RPM Live

All right guys, we're live.

Wow, we are.

Good evening everybody, and my name is Conor Brady and I am joined by two of the finest vets in the world, uh, Brendan Clark and Nick Thompson. And tonight we also have Sean McCormick up here in the top panel. It's like a game show, so it's an all-male cast tonight for your viewing pleasure. So, uh, thanks for joining us.

Let's do that, the big man.

There you go, there he is.

Yes. In the pink.

Is that, is that to say you're not native to Taiwan where you're currently residing?

Yeah, like a sore thumb, a very pink sore thumb.

Yeah, yeah. Um, so guys, we're on, we're on patreon.com/rawpetmedics, so if you, uh, can spare the price of a cup of tea or coffee, that is where you can do it, and we deeply appreciate those that are doing it, it's great, helps us get these extremely expensive guests like Sean McCormick. And so we do appreciate that. And you can also check us out on your podcast, anywhere you listen to your podcast. And if you can leave us a vote, we do appreciate that. So don't forget to give us the thumbs up and subscribe and do all those other bits and pieces that the podcasters tell you to do and that we keep forgetting to say. So yeah, guys, is there anything exciting happening in your week? Brendan?

Yeah, Conor, don't forget YouTube, please watch us on YouTube and give us a like and subscribe and do all that stuff. That really really helps raise us up so that we can spread the message to more and more people.

Yeah, and remember, you're privileged on YouTube because we can actually share your comments live, as whereas on Facebook I'm just watching you come on and yeah, just commenting separately.

So what happened to all the comments? These be loads of—

on the right, because BeLive has this wonderful way of— it interacts with YouTube but not with Facebook.

They fell out. They fell out with Facebook. Anyway, guys, let's get into Sean because he's got a lot of very fascinating observations and it's 3 AM there. So if we don't get him talking soon, the poor man is going to fall asleep listening to us. Yeah. So Sean, listen, a thousand thanks for coming on. You and I spoke. We've just worked out what 15 years ago or so, and you helped me with editing some of the stuff that I was putting out, and we worked on a couple of, of cases together.

I do remember. I remember now. I edited your site because I was working as an editor at the time. That's exactly right. Um, annoying at correcting people's—

you were really meticulous. I kept those edits probably for 10 years.

Oh wow.

Yeah, no, they were superb. He's the man. Do you still do editing?

No, that was my profession for a couple of years, but it helps me now when I'm obviously writing for the website and things.

Yeah. So what do you do now? Tell us what you do.

So I came here as a teacher to teach English, but I very quickly got into rescuing animals. And so since 1999, I've been rescuing mostly dogs, a lot of cats, and some wildlife, uh, and a few pigs along the way. And we, we started several charities here to, um, to, to really try and, and make as big an impact as we can here because it's needed. Apart from the obvious, why, why, why did I start rescuing animals? Yeah, um, well You know, in England we have stray dogs, but you rarely would see them. At the time, we had the same number of stray dogs picked up annually in the UK as we do in Taiwan, 120,000 a year. But in the UK, the system is so well set up that when anyone sees a stray dog, they know what to do: call the police or call the RSPCA, and the dog gets picked up, and the majority get returned to their owners, and the rest go into the system. But in Taiwan, we don't have that, that long history of animal rescue, animal welfare, and let's say proper sheltering. So we pick up 120,000 a year, but the majority end up in the shelters, don't get returned to owners. And so when I came here, I was seeing stray dogs at that time in packs in the city. And this was just a huge thing for me.

Yeah, would be.

Um, and, uh, I just found it very interesting, and it wasn't until I started exploring the countryside that I realized there are dogs, uh, in quite desperate need outside of the city. Um, the first dog I rescued had been hit by a car and was suffering with, um, mange. But the majority of dogs that we rescue now have lost a limb to hunting devices, gin traps and wire snares.

Oh, what are the snares for?

Well, they are mostly for— excuse me— mostly for catching wild boar and wild deer. So they're put out by hunters, but they're also used for other things. Farmers— we have a lot of farmers who just have I'm pretty much— I'm pretty sure it's an illegal plot of land because they haven't put fences around it. And they'll put out traps to keep animals off of their vegetable garden. They think dogs are going and eating their vegetables. They think it's a deterrent, but it's not, because the same dog will go back and lose another limb. And they'll use them to keep rats out of restaurants, cats out of houses. Um, yeah, but you know, they were made illegal. The snares were banned in 2017 when we had some major changes to the animal protection law. And sorry, no, uh, gin traps were banned in 2017, but the poachers got a— they used a little workaround where wire snares weren't specifically mentioned. So they were using wire snares, which were worse because a gin trap will take off the foot. It's only got to hang on for 12 hours and there's enough damage done that the dog's circulation can't recover. But with a wire snare, it will catch them because a gin trap is like, you know, the bear traps, the claws.

