RPM Facebook Live: Q&A Tonights your night.

I don't mind screen lock, that's nice.

Oh, we're gonna have to do the advert more regularly.

I prefer this actually.

Yeah, so Conor, do you want to go ahead and just thank Trish?

Yeah, absolutely. We've got a new sponsor for tonight and for the next couple of nights, and that sponsor is Patricia Gettin. Most of you on here will definitely know who Patricia is because you're in her group. She is the Raw and Delistic Cat and Dog support group is her group on Facebook, so you find her on Facebook. She is the largest natural Facebook page, advisory Facebook page in the UK, and for very good reason. I'm on there as well. She's got a heap of admins. I'm one of them. But I love the page. Really friendly, you know, can't help you enough. And there's so much— people want so much handholding. I don't know about you guys, but people contact you all the time for handholding and you feel for them. You want to give them 10 or 15 minutes of your time, but you literally can't get to them. So I dump a lot of these people that need help in Facebook groups such as well, this is a cat and dog support group. They can handhold you and get you over the line. She's also got a big back catalog of things. So if you've got an ailment that they've covered already a lot of times, you can find heaps of links and stuff to different people's pages and good supporter of ours as well. So thanks very much, Patricia, for the sponsorship tonight, and she'll be here then for us next week as well. So you'll find her on Facebook there on Raw and Holistic Cat and Dog Support Group. And to be also, also Patreon as well, guys. Patreon is just going from strength to strength and we really appreciate the help, guys. Every week it really, really helps, helps us to get prepared for this busy, busy night. So we will go through as quick as we can, but you will find us on rawpetmedics@patreon.com and that's where a lot of the questions have come in too. So we're going to be dealing with a lot of them tonight. To get back to the patrons, just to kind of to give back to them. So guys, last week, how have you been? Did you have a long weekend? We had a long weekend. Does England have a— does Britain have a long weekend?

That was the week before.

It was the week before. Yeah, no, ours was just now. Yeah, so I'm recovering after that.

Conor, do you want to mention that you do consulting?

I do, yeah. Like, we're going to be doing— like, so many of the questions are about raw, and like, a lot of these people are already raw feeding, so if you have an ailment, like if you need dietary advice, you've got like the three of us, this is what we do for a living. I'm like, it's kind of like we don't, we don't push ourselves enough, lads. Like, we don't mention Brendan from tarawoodvets.co.uk, you know, one of the top vets in the country, and you can access him and his vets via Zoom. And Nick Thompson, the exact same, if you don't mind waiting for the lads. But I've got a slightly shorter waiting list, so I just thought, you know, tonight's the night that I'm just going to remind people that if there is ailments that I can deal with, which is like, you know, from your allergies to dietary advice for pancreatitis or just simple mild kidney disease, not anything mind-blowing where medical intervention is needed. If I can help you out, I will. So you can fill in a questionnaire on my website on dogsfirst.ie, and you can book a little space, and I can take a look at it. If it doesn't suit me, guys, I'll ping it back to you. But if I can help, if it's in one of my 5 or 6 fields where I think I'm strong, I definitely will help. So please check that out because a lot of the questions here is what can I do for pancreatitis, which we've covered already, kidney disease, which we've covered already. Please check back over those. So that's already done by RPM, but if I can help you with any of the allergy stuff, recurring IBD kind of gut issues and stuff, that's where we're stronger. Well, guys, how did you get up to? What did you get up to during the week? Did you have any major successes or failures over the last 7 days, or did you have anything exciting happening?

Bren, do you want to go first?

Oh yeah, well, we're just going through having big containers delivered with loads of builders just about to start on the house. So I'm going to be decamping shortly from this place, and yeah, we're going to be trying to recreate something that's slightly different but still with a view.

What are you— are you knocking that all down, your house, to build a new thing, or—

yeah, we're knocking out the back wall, knocking outside, taking out the garage.

Nice.

Gonna get my trowel out because I haven't got enough jobs to do. I just thought I'd move from farming into a bit of building, you know.

Yeah, God, you're really putting the feet up lately, Brendan. This is great. And you have to mix all this with running the clinic as well.

Yeah, well, you know, you've got to oversight it. You've got to have some time to do other stuff, otherwise you're not very rounded, are you? You've got to experience all sorts of stuff.

Sounds good. What about you, Nick?

We've had builders in until about a year ago for for about 3 years with different projects, and it's just, you know, and they were really nice guys. They're all in the same family, and they, you know, they were cousins and brothers and, and what have you. But it's just like, guys, you're great, but we wish you'd disappear. Yeah, the major revelation for me, and it is a massive, massive, massive revelation, and you guys have talked about it lots, is deep nutrition. Uh, the, the, the Catherine Shanahan, Dr. Catherine Shanahan. And I just want to summarize because she is, she's unreal, she's unbelievably good. And she says there's two things that, at least two things, but these are the two main things that you need to avoid. And then there's two things, well, there's four, but I'll just give you two that you need to really go for. You need to change your life and get to work. The two things that you want to avoid like the plague is sugar and vegetable oils. Okay, I knew the sugar thing really quite well, but I did— and I knew vegetables weren't brilliant. Yeah, but they are not. It's not just very good for you, they're toxic. There's nothing— and it's because they're all rancid. Okay, so olive oil, ghee, all those, all those, and butter, all those things are good. So the things that she says to really go for are bone broth— that's for us— Not just the dogs, for us, bone broth. If you're vegan, you obviously can't go there. And organ meat. In the last week, I've eaten more liver than I have in the last—

Yeah.

