RawPetMedics Tuesday Night Live: Dr Judy Morgan (Guest)

Hello everybody, good evening everybody, nice to be back. Well, welcome, welcome, welcome, and thanks for all of you guys who are joining us live across several streams. We hopefully have got it right tonight and it will work. I can see somebody's appeared on Facebook, so that's fine. So the— we have a great guest tonight, but before we go ahead with Dr. Judy, we are going just to ask if anybody wants to join us later when we're just going to go through some of the things we've learned tonight, please don't forget to join us on www.patreon.com/rawpetmedics going across the bottom of your screen now. And we're going to have a little bit of a chat afterwards. We've got the pleasure of Dr. Judy for 45 minutes, and I don't think we should waste any more time than to jump straight into asking some Wonderful questions. So, and I think Nick, you've got the first, first question to ask ready.

So just the first one. Dr. Judy Morgan, it's so lovely to have you here. That's fantastic. We're really looking forward to seeing you for the expo in the UK in May. I'm not sure if you're doing that live or online, but it'd be great to have you there.

I will be there. Wow.

Okay, great. So we can hug and do all that stuff. That'll be amazing. Wonderful, wonderful. Listen, um, we, we've actually done a survey of every person on the planet, all 8 billion people. We actually found 2 who hadn't heard of you, so we got them to come and join this evening. So for their sake, if you could just tell us who you are and what you do, just, just a little 1-minute, 2-minute intro for those 2 people.

For those 2 people? Okay, well, I'm Dr. Judy Morgan, and, uh, I have been a veterinarian for over 38 years. I retired from clinical practice and sold my two practices in November of 2020 so that I could move south to North Carolina from New Jersey and be near my daughter and most particularly my granddaughter. But we'll throw Gwen in there too.

She's listening.

But my two-year-old granddaughter is the love of my life. So I've had to transition away from clinical practice into more online education and also our online Naturally Healthy Pets product web store. And I actually like this because I'm able to educate a much broader audience and reach a ton more people than I could in daily practice in the clinic. So, so that's what I'm up to. That's what we do. I've written 4 books and hopefully have 2 coming out this year if, if the stars align.

Whoa, 2 at the same time, Judy? You're so—

well, one of them I wrote a year and a half ago. I just needed to do the last chapter, which was really dumb to sit on it for that long, but here we are.

Yeah. Does it get easier writing books?

It does. Although if I was writing one like yours with that much research and that many footnotes, no.

Yeah.

Do you enjoy it though? Because your books are extremely digestible. They are extremely popular as well. They top the kind of lists of canine nutrition books all the time, particularly your first one there at the bottom right one. What was the name of that with the 3 speech bubbles? Was it—

Oh, From Needles to Natural Learning Holistic Pet Healing. Yes, that was it. Yeah. So that one's getting revamped. This year.

Okay, very good. Okay, cool. Good. And you have also got a lot of online courses coming on as well. I see it pops up in my feed all the time. You guys are very busy.

We are. And one of the things with Dr. Judy Yu, it's drjudyu.com, we love to have courses from other holistic veterinarians, trainers, whoever wants to send us things. So we have some of Dr. Nick's courses on there on raw feeding and feeding bones. And so we are always looking for people who have great content who want to get it out to more people and share through our platform. And we do have a new course which I really hope is being launched next week. We've been really working on this for about a year and a half, which is a hospice and palliative care course. And I think it is so, so needed. So keep tuned for that because that should be— should go live, we think, in the next week.

Yeah, sounds great. Good luck with that.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. That's good. So you had mentioned, Judy, I couldn't help but when we were sharing the fact that you were coming on, people get very, very excited. But even you came on and you got quite excited because you were mentioning that you had this case study in the background of this dog that you wanted, and it was a hot topic of what you want to talk about because it's exactly one of the main topics we wanted to talk to you about. We want to get the kind of what's going on across the pond and how you guys deal with some topics. Do you want to just— the best nutrition for puppies and kittens was the first question Bren was itching to get at. Will we just start with that bit and then we'll lead into the case study? Sure.