Yeah, like this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it can only go up to a certain height of the foot, shall we say. But the snare, we've rescued dogs and monkeys and other animals with snares at the top of their limb, around their throats. We had a nursing mother we rescued with a wire snare embedded in her belly.

Bloody—

it's horrific. If you came to Taiwan and you got out of the city, you will see three-legged dogs. And, you know, we, we, we try and spread the hashtag #mainedintaiwan because it's such a common thing that you'll see here. And as I tell people when I'm interviewed here, you know, England, we've got the Old English Sheepdog, and Germany's got the German Shepherd. And it seems to me that the Taiwan breed is the three-legged stray dog. That's the most prolific thing you'll see here.

And how do people treat dogs in Taiwan? Are they very much loved like they are in the UK, Or are they considered kind of vermin and only kind of the rich have them as playthings? Or what's the vibe in Taiwan?

The vermin side is really other Asian countries that you might see that.

Okay.

They are either— well, they're very much loved, but there's two ways of loving a dog. There's loving a dog in the way that the dog needs, or there's loving the dog in the way that you You need, right? So we've gone from— Taiwan has a long history of dog care. 50% of households— there was a survey done about 25 years ago. 50% of households had a dog. 20% do now. But when you're interviewing someone from one household, they might have had a dog when they were growing up. So that's how you get the rise in percentages. But they were kept in— Taiwan was very much an urban society until the early 1990s. So before then, dogs were kept as guard dogs, but they were much loved. But they were actually kept in a way that was very suitable for a dog in its most, let's say, natural setting. I mean, we, we have dogs as pets because we originally had them as guard dogs, and we would feed them scraps, and they weren't really seen as house pets, as it were. And that's how dogs were kept up until the '90s, and it worked quite well. And then Taiwan became urbanized and everyone started moving into the cities and taking dogs with them. And that's when we started having a stray dog problem, because that's when people were letting their dogs run around on the streets in Taipei City. They were now in close proximity to each other, so they were breeding far more than they were in the countryside. People realized they didn't actually know how to train a dog, because when a dog's living outside your house and just coming when you call for food, but now you've got him living in— him or her living in your apartment, and you've got to find time to walk the dog. And yeah, and, uh, yeah, it's not the same thing. And so people— you still see it now, you go in the city, they'll open their door and let their dog out in the city to do his business and then come back. So you know, that's not a good way of keeping a dog.

Yeah.

And that's when the problems started. So before urbanization, we had dogs living on the streets, but not in close proximity and more in a setting that was natural for a dog.

Yeah.

But with urbanization, people had to change the way they kept dogs.

And with this urbanization— and actually, Sean, just before, have you got a pen? Are you clicking a pen in your hand?

I apologize.

It's okay, you've got your earphones on, you can't hear it. We have a sound guy peeking on us.

I'll just do my fingers instead.

That's it, crack them, all the knuckles.

He's our sound guy and he is not paid enough.

He won't be happy with that. Conor, have you got earphones?

Oh bloody hell, I can put in my earphones.

Pots and kettles.

Yeah.

Oh my God. Okay, so while he's getting ready—

Did you actually dress as a cord either? Dr. Conor, have you pressed record?

Yeah, I have. I'm definitely recording. There's lights on all over the place. I was going to say, Sean, with the increase in urbanization, and has the dietary— the way they treat the dogs and what they feed the dogs, does that change in the city? Over here, predominantly commercial kind of products, largely dry, canned, moving towards real food. Where is Taipei in all that?

Yeah, I mean, as, as, uh, pet keeping became urbanized, so did the pet industry. And, uh, as I understand it, the, the, the pet industry overall increases by about 10% per year here. We're seeing more and more vets, uh, opening up. They're becoming much more professional, much more expensively designed clinics, and our vet bills have doubled in the last 10 years. But the feeding, it's primarily dry food. And okay, so we're dealing with two things here. We're dealing with people who have dogs as pets, and we're having the stray population that people go out and feed. When they're feeding the strays, a lot of the feeders will actually do a better job. They'll go and get leftover scraps of like— they'll get chicken heads And they're cooked, unfortunately. But when we see a group of stray dogs, we can look at their condition and we can guess what they're being fed. The ones who are being fed the meat scraps are faring far better than the ones who sadly are being forced to survive on dry pellets. And you can see in their skin condition, you can see it, that they're the ones getting cancers, they're the ones getting the kidney failure. But, you know, we encourage people to feed raw, but no one's feeding raw to stray dogs.