Why does it taste so revolting if it's good for you?

I don't get that. What is more than—

It tastes great.

Kidneys.

Kidneys.

Just slightly.

Kidneys cross with wee bread. I don't need to eat that.

They're tasting the wrong things.

You know, I don't need that stuff in my diet. How many?

Tastings have you been to?

I believe that's the, uh, something valley. I can't think of it.

So there you go, that's a revelation to me, and I'm getting really excited about making some bone broth. I never normally go into the kitchen at all, forgive me everybody, but, uh, Ellie and, and my, my mother-in-law cook really, really well, so you know, why would I go into the kitchen? You know.

Yeah.

And, uh, and I'm really excited about getting into that. And some liver pâté, making some liver pâté.

Unfortunately, and you know what, that book has actually sent me back. We keep talking about Deep Nutrition. I actually sent her a congratulating email a few days ago, but, um, I— it's actually pushed me back onto bone broth now. So it's like all the time, as I think I mentioned this already, but I have a bad knee, I've fixed some football a few times, and all the advice I'm giving people about dogs— you've got to give the dog the building blocks to build his knee back up again. So he needs glucosamine cartilage, he needs collagen, he's you know, everything, the glucagon, glutathione, all the stuff we suck out of the bones in broth to fix up your gut and joints. And I'm thinking, I never gave my joints any of that. I did all the physio, I did, I ate as well as I could, I got lean, I got healthy, and my knee went again. And I really just got so annoyed at myself thinking I've just got bad structure when actually, did I really give my knee the best chance to recover if I wasn't pumping these blocks out? So I am, it's now sent me back to thinking I need to pick up an organic chicken now and again. So now I'm back to having to face the fact of going down to Wicklow, picking up a chicken that I like, you know, and saying— I used to look at it and go €17, €18, €19 for a chicken. Now I look at it like it's just a pure investment. It's just like we've been looking at food totally wrong. We look at the price of food and we get a cheap bit of food somewhere when that's just pure— it's just toxic crap. That's all it is. It's just taking life points from you. So when you buy good quality meat at twice the price, which I just wrote about there for Pay Your Wage, when you buy an organic chicken that's 3 or 4 times the price that's been pecking around outside, you get all the nutrition that animal was eating. He's a sink for all that stuff, she's a sink for all that stuff, you know. So I have now, it's for the first time in what, 12 years, I'm going back to kind of putting it in the fridge. I've always let Holly have a bit of meat now and again. I knew I was missing some bits and pieces, but now I'm going back at it, an organic chicken once a week or a month. I haven't decided, but yeah, that book completely changed me. So it's amazing how quick you can be swerved by something. So that was a good recommendation.

It is amazing, isn't it? And what she would say is what you, what you spend on the chicken, you can save on supplements. We've had some questions about should we give supplements? The answer is, if you're doing really well, if you've got really good quality meat and veg and you're giving variety, you don't need supplements. Technically, you do not need supplements.

Yeah, that's a good point in the Lustig book for Metabolical that you were talking about, where he talks about exactly that, that actually you can't subsidize poor quality ingredients by putting in the George Jetson pill. Yeah. You know, that many companies do. They'll put in, you know, these vitamins and minerals, often, you know, synthetics rather than actually from natural sourcing. Repeat that theme. And it's really interesting when you read all of these books that we've been advising you on, you'll see that there's some nuances in there, you know, where they're coming from and how they approach the health. You know, most of them medical doctors, and that, you know, that's why they're going to have a slightly different opinion. But so many common themes that come through, and that's what we're sort of really trying to point to. I think the thing for the Lustig book, you know, uh, people will be that he really tries to bring get the vegetarians and vegans on board with what they can do within their diet and how to try and enhance their diets with those, you know, those aspects of fermented foods and other things that are really good protein sources, really good fat sources. If you're going to take a fat, what you know, what you have to be looking at for it, you know, all of those side of things. So not being superheated, not being close to its smoke point, not being turned into trans fats, not being processed before you've even seen it with heat, all of those aspects. So I think, yeah, guys, if you haven't read any of these, really go and have a look at those now.

And I'd start with Deep Nutrition on Audible, guys. It's just for your walks and like it's an investment into if you're feeding kids. Honest to God, that's what I'm thinking about now. It's just like absolutely everyone needs to know. It should be taught in school and it's very readable, it's very digestible and it's full. It's not Very— it's not absolutely mad heavy on the science, although the fat stuff was really heavy. That took a few listens to, but I get it. But anyway, so the supplements thing, coming back to that, guys, that was— that came up a lot. Do we need to supplement? I'm on the same wavelength as Nick. So other way— I can't point the other way. Why can't I? But yeah, so like, you know, if we were all eating wild animals that were running around lovely fields of clover and nibbling bits and pieces, and that was the meat we were eating all the time, well, then you wouldn't need to supplement a meat eater's diet if that was the meat he was eating That's not the meat we're feeding, unfortunately. And even I wonder sometimes, like, even the organic sector, you know, it's only so much space and forage and naturalness you can give a turkey or a chicken in its very short lifetime. Just because they're organic doesn't mean they're on the planet very long. So, you know, it's— I still wonder. But like, as Patricia says, the sponsor of the show tonight, Patricia is mad into testing and she's like, you know, test, test, test, check your vitamins and minerals levels because a deficiency in vitamin D or E long term, you're going to get inflammation and sick from it. You never would have diagnosed it was a lack of a vitamin or mineral. You just treat the element that pops up. So a good check now and again, if you're going to go to the vet once a year for a health check, isn't that a great thing to check your main vitamins and minerals? Is that an expensive thing to do, guys?

Yeah, I was just going to point out that I think from— you just got to be careful because there will be— and we've been talking about this, Conor, There's a lot of tests out there that they'll talk about, well, £30 to £60, send in some hair, send in some saliva. Now we're talking about bioresonance there, and it's very dependent on who's reading it, what machine they're using.

Yeah.

So there is stuff to bioresonance, there's papers on it, you know, it can be really effective, but it can be misread so often. And also we, we do see a number of health professionals that have gone for, for the throat for these guys, because what they've done is they've sent exactly the same samples.

I did that.

Yeah, but just under two different names and they've got two different results.

What about a blood test? What about a blood test for vitamins and minerals? Blood tests for nutrients?

They are. But you just got to be careful because they get quite expensive quite quickly if you start lots of things.

My thought would be just make sure that you cover that. So for vitamin E, for example, really, really important. Vitamin D, really, really important. Just make sure you're getting lots of, lots of organ meat going in for the D, and then you're getting, you know, all spectrums of any vitamin D. And the other thing would be vitamin E, is you just use sprouted seeds as part of your nuts, herbs, and seeds, and just keep the variety going. And I just thought, I don't think you'd need to test for those, to be honest.

But some things, like if you get pancreatitis, your vitamin E is going to take an absolute whacking. Because your vitamin E is not controlling like really the fat response in your body. That's it, that's your antioxidant for fat. So if you have chronic— if you have like a high blood triglycerides for a long time, your vitamin E is going to hit the deck and then that's going to be self-perpetuating because it's going to drive inflammation. So like, aren't you— can't you be left with pretty severe vitamin and mineral deficiencies after a pretty prolonged bit of, uh, you know, gastroenteritis or something like that?

Yeah, but which, which of the 125 Tocopherols, are you going to measure?

Yeah, yeah.

You know, it's not a simple— like, you're measuring estrogen, which of the 12 do you measure?

You think it's a little bit misleading then, that you think it's like a bit of a— what's the word— it's, it's, it's not, it's not a good safety blanket.

It's kind of like, yeah, they do this in the human side that they, you know, you go to a human nutritionist and they will propose that they'll do some bloods and they may do a genetic test or two just to see what your predisposition is and where your insulin level is and those things. But actually, it's not defined science. I mean, it's very much, you know, there's so many other factors that can come in. And I tend to go back to what Nick was saying of trying to just think, well, actually give them that variety of exposure, give them enough variety. Don't just stick to that. So there's a couple of questions that came in actually from Patreon users and some from Facebook. One of them, can we deal with this one and then there's the other one that I want to deal with, single proteins from Nick. So the cats, do they need veg and seeds? Look guys, if they're gonna have good reared meat that's pasture reared and they're going to get a good organ mix and yeah if they hunt as well to some degree then they're going to get all of those nutrients from those meats. So the only issue that you've got is if you're slightly less wholesome with the foods that you're giving, are you going to need to mimic some of the other bits that they would get maybe from the guts of the animals, or are you actually subsidizing, you know, what their gut bacteria maybe need to thrive on as well? And that's where some of this fermented veg and seeds sort of comes in that, you know, Nick loves to talk about, yeah, NHS, nuts, herbs, and seeds. You know, yes, you can imagine the mice, the vermin that they're going to be catching would have some of that inside. So I can see why that would sort of come along. But you've got to remember, they have no way of crushing that stuff up themselves. They've got no way of fermenting it for any length of time themselves. So you're going to have to pre-do that, pre-macerate it. So chop it up fine. You're going to have to consider fermenting it first, or sprouting it is another consideration because that effectively takes away some of the carbohydrate load but leaves a lot of the protein and other nutrients that are there, antioxidants, etc., within that, that product. So that's my answer on the cats because I love to talk about cats. Nick, do you want to just fill us in on your single protein theory a little bit?

Single protein theory. Okay, so My theory is that in nature, I don't think a wolf, for example, would eat fish and chicken all in the same day, or chicken and beef, or chicken and tripe all in the same day on a regular basis. And therefore, I think that it's it's the, the diet of the average wolf is pretty monotonous in any given season. There is some variety, I'm sure, because they're scavengers, they'll come across this, that, and the other. But you know, when it's, when it's spring, they'll be eating rabbits all spring because that's the bunnies multiplying like rabbits. And then in the summer, they may be going for, you know, summer is, they're really going to be fattening up during the summer. So they'll be going for, I don't know, you know, whatever's passing, bison, or maybe the birds are very easy to get at that time because of the forest cover or whatever. It's just I don't think they're going to be getting a completely different thing every single day, and they're definitely not going to get 7 different proteins. It looks great on Instagram. But I just don't think that's how nature works. I don't think you're going to kill your dog by doing it, but if you want to go for the most evolutionarily appropriate— and this is maybe, this is me just being a bit geeky, trying to make it as evolutionary as possible— then I think a little bit of monotony is probably a good thing. Because when you're on, if you've got 3 proteins, X, Y, and Z, when you're on So you feed X for a week, say, and then you go on to Y and Z. It means you've got— X is going to have a 2-week holiday until you come back to X. And I think that that's quite, quite a healthy thing, because if you're continually exposed to, say, chicken, because it's always in the background in the feeds that you feed, or there's beef— beef liver, for example, is always in the background— means you've got continual exposure to beef and you become sensitive to that which you're exposed to. So It's— that's my theory. If you don't like it, fine, you're not going to kill your dog. But I think, you know, don't chop, chop and change all the time. Also, if your dog has slightly less than perfect, not like 10 out of 10 poo, and you're feeding blocks of a week, you'll be able to say, okay, when he goes on chicken, he's a 7, and when he's on beef, he's a 10, and when he's on turkey, he's a 10. And I think that that means that you can have a a much more in-detail conversation with the dog's gut. What are your thoughts?

