RawPetMedics Tuesday Night Live: Octoberfest Q&A

Everybody, we're back. It's another Tuesday Night Live.

Greetings.

And yeah, the lads are here and it's all about you out there. Now we've got a Q&A, question and answer. Really, we should, you know, it's October, we should be sat here with a wheat beer. And then I suddenly went, wheat beer? No, we shouldn't. So I've not got a beer with me. Sorry, don't know whether these guys have, but I still think Octoberfest should have been in the title.

So, oh yes, I like it. Octoberfest is good because it involves feast, which involves food, which is a very subtle link to Raw Pet Medics, which is wonderful.

Now, I'd really like to thank everybody who came back to us on, on—

I think we had at least 224 within 48 hours on the, on the, on the JotForm thing that, that Conor Brady kindly did for us. So thank you everybody there. And we are taking note of that. We are going to make— even today we're going to make some changes. Gotta say a big thank you to Patreon, all our Patreon people on patreon.com/rawpetmedics. Uh, your support is wonderful because we're gonna have to start employing people to do various little bits and pieces to keep you happy. So this is what we're going to do. We're all about that, and that's wonderful.

Yeah, sorry, the feedback was so essential though.

I like—

you just get so many cool little tips and tricks from people that are that are watching. And so, yeah, it's been very, very useful. And then we accumulated it all in an Excel spreadsheet and we're trying to find out who we are to you, I think, which is important. This idea of branding, which is— it's a complicated subject and a lot of businesses don't give it any time whatsoever. So we want to do it from the start and make sure that we— yeah, it's just to be better. Better at what we're doing is what we're achieving. So that feedback was—

Yeah, sharpen the message.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, it's cool. So it was all very, very positive, nothing negative. We left a nice additions box at the bottom and I said like, you know, we can take it, guys, you give it to us straight. What do you like? What do you not like? And it was just resoundingly positive that I saw. I didn't see any mean ones anyway.

Yeah, I'm waiting, I'm waiting for the comments section to suddenly fill up now.

Yeah, yeah, fill up.

We love you all.

Somebody did say about dress code. So I thought I'd wear a shirt tonight.

I just went for a t-shirt my first time ever.

I thought, you know, I'm going to do shirt, jacket. And what do we always get? One guy who turns up in a rock t-shirt.

First time. First time I've worn a t-shirt. I always wear shirts and my shirt is lying on the ground. You want to see it? I forget it's there. Trust me. So damn, I decided to go with a cool black t-shirt. What can you do? But yeah.

Amazing. Okay. So we've also been accused of not jumping into the subjects quickly enough. So, and we take that on the chin. Yes, we like— we, we do waffle up, you know, sometimes a lot, sometimes a little, but we do. So let's jump straight in, guys, um, unless anybody's got anything, you know, uh, anything happening in the village, guys. Anything?

Let's go for it.

Oh no, we've got— we've just got a massive, massive, uh, list, haven't we, of, uh, questions.

46 questions from Patreon. All our Patreon people, thank you.

Okay, so I will start. Let's have a little look. Charlie, so can you feed too much bone or do they just poop out the excess? Does it help anal gland expression or can it cause issues? So Nick, you're one for bone, you love bone in—

Ah, wow. Well, I think that's bigger than we— before we started, guys, we said, right, we're going to have 20 seconds each, we're going to do quickfire so that we can get through you know, as many of the 46 questions that we can. So if there goes— I could give you an hour, I could give you an hour on that particular question. But very briefly speaking, there are some companies who put in up to 30% because they thought that perhaps the average skeletal content of a rabbit, say, is up to like 25-30%. I'm not sure whether that fits with cattle and what have you. So I think it's actually a big, big, big, big contest. So my take-home message is find the Level Up bone that works for your dog. There you go. That sounds good.

I would just like a love addition here. I have fed my Pippa, who's my Labrador, venison spine before, thinking she'd just pick off the outer bits, you know, get all the meat off, maybe take a bit of bone. Left her out in the garden for a couple of hours. She was sort of like in the pleasant surrounds, loved it, you know, thought it was great. Went back, no venison spine to be found. She literally ate the whole thing. She pooed crumble, sort of powdery white stuff for about 24-48 hours. But, you know, so my view is because of it being a protein matrix, you're not feeding calcium carbonate here. You are feeding calcium and phosphorus and phosphates in a protein matrix. So actually the body doesn't— and we've discussed this before from Pete Colshaw's sort of paper and stuff about the fact that the body doesn't take the calcium in the same way. And I would just say it's probably a bit too much for the average dog. And please, there are a myriad of websites out there which will talk about constipation. Constipation isn't just about the amount of dry material going through. So if your vet is saying, oh, it's constipated because there's too much bone look, there are some other good reasons of nerve impetus into the gut, what their parasympathetic-sympathetic balance is like, the level of inflammation that's going on. There's all sorts of other things that can be going on, microbiome imbalance, excess methanobacteria, smithii, things like that within the gut that can all cause an immotility and a constipation to occur.

I think you need to work on your 20 seconds, Brent.

That's why I would say, for God's sake, just, you know, yeah, I would say all bones are different.