So from my perspective, I think that we should be buying puppies and kittens who come from raw-fed parents because they're less likely to— so really, when you're looking for that new pet, and this is part of what the the first book that I have ready to go. When you're looking for that new pet, look at the parents because the health of your pet starts before they're even conceived with what the health of the parents is. So that's the first thing. And then I really like to see them weaned directly onto raw feeding because the health is going to be so much better unless you screw it up with a lot of other things that we'll talk about. Because even the best nutrition in the world, you can screw that up if you do enough other things wrong.

No doubt. That's a fact.

So, but even all of our dogs, um, they're, they're rescues and they come in with tons of allergies and disease problems and ear infections and you name it. They're just a train wreck. And, uh, we switch them immediately onto raw food and the, it's never too late to make that change. So if you can start it out on your puppies and kittens, absolutely. But it is never too late to change. We have, um, We have a clowder of 12 cats at the moment. It wasn't planned, but it just happened because 2 mamas showed up pregnant at the same time. And those kittens were weaned directly onto raw feeding. And this is the healthiest group of cats I have ever had. They live mostly outside in our barn and they're allowed to come in the house if they want to. But these are the healthiest, happiest, most robust Bust cats. They were born in April, so they're 9 months old. Just gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous cats. So it can't be beat.

Yeah, we advocate this all the time. And from the point of view of how many breeders over there are actually still giving away these puppies and kittens— I say giving, selling these puppies and kittens with dry food still, you know, even though they might advocate raw food, they still almost have this tentative, I must give a packet of something across the counter. To, to the person taking them home. We had this asked just last week. Um, so do you still get that a lot over in the States? Are you—

absolutely. Um, although I do, like, my raw feeding breeders do tend to push their puppy and kitten owners into raw feeding. But it's funny because sometimes when I talk to them, they'll say, well, I tell them I'd like them to feed raw, I'd really like them to feed raw, I recommend they feed raw, and— but I know that the majority of them are going to switch over to kibble.

Yeah.

How prominent, Judy, how prominent is raw feeding in the States at the moment? And how does that compare with like 5 years ago, would you say? Which direction are we going?

Oh, we're going up. Absolutely going up with the raw feeding. And I think that that's part of why the big pet food conglomerates have really gotten their way into the AVMA, the American Animal Hospital Association, even the CDC, and they all have these huge statements about not feeding raw food. And really, and we don't want to go into the whole DCM debacle that's been going on, but—

A long time.

You want to see steam come out my ears. But really, this is all just this huge marketing ploy to get people to stop doing what is really better for their pets. And it was really interesting because with that whole DCM debacle over the past few years, I looked at the statistics of the dollar value of sales for dry kibble from the, you know, with the grains and all the poor quality ingredients and looked at the sales level of those versus the sales level of raw and grain-free, you know, the quote better kibble. I don't know if there is such a thing. But I looked at the sales levels and what was happening over a period of, maybe a decade is that the raw and the grain-free were doing this. And then these typical grain, you know, crappy foods were doing this.

Panic stations.

And it was panic time. And so, well, let's make a narrative. Let's spin something to get everybody to do this.

Yeah.

And it worked brilliantly. They have brainwashed the veterinary profession. And I was going over notes for a consultation tomorrow. I was going over them today. And their dog with mitral valve disease, the cardiologist said, oh, it also has DCM. You can't feed it this raw food anymore. You've got to get it back on one of these kibbles. And I'm like, the dog doesn't even have DCM. We had to make up a disease.