And also you're looking at whether you then see, well, what was it about the chicken? Is it what, you know, the type of chicken?

Yes.

Was it organic?

Yes. And you— yeah, but you can't—

what's it really on?

Yeah, you can't do that if you're feeding chicken and tripe and salmon into, you know, chicken eggs can go with chicken Turkey eggs could go with turkey.

Yeah, uh, yeah, even then though, you can be allergic to chicken and be okay on the eggs, can't you? Different proteins.

I can't. Yeah, it's like you can be beef intolerant and still be good on tripe.

These eggs—

I'm just thinking that they're still classed as one animal.

That's not true. If you're beef intolerant, you can't eat tripe.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can because it's digestible.

You can get goat tripe, it's fine.

It's much more digestible. Yeah, seriously, try it.

I, I, I I can't believe that. I can't. But listen, come back to the single protein thing. Look, I get the second bit for definite, okay? If your dog's digestive is a tiny bit iffy, you need to find out what it is. How are you on beef, buddy? How are you on lamb? Organic lamb, not so organic, organic chicken, not so organic, because we know intensively reared chickens, you know, can have issues. So yeah, I get that bit, but like, I would be of the belief that a dog would be half the size of a wolf. They don't hunt in packs, they're scavengers, they take whatever's around, and they will eat I believe they need a very varied diet. It's something that we just don't know. We don't know what a real feral dog eats, and like, in a day, in a 24-hour window, that hasn't been observed. All we have is poo samples and gut samples from feral dogs that indicate it's very meaty, the diet. So we get that. And so it would be interesting to contact the authors of those diet studies and say, in a poo sample, in a single poo sample, which represents an 8-hour window how many different animals did you find in that poo sample? So that's what I'll do, Nick, to help you get to the bottom of this question. I kind of feel that when I ask the author, when I get in touch with him or her, you'll find that the dog probably eats quite a varied diet. That's where my money is. So I don't see, I don't see too much of a problem with the mix and produce. People are worried to do it, that it might have a problem with the dog. I think if your dog is healthy, digestively healthy, they will process you know, anything. And a mixed diet is fine, but I'm also of the belief that mixing too much in one meal, I wouldn't do it either. I just think like one, maybe two, is fine. But I know Dobby can eat anything but pork. Anything but pork and the dog will have a perfect poo. So I don't have the stress of trying to find it. So I get the last bit of what you're saying, but the first bit, I think wolves would have a very simple kind of monotonous diet because they're going after a certain prey for a certain amount of time when it's available. Dogs are just taking whatever they can get. They're perfect scavenging carnivores, you know. So that would be my— let's contact the authors and put that one to bed.

That's—

yeah, I think it's an interesting theory, but I, I like Conor, I do tend to mix through meats within a week. I don't mix within one dish that much, but you know, it does look great on Instagram though, doesn't it?

Yeah, beautiful.

Yeah, anyway, a couple of things, uh, that we'll just— as we're going through, um, Yeah, Penny, we've had a few comments from her. She's been finding some great results. I think she was on Patreon with just talking about some great results that she'd had with some of the fermented different options that are out there for arthritis and things like that. So have a look through some of the comments, guys, for those. So there's another question.

I've got a question.

If you want to Yeah, yeah, I've got a question from Hal and Zen.

Yeah, Brendan, you might not— you might have it to, to put up for everybody to have a look at, but the, the, uh, this— the guts of it is that, are there any joint supplements that don't have diuretic properties, or any herbs that we can use where a dog is extremely sensitive to any supplements with diuretic properties? So joint supplements that aren't diuretic? Yeah, I've just had an idea, so you go, you go first and we'll see how we go.

Why would raw green-lipped mussels or whole mussels— I mean, that would be a fantastic food source for the dog, surely, if you wanted to go after that. Or the oil extracted from green-lipped mussel, how could that possibly be a diuretic either?

She's gone on to that and she says thanks very much, Conor. And she's also using boswellia. I mean, boswellia is supposed to be be— Boswellia is minutely diuretic, if at all. It's more active, so I wouldn't worry about that.

Yeah, it's more active on the liver. I mean, there are some liver herbs like Berberis and things like that that can be more active on the kidneys as well, but I would definitely say, you know, Boswellia, you know, the curcumins.

Which joint supplements are diuretic?

Well, she is— she finds that her dog is— let's have a look— withania and turmeric have diuretic effects on her dog.