Yeah, I mean, there's nothing to scavenge in the city, so if you've got stray dogs in the city, they are entirely dependent on handouts and, you know, a couple of rats, because they're not going to dig them out of the sewers, you know. So it's tricky. In the country, you can imagine a bit of foraging going on, hence the traps and the lack of legs and stuff, and going around looking for bits and pieces. You can't supplement your diet in the city too easy. Bar, what you get at the back of a restaurant, maybe.

So there's fewer stray dogs— stray meaning no owners, shall we say— in the city now, because as they did away with the garbage piling up on street corners, the stray population actually dropped. And also the dog catchers go out in the city now. But you still get stray dogs, but they're more kept stray dogs. They'll live outside a storefront. But yeah, they're all fed by passersby. They're all fat, the ones, the strays in the city. But in the countryside, they're much more active. They're thinner, not thin, they're slimmer. But yeah, the majority of people believe that you should feed ultra-processed food, even when you point out, you do realize you're giving them ultra-processed food instead of fresh food. But they're just so heavily indoctrinated into this, this myth that processed pellets are better for our dogs than fresh meat.

It's a perfect study, Sean, of a population, and essentially the same— they're going to have the same genetics, going to be a lot of crosses and what have you, and one is fed crappy ultra-processed food and one is fed various non-ultra-processed foods, and you can tell the difference at 20 yards.

Oh, absolutely. I can give you other examples.

Amazing.

We've rescued puppies, uh, siblings, 3 of them. They got adopted, and, uh, uh, 2 of them kept the raw diet and one was put on a pellet diet, and that one came back because of skin disease, and we fixed it just by— and we asked our vet, can we experiment here? Because it wasn't mange. We just put him onto fresh food and his skin improved. And I can give you another example, and I've got to be careful here because I don't, I don't want to be criticizing anybody. Um, as you know, we spoke earlier, we're moving one of our sanctuaries. We've been hounded out of our current location, and we found the, the almost perfect place to move to. It's the sanctuary that we built 10 years ago that's never had neighbor problems. We left it because of, uh very serious disagreements with the, the directors that we had at our charity, and they took over the care of that dog sanctuary. And as we left, they just disregarded anything that we did, um, even though they had no experience. And we had, at that time, we had 15 years of experience of caring for animals, and they put them all onto dry pellets. So those are dogs that we had all fed raw food. That was 330 dogs we had all on a raw diet.

Wow.

We, we knew that the occurrence of cancer in the general dog population was around 50%. And as you get older, it goes up to, you know, at least suspected cases up to maybe 60, 70, 80% in our population. And we've been doing this for 15 years at the time. It's extremely low. Maybe, maybe 1% of our dogs were getting cancer. That's just a rough guess, but it's very tiny. It was very rare unless they came in with cancer.

It's a glorious observational study. It really is. Yeah.

So we've gone back to now— we're now planning on building our new sanctuary, and we're speaking to the staff taking care of the dogs that we were taking care of. And how's it all going? Oh, there's only 160 left out of 330. And it was like 8, 9, 10 years ago, no, 2017, so it'd be 8 years ago we left. And they just volunteered saying to us, yeah, you know, we've lost most of them to cancer and kidney failure, and they've all got really bad teeth. And those were the 3 things that we warned the directors: if you're going to feed dry food, you've got to brush their teeth every day, which is why you can't do it as a dog sanctuary.

Yeah, well, you can't—

why you can't— of course, yeah, you want to feed fresh food for the health benefits, but you can't feed dry food because you can't brush all their teeth. And we said to them, you know, you're going to get more dogs with cancer and kidney failure. That's exactly what happened. So we're going to have now two dog populations living next to each other, and half of them are going to be on processed pellets and ours are going to be on fresh food.

There's a study, right?

Perfect study situation.

Oh my God, it's next level, right? We don't, we don't blame them because, yeah, they are, they are, they're doing their best industry.

Yeah, you're doing what you're doing, what you believe is right. Tell me, how does, how do you go about, how many dogs do you have right now, Sean, at the moment? And how do you go about housing and feeding them? What's that look like? They don't all have their own kennel. I mean, what's the kennel complex look like? How do you feed them breakfast? What's that look like? Take me through the routine.