Whatever you do, don't feed it lots of taurine. You know, what's— I mean, we're touching on the dark side there, but it's only right to mention that the FDA were involved heavily with this. And the FDA were pushing out some pretty questionable messages because during the melamine scandal in 2006, the problem was that the FDA knew which companies were involved and had melamine, had imported melamine. Melamine was this toxic kind of version of protein that they were putting into rice meal and stuff to jack up the protein contents. And the pet food companies then pretend they're using more protein. Unfortunately, it was killing thousands and thousands of pets. And cats and dogs. So when the FDA started investigating, they wouldn't name the companies for the sake of public who were buying the dry food. They wouldn't name them until they knew exactly who was doing what, or they'd sold their bad stock. I mean, okay, that's a bit conspiracy, that's just my opinion. Okay, fair enough. And that's the right way to do things. You can't throw companies under the bus. Fast forward to 2016 when the FDA got involved with grain-free pet food, and they named under suspicion the exact companies who they thought were causing DCM their products. Can you imagine that? And those companies are thrown under the bus. And only recently the FDA admits absolutely no link from grain-free pet food, but it did the job because the grain-free sales stuttered for the first time in 10 years. 13 to 15% increase every year, and then a 1% decrease as soon as the FDA— that is, that is collusion. That's not good. That's bad.

Well, and to add to the collusion, FDA just very quietly added a statement on the original, uh, DCM debacle, they added very quietly, added a statement that we have found no connection between grain-free feeding and DCM. And funny, it coincides with one of the big manufacturers buying the grain-free company's food.

Oh, wow.

So what do you do if you want to change the dynamic? You trash their sales. Trash the value of their company, then you buy low, and then all of a sudden say, oh, it's all good. Oh, my daughter came up with that conspiracy theory and I love it.

I didn't see that link, I didn't see that, but I remember it happening. I remember them buying Origin or Champion Pet Foods, and of course now they own the cereal-based pet food side of things and grain-free. So you've got to stop pushing the DCM message because you own the biggest—

you own this now.

They just, they just don't care what they say as long as they sell.

FDA to quietly say, yeah, no, no connection.

And what's really, what's really, uh, very sad about the whole thing is that the academics were getting in on, on board at the beginning. Yeah, without mentioning their name.

They're still on board.

It, yeah, yeah, they will.

You guys really just want to see steam come out my ears before we're done.

Yeah, yeah.

And talking of which, we should really then touch on this next hot topic of the month because everybody's got their new puppies and kittens. And, you know, we have a theory. We've talked about immunity and vaxxed in one of our previous videos. But I'd love to hear what's going on your side of the pond as far as best start to immunity. Where are you at with advice for puppies and kittens?

So I can tell you what I recommend. So when I retired from practice 2 years ago, I had totally changed my vaccination protocol because I went to a Midwest American veterinary school back in the '80s. I learned traditional vaccine protocols, which are awful. And over the years, as I got more integrated and more into holistic therapies, it became just incredibly clear to me that, wow, we are doing this completely all wrong. And so by the time I was in my last 5 to 10 years of practice, I had totally revamped my vaccine protocol. So instead of saying, oh, we have to start them at 4 weeks or 6 weeks or 8 weeks, and we have to do them every 2 to 4 weeks until they hit 18 to 20 weeks, whatever. Instead, I said, hey, you know what? I think if we vaccinate later and we vaccinate with less and we do single vaccines, we can get away with a lot less. And some studies had been done over here. Ron Schultz was big in this. but started giving lower doses of vaccines and less vaccines. So I started trialing in my clinic with puppies, with holistic pet parents who really wanted to try to do things the right way. We started doing a single distemper by itself at 14 weeks, a single parvo by itself at 16 weeks. And then at 20 weeks, we would do a titer. And then we would come back a year later and do a titer just to make sure that everything was still good. We got the strongest titers that we ever got. With any puppies we ever vaccinated. The cats, with the kittens, it's harder to find single vaccines for them. Everything's a combo. So again, I had some breeders that I worked with and some, some people who were willing to try to go along with me and see how this would work. And we would wait on the kittens and we would do a single vaccine at 14 weeks and then do a titer at 20. And again, much better immunity, holds longer. So all my clowder of kittens that we have now had one single distemper vaccine at about 14 weeks, and then they had one— because they're outside, they had one single rabies vaccine at about 20 weeks. That's all they're ever going to get for the rest of their life. And they're raw fed, they're outdoors exercising, catching wild prey. This is the life that cats are supposed to live. I get that not everybody can do that if you live in the city, whatever. But this is this is what cats are supposed to do. So I think if we start looking at those, that kind of immunity for our animals, where less is more— and this is one of those cases, one of those times where absolutely less is more.