Maybe they are individual to her dog because that's another Ayurvedic sort of approach thing and what it may do to affect her system.

So I would That's the increased production of urine, guys.

Diuretic. I would say bone broth, just to ring the Shanahan bell once again, because bone broth is not diuretic. It will, it will make you pee, but you'll probably take on more— you'll take on more fluid than you will get rid of. And so it's going to be anti-diuretic, I would wager.

Yeah.

And fantastic for your joints.

So what's wrong with a tiny bit of— if there's a tiny bit more diuretic, that's— is that the end of the world? Really that you're producing more wee? I mean, is that not a flushing thing that you might think a little bit isn't to be worried about unless there's some sort of disease there?

Yeah, I think if the dog's peeing overnight, then that's— you need to be careful.

He's off your turf.

If the dog just, you know, pees a lot first thing in the morning and is otherwise well, then you're right. I think that's— yeah, so we'd have to get that in some kind of proportion.

Jane's got a good question here. Jane's always on. Jane Eastwood, is that how you pronounce that? Allergy to chicken, question mark, because of chicken embryo cells in vaccines. There's 2 or 3 really leading theories of why chicken and beef is at the top of the allergy list of dogs, okay? And like, the first one is that most dry food is based on chicken and beef. So if you have— if you're eating ultra-processed food for a long time and all the chemical preservatives, your gut starts to rot, for want of a very quick answer here, and you start to get inflammation, the gut starts to break down, and you get this leaky gut issue. And it's a bit— a bit of protein can sneak— the tight cell junctions can separate a little bit, and a little bit of half-digested protein can get from the gut where supposed to be digested properly for us and suddenly sneaks down through the gap. Well, if you're on chicken or beef-flavored dry food, as most of the marcas are the cheapest meat proteins on the planet, well then you're going— you may develop an issue with chicken or beef. That might be one of the reasons. But the other reason would be that chicken and beef serum are used in vaccines. Like, Bren, does anybody know how, uh, which vaccines have chicken or beef serum in them?

Okay, so what generally known is that the viruses such as distemper and the hepatitis virus are usually grown on an egg-based medium, okay, whereas the bacterial ones like leptospirosis are generally grown on a bovine albumin serum, okay. So that's, that's roughly what's going on. So generally the the viruses are grown in egg cells and the others. Now there are some other embryonic cells that occasionally are versed with, you know, what they use in various other vaccines, and especially in the human field, but those generally are the ones for the dogs.

And if they're grown on that, that will definitely come through, even in minute, you know, nanoparticle-sized things. That will come through into the vaccine, but at a level where it passes the regulations. Now what this guy— sorry, it's another book, people are getting a bit paranoid about books, and it's really, really difficult to get hold of, but he's done an online version which is free, okay? Donald R. Strombeck. And he, he basically wrote the— during the '60s, he was an internal medicine guy, he was the internal medicine guy. And what he says is his reasoning for chicken and beef, because they are in most of the puppy foods, and puppies are born with leaky guts so that they can absorb antibodies from mum. Yeah, uh, and he's saying that if we feed poor quality, um, chicken and beef protein to puppies, you know, for their first, you know, 6 weeks, then he thinks that's going to get into, you know, through the tight junctions into the body and set up responses for later in life. That's his—

yeah, the colostrum theory is really— you've got to understand that colostrum to get through from mum with antibodies is really based around the first 48, 72 hours. Yeah, it's, you know, to say that it's going to extend into when you'd be weaning puppies would be maybe an extension of that because they're not going to eat until they've weaned. And weaning is going to be, you know, naturally should be around 12 weeks. But actually, in the grand scheme of things, we know that we've got breeders out there weaning them at 5 to 6 weeks. Which is, you know, pushing things. But there we go. Guys, we've got so many questions to get through. I think there's a couple I'd just like to pull up here.

It is all there, by the way. He does justify his position, which is really, really interesting.

I'm looking forward to it. I have to look at that. That's cool. Never heard of that before.

It's online.

Strongback. You're born with it. That's interesting.

Cool.

Okay, so there was this one that I think, Conor, you highlighted. So what is it about—

my dog has a heart and a heart murmur.

A heart murmur. Hey, there we go. So the one thing I would say is please don't worry if you first get the diagnosis of heart murmur, okay? There are some things to understand. It's turbulence that they're listening to within the heart. So it doesn't automatically mean that you've done something wrong with the diet. You know, the taurine isn't deficient necessarily. You know, good racing greyhounds that have, you know, really fit, you know, great, well-fed will still have heart murmurs often because of the thickness of their blood, just meaning that the turbulence shows up when you're listening to it.

Most racing greyhounds are fed abysmally, though.

Necessarily, I would say even on those that aren't fed abysmally, okay, they will have heart murmurs. And it's— you can see it's the difference in the levels of red cells within their blood. So I would look at firstly, one, there's a great app. I know it's by a drug company, but Heart to Heart, okay, you can download it. It just allows you to count the respiratory rate when they're at rest beside you. The science shows that actually only if their respiratory rate goes above 40 breaths a minute do you desperately need treatment for your dog. Okay, you must be going into the vets. If it is between 20 and 40, they should be monitored. If it's below 20, okay, at rest— so not just after they've come in off the field on a hot day, but when you're sat watching the TV and, you know, they're at rest beside you If it's below 20, it doesn't matter if they've got a heart murmur. It really doesn't seem to correlate to them actually having heart disease. Okay, so that's a simple option. Great apps out there that you can download to help you count through those, you know, or you just count in 15 seconds and times it by 4. That's your maths lesson for tonight. But the other thing to look at is that there's lots of things that you can be doing, and Nick's going to talk about herbs and things that you can add. You know, we use those regularly, but just make sure, you know, you're feeding hearts for hearts, okay? You're feeding, um, yeah, feed heart, definitely. All of those other elements, look at, um, you know, is there any other factors that could be indicative that they've got a problem? Have they been collapsing? Have they gone really pale? You know, all of those elements.