We've always— all of our dog sanctuaries, um, have been garden settings, so we only have kennels for those who come in. Um, maybe we get a sick one that needs to go in a kennel for a little while, but generally, after they've gone through the quarantine period and we've got them used to the fresh food diet, which isn't easy because it's like switching kids from burgers, pizza, and French fries onto salad, vegetables, and fruit, right? They've got to get used to the, to the, to the taste of it. And then once after 2 weeks they've overcome their ailment, they finish their course of antibiotics, they've overcome the surgery, they're on the raw diet, then they get introduced to gardens. So for example, we've got one, uh, one site called The Den. I think it's about 4 acres. Lovely. And we have about 30 gardens there ranging from single dog gardens to two dog gardens to gardens with maybe 10 at the most. And the staff come in the morning and they'll prepare the vegetable mix, which is basically— we call it veg mix, but we don't feed veg anymore. We add seaweed powder instead. It's basically eggs, garlic, vinegar, fish oil, some kind of powder like seaweed powder, spirulina, something like that. And we blend it all up in the blender and then they'll prepare buckets with the chicken. It's mostly chicken that we feed, but every now and again we'll get beef or duck or lamb and then they'll pour the veg mix over, mix it all up. And then we go into the gardens and the dogs all stand around us and they've learned to be good or they won't get any food and we're just throwing it out to them. And we know that like Blackie here, he's a high energy dog and even though he's the same size as Whitey here, Blackie needs 10 pieces of chicken and Whitey needs 6 because Whitey is low energy. So they can pretty much gauge accurately how much each dog should get. And it's a good way of feeding as well, because when you free feed, that's not good for the dog. We now know, and I read this in Rodney Habib's book as well, something that saved my friend's life is intermittent fasting. And we've always had the question of how often should you feed a dog? And now I tell people, I know for certain, once a day, because the rest of the day the body is focusing on repairing and dealing with disease. But when you're feeding, the body's focusing on that. So we're feeding once a day. There's no free feeding. There's no aggression because we're controlling it. It gives us an opportunity to show that we're in charge because at feeding time, that is a perfect time for demonstrating, let's say, respect from the dogs or leadership from you. There was a guy called Sean Ellis that did an amazing series on National Geographic about how he had to work with wolves and, and make the wolves wild again. And the most important time for him was at feeding time, and, and he had his crew, uh, cook the organs of, uh, of a deer and put them into a sandwich bag and then stuff it into the carcass, and they drag it in, and his job was to run in with the wolves and stand over the carcass and growl at the wolves to show that he was the alpha.

Rather him than me. That's not a good position to be in.

What do you mean? When we go to America, Conor, we're putting you in Yosemite.

You're going to be lunch.

Yeah, great.

It's an important time to demonstrate leadership. It's a great way to feed because we get to see who's got an appetite, who doesn't, who's more fearful, who isn't. And we get everyone to be calm and listening to us.

Nice. Nice.

What breeds do you see, Sean? What are the variety of breeds?

So the Taiwan breed is called the Tugao, which means the earth dog. Sometimes it's called the Formosan Mountain Dog, but actually the Formosan Mountain Dog is a larger dog. Almost looks like a smaller Great Dane. And what we're largely seeing is basically the Togo or Togo mixed with something. I've got one on my sofa now who's a Togo mixed with a— obviously mixed with a Lab. You'll see Togos mixed with Beagles and whatever, but there's not a lot of stray purebreds. They're very quickly picked up. Okay, so the mixing is There is a mix, but they're predominantly 2Go.

Can we have a look at your 2Go Lab mix? Is your camera mobile?

It's not, but I'll let me go grab the dog.

That'd be great.

It'll go with your shirt.

3 AM. What are you waking him up for?

Yeah, but guys, this guy is an absolute saint and he's a very knowledgeable saint, and I think we're really lucky to be talking. So well done, Conor. Digging it out.

Hey, this is beautiful. Hey, I rescued her 11 years ago. Um, I don't know if you can see her.

I think it's— I think it's a miniature lapshawn.

The vets wanted to amputate and we said let's see first. There's no point amputating to prevent a possible infection. We might as well amputate if they get an infection.

Nice.

She's been like this for 11 years, and her daughter's on my sofa. She's much more shy, um, but she's lovely.

She's a peach. She really is lovely. God, look at this.

She was this size when I rescued her, so she was an adult. So she was at least 2 when I rescued her, and that was 11 years ago, so she's at least 13.

Yeah, she's looking good.

She's in good nick.

Yeah, looking good.

Yeah, a lot of it, a lot of A lot of outdoor, a lot of outdoor living, Sean. A lot of outdoor dogs, outdoor living. And what is the story with parasites in Taiwan? How, how do the dogs fare outside?