That's not a popular opinion in the medical profession, it seems. So in relation to when you said the breeders hand over the pups and kittens with dry food, as they do over here if they're not raw-fed kind of litterers, also breeders will stick in a vaccination into the puppy and say, well, like, it looks good that I'm giving the jab to the pup. And then the pup gets to the vet with the owner at 9 or 10 weeks, and the vet says, I don't know what the breeder did, so I'll just start my protocol now. I don't know any vet that's ever taken into consideration that a pup got a jab at 8 weeks. But even then, what is the— is there any benefit at all to jabbing a pup so early? Why do the likes of yourself and Schultz recommend pushing it on? What is it that makes What's the problem?

So if your puppy is born from a healthy adult mom who had antibodies in her system against distemper, parvo, whatever, she's going to pass that on in the first milk, the colostrum. And so those are the maternal antibodies. Those remain active to protect the puppies and the kittens for anywhere from 8 to 18 weeks. And it is impossible to know when that maternal immunity is going to start to go down. And so what happens, the veterinarians and the breeders and everybody jump in and they say, well, you know, what happens if it starts to dive at 6 weeks, which it doesn't, it never has. But what happens if it starts to dive at 6 weeks? We better have something in so that the vaccine immunity, because we know it takes a couple of weeks, it's not instantly effective. So as the maternal is coming down, the, um, vaccine is going up and then somewhere they meet and this one drops down and this one continues up. The problem is the maternal antibodies interfere with the vaccine that you give. They totally block it. So it's useless other than the fact that now you've put toxins into the puppy or kitten's body because it's not just the vaccine particles. There's adjuvants and carriers and all kinds of other things that are in the vaccines. That contribute to allergies, IBD, a lot of things that we get down the line. And so some of these breeders are starting vaccines at 4 weeks of age, which is—

whoa, God, that's ridiculous.

Ridiculous. So can I, can I give you, can I give you my book case?

Yeah, give us a case.

I have this amazing case. So I was asked to consult just for you know, like overall health things that could be done to keep this little dog healthy. The dog's like 15 months old now and it's a tiny little 10-pound dog. And so I was like, oh, this will be easy. Yes. I'll just jump on and make sure that she's feeding the right thing. And I get her paperwork and it says she's feeding this raw food. And I'm thinking, oh, this is, this is going to be easy. Then I get the medical records on this puppy and hot pokers in the eyes. So at 4 weeks, the breeder gave a parvo. At 6 weeks, the breeder gave another parvo. At 8 weeks, the breeder gave a distemper, hepatitis, parvo, parainfluenza. So a 4-way. And the puppy at this point weighs about 3 pounds. At 11 weeks, it got another distemper, hepatitis, parvo, parainfluenza. At 12 and a half weeks, it got that same 4-way vaccine again, along with Bravecto, Strongid-T, which is a dewormer, and Interceptor Plus. Then 2, 3 days later, it got a bivalent flu vaccine. So that's 2 flu vaccines at 13 weeks old and the rabies and a 4-way lepto and Bravecto, which it just got 3 days ago, but they gave it again, and Interceptor Plus. Then another 5 days later, it gets its intranasal Bordetella, which is a 3-way vaccine. And then 2 weeks after that, They come back at 16 weeks with another DAPP, another 4-way Lepto, another bivalent flu. The dog weighs 5 pounds. It got 10 vaccines in one day at 5 pounds. So 3 weeks later, at 19 weeks, it comes back, it gets another 4-way, another dose of Bravecto, another dose of Interceptor Plus. 3 weeks later, another dose of Bravecto, another dose of Interceptor Plus. 4 weeks after that, at 6 months old, it gets spayed. Then it gets changed over to some Parecotrio. And guess what? By the time I had my consultation with them, the dog was no longer healthy. Now, when I saw this, I said, this dog is like— I'm thinking, okay, my consultation just changed for this person. I have to help them prevent this dog from developing allergies, IBD, food intolerance. Like, I'm just going through this whole litany of what this dog's been set up for. So it had 38 vaccinations by the time it was 19 weeks old. And they gave it Benadryl along with every vaccine because it's a very small dog and it's likely to react. So by the time I get on my consultation with this person, oh, guess what? We've had chronic diarrhea that is unstoppable for the past 6 weeks, went through 2 rounds of metronidazole with 2 different veterinarians, had antibiotics for a UTI that it didn't have. It has horrible anxiety and now it is on on a hydrolyzed protein dry kibble.

Bloody hell.

So Judy, where do you stand? I mean, that is a litany. That's 38. Where do the guidelines— where do the professional guidelines— because somewhere along the line somebody must have thought, I'm giving too much here.

Nobody thought that. That's the thing that blows my mind. Nobody thought that. It's a 5-pound dog and you gave 10 vaccines at once.

Is this just a single vet that just, you know, who was, you know, going maybe losing their mind, or is this like, do you think this is a common feature of what's going on at the moment?

This is absolutely common. This is what they're taught. Give another set of vaccines every 2 to 4 weeks. This puppy, unfortunately, it was like every 2 weeks and sometimes twice a week. But it is very common. And you're right when you say if you buy a puppy from a pet store or from a breeder and they have given previous vaccines, when you take that puppy or kitten into the veterinary office, they go, oh no, we can't trust any of that. We have to start over. And they're going to make sure that they get their series of 3 or their series of 4, whatever their protocol is, no matter how they have to do it. So if they have to squeeze that in, I mean, they are taught that you shouldn't give them more than 2 weeks, like they have to be at least 2 weeks apart. That's nice, but they're going to squeeze them in.

Is there any, is there any evidence at all to suggest that the dog needs multiple reminders for viruses, for these, for these 3 or 4 core, um, um, jabs that we're talking about? Distemper, parvo. I mean, do they get rabies more than once?

They get it, um, as a puppy, and then a year later they'll get the 3-year vaccine, and then they're supposed to get that every 3 years. But There are a lot of veterinarians, particularly in— I've seen it the most with records from Texas, where they give the 3-year vaccine every year.

Wow.

And when I questioned them— well, it's funny because one client, I said, why are you giving your dog rabies vaccine every year? And she said, I didn't know I was. I said, well, your vet is. Look at the records. And I said, so call your vet and ask them. And when she called, he said it's state law. So I looked it up and I said, it's not state law. Call him back again, tell him it's not state law. So then he said, it's county law. So I looked up their county and said, no. She called him back and he said, oh well, it's our rule. And she said, why is it your rule? And he didn't have a good answer, so she switched veterinarians.

Yeah, and Schultz has done long-term, um, challenge studies on these, on these core vaccines. Um, I'm not sure if it was rabies, certainly parvo. Adenovirus, and there was 7 to 9 year challenge studies. So we know that the dog has immunity, much like smallpox, they were measuring immunity in people 70 years later. You know, initially with SARS and MERS, they were measuring to like 10, 15 years later. We know that immunity lasts to viruses. It's the whole point of a vaccination. It's the whole point of this amazing product we once had. And like, but there's no defense, there's no studies that say you need to do it every 2 weeks. There's nothing there. Even the whole idea of every year for like, why would you do it every year? Oh well, you get a health check as well. That's not answering the virus question.