She was told a grade 3 heart murmur, guys. What's the different grades? How do you grade them so quickly?

So grade 3 is quite loud, so it's about how easy they are to hear. So grade 1s are really quiet and they really take a lot of concentration to hear. Grade 3s are pretty stark. You can hear them really well, and you know, just by putting your stethoscope on And, you know, the grade 5s are that you can really, you know, you can hear them. Well, yeah, you can see them. You can feel the palpable thrill, you know, through the chest wall. It's that, you know, vibrating. But it comes back to the studies show that actually there isn't always— you can't tell how diseased the heart is by telling how loud that murmur is.

That's good.

That's the difficulty. The study that they looked at that was most predictable was what their resting respiratory rate was as to whether they would have heart disease.

But if in doubt, get— go to a cardiologist, or if somebody has a Doppler ultrasound machine, and they will look at how the blood is moving around within the heart. You know, if you want to put your mind at rest, then I think that's not a bad idea.

This is the most pampered dog ever, you know. I mean, it's so well fed, so well exercised, and it's a spaniel though, and maybe that's a problem.

Yeah, I would say— so Brendan said there's those— you've got a dog with a murmur which is totally fine below 20, the heart rate, the resting respiratory rate is below 20, and you've got the one above 40 which needs intervention. But what about that group in between? Rather than, you know, Brendan, you were saying rightly that the conventional guys would say let's monitor it, which means let's not do anything. I would say that's a really, really useful time to start thinking about feeding Heart for Heart. Completely agree, Brendan. Feeding Heart, feeding lamb's heart, pig heart, ox heart to your dog with heart disease every day, if you like, a little bit every single day, because it's so rich in nutrients. Also vitamin E in your nuts, herbs, and seeds. Okay, you could use a supplement, but again, there's 125 types of tocopherols. You're only going to get 15 with the really best supplements. So really go heavy with those. And what we use from a, a herbal perspective is hawthorn. Okay, Crataegus hawthorn. It's quite sweet, it's really palatable. It helps with circulation and it helps to strengthen the heart, strengthen it in a good way, not overstrain it. So really simple, omega-3s, vitamin E, and Hawthorn.

What about rosehip? Is that used?

Rosehip is for vitamin C and bioflavonoids and lots of, you know, other good things as well. You can't go wrong with, with selenium. Okay, a bit of extra selenium. Yeah, that's going to be in your nuts, herbs, and seeds.

And for other people that are suffering the issue as well, obviously one of the major things is to get very, very lean. Every little gram of extra fat that you're wearing in your body, you don't need this if you've got a heart condition. So get your dog nice and lean, nice and fit, not from doing lots of exercise, but just get them lean and have them look like the long-distance runner that he's supposed to be, bar a few breeds. So, you know, nice. I like a very, very lean dog. And that's surely a good— it helps with all ailments. As soon as anything's wrong, you know, get them lean.

And bone broth, good for stress. Bone broth for stress. Yeah. So we're gonna— bone broth, down with the stress.

Right, we're gonna go quickfire now. We've got to start moving a little bit. So here we go. So Conor, this is a great one for you. You do a lot on this.

Yeah, I posted about grass last week. Look guys, eating grass is normal, so let them at us. I gave Dudley a pork supper there last week. I knew I shouldn't have, it was really good quality. And he just didn't feel great, and then he starts eating the grass. A nice fresh meadow where they're not spraying, the dog eating a little bit of grass, it's fine. They take different plants at different times. Lots of animals do it, from caterpillars to birds to chimps, and everybody does it. Lots of different reasons. It's probably some form of digestive— something's not quite agreeing with them. It might be for a poop, it's often for a vomit, it's rarely for worms. I tested 20 very heavy grass eaters and we only found worms in one of them. Via a worm egg count. So it's unlikely worms. A lady's done a great ma— this girl's done a great master's on grass eating, spent 2 years looking at, and they were her tips. Very normal, let them at it. But it is a bit of a sign, like if your dog is plowing into the grass every day, then I might say, okay, do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to take a bit of Nick's advice and I'm going to go to single proteins and I'm going to start saying what's working for your dog. And not just single proteins, guys, but change your suppliers because you know, chicken's not chicken is not chicken, okay? So just change your suppliers, buy something off the shelf at Tesco's, and get really simple with the food and see if that can help. It may be a nutritional thing, but it's highly unlikely because grass is very hard to digest. And so that would be my short spiel on grass. What about anybody else? Do you want to add in a tuppence worth?

I'm with that. My girls eat grass, a little tiny bit every day, and totally fine with that. If they start grazing like a cow, yeah, you need to look at look at the gut, look at the microbiome, look at the poos. Yeah, you know, because they're looking for something.

You can't help but look at the poos because you're usually dragging bits of grass out with them. Yeah, come on, come on, guys, we're gonna crack on.

I've got another one, I've got another Patreon one here.

That's— this is also off Patreon, I think. So, uh, why has my dog, uh, got acid reflux?

Why has my dog got acid reflux? Go on, lads, help me out.

Food sensitivities. Food sensitivities. Yeah, it's the easy option.

So a lot of people assume that it's the acid that's causing the reflux, and I think it's really important that we get across that actually there's lots of other diseases that cause the stomach to be super sensitive and to not close the the esophageal sphincter off properly, you know, sorry, the cardiac sphincter off properly, and you get reflux into the esophagus. There's inflammatory disease is so common. The number of people that say my dog's got stomach ulcers, it's not the acid that's necessarily causing the ulcers. They may aggravate the ulcers, but actually there's inflammatory disease that often comes from the rest of the gut that's causing these. Think about not just trying to pour foam on top of the acid and trying to calm it down. Think about trying to address the underlying inflammation. And I think that's most important.

What's the first step then? My dog's got acid reflux. What do you recommend, guys?

Food trials. I would say food trials would be the thing. Go easy on omeprazole as well. Your vet might give you omeprazole, and I would only use it if it really, you know, that it is making a big—

there's been a meta-analysis review by WSAVA, BSAVA, the American Veterinary Medicine Association. They've all shown that those antacids just don't have an effect on stomach acidity in dogs. So why are we even going there?

Why doesn't every dog I see who's got— why do they still do it?

There's lots of other things that they're now talking about. Is it excusing themselves to use omeprazole because it's a prokinetic or it's got, you know, it'll reduce the pressure within the brain. You know, there's all sorts of theories that go on and I just go, what? You know, you're way off license, you're way off even what you should be using the drug for. And we know that the drug doesn't really work. You should be just ditching it and using something else to calm the inflammation down. Keep it simple. Treat the gut microbiome, give them bone broth until things settle, and then come in to think about simple foods and then work your way back. And that's sort of doing a food trial, really.

Sharon Evans there, why does my—

that's what I use instead of omeprazole, we use mastic gum.

That reminds me of Greek holidays, mastic gum.

Is that from vets only, Nick, or can we buy it online?

No, you can buy it online from Bio Nutri.

Okay, cool. So is that like, is that like your fire extinguisher while you find the issue of what's causing the acid reflux?

It's like having a Rennie when you've got acid reflux.

Yeah, yeah.

In human medicine, if you're getting acid reflux, if you're getting heartburn and things like that, Shanahan says it's your liver. You've got, you've got fatty liver. So yeah, so things like your liver.

Yeah, here's one from Sharon Evans. Why does my dog eat poo? Eating poo is really normal, guys. Coprophagia is very normal. Dogs will eat poo, and again, it's probably a nutritional thing with dogs. We've got studies there of dogs in Zimbabwe that spend about 20-30% of their time eating poo because they're so protein deficient that they will happily eat poo. So they will jump to that as a food source. And behavior can kick in later with pups, but initially it can be boredom if you're locked in a box with your own poo. So it can be a behavioral thing, but most likely for dogs, healthy pampered dogs, it's a nutritional thing. So you'll see dry-fed dogs will eat a lot of poo, in my opinion. I think that— I think it drops away. We're all feeding, it still happens.

I've got a post coming on that, um, on another platform, but about coprophagia. But remember there's different types. There's those that eat their own, there's those that eat other dogs' poos. And remember, especially for the kibble-fed and the processed foods, the amount of artificial additives they add into these foods to flavor them that often aren't digested and they come out in the poo. So the poo smells as attractive as the food that they're eating.

How about this as an idea? They get so little nutrition from it they are impelled to eat it again to have another go.

Or if you eat horse and, and hindgut fermenter type things, that bacteria, they are producing loads of vitamins and minerals. So if you're living on dry food that has no vitamin K in it, very little vitamin E, and this stuff is quite rich in poo if you're a hindgut fermenter. So horse poo is fantastic. So it could be just— but again, if your dog's gobbling all that, I'm thinking I might be doing something wrong, particularly if he's raw fed. I like putting in the only nutritional supplement— come back to supplements— I'm a big seaweed man, you know I am. I like a little bit of seaweed because it's just got lots of cool stuff in it, but a little bit of dark greens, experiment with those things and see if that takes the edge off them. But I would move back down to single proteins, change my suppliers.

And, uh, so I know you've got a great product out there for anal glands, the Stool Right stuff. Does that do for, um, coprophagia too, or is that—

I don't know.

All right.

Okay.

Oh no, I never even thought to check. I hope so.

Conor, do you give a money-back guarantee with Stoolrite?

I do, lads. I do.

Tell us about that. That's amazing.

Any of my products that say they do something— BioFunctionate for guts, Stoolrite, Oculus Prime for weepy eyes— if I say they do something and it doesn't work, you get your money back with no quibble. People can't believe I do that, but I don't even argue. If you tell me it didn't work, boom, your money back. Still Right has a 5 out of 5 rating on every website you see. I just can't believe it works so well. So that's got patent pending on it at the moment, but that is a seaweed fiber and it just, it just works as a natural anti-inflammatory. We have a bit of science on that, but it's mainly the soluble fiber maybe that's going to help it up as well. So look, it's a good supplement, but it's interesting for the copper phage. I never thought to check for that, but different poos for different dogs for different reasons. Cat food has more protein in it, dry food, but it's indigestible. So that's like a protein pellet to a dog, you know. So I can see why dogs would eat different poos, but it's very normal. But you don't want to see it too much.

The herbivore ones as well, that's really normal.

That's really normal.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying, guys, don't worry about that. That is just all the vitamin Bs and stuff that's in there, really flavorsome to your dogs. It's not really a problem.

It's perfect probiotic and prebiotic. Yeah, yeah, rabbit poo, horse poo. I haven't got a problem unless you've got a collie.

The digestion's been done for them.

Yeah, yeah. If you've got a collie and the horse has just been wormed with an ivermectin, then that could cause problems. So just be a little bit careful.

I was talking to a horse lady there and she was saying that her lab loves to eat horse poo but won't eat— only eats the horse poo of the horse that doesn't get dosed with worms. So they use a natural wormer in their own horse and they only eat that one horse.

Wow, that's cool.

Yeah, he knows. So it's Patricia Gethin. Once again, just want to say thanks to Patricia Gethin. She is sponsoring our show tonight. That's Raw and Holistic Cat and Dog Support Group, biggest natural site, biggest natural Facebook page in the UK. It's fantastic, guys. If you have these sort of questions, come to Patricia's page and ask her. I'll be answering them. So look, that group is brilliant and there's loads of really helpful admins, and Patricia's a saint. She just spends her whole days on that. You know what I mean? I highly recommend it. Patricia's tip of the evening here, which I should have come up with myself, and I love it, is that dogs love to self-select. So why don't you put some things in pots out the back that they can self-select from? They like wheatgrass, so plant a bit of wheat or barley grass. Plant your own bit of German chamomile. Plant your own bit of marshmallow or anything that you can grow. 3, 4, 5 plants. Couch grass. But those sort of things we know they love, so have them in 4 or 5 pots so when they go out the back you can watch them do it. And now you know which plants they're eating, so it might tell you a little bit more of why they're doing it. So it's a really good tip to let them select their own wheatgrass and keep it nice and short because it's the fresh stuff that they want. And so that's a really good tip. So thanks to Patricia from Leitrim. I hope we got to a lot of the questions on Patreon. Guys, is there any remaining Patreon questions, Bren, that we need to get to?

Nick's got those filtered.

Nick's just looking through those.

I've got one.

Filter water.

We need to filter water for dogs.

Yeah, in my opinion, yes, absolutely, 100% filtered water. Dogs have 25% of their brain is a nose. They can smell a drop of vitamin in a swimming pool type thing, and here you are giving them chlorinated water. It must be disgusting for them. So that's why dogs love puddles, manky puddles, and you go, my God, dog, I just poured you fresh tap water, but he doesn't want that water. So they want rainwater. The thing about chlorine is it's a gas, so it comes off in 12-24 hours. So if you just leave water sitting there, it'll come off. But boiled and cooled water is fine. A filtered tap would be great.

A piece of charcoal.

Yeah, any of the filters that like Brita filters and stuff, but a piece of charcoal is a fantastic one. They cost nothing. You can drop them in your sports bottle, your water bottles. It takes in a lot of the impurities and chlorine, not fluoride, and you can wash them every 30 days, but they also give out some stuff to the water as well. So it's a fantastic thing to have there.

I would say to the cat owners out there, this is a really important aspect. Where you place the water dish is really important. Not using plastic water dishes, but using glass or pottery, something like that. But again, rainwater. So many cats are so sensitive about it. If you're really worried about what's in the rainwater, filter it. Just bring it in and filter it. But most of them will have filters in those water fountains that you can get. Okay, so you can get those because some cats love that movement of the water to drink from as well. So just have a little think about that and don't put your water near the food, okay? They have this innate behavioral thing of if they've killed an animal, they're not going to drink from the water source near that dead animal. It's going to be contaminated with excrement and everything else. So they like clean water away from that. Those dual food bowls, that's for two types of food, you know, they just collect, not for water and food.

That's interesting.

And don't buy bottles because there's enough plastic on the planet.

Yeah, totally not necessary.

Yeah, absolutely don't need to.

Yeah, just guys, yeah, there are so many questions. For all of you guys that are looking down the list and thinking they've not answered my question yet that was in the, um, the comments, look, it's been really popular tonight. We're going to do more Q&As. Yeah, loads of material here that we're going to be answering through Patreon. There'll be some answers coming to you, brief answers on these comments, so keep an eye on the stream, come back to it, have another look because we'll be answering these comments too. And guys, thanks so much for helping out.

I love this, this is great. Even the ideas from people on the side are really catching my eye. I'm kind of watching them going, that's a cool idea.

Let's do it again.

Yeah, let's do, let's do it every month.

We'll do one Q&A every month.

Yeah, so that's great. So we'll pick, uh, we'll put up 3 options of what we want to do for next week, and, uh, we'll let the people pick, and, uh, we'll announce it then next couple of days, I suppose.

Yeah, we're a bit lax. We should have thought about this ahead of time.

We're talking about FAQs for hours today. Okay, so brilliant.

That sounds good.

I think that was— I love doing that, guys. I like it. Yeah, I like the spontaneity of it.

Thanks.

Guys. Thanks for all the attendance. Brilliant tonight.

Thank you. And Patreon people, really appreciate it. Thank you.

Without you— night, guys.

Good night.