Okay, so when we rescue them, we'll do all the blood tests, and we do get a lot of cases of Babesia and Ehrlichia, but not necessarily Babesiosis and Ehrlichiosis. Because I learned this the hard way, that an animal can test positive for something just like a person can, but they don't actually have the disease. They're just dealing with it.

Nice.

Nice. Yeah.

But the vets will immediately put them onto a 6-week course of antibiotics for amoxicillin or doxycycline or whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah. And we stopped it after a while because we know it's not good for an animal to be on antibiotics even for a couple of weeks. For 6 weeks, surely you're causing more harm than good. And that's when we realized that there's a difference between testing positive and actually being sick with something. So now we only treat the tick— those are tick diseases, tick-borne diseases. Okay, we only treat those if the animal is showing the symptoms of those diseases. Um, they'll often come in with fleas, and what we do is we'll give them a if we can't touch the dog very easily, he has to get the spot-on stuff. But we're now trying out, uh, kinder ones with the, um, uh, what's the lemon—

lemongrass—

anyway, lemongrass, citronella.

Yeah, yeah. Um, because my own cat died after getting the spot-on treatment. Oh, very sadly. We— because we've avoided it, but we know, okay, it's very rare. And we had a little flea outbreak here and we gave it to her and she started having seizures and then she had a heart attack and she died.

Have you tried cedar oil at all, Sean? Cedar oil might be good.

That's in the, the one that I've got, uh, now that seems to work great has cedar oil and citronella.

Try a bit of rose geranium as well.

Well, that's a big one. Yeah, it's a crush geranium oil.

Ellie, I should have a pot here. My wife makes an insect defense and it contains lemongrass and, and I'm not pushing the product, I'm just saying this, it's a great little product. So lemongrass, cedar oil, rose geranium, that's a key component. Can you get a hold of any over there?

I'm sure I can get a hold of most.

Yeah, yeah, there'll be aromatherapy oils, they'll be widely available over there.

Check it out, seriously check it out.

Yeah, I will.

It's one of the oils, rose geranium oil inhabits the dermal layers, so when you put it on the dog's neck or color, it actually can travel. So it's not just sitting there. Yeah, so I thought that's pretty cool. Not all oils do that and may be effective for ticks. I say that and Brian's gonna go, Conor, have you read a study? And I haven't, but I'm gonna look for it. Just as I said that, I'm gonna look for it.

Oh really? I thought you were busy taking the recipe down from Sean's mix ready for your next power paste.

That's great info because I've never heard of that, and I'll look that up because we— so the way that we usually do it is if we have to, we'll, we'll give them a— we use a syringe with the spot-on treatment because you can fire it from a little distance. But generally, we'll give them a bath in dish soap. Dish soap is the quickest. And if you've got the pH right, which most dish soaps are, they're usually between 6 to 8 pH, and a dog's skin is around 7. Dish soap, just, and a nice thick lather, it just kills the fleas instantly.

Not the ticks.

And I learned that from a documentary in the US, and it was an SPCA trick apparently. It kills them immediately. You see them all float to the top of the lather.

Lovely.

It doesn't prevent fleas, but it kills the ones that are there. And then of course, if you're bringing them into an environment like our sanctuaries that don't have any fleas and you're keeping the environment clean— so we encourage the staff to turn over the dog houses when the weather's warm, jet wash underneath, let it dry and put it back— if a dog has got a healthy immune system, because we know this, because as you gents know, you can have a litter of puppies and the sickest one will be the one that has the most fleas because it's the immune system that's actually controlling them, keeping them in check. So as long as your dog's got a healthy immune system, which means raw food— we give garlic, all the dogs get garlic, even the cats do. We know that some say you should, some say you shouldn't, but we've done it and it's fine. Of course, garlic is a great preventative. And I got into some debates online, as I often do, and people were arguing with me, but One guy said, you know what, I'm going to try it, I'm going to try garlic. And then someone else said, I'm going to try it too. And in the end, 3 of them tested it out for me. And I said to them, I said how much to give and how often to give it, and you've got to crush it, wait 10 minutes, and then give, give it to the dog. And they all came back and said, my God, it works. And they all said the same thing that I was experiencing. When you've got a dog with ticks, of course you're taking them all off, but you don't know where the little ones are hiding out. After maybe a week or so, you'll start finding ticks climbing up your wall, and they seem to accumulate around the, um, the electric sockets for some reason. And that's because they've left the dog. The dog is no longer a, uh, attractive host.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, another, another couple of things just to, to, to look into there, Sean. I'm not going to tell you how to suck eggs because you can probably suck eggs a lot better than me, but vegan Something egg-shaped.