You know, cattle are killed at, say, a year old, chickens are killed at 10 weeks. A 10-week-old chicken has bones full of water, very low calcium, zinc, iron content compared to a half-ton beast that these leg bones can hold. Same with pigs killed at like 6 months. So you're not comparing like with like. I do believe that raw dog foods can contain 20-25% poultry bones. Most, I'd say an awful lot probably do because dogs are fine with that content of chicken bones and young, early killed poultry. Depends on the animal of course, but if you put in 20% beef bone, you're gonna know all about it as Bren is explaining there 'cause the bones are much harder, much drier. They've got way more to them because they have to hold a bigger beast. As regard to anal glands, yeah, look, anal glands are like, you know, a gut condition, too many soft poos, a little bit of inflammation in the gut, whatever. And if the bit of bone helps to have a drier poo, that's one way to do it, but it's not the way anybody really does it. You wouldn't use lots of bones to fix anal glands. If it helps to have a nice firm poo, it might help with anal gland expression, but you need a bit of anti-inflammation in there. I like a little bit of fiber, soluble fiber, which stores up the water and makes for a better poo. Look, you can learn more about anal glands from a number of different websites, mine and a few others. But as regards the bone thing making you sick, I think a lot of bone might, but not a little bit. Tiny bit.

Okay, I think the roundup is, guys, there are so many great subjects in here that we could talk about forever that actually there's a lot of these which are going to be future full sessions, I think. So I think bones is definitely one of them.

We're trying to do rapid fire. Yeah, right.

Okay, so, okay, okay, next question.

I've got, I've got a couple of questions. Nikki had a question about itchy dogs, and someone else, Nige G, had a question about Itchy Dogs and a few other people. So I'm going to take Nikki's as an example, and she says, I've adopted a dog who was put on Apoquel. Apoquel is an anti-itch, doesn't do anything else, it just kills your itch. Prior to being spayed, along with having 5 teeth extracted, it was very traumatic for her, as anyone can understand. Another vet— under another vet's care, we were taken off Apoquel However, she still struggles with itchy skin. She's on a raw diet and her fur is soft and shiny. She has— we've tested her gut with Animal Biome and her sensitivities with Dr. Dodds, and her hair, she showed sensitive to almost every protein. I'd love somebody to comment on that. Sensitive to almost every protein with the saliva test from Jean Dodds. I have tried to heal the gut and plan to retest with Animal Biome. The The vet believes it may just be a slight bacterial infection. Any thoughts on what to try next?

Oh, that's hard.

Go, Brad.

Quick, 20 seconds.

As soon as you've got more than 3 or 4 proteins that they're sensitive to on any of those tests, I immediately say, okay, back off, seal the gut, heal the gut, and then try and settle that down and then look at retesting down the line and double-check what results you're getting, because if you've got a leaky gut, the body is becoming exposed to all of its contents at various points. And so therefore, sometimes you'll get antibody buildup purely through exposure, not because they've got true sensitivities. So you've got a lot of work to go on just getting the bacteria back to some normality. We've talked about Atrantil and then using butyrates and following up with a good probiotic as an option. Yeah, there's a couple of other things out there. That's my 20 seconds.

Yeah, I think this is a colossal subject. This one, they come into Dog's Trust, you'd spend an hour and a half trying to talk to people about this. There's so much things you need to understand about it. But as Nick would say, actually, I'm not going to take Nick's idea about his bucket, but it's if your dog— this word allergies is used far too often. You know, you're born with allergies. The chance of this being an actual allergy is pretty small. Food allergies are quite rare. But you develop these sensitivities. And as Bren said, if your tests, which I find those tests are grossly misleading, they shatter your confidence, they're not allergies what you're looking at. You're probably looking at a shot gut with a few little holes and into this escaping lots of different proteins. You try that, you try that, and you expose the dog to more and more proteins. As Bren said, you've got to fix the gut. So it would be to a couple of days on— I like starting on a broth, a nice simple broth from the best animal you can, grass-fed lamb, A well-reared duck or turkey would be great. You make a nice big broth out of that, put that onto them. I love German chamomile and I love marshmallow together. German chamomile is called mother of the gut for a reason, look into it on Google Scholar. A marshmallow which increases mucosal lining and then hit him with a probiotic and I say, right dog, you're going to eat that protein for a while, then you can add more turkey bits into it if he's on turkey and you can move slowly onto turkey raw dog food and then maybe I'll move slowly over to lamb after 4 or 5 weeks if the poos stay good but rehabilitation, as Bren says, before you even think what else is going. You got to put the fire out in the house before you start taping up the windows with ApoQuell and putting the carpet over the chimney to stop the smoke coming out the roof. They look at the symptoms, put the hose inside the house, and come back and look at what's damaged after that. Nick.

Amazing. I would say that the test is on whether your vet's done a blood test or you've sent it off to Dr. Jean Dodds in the States for her nutri— what's it called? Nutri— New saliva test, it's a guide at the very best. However, if there are zeros there, they can be good proteins to start with. So if you've got a panel of 8 proteins and the dog is positive in some way to either IgG or IgE to 7 of those, then the, the 8th one, be it whatever, horse or duck or what have you, that's possibly a good place to start. Okay, I completely agree with Conor about the lamb, completely agree about the bone broth, completely agree about healing the gut and then reappraising the animal completely after that. Doing the animal microbiome testing, yes, but it's kind of difficult to interpret. But if the biome is really shot, then maybe that's something that you can do some work on. There you go.