Why are you—

I understand if you want to promote a health check every year, that's one thing, but don't say that your dog needs to be reminded for viruses. Bacteria is perhaps something else, but I mean, it's just, it's fraudulent. It's not, it's not correct. And you're paying for these jabs. It's not like they're coming in free, and they're not harmless, particularly for that toy dog that we're talking about. Vaccine side effects is much bigger, it's more prominent. Side effect literature is dominated by toy and small breed pups because they don't, they're not dose dependent. So this Great Dane pup can lumber in, big doofus, about 30 times heavier than this little kind of dotty pup, and he gets the same amount of vaccine. I mean, is there, is there, is there not a, is there a series of size vaccines for different sizes of dogs at all going on in the US much, or does that happen here, lads, in the UK?

It's not here either. And the wonderful thing is that we have vaccine companies changing their data sheet, and then the veterinary profession isn't always following what those data sheets said. So we get the extension to 3 years, we get it stated quite clearly on the vaccine data sheets, if you give a vaccine after 12 weeks, you don't need to give these multiple boosters of it. And so, as Judy quite rightly said, you know, we've got these puppies that have often been, you know, really well fed by mums with great first milk, so the colostrum, and they've got those antibodies, they don't need that support. You know, if anything, a bit of due diligence about your, you know, when people are coming in, that they're washing their hands, they're maybe not treading their shoes in to see the puppies, those sort of things which we call biosecurity. And actually, the rest you can just do by delaying those vaccines as Dr. Judy said, even 14, 16, 20 weeks. You know, we talked about that before.

So certainly on this side of the pond, within the World Small Animal Veterinary Association, the vaccine guideline says it in black and white: vaccines given after 14 to 16 weeks can last a lifetime. It's there. It's, you know, and these— our colleagues need to read and Um, read.

Yeah, and AVMA on their websites say that the adult vaccine should be given no more often than every 3 to 5 years, yet I am still getting records for 1-year vaccines for distemper, hepatitis, parvo. It, it boggles my mind, and I hate to say that it's just a moneymaker I think it's just people are not up to date. They're— I don't know, but I see, you know, and maybe the new grads are going into a practice that has this policy that they have to have it every year. It just makes no sense. And I would hope that a new grad that's going into a clinic that has these old traditional ways of doing things would open their mouth and say, hey, you know, that's not what they're teaching anymore. But I don't know what they're teaching in the schools, but I do know that On AHVMA and AAHA, it says no more often than every 3 to 5 years. It also states— then the funny thing is the vaccines are licensed for 1 year. So that's part of the argument that you get. And I forget which one it was. I think it was Fort Dodge many years ago had a 3-year licensed DAPP vaccine. The veterinarians wouldn't buy it. They ended up taking it off the market. It was the only one they ever actually did the research, proved that it was absolutely good for 3 years. It was labeled as a 3-year. I think mine was the only clinic that ever bought it. They took it off the market after about 5 years. They said, we just can't sell enough of this. Everybody wants to own this label for 1 year so they can get people in to vaccinate them every year. I'm like, they're not, they're not.

Well, the wonderful thing is those companies that did DHP or DAP have actually succeeded in this country. And the wonderful thing Beth was bringing up, you know, we've got vaccine companies with the Purevax range in the UK. I think you've also got them over there in the States. You know, that have no adjuvants for kittens. You know, again, they're also extending their range over here, the number of years. Are they doing that in the States too, or are you—

Yes, I did finally hear, because the vet— now that I'm not licensed to practice in the state that I'm in, I have to take my animals to a veterinarian, which is really an interesting conundrum, I have to tell you. And there are no holistic veterinarians anywhere near me, so I made a deal with the veterinarian that I'm using, and I'm like, I won't tell you how to practice, you don't tell me what to do with my animals, here's what we're doing. And And she's like, okay, great. It's worked out really well. But she uses the Purevax. And I said, well, I don't want you to give my animals a vaccine that's licensed for, you know, a rabies vaccine that is licensed for 1 year if we're going to do this at all, which I don't after they're— I mean, they got their one, they're good. Maybe I shouldn't say that out loud. But, you know, I want something that is a 3-year and I I have learned that the Purevax rabies, they now have a 3-year label on the Purevax, which is good.

And what of, like, you know, you're saying it lasts for 3 years, it kind of sounds like there's legislation that if you don't do it, is there some sort of rules? That's the first question. And the second part of that is, are titer tests not recognized? Everyone's talking about titer tests. They seem like an enormously sensible thing to do where we measure the antibodies to see if the last, you know, jab is still there, or the antibodies are still coursing through. And of course, they usually find them. So titer tests seem like a very interesting way. Are they not— we know the top governing body, WSAVA, are recommending them. Nobody doing them?

Yeah, so for rabies, rabies over here is legislated in each state and each county and municipality. So almost all of them follow the national guideline, which is the first vaccine is good for 1 year, any vaccine after that is good for 3 years. And that's, that's just the law that mandates that. I have only found 1 or 2 teeny tiny municipalities who happen to have a clerk that happens to be a little more holistic, who has talked their township into saying, hey, if they bring me a titer, is that good enough? That is very, very, very rare for rabies. Nothing else is mandated. Part of the problem is that we have not done a good enough job educating boarding, daycare, grooming, facilities to say, hey, you had a vaccine 3 years ago. It's still good. We're good to go. Or you brought me a titer. That's good. We still have way too many of these facilities who are saying that your pet has to have their distemper, upper respiratory, parvo, influenza, lepto, blah, blah, blah. You know, the litany goes on. And that's when I talked to the owner of this puppy. I said, so what are you doing for vaccines going forward? Because we can't keep doing this. And she said, oh, well, he goes to daycare and boarding. So they require all of this. And I'm like, then you need to find another way around this because this dog is not going to survive this.

Yeah, yeah. We've got the same problem over here. The insurance for these, for a lot of these guys, they, you know, they're switched on and they know that this, you know, a lot of things they don't agree with. I'm just not going to name the diseases. You guys are the vets, but they don't want to do this. They don't want to recommend it, but their insurance policy demands it. And so they're in a tough place. They want to run the business, and so they have to insist on these things that they wouldn't put in their own dog. And it's like, that's a tough situation.

A lot of the pet insurance companies, we need to educate them as well, because in order to insure your pet for medical issues, whatever, they insist that your pet be up to date on vaccines. And what their definition of up to date is may not be my definition of up to date. So that's another, like, we just need to do a better job educating across the board. And there are so many veterinarians who really don't understand the science behind a titer. And so in order to get around having to do it, because they don't want to admit that they're not comfortable with sending this test out and then interpreting results, whatever, which by the way, the lab interprets it. So what's the big deal? So they just charge exorbitant fees. I mean, I have people coming to me saying, well, the veterinarian wanted $500 to do a distemper, parvo, and rabies titer. And, you know, 'Or they'll give me the vaccine and it'll be under $50.' Well, that's a pretty big motivator.

Yeah. Oh, that's awful. So you mentioned, you mentioned this poor old puppy. They got a couple. To move on to your maybe, um, the flea and worms kind of, uh, ticks kind of questions. Now, what goes on where you are? Because like the US, you, you like, you know, where we are in Ireland, Britain here, we don't have any mozzies, so we don't have to worry about heartworm. That might be an issue on your side. So what about this poor pup that got a couple of flea treatments every 2 weeks, or like, where are you on all this?

Man, I hate chemicals, and I've kind of made it my life's goal to get these isoxazoline products off the market. I mean, we're not making much headway in the human space about getting bad things off the market, so— and our conversation with the FDA about this, that's another conversation.

We're all dying to get into it.

We actually got a conversation with the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine over these products a few years ago. We gave them the numbers from the EU. We gave them the numbers from that had been reported on our VAERS system. And it didn't matter that we had tens of thousands of dead animals. It didn't matter that we had tens and tens and tens of thousands of animals with, uh, permanent neurologic issues. Kidney failure, liver failure, you name it, uh, their answer to us was, we just don't see enough problem yet.

Yeah, in 2019, in 2019, did they not issue a warning for Bravecto and Nexgard?

And yeah, for the isoxazolines, now it has to have a little warning on the box that says, uh, be careful with seizure pets. Interestingly, what I see in notes that I get is the client comes in once a month, picks up their dose of NexGard, Bravecto, Credelio, Cepharica, whatever, along with their dose of phenobarbital, which is anticonvulsant. So they come in and they get both of them side by side. It's like, did you not read the label here? And I had a case with a dog that started having seizures. It had been on these monthly or every 3 months medications for a couple of years. Dog started having seizures. They went to the neurologist, had the MRI, the whole workup, couldn't find anything, which that's the problem with these drugs. You won't find anything. So they get classified as idiopathic epilepsy, which stinks. And so they said to the neurologist, we want to use natural flea and tick prevention. And they said, oh no, no problem, no problem. You can use what you've been using. It's not an issue that has nothing to do with the seizures. Oh, but don't use Trifexis for your heartworm. Again, steam. So Milbemycin, is that a Milbemycin and Spinosad together? Separately they're not so bad, together they're an issue. Um, so we've got neurologists who are not willing to own up to the fact that these chemicals are causing neurologic problems, like We're— how do we educate these people?

And does the FDA have a yellow form like we do in the UK? We have— the VMD has a yellow form to report adverse reactions that even the owners can report in on online. Do you also have something like that in the States?

Yeah. So the veterinarian and/or the owner would have to report on the FDA website, which, let me tell you, is not that easy to navigate. So I think a lot of pet owners, unless they are really like down on like, I am going after them, they're not going to bother. And the veterinarians, 99% of them refuse to admit that what they prescribed is related to the problems they're seeing, especially if it doesn't have— like if you give a dose of something and they seizure within a couple of hours, the veterinarian might go, go, well, maybe. But I've even had veterinarians go, it was coincidental. I had a case with a dog that was given, uh, one of those chewables in the office at its visit, and within 2 hours this dog had hemorrhagic gastroenteritis, needed to be hospitalized, almost died. And the veterinarian said, coincidence, not related.

Yeah, like, I mean, the wonderful thing in the UK is that it's a suspect adverse reaction. So for anybody reporting over here on this side of the Atlantic, please do use that form because it actually does not have to be associated other than you've given it around the right time that it could be a problem, and therefore suspect adverse reaction form is what it's called in the UK. And that's the beauty of it. It then relies on the statisticians to work out whether that then can be connected over time. So yeah, great news on this side.

No, ours is actually the same. If you suspect Act. But the problem is, in order to get your veterinarian to report it, you gotta get your veterinarian convinced to report it. But clients, pet owners can call the companies themselves because their phone numbers are on the packaging. And they can report directly to FDA. But like I said, it's not the easiest thing to do. So a lot of people get discouraged. And it's amazing, like if the pet had a vaccine the same day that it was given I can guarantee you the drug company is going to say, oh no, it came from the vaccine. Which really, if your pet has an adverse reaction and they had multiple things done, it's— every single thing that was done should be reported as suspect because it could have come from a vaccine. It could have— I mean, for this dog, could have come from the Benadryl, could have come from any one of the 10 vaccines it got in that day, could have come from the Bravecto, could have come from the Interceptor Plus. So we should report all of it.

It seems like— it seems that the, uh, like, you know, from the non-veterinary gang here, and if you add the amount of stuff that seems to be going wrong, from recommending cereal-based pet food for meat eaters without a single study in support, uh, you know, massive amounts of excessive amount of jabs despite what the evidence clearly says, lasts for 7 to 9 years. Well, we're going to lob them in anyway, why not? Sure, they're no harm. Well, here's side effects studies, don't want to see them. And now we're talking about this terrible harm that we're seeing from flea treatments and they will not link to seizures. It's like there's an absolute refusal to— like, I think if you take your stance, they, you know, veterinary science is in a bit of a predicament here because they're no longer using evidence-based science to make decisions. A lot of these, it seems like they're taking their position in like faith. They have faith in the rep and the drug and the treatment and the product they're giving. And so therefore, no studies can come in and intrude on that faith because then