Don't go there, don't go there.

Okay, all right, mate, figuratively. I've often used garlic and brewer's yeast and ginger.

Oh, right.

Yeah, because you might find that the ginger kind of potentiates the garlic. Yeah, circulation and what have you. And the brewer's yeast, it's— no, we use it in horses, for example, to keep, um, certain culicoides flies off horses that are prone to sweet itch.

Well, I was interesting because, uh, you've mentioned that, but we also use apple cider vinegar in some of these mixes, and you add a vinegar to your mix. What vinegar do you use in your food?

Ours?

Yeah, you in the greens, in the veggie mix. Is it apple cider? Right, there you go. Yeah, but you've also got some benefits.

Some say not, you shouldn't use apple cider vinegar because they say it's, it's sweet and it can—

maybe it's not sweet.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

If it's, if it's, if it's well fermented, it's not. What are you talking about fermented? What about, um, uh, I'm just thinking, I'm not sure how far Korea is from you because my my geography is really terrible in that region, unfortunately. But what about kimchi? I'm getting really excited about sauerkraut and kimchi and what have you.

We're still talking about parasites.

I never met her. That's just a rumor. Nice. It's something I've heard about. And it's a bit like sauerkraut, isn't it? Kimchi?

Yeah, it's a fermented veggie thing.

It's got chili in it as well, hasn't it? That's the thing.

But you know, you can, you can miss out the chili, but it's just— it's a South Korean thing, a Korean thing. And it's basically, it's Korean sauerkraut with chili. Okay, but you don't need to go with the chili.

It's something that we're, we're getting into more now, which is trying to really focus on the gut health of the dogs, because as you know, that the gut is the immune system. That's the core of the immune system. It's also the protective part of the immune system. Anyway, so I'm a bit tired, but the immune system's got to be strong, so gut health's got to be strong. So we give, we give some yogurts when we can get kefir, we'll get it.

Amazing.

But we are looking for other ways to add a broader flora, species richness.

Yeah, yeah, that kind of thing.

Not too expensively.

Yeah, making sauerkraut, have a look online or email one of us, and it's dead easy to make. Basically, you just get cabbage and you stick it in a jar, and Bren's going to give us some references. You stick it in a jar, squish it down. There you go, there you go. Brilliant. The principle is really simple. Basically, you get cabbage, you pack it in so it's anaerobic, bic. You might add a wee bit of salt, a bit of ginger, a bit of garlic to taste, and you leave it for 2 weeks. You're good to go. If it smells good after 2 weeks, you feed it to the dogs. It's as good and as easy as that.

Yeah, I tried to make it now based on that recipe, and I have to say, after 2 weeks, tasted like shit. It didn't work out at all. It just went brown, and I just couldn't eat the Dog was looking at me going—

anaerobic, you've got to squish it.

Oh, I had a weight, I had a weight on top. I made sure to do that. I, I had a little— I mean, it was— I just did—

did you, did you salt it and bash it?

Salted it, yes, lots of salt, very, very salty. Um, probably oversalted it. Yeah. Um, and it went brownish, and I don't like brownish. That's not good.

Uh, try again, try again. Yeah, if at first you don't succeed. Seriously, Sean, it, it is like falling off a log. Yeah, Brady can't do it, but that's not saying. Yeah.

And honestly, if you're using like an apple cider vinegar, you know, if you want a starter, you know, good organic apple cider vinegar, if you've got— if they're making it themselves and it's still got the ferment, the mother in it.

Yeah.

The mother.

Yeah. As a, you know, just, you know, if you're making like 40 kilo batches or whatever, just pour a 750ml bottle into it as a starter. You know, when you do the bashing and the salting, Yeah, it just adds that ferment automatically in there. You're not even waiting for the soil bacteria or anything. It just gives it that boost to really start it before it goes brown and horrible and rotting like Conor has managed.

It means it's got kind of infected and it hasn't gone into a fermentation with lactobacillus and all those good fermentative bugs. Yeah, it's got the wrong bugs.

I'm personally on a fence. You don't need to hear this argument now, Sean, because we've done it so many times, but I'm the guy that's on a fence about fermented ingredients. We have a guy coming on who's a fermented ingredient guy, and he's coming on soon, so we'll talk again about it.

9th of April.

I'm on a fence about it all. I'm like thinking, you know, I think all the other stuff sounds great, but that gets into the realm of things that the dog wouldn't normally eat. I know you're going to say it's fermented in the intestines of the animal. I don't know. I'm thinking, you know, all those postbiotics.

