at this, heavy tails, and spaniels that don't have docked tails. Okay, as well, it's a risk, and it's almost in that frenetic wagging action that they often will have as they're seeking out birds to flush, etc. If they do that and just keep going and keep going And they go in and out of cold water, seems to aggravate it, hence swimmer's tail. Seems to be the point where it almost cramps the muscle. So you've got to think about, you know, have you got some Arnica, Ruta, a few other things like that, slowly getting the warmth back into there, keeping the blood flow. But it's this inflammatory change. So remember, the muscles are enclosed in a tight sheath of fibrous material. So as they become inflamed, it restricts the blood flow even more because they are restricted in that, and it can be really, really uncomfortable. So you've sometimes just got to try and not warm them. Don't heat them up too much because they'll suddenly try and burst through that fibrous layer, and that's just not going to happen. So it can be really uncomfortable. So pain relief, of one form or another. Rest, just keep them hydrated, make sure that they are just kept so that they are dried off and calm, and it should resolve within 12 hours.

Okay, and homeopathics, some Ruta, some Arnica, good idea. 200, just a really, really impressive dose.

I might just post a little video. I did a video probably about 3, 4 years ago of that. So put Artie on a picnic table and just showed what it looked like.

And just a couple of thoughts from a herbal perspective. I'd be thinking about boswellia as a really potent anti-inflammatory. I'd be thinking about perhaps ginkgo or xanthoxylum to promote blood supply to the area and maybe a bit of ginger as a warming element. But I would pose to you gentlemen about Why is this happening with these dogs? If dogs have been swimming, or have dogs been swimming in rivers throughout evolution, why all of a sudden do we see this in working dogs? Are we— is, is that whole thing about chasing birds again and again and again into cold water, is that artificial? I think it probably is, but what I'm just trying to get my head around Why are we seeing this when they're doing something that could be construed as natural? Or is it, it's natural if they do it for 20 minutes to get some prey and then go back to their cave and to share it with the pack or something, but to do it again and again and again, you know, 40 times in a day, perhaps that's what drives it.

It's just, it can be overworking, can't it? You know, they won't do it in one go, but it's just that length of time working. It's particularly in the cold part of the season that's an issue. And if you've got dogs that just doing it before the shoots wouldn't necessarily last that long or the, you know, the drive. But for, for Artie, it was just, we were out on a long day's walk on a cold day, actually up in Northumberland going through one of the National Trust parks. She is a devil for wanting to, you know, swim in every lake, river, stream. You know, yeah, it was cold. You know, she's used to it. The birds were out, so she was doing her thing. And that's when, you know, she got struck. And remember, Artie's not got a docked tail, so a lot of these spaniels have a shorter tail docked. It's not going to have the weight on it as they're wagging, etc. And it is about overworking it. So the other really good remedy in those circumstances is actually Nux vomica. If you've been overworking muscle, if you've been digging the garden and you've got a really stiff back from overworking, so Nux vomica is really good for over excess, you know, excess alcohol, yeah, excess foods that make you nauseous, yes, but actually also excess exercise, really good remedy in those circumstances.

Interesting, very good. Somebody said, could it be a mineral deficiency? You know, who knows?

Yeah, electrolyte balance, we always thought about, is it truly a cramp? I feel that actually it's more this inflammatory, you know, it's over excess you suddenly get an inflammatory process inside a tightly sheathed muscle group. Okay. And that's the bit that really is problematic. It's one of those things, actually, that if you have a motorbike accident, not that, you know, many people think that this is relevant at all, but if you have a massive motorbike accident, you come off and you get a dead leg and bruised. Sometimes what they actually have to do is cut through your biceps muscle to release the blood because if they— if you don't do that, you know, and there's a big hematoma forming inside the muscle mass, if you don't let that pressure out, it actually kills off a lot of the muscle fibers. And then you've got months and months of rehab to go on your leg muscles to get them back. They have to release the pressure by effectively taking a scalpel to open up the fibers.