Denise Webb is saying, you're saying it too quick for me to write down what to do to cure the gut. Look, this is what's going to happen in 20 seconds. We've done a night on allergies before, on sensitivities. Yeah, there's an article on my website called Allergies in Adverted Colons because that's the word they type in to find us. And that will go from A to Z of what to do. That's the most relevant.

Also brilliant. You can listen to our audio on Audible, on Amazon, and actually you can play it at half speed. So we're not going to apologize for going really, really quickly. We want to address as many of these questions as possible. So tonight is the one to play at 0.5 of a speed. Okay.

I love Chris Braxton's comments. Will this be available to view later? I have to go ring the bells at the cathedral.

Guys, just to, just to say to everybody who's watching, this is recorded on YouTube. So if you don't like Facebook, you can get it there. It's also, it's on a podcast. Literally, you can go to any podcast player. If you don't know about podcasts, they're brilliant. They're basically radio programs that you are in control of. You can play them whenever you fancy, and you can listen to this when you're walking the dog at half speed with a piece of paper in your hand and absolutely easy peasy.

Cool. What's next? What's next? I mean, what—

I'm going to do one from Doris just with regards to, look, my dog is losing its hearing. Is there any way of slowing this down? I've looked at the Forever Dogs people, whoever they are, some mysterious book that Dr. Brady somewhere. Never heard of it. Yeah, never heard of it. Anyway, but isn't working for them. Any ideas of— you've got hearing issues for your dog, what would be your first thing, Nick, that you'd maybe consider?

I would consider just making sure that the general level of inflammation in the dog was great. So I would go definitely for raw. I assume the dog is raw, but I would make sure that the gut function was perfect, the poos were perfect, breath was perfect, skin was perfect, and what have you, i.e., indicating the general level of inflammation is good, and that would be my start. I'd be thinking about homeopathics, perhaps remedies like Hypericum, which is for damage to nerve endings, might be somewhere to start. If you go and see a very good veterinary homeopath, there are probably 200 or 300 remedies that they might be able to look at which may pertain much more specifically to your problem. However, prepare yourself for the fact that you might not be able to do very much.

Okay, I have a tip, but it's not regarding the ears. You said, is there anything you can do to slow down the, the, the kind of oldie decline? I have the— I love this study by Milgram where they got standard dry food and then they got 20 geriatric dogs on standard dry food and another 20 geriatric dogs on standard dry food, but they added in a tiny bit of spinach, a tiny bit of tomato, a tiny bit of grapes, and a tiny bit of blueberry. They did put grape palms, ignore that. A tiny bit of blueberry and a tiny bit of lemon peel and carrot. Okay, so those 5 things went in there that we've discussed that study before in powder form. And the reason for that is like, you know, the lycopene in the tomatoes, it's the lutein in the carrots, the anthocyanins in the blueberries, all this cool stuff that we know helps slow down cognitive decline in humans. They put it into the pet food to see what effect it would have on the geriatric dogs. And lo and behold, 2 years later, those getting the additional bioactive compounds were like, you know, better able for their tasks. And they wrapped this up as an old and aging prescription diet, even though they just took knowledge from, we know, from human sector and put it in pets. So those 4 or 5 things are great for older dogs. And so I would take those lessons and I just add into my own raw dog food and tailor it a bit. But that's a cognitive thing more so than ear thing. I just wanted to sound like I knew something to say.

Brent, don't feed them grapes.

Don't feed them grapes. I would definitely say, I would say, look, there are a number of things. So anything that's there for cognitive decline, so increase increasing the omega-3 compounds, reducing the inflammation. I think there are lots of things. I think VetPro and NutriVet both do a brain and mental well-being supplement now, so you can just get all of that pre-mixed in with the various nutrients in there just as a sprinkle capsule onto the food as a very brief option. So certainly look at that first and foremost. Okay, but agree with Nick, loads of remedies could be considered from Hypericum all the way through. It's worth looking at that too, depending on what your dog's suffering from. Okay, next question. I think we've got to come up— but someone's been bursting at the seams for this one.

Yeah, manganese.

Yeah, we had a lot of those questions. There's like, there's about 50 questions that came in. Yeah, yeah, Afcopharyngeal Balance. And the manganese thing came up 2 or 3 times. So like, this is unfortunately not going to be a 20-second one, but I do need 2 minutes. But look, manganese is just one mineral, okay? It's just one mineral that dogs need, and we're trying to— we're arguing over how much of it they need. And the problem is everybody's going by AAFCO and FEDIAF, and AAFCO and FEDIAF are this group of dry food producers making rules based on their potions and conical flask ingredients that they make. And the problem is we know that things like zinc oxide, iron oxide, manganese sulfate, and all these are not as readily absorbed as the real thing. Okay, so I just want to, uh, fly through a couple of notes I made to put this thing to bed once and for all. One sec. Um, so I have got an unbelievably long password for that laptop. I don't know why. Okay, so look, manganese functions in multiple enzymes, components of your bone, of cartilage, and that kind of stuff. Everyone worries about, you know, the ligament rupture. Becker was saying that if you're low on manganese, you might be more increased in ligament rupture. That is most likely true if you're very low on manganese, but we don't have any studies to back that up because doing studies of microminerals like manganese are very hard to do because you're talking tiny amounts. You need 2 milligrams of this. I mean, it's like you have enough iron in your body to make a nail. And you need 2 milligrams. Each human contains about maybe 20 or 30 milligrams of manganese. It's just nothing, okay? So when they say micro minerals, they mean a piece of dust amount in your entire body. So very hard to do studies on it, so we don't have them in any animals really. We have a good few on chickens. Deficiency results in bone growth, scales, abnormalities, all that. There is lots of different types in your pet food label. Manganese sulfate, manganese carbonate, very common. Manganese dioxide, very common. Manganese oxide, the most common. These are all conical flask manganese supplements that they make in the lab. The problem with these supplements is that they're not chelated to a protein or a polysaccharide. They're not holding the hand of that as these things are found in nature. These are inorganic minerals and the gut membrane does not like them on their own. So it's gotta be holding the hand to get into the party, get in of, of a carbon molecule or sugar. So things that come from conical flask aren't. So it doesn't matter which one of those is on the label, you know that it's not going to be the chelated form You can put in chelated forms, proteinates and things, but they're very expensive. I have seen a couple of pet food, raw dog food companies using them, but dry foods, I've never seen in a dry food product. So you're getting a product that the dog will struggle to absorb, 2 to 6, 8% of it. Okay, on top of that, as was highlighted to by a number of people, zinc and iron, if you try to make a complete food and put in lots of zinc oxide and iron oxide, it binds the manganese out of the product. So the dog can't even absorb the little bit that's put in there. So what do they do? They put even more in to account for the fact that they can't absorb enough oxide. So you get a huge amount of these in pet food, but how much the dog absorbs, we don't know. So when we go to find out the studies, AFCO says check out the NRC. Okay, so you go and you get your NRC manual, and this is what you do, and you say, right, where are the studies? Where are the studies? And he's got this massive book, and you go to the manganese section, and it's so enlightening. And they say manganese only occurs in very small amounts. For example, there is maybe 3 to 15 milligrams of manganese in a dog in total, 4 milligrams in total in a cat. So they need infinitesimal, like that's a gram is a tiny tip of a teaspoon of powder. 1,000 times less than that is 1 milligram. Okay, your dog has about 2 of those little tiny bits in it, tiny amounts. Okay, and they said it's mainly found in animals in the bone and liver. Not the hair and hide and stuff that we were talking about. And as Bren said, you know, even if it wasn't found in hair and hide and feathers, how much of that is your dog going to absorb if you feed it to them? Very little is the answer, because it's completely indigestible fiber. Okay, so even if manganese was found in those sources, feeding them a hairy rabbit ear, the hair is going to pass out because you can't digest that. That's not what bacteria eat and ferment. So okay, that was that first bit I thought was interesting. And then they said, right, What sort of studies have we got for deficiencies in dogs and cats? From the NRC, there are no clinical or experimental reports on magnesium deficiency in dogs or cats. Okay, so with no studies whatsoever to show what deficiency does, then we say, okay, what are the adverse effects of consumption of too much manganese that they use in pet food? There are no reports of toxic effects of conscious— of too much manganese in dogs and cats. They haven't got any reports, they haven't done any studies. And you go, okay, what 'What are the dietary requirements? Can you tell me how much manganese a puppy needs?' The answer: there are no specific reports regarding dietary requirements or allowances on manganese in puppies. They have no idea. Do you know for zinc and for iron they took figures for pigs? In these, all they talk about is, well, this is what people and chickens— loads of studies of chickens and rats. And the reason there's studies of chickens and rats is because they feed chickens this really complicated pellet diet like a kibble, and they have to make sure they grow them perfectly. So you can mess around with their diet, and with rats you can control their lab diet. So we've got lots of studies of rats and chickens and people, and the NRC is more than happy to look at what's going on in these animals and relate it to what's going on in dogs. But if you try to do that for, say, the obesity epidemic, cancer epidemic, pancreatitis, all the other stuff that we know nutritionally is caused by this, they say, oh no, we need more studies. But they're more than happy to borrow from these animals when they do. As regards adults, they've got zero studies to back up an adult either. They've got one study in pregnant bitches from 1984, and those bitches were fed dry food. Okay, so we've got no data whatsoever of how much normal manganese a dog needs. All we know is when you're trying to formulate a raw dog food, they demand that you have loads of manganese in there because these guys are coming from this conical flask George Jetson world, which has got nothing to do with fresh pet food. So when somebody says your diet is deficient, like, they spend about half a page here talking about the reason we know how much pups need is because they look at the milk of the mum and they analyze how much manganese is in that, and they say that's probably ideal puppy food for the first 12 weeks of life. And so that's how much manganese. And then it's like, okay, so why don't you look at what a dog normally eats, like a rabbit or a bloody lizard, and then you squish them up and see how much manganese is in that? They've already told us tiny, tiny amounts. So it begets normal bloody smartness that a dog would need huge amounts of manganese because it's not in the environment. It's not in cereal, it's not in rabbits, it's not in people, it's not in chickens. It's a tiny, tiny micromineral that dogs need bugger all of. So just feeding them a bit of liver and bone is probably going to be enough. I would say to everybody, relax, as I'm going to try to do now. This manganese thing is ridiculous. A single bag of mussels from Tesco's has oodles of manganese and great quality omega-3 and selenium and cool stuff. So yes, if you want to put that stuff in now and again and put in a little bit of hair and hide for fiber, because that's proper pre and prebiotic stuff for dogs, okay. But I would not be worried about this manganese thing. Park it, guys. We've no idea. We've never seen a manganese deficiency in a cat or dog. It's never been reported. It might exist, like the way we're all under-eating in zinc and magnesium and stuff, but it is I would put it in there, like hide it under a pile of coats and see if it pops up again. That's my thing.

Okay, breaking news. I've just heard from Pete, our podcast guy, and he says there have been so far with our podcast 5,900 downloads, which I think is pretty impressive.

Yeah, that's good.

5,900 in total. Yeah, and counting.

That's good.

So this is very, very good. Now, okay, I'm gonna just, uh, There was another thing that you had, Conor, but I think we've heard quite enough from you just for this in the short term.

Yeah, he's covered off every argument that we talked about on WhatsApp, so I think we're just—

yeah, thanks a lot.

Yeah, I know, I must say, Nikki is loving you at the moment, Nikki Cammack, uh, because this was a whole argument that we had back at the conference about we should be reaching these minimal levels And then it was a whole, oh my God, let's destroy it all because are those minimal levels even correct? Who knows? Nobody knows. Why are we even reaching for a target that's, you know, based on an assumption, estimates, cows, a pig, some rats?

And it's like, my God, you're talking about— you've done nothing. Are you telling me you've done no studies on dogs? And you talk about the Wild West.

It really is, isn't it? Nobody's got a clue. Feed great food, the best you can possibly afford, and that's the way— that's, that's where I'm going next. Eileen has brought up some wonderful— a wonderful point that there was a 25% spike in abandoned pets this year because everybody got a pet during COVID Something like 3.2 pets were bought during lockdowns, and 1 in 5 are now worried how they will feed their companions. So this is bringing in another question from the questionnaire, the the JotForm questionnaire, which said something like, we don't talk about kibble, and that's kind of deliberate, but I'm going to say the K word, and I'm going to say, in these straightened times when people are thinking, crumbs, I'm either going to have to get rid of the dog or I'm going to have to feed kibble, how can we— 20 seconds, gentlemen— how can we improve a kibble in order to make things economic?

Cool, who wants to go? I'm roasting hot here from the manganese thing.

Okay, I'll go, I'll go.

Okay, Bren, you go, then I will, then Conor, once you cool down, you can go.

Look, there are different choices of kibbles for a start. I think, you know, there's certainly changing away from things which are high cereal, things which are high grains of any descriptions including maize which could have mycotoxins in and other elements which are going to increase the inflammation within your dog's gut. But you've got to understand, do not look at food as the whole cost. You've got to look at the whole of life care as the cost of care. And actually, if you're going to be increasing costs because of allergies, itchy skins, upset guts, chronic dental issues, chronic inflammatory problems with arthritis, you've all of a sudden, it's almost counterintuitive to go, I'm just going to cut costs by feeding kibble. So I would say wherever you can try and improve the quality of kibble, maybe even go to lightly cooked foods instead, or even, you know, do stick with your raw and accept that actually you're in it for the long game. And from there, remember, at least if you're adding 25% plus on your raw, then you're at least gaining something. But there's lots of other additions, I think. Conor, you're going to have to step in. What would be your advice for the kibble game?

I think we definitely do need to do a night on kibble, Bren. And they're right, we've got 2 or 3 people on Patreon saying, can you do a chat on kibble? And there's so much to talk about, guiding people towards, away from bad kibbles, towards good kibbles, how to supplement them. You know, what's the difference between grain-free and cereal-based and cold-pressed and all this kind of stuff. And there is big differences, and as Bren said, choosing a good kibble at a minimum is a good start. So away from wheat and corn and at least grain-free. That's still very high carbohydrate, belly-busting stuff, so it's a tiny step up the ladder, but not much. But here's my thing, I love Power Cubes, okay, the Power Cubes TM. Power Cubes, I would just get the stuff that you wish was in kibble, okay, and most of us know what that is. So go down the butcher, get a bit of liver, and a bit of kidney and a bit of heart if he has it. But very few butchers are killing their own animals, so you might just get liver and kidney. Okay, so you get some liver and kidney, a pound of each, half a kilo of each, whatever, and you go home and then you cook up a bit of greens, dark greens, bit of carrot, in they go. Then you look in the fridge, what's kind of— okay, I need to use that, put that in there as well. I put in some flaxseed that I've got in the thing. Okay, in that goes. A few dollops of probiotics. So I steam my veg, I leave the meat raw, and I chop up the organ meat and I steam the veg and I might throw in a few pumpkin seeds and I let that cool off and that's in my pot. And then I put in any cool extras. If I've got some sardines that you got from somewhere, some fish heads, a tiny bit of tomato puree, a sprinkle of salt, good quality salt is nutritious, and anything, a handful of good quality blueberries, all the things that people are saying in the list there, bone broth, kefir, a little bit of veg, eggs, like all that stuff is great. All that goes into your pot and you mix it all up, all this cool stuff that you wish you were giving to the dog every day. And then you get a few big ice cube trays, small, small dog, big if it's a big dog, you mash your now purple goo into the ice cube tray and you freeze it down, you pop them into a bag and now you've got a power cube. And I would recommend that that power cube is 10 to 20% of your dog's dry, of his food every day. So you're putting in 10% organ meats, 10% veg, give or take. And that is a wonderful addition for any dog. Studies show anything you put into that bowl is going to benefit the dog. I would say it's probably because you're taking out the harm, but popping in something like that every day, now you can say, all right, I'm feeding at least a wheat-free, corn-free kibble, as Brenna said, and I'm putting in a little addition like that on top of a raw meaty bone now and again that costs you nothing. You are adding years onto your dog's life just doing that, I would say. So I love all that sort of stuff. There's loads of those recipes on Power Cubes online. People have I've put it up on Facebook a number of times, but yeah, absolutely. All right, Brian, should we go on to the next one while we wait for Nick to come back?

Yeah, I think, look, there's a very quick one from Ellie Micklewright. Is flaxseed oil beneficial to dogs?

Hmm, who will I?

Yeah, you're the only other person in the room.

Yeah, oh, it's me. I'll happily take it. I'll take the conch. Um, so yeah, like, I think, um, look, do you have to be very careful with veg oils? A lot of them are, uh, what's that word where they've been, uh, de-scented and, and, and, um, and, and just stripped bare, part products of the oil industry. So a lot of refined oils are just nasty. And so I take it very easy with veg oils. I'm not a big fan of them. Maybe a tiny drop of, uh, you know cold-pressed raw virgin organic olive oil, tiny bit of that, there's fantastic compounds in that, very medicinal. That and coconut oil a little bit, okay. The problem with these oils is that plant oils come with a lot of omega-6, and so I'm not up for adding a lot of omega-6 to the dog's diet. I think they want to keep their ratio of omega-3 up, you know, at a ratio of around 4:1, 1:4, 3:6. So as soon as you add in plant oils, you jack up that omega-6 that's inflammatory. I just, I don't like putting in too much of it in. But if there's a medicinal reason and something cool going on with flaxseed, there certainly is in olive oil and a bit in coconut oil, great MCTs. Those two I like, but flaxseed, I don't actually know a whole lot about it. But I actually do use the ground powder in my Power Cubes because I think that would be something that will be in birds' tummies when the dog eats the whole bird. So, you know, I'm contradicting myself there. I just don't use a whole lot.

And I think the antioxidants, is it lignans within the seed, if it's in a flour base like our hea flour and things like that, you've got a much better balance of preserving those oils as well, rather than the risk of them oxidizing quite so readily. That's an interesting— Nick, we were just— thanks for coming back to us. We just, uh, we're talking about is flaxseed oil beneficial to dogs?

Yes.

A brief overview and what other things we could talk about with oils.

Yeah, yeah, I think it is flaxseed oil, and the, the trick is to get a very stable product. I did some work with ProFlax and and they've done accelerated aging of their product and it's good for 2 years. It's minimal, minimal oxidation. You keep it in the fridge, you keep the lid on, you use it sparingly and what have you. I would always alternate that with marine oils. The thing about, about seed oils, and we're talking sunflower oil and canola oil and all these kind of things, basically as soon as you break open that seed, as Bren was saying, all the goodness that's in there, if you eat it within half a day or so, if it's— they are edible, unlike some of the seeds that they, they will give you. The early margarines were made out of, of, of castor seed and all sorts of hideous things. But if it's sunflower seed and what have you, they're not inherently bad. It's just that they get, they get denatured, as Conor was saying, and by the time they reach the off the shelf in the supermarket, that they are bad for you. They are actually positively oxidizing, and they will bind to proteins in your body and do you a lot of harm. So I'd say flax oil, yes, as part of a rotation of krill oil, marine oil, flax oil. I'm pretty comfortable with that. I do use What's it called? Um, uh, you were saying it just now, Connor, the coconut oil. Um, yeah, I use it for my kids. We call it ice, uh, non-cold ice cream for my kids. That's how deprived my kids are.

They will get—

yeah, they will get— they get a teaspoon of this stuff and they absolutely love it because it melts in your mouth like, um, yeah, like ice cream. Okay, and the dogs as well. It's a little treat if you want to get a tablet into a dog. If you can put it in coconut oil, it's a very good thing as well. So I think that there's a lot of oils out there. Go gently, always bring oils in gently. I think that's the thing, so you don't embarrass the pancreas, because a lot of dogs have got delicate pancreases because of toxins and over-vaccination and many things. So there we go.

Just would like to come back to Heather's point here. Have you heard this, the truth about flaxseed flaxseed interfering with dogs' fertility? Is this a myth or truth? I'm— I would just be of interest because there is an issue with glyphosate that can cause issues with fertility, and it may be down to people's experience of using general flaxseed that is contaminated with glyphosate, which is quite common because it's the thing that kills off the crop before they then crop it and spray all of those seeds separately, separate them out, and they can end up with glyphosate in amongst them. And there's a couple of other antifungals that they spray on some of these crops to try and keep the moulds down that can end up being a problem. Okay, so it might be to do with that, Heather, nothing to do with the actual oil within the product.

I would totally go with that, Wren, totally go with that.

I see Lynn Hobbs came on there and she says, hi, I'm late, with a sad face. Oh, congratulations, Lynn, well done to yourself and your partner. Oh no, there was another one there, um, who said, where does it— a night on fireworks is needed. I think that's pretty good on anxiety and fear, and that would be very good. Um, yeah, uh, have we got another question or should we talk about fireworks for a second? That's a really good question. Shall we do the fireworks? Why don't we do—

I know we're doing, we're doing, uh, Mr. Lucilin is next. Week. And then after that, we've got Joe with Mr. Probiotics. So we're kind of contrasting those two guys because you guys once said to us more guests. So we're getting more guests.

Um, yeah, that's gonna be cool.

And then, but, but we need fireworks in, so let's, let's get fireworks in as soon as we can. This—

I'll write it, I'll write it for a Patreon. I've already written it from my Facebook page, so I'll write it and tweak it. There we go.

Why don't we do, why don't we do a special thing for Patreon? We'll do a little write-up and we might just get together for 5-10 minutes and do a roundup of our thoughts on fireworks. At the end of this, just as a special, just as a special.

Yeah, that's what we'll do after this then.

Okay, good, good. Okay, we'll do that.

Great, good, sounds good. Okay, next question from, uh, the Patreon page, patreon.com/rawpetmedics, guys. Uh, the price of a cup of tea gets you access to that. Um, so we really appreciate everyone in there, thanks very much. Could you discuss the need to modify raw diets depending on livestock life stage, particularly outlining the extra requirements for pups, oldies, and with the question underneath that also says, when do you change from puppy raw dog food to adult raw dog food? Let's lash that in there. Life stage pet food, guys, where are you?

Brilliant.

Yeah, thanks, Janice, for that question. I think me, I would say, I think we did this back in January, we talked about puppy foods and feeding the bitch as well, the pregnant bitch. And sometimes it is just about amounts and calories for me, and I just want to make sure they've got an increased access to food. So that's why for puppies I generally go, yes, increased fats to some degree are beneficial just for the extra energy, but I'm quite happy with just increasing their percentages between 5 and 10%, between, dependent on what they need and how much they can take. And certainly that's what was going on for my kitten at the moment. You know, Harry's burning through a shedload of raw food, quite happy to stuff his little face at about 10% of his body weight, quite happily running around like crazy. So that would be my life stage thing. And in senior years, just adding more of those power cubes that we've just been talking about.

Yeah.

What's yours, Nick?

Okay, my take on this is I'm with Bren on this, but I would take it to make it even more of a ridiculous observation, to say if anybody who's listening or anybody in the profession can tell me when a puppy becomes a junior, when a junior becomes an adult, and when an adult becomes a senior with any kind of scientific certainty, I'd be very grateful to receive that, because then you can start saying, right, this is when you move from A to B to C to D. So that's number one. Number two is that this whole idea of a difference thing for puppies came from James Spratt back in whenever it was, 18— when was he, 1864 or so? Yeah, with the original— he was the original marketeer. He put advertising on the map by using it for pet food, and one of his brilliant genius ideas was, we'll charge a little bit extra for some puppy food. So as far as I'm concerned, in nature there's no such thing as puppy food. It's just puppies eat a vast amount more, and therefore they get a vast amount more exposure to nutrient sense food, and that's what sorts them out, methinks. Yeah, Conor, where are you on that one?

Yeah, I kind of think the same thing. I think probably, you know, there's probably some element of timing with these pups, and the pups are kind of born— I can only imagine young animals when they're born, they have access to young animals and fattier animals, and maybe perhaps spring/summer type business, and not so much the case with dogs. But, like, you know, I think, yeah, I think pups would probably do with a slightly more oomph in their diet. You might choose red meats over the white meats a little bit, but to be honest, I'm a lean puppy man, I'm a lean dog man, I'm a lean, lean senior man, and so I don't think he'd— like, the only consideration would be a bit more fat now and again, a pinch of fatty beef mince now and again to feed those zoomies that he's doing. So yeah, maybe, but you know, other than that, we've talked about the seniors already, and I really don't think I wouldn't get in a fuss. I think we will see more and more prescription and life stage raw diets to cater for the people's need to have you know, they love us, and so it sells. And I think that's gonna— it's already started happening with one company. So, you know, I don't think there's a whole lot of thought behind that. But look, if it works for you, um, go bananas, as long as the price is the same, because, uh, I just like to buy meat and not fat myself. And I've got a question on salivary glands, guys, that I have to read out because this girl has been with us since the very start. Lulu developed a swollen salivary gland. This is the second time, so it's going to get aspirated once again. You can tell me what that means. But can't get an appointment till the 13th of October. Not yet available till then. Apparently poodles do get it. Odd, isn't it? It's rare, but if it keeps returning, we're going to have to consider taking the gland out. I don't want to do that. I have no idea what causes it. I'm looking at the internet, reveals a lot of vets perplexed. Have you any thoughts, guys? I certainly don't.

My thought, very simply— Brendan will give us the bottom line on this— but very simply speaking, for the non-vetty, the non-scientific among us, is you can't treat most things until you've diagnosed them. Yeah, unless you open the bonnet on the car and have a look at the engine, you cannot fix that engine. Okay, so it's very simply speaking, get a diagnosis. A lot of people come to me and say, oh, my dog's doing this, this, and this. I say, what's the diagnosis? So they say, oh, I haven't been to the vet yet. Okay, start at the beginning. I'd say, let's get a diagnosis. There will be a reason why this salivary gland is filling up. If we're lucky, it'll just be gunked up with a little bit of fluid and the saliva can't come out. If we're less lucky, there may be swelling for some reason in the salivary duct, so the stuff can't come out. And if we're very unlucky, there may be something sinister going on. But I think let's get diagnosis. Brent, your thoughts?

Yeah, I mean, look, if it's truly just a blockage, You know, the salivary mucus, the protein and congealed stuff that blocks those glands can be really frustrating because you can do any number of warm packs, cold packs, massage, all of the things you like to try and get that plug to unbung. But as Nik says, unless you know for sure that it's just a plug, you could be trying to add hot and cold poultices, an abscess in there. You know, there could be all sorts of other stuff that's going on. There could be a growth in there that actually has been, you know, hovering around for a while that needs to be addressed. So I would definitely say, look, it's always nice to think, yeah, it's just a salivary mucosal seal. Surely it should be as simple as, you know, applying a bit of pressure, jetting it out, it'll all clear, it'll be lovely, hunky-dory. It's not always as simple as that. And definitely get a diagnosis.

Yeah, she said it's her second time now. So why would the vet diagnose that? I mean, do you scan a jaw? Like, I mean, aside from feeling and probing around.

Ultrasound. Yeah, absolutely. Ultrasound probe. You can get on there and have a look. You know, I know there are a number of vets that would be super lazy about this and just go, oh, go send it for MRI or send it for a CT. Yeah, just because they can send it off for a really expensive test. By somebody else.

No, this is not the winter for us.

But I think, you know, there is the way to ultrasound it just to check to see if we can identify exactly where it is. I think that's, you know, it's not something that if your dog's quite calm, you can actually even do it conscious. They don't need to be unconscious to do that ultrasound. So it's certainly doable. And placing a needle just to check that it is just saliva in there and it's not abscess material or any— some things like that.

What does— is that what aspiration is, where they leak it out?

Sucking something out?

Yeah, yeah, it's when you're sucking something out.

But that's, you know, again, Michelle has added here, can't dogs develop calculi in salivary glands? Yes, lads.

Yeah, yeah, little gritty grainy bits. But again, with an ultrasound, you'd probably be able to see it because they're very dense. But with an X-ray, you might be able to see it as well. But basically, start with the simplest of imaging. Vets call this stuff imaging. Yeah, so what's really simple is if the dog is calm, you just have a look with a probe like this and you're away in 20 minutes. If not, then you can set them, you can knock them out a bit, and then you can do an X-ray just to see if you can see any gritty material or anything that oughtn't to be there. And only if those were not giving you any results and you're still not sure as to why this thing is recurring, that's when you'd be thinking about perhaps some kind of expensive imaging. Yeah, so it's great, you know, start, do the simple stuff to start with, that's the important thing.

Yeah, you'd hope that the vet— this is the second time the vet has seen it, so you'd hope that at least that imaging type probe, why wouldn't that be something you'd reach for very quickly?

You'd hope that it's also going to be the same diagnosis. Now, that's also something that's not always the case. So it's always worth, you know, if you think it looks the same, absolutely, probably 8 times out of 10, it's going to be the same. But if you miss the 2 times it's different, you know, you're going to look a little bit foolish. So it is a case of looking at making sure you get the diagnosis right.

Okay, cool. We only have 5 down the list of 47 questions, guys. We did well, we did well.

Yeah, we did.

That was good. That was— I'm roasting. Uh, right, let's boogie on. We're going to do fireworks, uh, for 10 minutes after this on patreon.com. Come over and join us there, guys, if you can. If you can't, not to worry, we're going to be here same time next week to talk to Mr. Lucille about cleaning wounds the natural way. And, uh, can't wait for that. That's going to be very, very interesting. So, uh, join us for that. Thanks everyone for coming tonight. I, uh, I really love those FAQs. It keeps you on the ball. Thanks, lads. That was great fun.

So many subjects for the future as well. And yeah, we'll catch you all soon. If you want to join us on Bit on the Side,