I think, yes, I'm keen.

I'm keen. I think Bren is keen, but Conor's yet to be converted.

I think, remember, they like to eat dog poop and cat poop.

Yeah. So talk about a probiotic, you know what I mean? Yeah. Who knows? But don't forget that amazing talk I did a few months ago. I can't remember which one it was.

The one you stole off Christian.

That was so unlucky, he brought up my main points. No, but I remember the two cat studies I found on collagen increasing the species richness in cats. So collagen is like this protein, this hard to digest protein in meat, okay? It's one of the most abundant proteins in meat, and collagen is the stuff that cats need lots of. Dogs need a fair whack of it too, obviously, as meat eaters. But that is a type of carnivore fiber people don't talk about. So the more harder to digest material, when you start feeding heads, you're getting some great stuff in there because it's got the beak and the tiny bits of feathers in the head you can't pluck, all this kind of stuff. So that's great food, surely. So I like the studies from the zoos and stuff that said, look, if you take the hide off the horse leg, the big cats get colitis and gastrointestinal disease and they started leaving the hair on. So leaving the feathers on the chicken for the, for the cheetahs, leaving the rabbit intact for the cheetahs. So that kind of stuff is interesting. I think that's really where carnivore fiber is, and maybe more of that in the diet along with the guys' fermentation tips, I'm sure. That's kind of cool. What other bits of the chicken do you feed? I mean, surely you don't feed whole chickens. What's, uh, what's like—

what's left?

What do you get? Yeah, what's in your mix?

The dogs in my home, they'll get the whole chicken, kind of, because you can buy chicken feet in the supermarket here. You can buy the chicken neck. And, um, but so, you know, we've got a huge number of dogs to feed. We found a chicken supplier who, um, you know, the, the thigh, the chicken thigh, you can cut the top of the thigh to leave the drumstick, but the bit you cut off, no one really wants that. And we buy that. Um, it's a I've got to get this right. I think it's a 10-kilogram bag for 70 NT, which is about 2 pounds, and that's enough to feed— it might be— I think it's a, it's a 6-kilogram bag. That's right, because it's enough to feed about 10 to 12 dogs. It's a very bony part, but it also has, um, a little bit of organ attached to it for some reason. That's the core of what we feed. And then we also buy chicken legs and we'll buy beef, we'll buy fish and things like that. But they're only getting that really once a week. When we get organ meat, we'll be getting a whole lot.

Yeah, we give liver and spleen and kidney and all that goodness.

So the dogs in my home, they'll get all kinds of organs from the stomach, the intestines, they'll get heart, which I know isn't really classified as an organ. They'll get the gizzards, they'll get liver. Any organ that we see, we'll get.

Can you get heads?

We can. Yeah, it's very easy for us to get heads, but when we give too much, the dogs get bad diarrhea. So it might be one head per dog if we can.

Well, they're quite rich in fats and stuff in the brain.

Yeah. And the eyes and everything. So, um, uh, 10% of the diet is organ and half of that is liver. They get liver every day. The cats, we make sure get, um, a chicken heart every day for the taurine. Even though it's in meat, they just get the additional from the chicken hearts.

Does, does anybody come to claim these dogs, Sean, that you're taking such great lengths to get in such perfect condition? Do people come to you for dogs?

Uh, adoptions, yeah.

Yeah.

When we are active, we've had some problems, some serious financial problems the last 2 years. We lost our license. We just got it back last week, thankfully.

Good.

When we have money, we, we have a rehoming manager, and, and when someone's focused on adoptions, we'll, we'll double our rate. But it's not a huge rate. I think we get 30 dogs adopted a year, and that's just from posting on Facebook. But when we get a manager actually focusing on it, we'll get maybe 70 a year adopted. And when we get 70 a year adopted, the number of dogs in our care stops going up. There's a reason why I started so many charities is because we fill up and then I'll just quickly leave, start another one. But we increase by about 140 animals per year. No, sorry, we increase— we rescue 150 animals per year. When you take away the ones that die at rescue, we've had a couple escape. The net increase in dogs per year is about 44. So you can see that after 5 years we've got another 250 dogs. But that means we only have to increase our adoption rate by a little more than double from our 30 to 35 a year, and the numbers stop going up.

Yeah.