Interesting. I had a very bad motorbike accident. Did I ever tell you about this? I did my PhD at nighttime for the last 2 years. I just did it at nighttime when everyone was gone, from 10 o'clock at night to about 8 o'clock in the morning. People come in then, but you've got full use of the lab and all the equipment when they aren't there. And, uh, so I used to work at nighttime. It suited me and a couple of others. And I was coming out about 5 or 6 in the morning on my motorbike, and I was stopped at these lights. I didn't need to stop, there wasn't a whole lot of traffic around, but I stopped being a good boy. And a taxi full of people, the guy didn't see me, and he went straight through me like I wasn't there. And his bonnet went in between my saddle and back wheel. Had my bike been slightly lower riding, he would have been up on my back, I would have been dead. And he split my bike in half, the bike got stuck in the front, it threw me up in the air, I went whoop, whoop, whoop, and landed on my back. And then I woke up and I was lying on the ground going, what's after happening here? I had no idea what happened. A guy was saying, stay on the ground, don't move. There was a big flurry of people and there was a lot of drama. Anyway, here's the funny bit. So I said, no, no, I just need to get up. I'm lying down, I'd bitten my tongue badly, I have a scar across my tongue. I was like, I gotta get up, I can't breathe. So I got up and the ambulance comes along to go to hospital, and my, my top of my ass was really sore. And, uh, so into A&E, and I'm sitting there with all my gear on and taking that off. You're told to take off your leathers and stuff. Maybe that's part of what you're saying, Brent. And I'm sitting there on top of 3 or 4 cushions, and I had to go for a scan to check out my lower kind of back, kind of, uh, you know, butt area. My coccyx. Thanks. Yeah, so I had to have a scan of that, and then they brought me back into A&E. I was sitting on top of 5 cushions and And for about 2 hours while I was waiting to be seen, people were walking past and they'd look at me and they'd look up at the— they'd look up above me and they'd look back at me and smile and walk off. And they'd come in, they'd look at me, look up, look back at me and smile. And I'm like, what is going on? Never thought about it. After about 2 hours, I'm called and I stand up and I was sitting right underneath my own scan. And so I was sitting on my own butt and you could see everything. You could see like, you could see my nuts and you could see my— it was like, I was just sitting there, right? And it was clearly me because I'm the one sitting on 4 or 5 cushions. And it was so embarrassing. Seen everyone of us walking through A&E going, oh, there you go, very nice. So, uh, and it was— it looks to be very cold in the room at the time.

I'm quickly flicking back to the comments and I'm thinking somebody just said, I'd like to see those x-rays in Patreon, please.

I've since edited them with Photoshop.

Anyway, I can, I can see that one making TikTok.

Somebody TikTok out of that. Anyway, have you got a question, guys? What have you got lined up? I have many, so if you want to let me loose.

Brent, you've got one there just handy.

Let me just go back into them. Sorry, laughing too much, I switched off my phone.

Yeah.

So this is a good one. Bought omega-3 fish oils, soft gels, okay, from a company want to know. It was from your website, I believe, Conor. Do I break the soft gels to add to the food or can I just give them inside the gel? What's the advantage of doing one or the other?

I often get asked that. Do you often like— I think that's probably the— as when we got talking to the fish oil expert over in the US and this guy has been doing fish oil for 25 years, making, selling everything. He knows it. He's a lipidologist. And he said the best way to do it is capsules in a brown jar, as I've mentioned before. So that's great news. But what happens if you have a Chihuahua and you're looking at a capsule and you're like, this is way too much fish oil for a little Chihuahua every day. So that is a little bit of a way up. Dry capsules you can kind of put in half and keep the other half, you know, it's a little bit messy, but if they're cheap enough, it won't matter. I don't think you need to puncture the capsule myself. But again, if I have a Chihuahua and I'm looking at the dosage and the dosage is way too much, or it might be considered a medicinal dose for 2 or 3 or 4 days, but it wouldn't be a long-term thing, then you are up against it. You are up against it with the capsules. You can get smaller capsules these days. You can get algal oils in tiny little capsules. You can get it in powder. You can get your EPA/DHA in powder. Doesn't have to be fish oil anymore. Algal oils particularly can come in powders. They just dry out the algae into a powder, and you get good EPA/DHA from that. Doesn't have to be fish oil tablets if you find the capsules too hard to work with. But I'm not personally worried about the vegetarian capsule outer. Is any— is that the question? Is it more the worry of feeding the gel capsule which I feel is really good.

Do they need to feed it in the capsule to get it into the gut in a good form, or, you know, is the stomach acid going to make a difference to it, I guess, or can they just tip it on the food?

I never even thought about that. I can't imagine the stomach acids would obliterate omega-3 because then your dog would be dead. So I'm sure that passes through. I think protein is the problem. So things, anything protein-based struggles to get through the gut because that's what your gut is ready to do. But I think fat oils, particularly are allowed through. Nick, what do you think?

Yeah, I'd have thought, I mean, the capsule is there to stop it oxidizing and make it easier to swallow and what have you. So if you puncture the capsule just before you feed, the oxidation is going to be negligible, and therefore I'd have thought you'd be okay. However, what I do if I've got a very small dog and you've got to give, and the dose that you want is kind of half a capsule, I just go half every other day.

Oh yeah, okay.

Because, because EPA and DHA, they're going to hang around for, you know, days and days, and therefore if you're going every other day, then that's the equivalent of giving half a capsule a day.

Sorry, a whole one every second day.

A whole one every second day, yeah.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

Good idea. Just to keep it, keep things simple and easy.

Totally.

Yeah, I like simple. Okay, that's why I work with you guys.

Yeah, let's try and get through a few. Come on, I've got a whole list gathering here. I mean, there's 31 plus just on the—

I've got one here as well.

So there's a lady taking her 7-month-old little girl dog in for a shoulder operation for osteochondrosis dissecans, OCD, at the end of March. Do you have any nutritional tips? I know, Conor, you love talking about this. Nutritional tips for before and after surgery for a faster recovery.

How old's the dog?

7 months.

7 months. Sorry, I missed that.

Yeah. Do you want to go first, Nick?

So before surgery, you would reduce anything that's going to make bleeding. So if the dog's on any salicylates, then you'd have to be careful of that. Or if you're on white willow herb, you'd have to be careful of that. There is technically a possibility that omega-3s will reduce blood clotting. So you might want to stop those for possibly a week before, just one week, because the anti-inflammatory effects are great. So that I think that, that I think would be very important. I could talk about So I'll talk about herbs. I'll let Bren talk about homeopathics. So herb-wise, I think that I would be making sure that we had good spirulina, so we had minerals and vitamins going in, because when you go through surgery, you're going to— there's going to be a lot of metabolic demand. I'd make sure that the B vitamins were in good shape, so liver was in really healthy shape. I'd be making sure that the vegetable and fruit content so that we had plenty of vitamin C going in and bioflavonoids for healing. Obviously you need vitamin C to help with the collagen cross-binding and meeting up. So that very briefly is what I would look at. I'm sure Brendan's got a nice regime homeopathically. Yeah, for these things.

So I think, remember, don't give Arnica for a week before, okay? Because that's a great way of proving a remedy. If you want to give something to a healthy individual that's otherwise not had an injury, i.e., you give Arnica and you give that over and over again, and then you then put them into an operation, they can have some horrendous bleeds. Okay, so that's proving the remedy. Arnica should be safe for on the day of and just following that procedure. I had a great friend who was actually taking the homeopathic course with me, had to have an hip operation, and she'd learned enough to think Arnica is great for bleeding. So she took Arnica and she had one of the most horrendous hip operations. The surgeon said, I don't know what was going on with you, your clotting factors were all okay, we couldn't understand it. They operated on her hip, she woke up bruised from her ankle to her armpit. She had, you know, it was, they just said it was just like a bloodbath, you know, following it. And she'd literally been taking Arnica for about 2 weeks before the operation. And yeah, that was just approving. So just beware of that. So take it after. Rootagrave as well, again, can be really useful in those situations. Maybe even a bit of cat's claw could be useful in those things. I would love to say, you know, bone broth, I love bone broth. I'd always say, you know, that should be a nutrient addition. You can add in some things like this, sort of like a hydrolyzed beef collagen, so grass-fed beef collagen. Okay, you can get those as organic, um, things. So you can fortify that bone broth with those sort of things, uh, just to get lots of that material in. And then you can go down the, you know, so many, um, supplements out there by NutraVet, by VetPro, by Conor, I think you've got joint supplements. Have you got joint supplements?

I don't, no, no.

Oh no, something you've stuck away from.

Yet to do it, yeah. I think like you're opening up, you open up a bit. I think knees are amazing. Can you think, like imagine what some knees have to do, like especially for the bigger animals, but even bigger humans. I mean, those knees have to stay absolutely perfectly kind of fluid all the time. Joints are amazing, I think, especially when you've got a bad knee, you start to realize how important elbows and joints and shoulders really are. But I think they have to get into the joint and that leaves the joint needing bits and pieces. So one of the things I didn't do after my joint operation was that I didn't feed it. So as Bren was alluding to there, you feeding joint material is a good idea because you're feeding all the glucosamine, chondroitin, and collagen, hyaluronic acid, glucagon glutamine, I'm always saying the same things, vitamin C, all that stuff that's actually in some of the joint supplements is in joint material. So it's a really good time to switch on to raw dog food. Raw dog food if you're not feeding it already, or give meaty bones, or definitely give broth if you're not feeding those. There's wet broths, there's dried broths, there's all sorts of things. They are a great cheat to put in now. I think some broths have the fat removed, some don't, and I'd be looking into that. I would make my own and I'd be horsing that into the dog now. That's the building blocks for the recovery. A little bit of omega-3 for the recovery. Very interesting what Nick said there about it getting in the way possibly, which is news to me. I never even thought of that. So, but afterwards, omega-3 and joints, they are best friends. So your dog's going to be crated. He's going to be restricted big time. So I've got a video on YouTube called Dog in a Box when my dog busted his back completely and he was out of action for 2 months. Imagine a cocker spaniel housed up for 2 months. And so CBD for anxiety and keeping the head calm. There's also a great study of CBD in rats where they did a horrible experiment where they break their femurs and the rats on CBD healed up twice as fast and twice as quick so there's something to that. I would be thinking about that, adding that in, getting the dog super lean. You need to take all the pressure off those joints. There's a website called Canine Enrichment where you can go onto Facebook and there's a million different ideas what to do with a dog when he's restricted, how to keep him entertained, rolling up pieces of paper with a treat in it, scattering it around his crate. Finally, you need to get advice from a joint specialist. So vets are excellent, excellent general practitioners, but you just cannot replace the advice and therapy that a canine physio can offer you, or even down the way when it's healed up, hydrotherapy to get the joint back moving. Those guys work with joints every single day and they can give you great tips and tricks. They know exactly how to rehab a joint. And so again, as good as vets are, they couldn't possibly know the rehabilitation bit as well as someone that just does it day in, day out. And these people cost about £40. So that'd be all my advice.

Yeah, and I'm just going to bring to the table Dear Velvet.

Oh dear Velvet. Oh dear Velvet.

You see that?

I'm not sure if you can even—

yeah, well, we can tell because you told us what it says.

Yeah, I'll put some information.

Are you still able to, uh, import that from, um, is it coming in from New Zealand?

I've got, I've got a whole load just came in, so that's all good.

Smuggled in.

That was something that was said again. Did you— have you opened up your market to Australia and New Zealand again?

We have somebody there now that worked out the paperwork and Aussie customs, not easy. Now that we're in Australia, we can hit New Zealand as well. And that has been good for sales, I have to say, because I have— well, we have a bit of a following in Australia and New Zealand. And so it's good to get the products in. So that's been working out well. But once you've opened up that, you can get anything in there and then there's just no problems. Even if you bring up animal-based products, probiotics, interestingly, they always ask if they're animal sourced or vegetarian sourced. So lactobacillus, a lot of them come from cattle milk and all sorts of stuff. And so shipping probiotics is not so easy to do. Not that I'm doing it, but I'm just, just questions that are popping up. It's like, oh, your probiotics animal based. It's like, I never thought that probiotics would be anything based, you know? And then these are the questions that pop up.

Bacterial based.

Bacterial based. Yeah. What's, how is there any other thing to it? So I don't get it. Nick, have you got another question there?

Yeah, I do. I've got a question here from Patreon. Fiona Parks has said, please may I— she's very, very polite, is Fiona Parks, and she has been a patron since September '22. Good on you, Fiona. Thank you very much. Please may I ask a question? My young dog has protein intolerance. He does well on wild meats. How much risk is there from feeding shot Should I limit how often he has it? I assume there is less risk with venison than rabbit and pheasant. Thank you, gentlemen. She obviously doesn't know you both, but she's probably talking to me. She's not talking to me.

I think there's no lead in shot anymore. I think surely that's it.

Depends. So this is a little interesting fact because I asked about this for the pheasant shooting fraternity that keep putting pheasant across my consult table for me to— so they— there are— depends on the shotgun they've got. So if they've got a modern gun that has been bored to cope with steel shot, then that's what they'll use. But there are a lot of older guns, so if they have a favourite gun which is older, they will only shoot with lead. And that is a real problem. It's cheaper still, it's still there, and there is still huge contamination of moorlands and woodlands and shoot areas.

Wow.

With lead shot. So it is possible, but you've got to remember they also use— you know, this is small bits of fragment that will, you know, dissipate into the bird to bring it down. And a good shot will mean that actually there'll only be 2 or 3 fractions of a pellet that actually hit the bird, which bring it down. It is not shot, by the time the distance— you've got to imagine that every meter that's going away, that shot is spreading out, okay? So the— by the time it gets anywhere near the bird, you know, the, the bird is only flying through a very small amount of that shot that actually hits them, okay? So it's only if you've got a numpty who decides to shoot the bird about 15 foot away that, you know—

yeah, um, I think, uh, but it's not the same with venison if you're shooting them because you're not shooting them with any sort of shock you're shooting them with a rifle, and then there's no lead in those bullets. But, um, but yeah, okay, so maybe for the poultry. Uh, so that's interesting because a guy that does a lot of hunting here said no, no, no, there's no lead. And I'm thinking he was just telling me what I wanted to hear. But the second thing that would give me a little bit of solace is that the top raw dog food manufacturers metal scan their products, particularly if they're using metal in the production process. You're obliged to do it by the Department of Agriculture if you're using metal clips on your chubs and that kind of stuff. Uh, but that, uh, whether that is done by all manufacturers, I'm not sure. So that's interesting.

So the question to, to you therefore, gentlemen, would be, are they doing X-rays, yeah, which will pick up all metal— lead and iron-based steel and bismuth and God knows what— or are they doing like a metal detector which which probably will pick up ferrous metals, iron, steel, and what have you, but may not pick up, um, lead. I don't know, because you can get detectors from Amazon, I don't know, £40 or something from— and, and, but the thing is, what are they going to pick up? Are they just looking for steel?

Um, and there's also a size— there's a size factor, isn't there? Because some regulations only demand that they isolate size down to, I think it's a couple of millimeters. So you can still get small bits which are less than a couple of millimeters, believe it or not, coming through in the food in those slacker regulations.

So I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask, I'm gonna find out about this. I'm gonna ask a few manufacturers of, with wild game, and I'll get back to you on that. I know somebody that runs a big wild game processing plant, and I'll find out the answer to that. But I've seen shots, I've seen shots, I've heard about a number of times, you know, ting as it falls in. Dogs, can you believe a lab can leave those tiny little bits of shot? I mean, how are they that precise when they're such pigs? How can they avoid those little bits and go, no, I don't like peas and I don't like shot? You know, it's amazing that they can do that.

I'm going to unmake your day. I saw a study from about 10, possibly even 20 years ago, and they were looking at the metal residue from bullets shot from a rifle. Yeah, so you've got a single piece of metal going through whatever, um, and they were saying that the vaporization of the metal as it goes through the poor bunny or the poor whatever, but the poor venison, there is a significant deposition of Metal, I don't know, vapor, metal.

Not only that, if it hits a bone, the amount of dissipation of the—

Yeah, yeah.

It's, well, not only the bone, not just the bone shattered, the metal can spread out. Metal is lots of little tiny fragments.

Well, you would hope—

Because it's going in red hot, so it's not going in cold.

You'd hope most of the time in managed populations, they're shooting the males. Males are bigger and they're shot in the head. And the dolls are shot in the chest, they're harder to hit in the head, and you can injure them as opposed to kill them.

So they tend to go off the heart, and then you're worried. Rather depressing. I don't think we should talk about shooting. I think, you know what, I'm already getting distracted.

Yeah, no, but listen, do you know what kind of ways to put— what would you choose? What would you choose? Standing in a line while your mate has her throat cut in front of you, or walking along a mountain eating some clover and waking up dead? You don't even hear the shot, you know. That is a— that isn't—

they're stunned, they're not lined up anymore, they're gonna go down a run and they're gonna be one by one stunned.

And then unless that room is a kilometer long, could you imagine the stench and the sound and everything else and the smells? There's no way, no, no, no processing. As, as you're running, Grandon, uh, kind of highlights, you know, there's no, there's no really good way of hiding from a cow that this is not a good place to be, you know. Anyway, look at that, we don't need to get into that. I think that's a little bit sadder than the guys that are shot out in the field. I think fair game, so to speak. Yeah, you know, um, anyway, anyway. Okay, let me have one. Let me have a quick shot here, guys, because I promise I'll get this one out. And so a really long time raw feeder knows what she's talking about, and she has this collie, and an older collie he is, 13, 14, 15 years old. And this collie now has issues. He's got absolute terrible dental arcade. He's worn down his teeth to flat nubs from eating stones for some reason, and he's had that penchant for stones for years. He hasn't been able to stop it in the dog. And she's in this situation now where we're not quite sure what's wrong with the dog. He is very anxious. He's a collie, very reactive, very person reactive, negative distraction. And when he goes into the vet, he has to be muzzled because he really, really doesn't want to be there, which makes anesthetizing the dog very difficult to do. So a year and a half ago, the dog had to have his teeth cleaned. And now clearly the dog is in great pain. So the dog is actually howling during the day and during the night. Not sleeping at all. And sorry, my battery's running low there. It's not a text message. I actually put it on airplane this time and it still beeps. You just can't—

anyway, it sounded like the clown.

Yeah, it used to make me happy, now just gives me a heart attack every time it goes off. And so, um, yeah, so the dog is now howling in pain. She sent me a video, I couldn't even watch it. So it's been going on 3 nights, went to the vet. The vet is prescribing gabapentin Gabapentin is a painkiller, but on the plus side has a drowsy effect. So it takes an hour for the dog to be knocked out, and it takes a couple of hours of sleep, and then the dog is back at it again, howling in pain. So she's looking for advice. What do I do? My initial advice was get it back to the vet, get those teeth looked at, get them sorted out. And so she said, I would do that, Conor, in a hurry if the last time he was put out his heart didn't stop. And I'm thinking, oh, bloody hell. And so the vet said the dog was that wound up going under the anesthetics that they reckon that was put too much pressure on his heart and his heart stopped for a moment and they got him going again. So then what are the— what is the advice for getting this dog put out in the calmest way possible so the vet can do the x-rays and get the work done if it's teeth related, which we're assuming it is? There's a long one.

Wow.

So I would say, I would say whatever you do, do it quickly because the dog is obviously in massive distress, I'd be there tomorrow morning, 8 o'clock, and asking the vets to take the dog in and to do what they can. If the dog is really distressed at going to the vets, there are preparations that can be given kind of before you get in the door. So you give it to the dog in the car, in the car park, because half an hour later, dog is pretty gaga. And then it means that the dog is less distressed and And the vet is happy because they know that they're less likely to get bitten. Yeah. So that works all round. But, you know, whenever any type of anesthetic, there is a risk with any, whether it's you or me or the dog or whoever it might be. But I'd say let's get some things done properly. Let's get the dog out, maybe get an X-ray and have a look at those teeth. And if anything is looking even the slightest bit cracked I think just take them out. You know, it's an old dog, they can do without this hassle. And get it done quickly because you don't want the dog under for any significant length of time. If you've got loads of bleeding, we used— what was that? There was a homeopathic we used to use for bleeding. It was a really— was it quartz? Have you ever used quartz for bleeding? In dentals, Brent? Quartz, I think. Have a look at quartz, guys. But the obvious one would be Arnica and Hypericum for nerve damage and what have you. But I think something needs to happen quickly, Brent.

And yeah, some Phyto, really good, especially when you're disturbing the bone for taking teeth out. Mag Carb is another great remedy in those circumstances. Sometimes Mercsol, Hepasulf if it's really infected roots. Oh, so many things that need to be looked at there for dental stuff. Look, there's gels now which are the sedative gels. So Cilio, I'm going to name it there. You'd have to still get it on prescription from your vet. So that can be given prior to you even getting close to the vets as a gel that's absorbed through the mucous membrane so that they are calm coming in. Okay, so there are— say it again.

Say it again. Brent, just say that.

S-I-L-E-O. Sileo. It's, uh, his name, which is a meditomidine gel, um, and that, um, can be given. There are lots of other, um, options out there for, um, calming with remedies. You know, most people will think of rescue remedy, um, you know, they're sort of, if they're really, really nervous, things like Aconite. But, you know, all of those can be less predictable. And if you really need to know that they're going to go in, they're going to get a sedative protocol anyway. They can use an injection of metatomidine again out in the car so that it's given and it's, the dog comes in as soon as it's sleepy, usually within 5 minutes of the injection, it will start to sleep. So there are options there with those injections.

So the options would have to be like administered by the owner herself, you know, the dog's that wound up that it's like—

and that's the Cilio. That's why Cilio is so great because it can be administered by the owner.

That'd be great.

If the dog is getting silly, think about Cilio.

Yeah, I'm thinking just before you get into a fight, you're about to go into a fight, you just rub this all over your face, your face goes numb, now you're ready to go. You can take any amount of—

actually, no, no, no, your brain goes numb, you fall over.

Oh yeah, and he's out. Saves you getting the punch in the face.

He just fell over.

He doesn't listen to a word we say.

No, I was reading her message just to make sure I had it right. I know we're going to jump to Patreon now in a second, but this lady's not on Patreon, okay? And I promised I'd read this one thing out. Stargazing and a Frenchie, okay? So stargazing— I saw this video of this little Frenchie. We got him right. He was a terribly— he was a bad case and he's doing great. So he was a successful case. Well done everyone, that helps. And he walks into the room now, he's got this stargazing thing because he's a Frenchie, he has to be weird. And he walks into the room and he goes— and then he just comes back to himself and he walks around. I've never seen it before, I've heard about it, I've read about it. And she goes, the strangest thing with stargazing. So I had to Google that to understand what it's about. The vet says some sort of seizure, got to get him on dry food and meds. And she's going, yeah, well, we just got him fixed on raw dog food, we're not jumping off it now. But she said when it happens, she picks up the Frenchie, and she rubs his belly and he does a massive burp. And it was only then that she realized she changed the food a week before this started happening and the dog started getting GI issues again because that's, you know, it gets very flaky trying to get it right. But the dog started having gut issues, the stargazing began, he burped every time his gut was manipulated, and then she jumped off that food again back to wherever there was a safe place and the stargazing has reduced down to virtually nil. How could that possibly be related to food?

The first thing I said was vagal, that there's some kind of afferent. Afferent?

What's that?

Yeah, some kind of afferent stimulation.

To an afferent goes from, isn't it? That way.

Afferent. Are you talking from the brain? Afferent and efferent.

From the brain to the— yeah.

From the brain.

Basically, the vagus nerve is a two-way street. Most people think that the brain just controls all of the other things through the autonomic nerve system. And I'm sorry to the guys that went to DTC because this will be a repetition of everything you learned. Unfortunately, Conor didn't listen at all. He fell asleep.

Oh yeah, give us the elevator pitch, Brad. Nick went to sleep during my talk, guys. Who's up next? He went to— he slept. I was so—

I'm going to bed.

Yeah, he did. Anyway, sorry, Brad, go ahead.

Absolutely. It's a two-way street, as Nick was trying to allude to. So the issues of the gut will impact the brain, and you will have an effect on those mechanisms. And he will obviously also try to relieve himself by doing weird and wonderful things. But the ultimate thing is his brain will be stimulated in a weird way. He may have been seeing stars. He may have had all sorts of other stuff going on because of that stimulus. So we call it the sixth sense, the entero-sense, the sense of each of your organs actually feed back to your brain. So no longer just the five senses that you think of with taste, touch, feel, you know, sorry, taste, touch, smell, and sight and sound. You've got also each of your organs feeding back. And some people are more in tune than others, and so are some animals, okay, in each of their organs and what's happening to their systems, right? Something Nick alluded to back on the Valentine's thing with the sensation from the heart and how that makes impacts upon how you actually feel, okay? So this is one of those emotional things. So have a little look at that. You can find lots of information out there from mind-gut stuff all the way through to the polyvagal theory. So have a little look, lots of information.

Just a thought from the— if it is a trapped wind thing, right? So what can we do for trapped wind? I'm thinking fennel, I'm thinking peppermint, I'm thinking cardamom and those kind of those carminative herbs, aniseed, these kind of things. CarboVeg, activated charcoal, maybe Nux vomica. Just thinking about how can we get that gas moving so it doesn't, you know, because if that's bulging and stimulating receptors within the gut, which then kicks off the vagus, which then makes the brain go, oh my goodness, what's happening? That's the kind of way you'd be thinking.

So calm, slow exercise, is really good for moving things along. Yeah, think as well, you know, does it have a spinal lesion? So, so many Frenchies, bulldogs will have hemivertebrae around the thoracolumbar region, which again will impact on innervation of the gut at other levels too. So you've just got to be aware of that and the impact that that can have. That can increase sympathetic innervation. Because of the inflammatory process, and that therefore reduces the vagus nerve impact on the gut. So you're sort of like competing parts of the autonomic nervous system.

I've got some reading to do there because I know nothing about all that. When you were talking about it, it was like, hmm, I know nothing about that at all. So I need to read that book you recommended me. I told you I flirted with it.

It was quite technical in places, goes deep, and I was Yeah, the big one, big one gets a bit deep on lots of other issues as well.

So I want to know about—

there is an easy version though, isn't there, Brendan?

I think you were saying that there's an easy version, which is about a third of the length, if that.

Um, what's that one called?

Effectively, um, it is the, um, I believe the polyvagal theory. So, um, I will bring it up and I will share that on, uh, the Facebook page, but we'll also talk about it in Patreon in a moment.

Yeah. Yes. Philip has said, are you sure he's not seeing ghosts? I was like, hmm. Yeah.

I've seen that before.

Yeah. Yeah. Bloody hell.

It's amazing how burping then gets rid of the ghost.

It does. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Sometimes you feel a bit haunted with a bad burp coming up, but yeah. So I thought that was very, very interesting.

But it's different to the— so the thing to not get confused about is the spaniels that go off seeing floaters in their eyes, you know, start doing that mysterious chasing flies, sort of fly-catching behavior, which is different to what you were describing because it's not something in those circumstances would just go with burping.

Yeah, yeah, very interesting. Hey guys, it's time to listen to 1952. Jump to Patreon. Yeah, one, one.

Having fits, guys. So brilliant. Uh, if you want to join us for a little bit of catch-up after, um, join us on Patreon and and you will be able to find us on patreon.com/rawpetmedics. It'd be great to see you over there in an hour or so, and we will just share our extra thoughts.

Just to say, we record it now, but it takes about an hour for it to go through all the channels and what have you until it actually comes out so you can see it. So in the UK, it's 8-ish now, so it'll be ready from 9, 9:30.

That's a great book recommendation there by somebody. I think it might have been Philip Murphy again. Why Don't Zebras Have Ulcers? That's— ah, yes, that is getting close to what Bren is talking about there, surely, is it not?

This is good. Sapolsky, Robert Sapolsky. It's essential if you're into cortisol and cortisone and you like stress. It's an amazing book about human stress, even really, really, really big.

Yeah, we need to finish that one as well. I'm halfway through.

If you want to join myself, Nick, Conor, and Coco the clown, who's got his horn honking in the background, then join us over on Patreon in about an hour. We look forward to seeing you there.