So, but people adopting dogs in Taiwan Historically, it's been very popular, but they didn't ask the question the right way. The studies said that Taiwanese are twice or two or three times more likely to adopt a stray dog than to adopt a dog than, say, an American. But what they're missing was a Taiwanese will say they've adopted a dog when really they've taken a puppy from their neighbor's dog who's got pregnant and had a load. Or they'll just feed one on the street and that will live outside their door. They're not going to the shelters as much as they need to. The government's not really promoting adoption as much as it should, but they do come to us and we're over the moon when they do. We— for us, it's the icing on the cake. We think we give a really nice environment for dogs, but nowhere near as good as being in a loving home.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Just in the last 3 minutes, Sean, and after that Would— because this is so fascinating, would you stick around with us just for 10 minutes to just— because what we do is we go over to our Patreon, who are the people who help us keep the lights on. If you can keep— come with us, and I'd love to talk to you about how do you cope with all the meat being a vegan. But let's save that for a little bit later.

And there's some great questions come up, things like, you know, do you have to cope with rabies and all of those sort of things.

Amazing. Okay, so let's do that in a bit. So just in the last couple of minutes, well, how can we and how can our wonderful followers help you? So can you give us some websites or some charities or some where to send some dosh, whatever?

Sure, you can go to our website, it's animalcaretrust.org.uk. Um, you can also find us— Animal Care Trust— you can also find us on Facebook We're ACT-M-Animal Care Trust, and you can see what we do. And, you know, as I always say, if you want to help, just take good care of your own dog and help a group near you if you like. We're always struggling for cash, but when people say, I'm sorry, I adopted a dog from somewhere else, or I donated to another, I'm just as happy because, you know, just helping your own in your own vicinity is a massive help. But if you want to transform the life of a suffering Taiwan Strait, feel free to send us a donation.

That's cool. I like that.

I think that's brilliant because you're obviously so committed and you're so loving and you're so clever. You, you are just such a force for nature— a force of nature, should I say, Sean. It's just, I'm humbled to talk to you.

Do you have a family over there, Sean? Did I see you with some, with some kids, and have you roped them into— Yeah, yeah.

Uh, my son loves animals. My daughter is a bit over them. She, when she was born, we had 40 dogs in the house.

Boring.

Yeah, for her it's like, she's, she's used to— in her crib she'd have 6 or 7 cats sleeping with her. She's a bit over it. She loves them, but my son If he sees a cat or a dog, he'll run over and I have to teach him. He's only just turned 4. I've got a 6-year-old daughter, 4-year-old son called Connor.

Oh, nice.

My daughter's called Saoirse.

Oh, nice.

And Liam.

Yeah.

Oh, good. You've got all the names in there.

And you're up at 3 in the morning to talk to us when you're going to be woken at 6 AM by the kids.

My wife and I separated. They're over there right now, but we're getting Congratulations.

Sean, one last thing, the viewers are just checking, is it.co.uk or is it.com for the animal care?.org.

Okay, we'll just change that.

And be careful, there's a few animal care trusts.

There is, yeah, that's what we're trying to work out.

Royal Veterinary Society has one and people sometimes write to us and take their donations.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's, that's the actual one down here. Yeah.

So is that the right one now?

Animalcaretrust.org.uk.

Can you get it together, please, Brad?

Bloody hell. I do have that domain, so I might forward anyone that goes there.

Clean it up, please. We'll share this again from our socials.

Animalcaretrust.org.uk for the podcast people. Forget everything that you've heard so far. Animalcaretrust.org.uk if you want to help Sean, support him, tell him he's a great guy. Anything. I think that's fabulous. Yeah, I really, really, really do. Um, should we— Sean, it's been, it's, it's been absolutely immense. You've got such knowledge. I'm, I'm in awe. I really am.

Um, I'd love to touch on things like endemic disease on Patreon. Uh, we'll talk a little bit about rabies. There's so many things to just touch on in such a short time, but really looking to you.

You can stick with us for 10 minutes, mate, that would be really, really grateful.

And it's been great, and I want to say thank you to you guys because I didn't know what you guys were doing, and we need you so much because we have 3 professionals helping the public understand that they've been fooled by an industry, an industry that doesn't care about their pets. It's an industry that cares about their profits, and it's out there to protect itself and to feed itself. And it makes me really, really sad. But to see guys like you doing this, I am extremely grateful.

Thank you.

I love that line. It's out there to feed itself, not your dog.

Oh, that's great.

I'm going to take that. Yeah, I'm going to take it.

I'm going to be using that this weekend, but not if I get in there first.

Okay. Yeah, yeah, do stick it on a t-shirt. Sean, thank you so much. Do stick around with us and we'll just jump over to Patreon. Cheers, lots of amazing questions.

Easy for you to say, but I'll do it.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank