RPM LIVE: PLANET PAWS

How exciting is this? This is like some sort of 1980s game show, isn't it?

It's like, yeah, look who we found, guys.

Yeah, absolutely. So look, guys, uh, these, these kids need no introduction. I had already planned quite a witty introduction for you guys, um, I road tested it this morning, it didn't work out too well. I was going to say, you know, these guys need no introduction, they are like, you know, super famous, they've more followers than Beyoncé added together. And, you know, and I was gonna build this up and make a big deal of it and say I value these guys as mentors and guides in what we're doing here, like the world's pet parents. And I was gonna say Carol Becker and Robbie Haboob. And so I thought if I introduced your names wrong, it'd be kind of funny. So I put it up on Facebook today, and half the people did— they were like, her name is Karen Becker. Change this immediately.

We're like, whoa, we were only joking, we didn't mean to insult the Pope.

So I thought maybe people thought I was— because they don't understand the kind of the sarcasm, it doesn't look good in print, and I'm Irish and I come out with a lot of that. So I thought I'd be a bit more sincere with my very quick intro and say, you know, since the— since the, uh, I don't want to appear kind of childish, you know, like I can't do it. So here it goes. Since the kind of introduction, or since the, um, since the book came out, since the success, the crazy success of the book. You know, it is in different languages, it's been held up as peers, as a kind of, you know, a godsend of nutrition, and it's topping lists and whatnot. And it's pretty much known as an abbreviation now— did you see this in FD, did you see that in FD? And I just think it's unbelievable. And I was wondering, like, how do you two guys deal, like, with the success? Or how do you follow a book like Feeding Dogs?

Well, you, you could never follow feeding dogs. You just can't. You just retire, Conor. Retire.

Oh, what you do?

I've been practicing that all day. Oh God, I just thought of the FD link.

Well done, well done, well done. Like, you teed it up, you set it up, the build-up and everything. Well done.

You couldn't have done No, I am, I am done, guys. How you doing? So good to have you on the show. Thank you for coming.

Listen, we're excited. This is like so awesome for us. You know, I, I can't remember, I think the last time we ever did a podcast was your podcast, as far as I, I can recall. I haven't done a podcast in so long. I, I mean, maybe a little bit different for you, Dr. Becker, but, uh, this is so exciting. And I say it every time, I say it every time I'm on here, just to get to hang out with 3 dudes, you You know, like my life is estrogen. All I hang around is estrogen. To hang around a little bit of testosterone every now and then, it's nice. Oh yeah, it's nice.

You have a male dog, don't you, Rodney?

I have a female, a female dog, unfortunately. Yeah, I shouldn't say unfortunately. That was terrible. I have a beautiful, I have a beautiful, beautiful dog. Boy, that was a Freudian slip right there. So let's just shut it down and redo this again. Um, you just, you're just, you're just back from Portugal, guys.

Uh, let's, let's just get, let's give us 5 minutes. On that. You met the world's oldest dog. I mean, considering that this book you guys have out, Forever Dog, unbelievable success of it, uh, New York Times bestseller in multiple, multiple languages, unbelievable book. Everybody go out there and buy it now. We've covered that before. But then you go and meet this Forever Dog, and like, you meet the oldest dog in the world. Can you tell us a little bit about meeting him and what might be the secrets?

You go, Karen.

Oh, I was— oh, Well, it was, as you can imagine, overwhelming, I guess, is the best way I would describe it. I was like, I, I became emotional when I just was able to see him and then to touch him. I became very emotional because I, I've been a vet over 25 years. I don't think I'm probably ever going to touch another 31-year-old dog. So I mostly just cried. Ugly, ugly snot.

Yeah, we'll shoot that again, Karen, if you could stop.

Yeah, that's what I did. I ugly snot cried, and then the mascara went, and then I just had so many questions for Bobby's owner, Leonel. I had so many questions. So I was so thankful. It's one thing just to meet him. It's another thing to get the whole background on potentially how and why, and then piece it together as a veterinarian. You know, like, this is a great time to kind of talk about the whys, because instantly you see this And the question is, is he a genetic anomaly? Is he an outlier? Does he have Methuselah genes? What were the variables epigenetically that Leonel did or didn't do? And did he do those variables cognizantly? Was it an intentional creation of longevity, or was it just all the perfect storm variables where he really kind of didn't intentionally set out to do this, but did it happen by default? My brain, after, after the Kleenex, I just immediately went to, I need to talk to you for an extended period of time to get All of my questions answered. Rodney, what do you think?

It was, you know, first of all, when you hear that type of story, it's, uh, this is, this is bullshit, right? Like, this can't be true. There's no way that this— you know, there's always that skeptic in me, the little science guy that's like, ah, you know, did somebody get the date wrong here? Was like a swap out of dogs. It's a little hard to believe. Uh, let's go down there and try to get to the bottom of it. So I was kind of really skeptic going into it. Once we landed and, you know, you start— you get the pulse of the country. So first of all, everyone in the country is talking about it. The second that we landed, uh, you know, from Uber drivers to get to certain locations, from the hotel, the, you know, the, the doorman at the hotel, everyone's like, hey, what are you doing here? It was very easy. We said we're here to interview and see the oldest dog in the world. It's all anyone talked about. You couldn't go anywhere in Portugal and not talk about it. And today you can't go anywhere in the world, um, arguably according to the, you know, major media, the most famous dog on the entire planet, rightfully so for what the dog has achieved. Um, so you get there and then, yeah, exactly what Karen said, there's like this godly feeling when you walk in and you see, like, you— it's almost like, you know, the good Lord himself comes out of the ground and you're just looking at this unbelievable, you know, being in front of you. No sign of aging, not a single gray hair, right? And then it's almost like you're playing, you're playing this song in your head, you know, whether— is— am I seeing what— is this believable? Is it— what's going on? I watched Karen totally emotional, like literally you could just see it all on her. We got Bee with us filming, she's bawling her eyes out. Everybody's, um— it was, it was a very powerful moment. And then You know, for me being like the scatterbrain, I need to collect every single bit of information. I have 24 hours.

Yeah.

What am I gonna do? Where am I gonna shoot? Where am I gonna go? And how am I gonna tell this story to the world? And that's where I was running around because obviously when you see these stories that are out there about the longest lived dog in the world, they always hide the stuff that you want, right? Yeah. All of, yeah. Every single one of us had a question and that question would never be answered. And it's like, we gotta get all of these questions. And that's kind of that moment where it just was— things were unraveling quick. We were asking questions. We sat them down. We did a 2-hour interview. We went in through the gardens. We went to the veterinarians because we had to— we want to talk to the veterinarians. So we went out. Yeah, we interviewed the veterinarians. Um, then, then the results started to come back. Like, what was it? So we, we contacted Guinness first because we wanted to interview Guinness. Hey, what are your regulations here? Are you just taking a picture and saying, hey, this is a 31-year-old dog, somebody sent us a picture? Like, what does it take? This man spent over a year back and forth, documents, paperwork, government paperwork, rabies vaccines. He needed the medical association. He needed 6 veterinarians. He needed neighbors and friends of neighbors. Then after all of that, then here comes the science. Let's measure the dog's telomeres to see if in fact the dog could even be close or remotely close to living that long. Results come back. Dog has telomeres the length of 28 to 32 years of age. Which is jaw-dropping in itself. And then let's now, let's now collect all of this information. And every single piece of paper that went between Leonel and the Guinness World Book of Records was certified either by the Portuguese government or by the Portuguese Vet Med Association. So it was, uh, once we got all that in our hands, it was like, okay, now, now this is— we can see the work and we can see the rigorous efforts that Guinness World Book of Records put people through to be able to validate something like this, because there's Everywhere you go, like every comment section you read, there's skeptics everywhere on the ordeal.

Yeah.

You know, for, for me, I, um, I like, I, the bullet, the bullet take-homes for me, I was like, Leonel, did you ever think about neutering your dog ever? And he was like, why? Right? And now we also, in his defense, everyone out there, I grew up in a kill shelter, just right away everyone's saying, ah, irresponsibility. Leonel lives in a very small village. It's a beautiful, simple, clean life. Bobby's not out impregnating all the neighbor dogs. Bobby has an incredible rich social life. He is intact. He was minimally vaccinated and he has never had a bite of ultra-processed food in his whole life. So my question, so my next question to Leonel was, hey, when you found this tiny puppy in the woodshed, and you decided, your parents said, okay, you can keep it. How did you decide to home cook? And the response was the same. What else would we feed him? Because the cost of dog food is a lot for most people in the village. Dog food is an added expense that many, many people can't afford. So rather than buy a separate food for the dog, You feed the dog as you would feed the rest of the family. And all of these kind of common sense, logical decisions were made, not, not intentionally by Leonel to set out to create the oldest dog in the world, but as a part of his culture and history and how his parents raised him, they had been raising their family dogs the exact same way their entire existence. His grandpa and his great-grandpa raised the dogs the same way. They all ate from the garden. They all walked miles around with Leonel through the forest every day. They have this incredible social life. They, they, all of these things are naturally common sense decisions for Leonel. So, when his friend, his friend, he was 28, when his friends are like, hey, the dog was 28. When Leonel's buddies at work were like, you have a really old dog. You should see if it's the oldest dog in Portugal. And that was kind of how the whole thing got started. Leonel didn't even really know this. His friends and family were like, you got a really ancient old dog, dude. You should find out how old it is compared to other dogs. And that's how the ball got started.

So interesting.

Well, it's amazing, Karen. It's a bit like the Blue Zones, you know, there's Okinawa and, and Loma Linda and places. And it's, and it's, it's, it's what you do i.e., you don't— you eat clean and you have a great social life, but it's also what you know, what you don't do. It's what do you avoid. So over-vaccination, messing around with your hormones and these kind of things. And so can you encapsulate just two of the most important aspects that you think contributed, that they did, and two of the most important things that they didn't do? I mean, you've mentioned neutering, so, so that could be one, but anything, any, anything that we can share with the guys?

For me, Rodney, I'll go first and then I'll let Rodney, um, give his two cents. Even when we were writing Forever Dog, I think the thing when we talked to the top longevity scientists, this was something that, that gave me pause when I was writing Forever Dog. Some of the top geneticists said we have underestimated the the weight of the necessity of rich social lives. And I was like, okay, we're talking about dogs. I mean, we know that dogs need social interaction, blah, blah, blah. But I kept kind of stressing dogs, and what they kept spitting back to me was, right, dogs. Dogs co-evolved with humans. They have a deep need for connection. And when we interviewed Dr. Dunbar, he said dogs need at least 5 friends. And I'm like, I have an aggressive dog. He goes, right, but you can work on that. I mean, I rescued a dog that just had never seen another dog. And so my default is, but what do you do about all these? And he's like, right, you work to get them to the point that, that some dogs can never have friends, but most dogs need things to sniff and, and butts to sniff and places to go and things to do. And then emerged this term that now is in the human field. We've got nutrigenomics, the study of how our food influences our DNA. How about sociogenomics? That's the latest term in Blue Zone, right? And it's how your social environment impacts your DNA. And we have underestimated that for ourselves. The top longevity scientists in the human field now say that your social, that your social genetic environment will impact your genetics potentially as much as exercise and nutrition. As much. So that to me was the biggest holy cats. And when I think about Bobby's social life, he's never— he's not— he doesn't have a collar, he's never been on a leash. He walks beside his dad, they go through the forest. He has all the neighbors, all the— when they go literally house to house. When we were there on our very first day, Bobby started walking and Lee and I said, hey, we we gotta go. Bobby started walking down the road to go on his walk, and at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, Bobby goes on a walk. Leonel's like, we gotta go because he's gonna go with or without us. So as we went, we collected all the village dogs, we all went through the woods, and then on our walk home, they all just went back to their houses, and we came back to Leonel's house with his dog. That's an amazing social life. And I think for me, that's the piece that I totally underestimated. And then I think about in the U.S., all the puppy mill dogs who live and die being bred in puppy mills, and their sociogenomic environment is so— that the puppies that they are producing, the upregulation of cortisol and stress hormones and anxiety that we literally are giving next generation. We're in, we're giving heritable anxiety to whole litters of puppies in the US because we're breeding them like, like they're a commodity. So that was my biggest takeaway. Rodney, for you?

I look just a little bit, uh, to add on top of what you were saying, you know, Leonel, we just— I just published recently the Dog Aging Project, the largest study that we— a survey study that we know to date on, uh, dogs and a rich— and as you had said, the rich social life. Dogs who live with other dogs seem to be healthier and seem to live longer, right? And so that was a really, really, um, valid— so it, it validated all of the things that you guys are saying, that all of us cut from the same cloth are saying. Jumping on that plane and going there is that, like, it was, it was so validating to see all of the things that we were talking, that we've, all of us have been talking about for over a decade, and to see it all validated sitting right there in front of us at 31 years of age, right? Like, there was nothing more, I guess, gratifying for when it's your life's work to talk about these type of things. For me, one of the, there, so there's a, a lot of things, but if I had to narrow them down to, to two, one of the things that I found that was extremely interesting was the EPA and DHA consumption by that dog and the EPA and DHA consumption by that family and by that entire country. Man, you can't go anywhere in Portugal and not see fish anywhere on a menu.

Mm-hmm.

Little side piece.

Everything is fish.

Yeah.

Everything is fish. Like we, you know, from walking through Lisbon, from going to Leiria, from going up to Conques, and visiting the village. It's everything on that table has to do with fish, right? So the amount of EPA and DHA that that dog required— and, you know, and Karen and I have been talking about this for years, like, you know, we have a big fascination with fossilized poop. Every time they find like some sort of fossilized poop from 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 years ago of a dog, it's always packed with some sort fish-based product in it, right? It's usually full of something that came from the ocean. So EPA, DHA, I know how important it is. I've—

oh, and Rodney's, Rodney's lost in thought.

Should we leave him lost in thought and I'll come back and ask you a question?

Well, and I'll just pick up and say that we have started, uh, measuring DHA and EPA. It— I mean, I did it for myself a couple years ago, and then I started doing it for my animals. I think the biggest kicker for me is what I think I'm putting in and what they're absorbing and what their levels are. We really want an omega-3 score over, over 10, and it's a little shocking how most kibble-fed dogs come in at 0.5 to 1. And even if you're giving adequate DHA and EPA, measure, because it's a little bit like vitamin D. If you've got the, you know, genetics and absorption and all those things, were— it can be humbling to, to check a vitamin D in a dog and be like, holy cats, uh, they're low. And it can be really shocking to check DHA and EPA and it's like, oh my gosh, you're giving sardines twice a week and your dog comes in with an omega score of 2.5. It's humbling, but that's also the beauty of modern medicine where we can check.

Karen, what's your favorite, favorite source of EPA and DHA?

The one that resonates with my patients, and what I mean by that is I'm a huge— if you're gonna take anything out of the ocean, it's a little bit like land mammals. If you're gonna eat mammals, we need to try and eat clean, happy animals that had a good life and were nourished on their species-appropriate foods prior to ethical slaughter. That's kind of my go-to for land creatures. If you're going to take anything out of the sea at this point, we know the sea is contaminated and we know that populations are dwindling. So what's important first and foremost is that whatever you take out of the sea, it's sustainable, third-party validated, and whatever organization. I like MSC, Marine Stewardship Council, for that. But a lot of animals are allergic now to fish and fish products. So, I have my go-to algal algae sources for DHA and EPA, and then a variety of smaller fish that have less contaminants, like sardines. I'm a big fan of sardines. So, it's smaller fish and then well-produced supplements.

Yeah, I like the social bit that you're saying, Karen. We went to a talk there recently, um, at the Natural Dog Conference here in the UK, and Dr. Paul Boland was talking about, um, you know, if you're really stressed, if you just simply say negative things to us, if you give yourself a negative mantra, I can't do it, I can't do it, or whatever, and you can check the rhythm of the heart, and it's, you know, it's quite a large— I can't remember the term for us, but it wasn't like the kind of beating of your heart, but it was another way of measuring it. Anyway, you could see it was quite wild when you're thinking negative thoughts or whatever, positive or things about love and stuff, you know, your, your, your heart monitor goes very, very calm. And as soon as you go back to negative, it goes like this. And so I thought, okay, that's interesting enough. He goes, but check it, check it out. We put a heart monitor on the dog in the room while you came in with your stressed self, and the heart monitor on the dog went down almost instantaneously. As soon as you calmed, the dog's calmed. And as soon as you stressed, the dog stressed. And he did it with a horse as well. And he said, like, this is well known that we share, like, just even being together is a very, very healing process, but also your effect on the dog when you're in that room. So how many times have you talked to a client with a dog with IBS, and 50% of the time that person is telling you they're stressed, somebody in the family is stressed? IBS is like shared almost in the family, and it's— there's definitely something in that that doesn't require any touching. So it's very interesting how health and maybe disease can be shared. But Rodney, you're—

that's really, really interesting. Yeah, really interesting, because when, when we're prescribing homeopathics, we're prescribing constitutionally with homeopathics, you say, right, I'm going to give your dog some Pulsatilla, or I'm going to give them a Lycopodium. As you say, about 50% of the time they will turn around and go, that's really interesting, that's what my homeopath has given me, you know. So this, this link is just enormous.

Yeah.

Um, yeah, well, well, Stephen Borges does the polyvagal theory. We've talked about that.

That's that transference, um, mammalian species as well.

It's not just, you know, he talks about the recognition across species of mood and sensing all of that. That's, I mean, that's just a great aspect. I think I was really interested in the nutrition stuff that you were talking about. I've just been to a health optimization conference for humans looking at various products. There is this— I'm just going to briefly— and I was like, I was gobsmacked by the fact that there was a brain material out there, and I had to ask them where it was from. So it's grass-fed cattle.

I'm surprised.

And they were from where, Bren? From New Zealand. Oh, New Zealand.

Okay, okay. And I said, why New Zealand?

Yeah, yeah. So I said why, but they test, they test for just about everything, including prions, which is really important to me, um, so that they can exclude. So they, um, are producing this, and there's a lovely organ mix on the human side that's actually available now for our pets too. And I was just looking at some of the posts that you've done about Bobbi's food and feeding and them putting the dish down, and there was none of the, oh, I need to have just a little bit of this and a little bit of that. And it was just make the food, it's fresh like we feed our children, stick it down. Variety is the key. Just keep going with that. And so how does that sit? What was your sort of take on what would they have added? What would you have said? Oh, because they didn't have, you know, 15 dogs of 24 through 32, you know, they had a question of mine, they just had, um, but, but they—

a history, they have a history of having long-lived dogs. For instance, Bobby's mom lived, I believe, 18, Rodney?

Almost to 20.

Yeah, almost to 20. And he said that their dogs previous to Bobbi would live into their— all of their dogs lived like between 15 and 25 was kind of the— so they've all had exceptionally— I mean, that entire family, the Costas, have had long-lived dogs. And of course you begin wondering, is it just in that environment? I do think that there's no— they live in a village with no pesticide use. Their home, they literally don't have cleaners under their kitchen sink. I mean, they're—

you—

I don't know what they're using. They have dish soap and their hand soap, but there is no sprays. There's no skull and crossbones on any of the products in their garage, in their house, in their shed. Nothing. That counts. That totally counts for something. Yeah, environment, for sure.

Did you take a poo sample? Take a poo sample, stick it in your pocket.

I did. I did. In fact, in fact, it's so funny. So, so here's the best part. So we pull up, Leonel comes out of the house, he lets Bobby out, they come out of the house. So Bobby, they've got like a 3-acre garden in the front of their house. So Bobby just hobbles, you know, you can tell, first of all, he's overweight. A really good discussion is, can you be fat and healthy? And he only got fat recently, but that's another, maybe for a different podcast. But so Bobby goes waddling out through the garden and Leonel comes out to greet us. And I see Bobby sniffing around, sniffing around, you know, you can always tell by body language when dogs are going to poop. And sure enough, we hadn't even cracked the door of the car and I see Bobby go, hutch up. And I'm like, oh, and I grabbed my backpack and I fished through to find my fecal sample cup. And so Lena was like, hello, Karen, hello, Rodney. And I'm like, and I said, I hope you don't mind, I— that's a brand new fresh poo, that's like gold. And he's like, please help yourself. So I got, I got poo from the Fountain of Youth, and I'll share results as soon as they're in.

Excellent.

Karen, did he ever have 10 years longer?

Sorry, I thought you were looking 10 years younger. Karen. So if you're face masking with us, it was extremely effective.

Hey, anything, you know, the key is to have a 4-foot distance from the camera.

Awesome.

Yeah, listen, listen, can I have an AI filter?

Yeah, what about antibiotics?

I don't know what that is, but send it over. Yeah, whatever that is, I probably need that too.

Did he ever have any antibiotics, guys?

No, no, no, no antibiotics. No antibiotics. And interestingly, when we asked, when we asked Leonel how things were going in the year, in the— Bobby was kind of hailed oldest dog in the world in January. Our first visit there was, I believe, March. In our March visit, I said to him, hey, you're probably not used to press and, you know, this new crazy 3 months of being, of having the oldest dog in the world and the popularity and the pressure that comes from that. How are you doing and how is Bobby doing? And you know, he said to me, he said, I didn't realize how mean people can be. And he said, I also didn't realize the backlash from the veterinarians. And I said, what do you mean backlash from veterinarians? And he said that a very well-known board-certified nutritionist from the US contacted him and said, please do the world a favor and do not disclose you are doing homemade diets because you will be personally responsible for harming the health of dogs worldwide if people follow your lead. And then she went on to say, imagine how long your dog would have lived if you would have fed kibble. Imagine how long he would have lived if he was on kibble.

It's so illogical. It's crazy, isn't it?

Rodney, Rodney, can you, can you tell us, Rodney, what was the breakdown? You went, you were talking about EPA, DHA, and that's something we're all very, very fond of. I did a great Inside Scoop with your guy that you had on for a couple of hours. Very interesting. Check that out on Inside Scoop, guys. And but what did the bowl, the general week's bowl, look like? Meat to veg to bone. What did this dog eat?

So yeah, that's kind of like the real interesting part, right? So as I was— I don't know what point it cut off. Here I am like just talking to myself and all you have frozen faces like, wow, they're very, they're really interested in what I'm saying. No one's blinking. Like, I'm just dropping gems right now and I'm not gonna stop. I'm just crushing it. So yeah, the amount of fish that the family, the country, everybody consumes is next level. So obviously those dogs But I wish we had done an OmegaQuant test on the omega-3 index that that dog had. Maybe, maybe next trip we'll try to get something like that. You know, interestingly enough too, off topic, when we get up there, the scientists that are waiting outside that man's door right now, he is being harassed by the scientific community.

Stalkers.

Yeah, he's, he's, we like, he's, he's trying to get like Google cams set up around the home because obviously when you have the oldest dog in the world Everybody wants the oldest dog in the world, either for pictures. The door is not— that is non-stop with people knocking on it. Literally, we were doing a—

in—

we were doing a live podcast with Lionel, and then there was, uh, a whole bunch of people from France just knocking on the door that just jumped on a plane. We met people from California that were there. We're like, hey, how the hell did you guys get here? And they were like, we got off a plane, we asked this person, we asked that person, point us to the direction where the oldest dog lives. That's literally what people are doing right now. Scientific community's down there knocking on his door. Here's a, here's a blank check, write whatever you want on it, just give us a urine sample or a blood sample. It's, it's next level right now for that poor man. But having said that, um, the bowl was really interesting, Conor. So the way that the food was cooked was very interesting, right? After sitting with Dr. David Turner, who talks to you about AGEs, advanced glycation end products, I never seen a frying pan come out once. Everything that these, this family consumed was boiled. Everything was boiled, right?

Basically poached, right, in a small amount of liquid.

Yeah, yeah. So you're not— so now you're not getting the damage that could be done from just straight either meat or oil or whatever fats that come contact with a hot pan, creating like chaos, chemical chaos in that bowl. So things were lightly boiled in that house, um, and the portions that you see would probably be— a lot of it was very— a lot of it was fresh meat heavy. So local fresh meats that would come direct from the market, like Even the fish, Conor, that, that he would bring home was daily catch fish. So not enough to sit out, accumulate a whole bunch of histamines and so on and so forth. Everything there is daily caught. So literally you go down to where the market is, there's all the fish just sitting there from the stand, freshly caught, goes right home, it's consumed right away. You didn't really see too much come out of the freezer. And then the garden, I don't know if Karen talked about the garden because we were so enamored with the soil. So Karen, not only were we collecting fecal micro— for a fecal sample for a fecal microbiome analysis, But we also took soil analysis samples.

Yeah.

DNA samples for Dr. Nico Cubini in Hungary and their $100 trillion supercomputer that can analyze Methuselah genes. But we started, you know, it was very important to us that we just didn't want to go there, but we wanted to get all the information we could and give it back to our friends, our scientists, so they can get into their journey. So we can have 1,000 studies in the next 10 to 20 years being published. About all the things that we talked about. So that was the exciting part. But that bowl, Connor, was heavy with seafood and so much veg from the garden, non-sprayed, chem-free soil. Like, B was there taking shots. We posted a video that went viral on the internet showing his 70 or 80-year-old mother— God love her, Donna Maria— with her, with her backhoe in the back, just like going at the soil like I mean, I, I can't even do that right now at my age though, coming with like a back problem, and she's just out there like moving the earth with her stick in her— like, anyways, it was unbelievable. So very heavy in meats, very heavy in veg and herbs. Herbs, herbs, herbs. I wish I could have like a Rita Hogan. Yeah, I could attach to the side of me and take it to the garden because we couldn't identify all the different herbs the dog was eating. But if you want to talk about zoopharmacognosy, that dog was out there there consuming so many herbs. Like, you just couldn't— you just didn't know what they were. They were just— I mean, we identified milk thistle, we were able to identify, uh, nettle, non-stinging form of nettle, plantain.

He ate a lot of marrow. Here's what— sometimes yarrow. Sometimes, um, Leonel said he would just skip food and just forage from the garden. Like, he would— his life was spent walking around the 3-acre garden, self- feeding, which is also very cool. Now the other thing is, uh, the— in March when we were there, his mama had some health concerns, so they did not have chickens and rabbits, but they historically raised their own chicken and rabbits. So when you think about where, where's the bone, you know, where's bone, where's trace minerals, every single piece and part from the rabbit and the chicken was recycled to Bobby. Oh, exactly. So yeah, so the parts that would be harvested from rabbits and chickens, that would be like white and dark breast meat would go to family, but everything else Bobby ate— home-raised animals as well as home-raised fruits and veggies. They grow about 80% of their food themselves.

Amazing.

What about fasting, guys? What, what, what was the deal there? Did he eat every day?

This was, this was very interesting. We could only get updated information because, you know, mind you, Leonel the dog spent more time out with other dogs. You know, it's just like that young, you know, when we were like young boys and we would just jump out the bedroom window and come home whenever we wanted. That was kind of the dog's lifestyle in the early stages, right? If he wanted to sleep at home, he couldn't. If he didn't, he could sleep out with his friends out in the woods if he wanted to, right? Because they were all set to roam free the way that they wanted. Um, so we, uh, you know, to, to see that, um, to ask Leonel about, talk to us about his feeding schedule He can only give us like the most up-to-date when he sort of— when he took over, but it was his siblings before him that were feeding, his family before him, and when the dogs wanted to come eat, they would come eat. He's now very focused, of course, and centralized on 3 times a day feeding, but I really was wanting to know, okay, talk to me about the 25 years before that. We couldn't get that information.

Yeah, and it's interesting that you were saying about the fact that he's put on weight in more recent years and that side of things, whereas before he's been much slimmer. And it's really interesting, you were saying that often he was reported to skip meals and go off foraging. Well, you know, on the human side, that is fasting. You, you can feed your gut flora with all of that herbage, and that's actually really good. The polyphenols and stuff are great for improving your gut flora without feeding you calories, and that could be a really good fasting day without appearing to be fasting. And we're seeing that on the human side now is Yeah, they do this what they call— I'm not going to get too technical, but mTOR and AMPK days and just alternating. So you've got a healing sort of gut looking after day followed by a building day and it allows you the apoptosis, the gobbling up of those cells that have gone slightly wrong and all of that side of things. No, brilliant. I think you've sort of answered that. Yes, he has been probably fasting on odd days in the past, or at least for a few long hours through those days. Um, yeah, it's brilliant. We're getting close, guys. We need to start also talking about some of the other great stuff that you're— you're doing.

We have some topics. Yeah, this is— this just seems too hard to shift from. It seems, it seems too hard to shift gears. This is really, really interesting. And, uh, yeah, I just want to know everything. But sure, what can you know? It's a single dog, you know, and so there's only so much in the back of your mind you're thinking, is this a fluke? Is this genetics? How much genetics is involved? I need 10 Bobbies, I need them on different diets, I need also— because there is like, to give kibble, it's due, okay? And I will never ever say that ever before and probably never will again. There are examples of dogs on kibble living longish lives. You will find an example, you'll hold a 16-year-old cat and an 18-year-old dog, and you might hit a 20-year-old dog mixed kibble and veg and stuff. So these individual examples, I would pour scorn on that example if they tried to hold it up, and I'm sure the industry will pour scorn on a single example of a dog fed incredibly well and look how well he did. So, you know, the single examples is one thing. It'd be nice to have, you know, 10 dogs in the village all eating the same thing. That's the dream. How difficult is it to separate those thoughts where you walk away going like, Clearly, if you eat right and do everything right and cut out all the crap, as Nick was saying, the blue zones, rural Afghanistan, rural Japan, these are the longest living people. It's— they keep on working, they keep on eating great. And it seems the further away from a pharmacy you are, the healthier you are for some reason. So like, it just seems that way. But it's hard to decipher all that from one single example. But I am delighted.

There is that— there is a small through line, Conor, when you look at the— like, if you look at the top the top maybe 10 longest-lived dogs, or even let's look at the top 3 longest-lived dogs, they all lived on farms. You know, if you, uh, you talk to Dr. Nico Kubiny and those Hungarian scientists who were studying on Boksi, a 27-year-old dog in Hungary, again on a farm, free roaming, got to go out, got to mingle in the soil, got to mingle within the microbiome, and got to mingle on the earth. You got Maggie, who was in the Guinness, removed from the Guinness over documentations, but arguably 30 years old as well, lived on a dairy farm, never was tethered to anything. Now you've got Bobby, lives on a farm. I mean, well, lives in a village, but a farm-esque life. Yeah, because I mean, most— some people classify that as a farm the way that the house is set up.

That's interesting.

Yeah, outdoor living, you know, and they all slept outdoors, which, you know, you tell that to a Canadian, you tell that to a Canadian kid, hey, my dog sleeps outside, we're calling the SPCA on you and you're going to jail, right? What do you mean your dog sleeps outside, right?

Yeah, dog slept outside. Yeah, yeah.

So guys, have you done a shout out to the world to say, give me your old dogs? Because you guys can do that.

Yeah, well, it's interesting. Rodney, Rodney has done that before. That's partly how we tracked down Leonel, is that we had heard whispers that there were— there was a 31-year-old dog, and Rodney posted, listen, if anyone know if this is true, drop some information, drop what you know, drop some links, and then we're gonna go looking. So I will do it now. If anyone— now this is what we we do get, we get people saying, I have a 28-year-old dog that I rescued, but there's no paperwork. And the gross thing, I get it, but the gross thing about, we have to be able to document, there has to be some way to document that the dog is as old as people say that it is. And that's the hardest part, Nick, is that there's, there are people that have old dogs, but they were rescued. So you have an adoption certificate and that's what we have to go. If you have an adoption certificate, we can at least go off of that date. But part of the issue is that it's hard to document these dogs. And so we, and we need to document before we get on a plane and go visit. So that has been part of the issue. But we, you know, Leonel said twice to us, he is convinced that there are other Bobbies in the world. He's totally convinced that in rural places there are lots of old dogs with people that have no idea that their 30-year-old dog is an amazing phenom that we're all interested in and actually have podcasts about. They have no idea that's going on. And nor would they probably care, but they're probably out there. And I do agree with him. They're probably out there. And if anyone knows, knows of any, drop us a link because we are a little obsessed with figuring out what they do and don't do. Because you're right, Conor, it's as much as what they don't— is the environment around these dogs' DNA, what's not there as what is there.

Yeah.

If you were to, yeah, if you were to ask like, what's the best way to avoid cancer, you start off with food and, you know, avoiding kind of some of the top diseases and trying to keep yourself lean and all that sort of stuff. But also, you know, cutting out some of the chemicals that we take is very everyday. It was Joe Kavanagh from Ingenious Probiotics who was highlighting— he's an industry— comes from the industry cleaning, industrial cleaning background. And he said those chemicals are unbelievable. They are just so pervasive all the way through the home, on your counters, on your floor, your kids crawl. And in 10 minutes they're drawing it, they're into the corners of the room. And then Rodney shares a study showing how many more times dogs are full of these compounds than we are because they're sniffing up with their nose all the time. So we just— and like when dogs are so many more times prone to cancer than we are, it's quite clear the Western life is not suiting these dogs, living indoors and being separated from their kin, which is a new thing for me to ponder, I have to say. It's clearly like it's a huge amount of parasite control and annual vaccinations and all this stuff It's not working out for dogs. We've got this incredible explosion of chronic disease in the West. We've never sold more prescription pet food and pet drugs, and they've never been sicker. So it's clearly not working for them or us, I would hazard to add. So it's quite obvious what's going on. I just want more dogs. Guys, if you're interested in what you're listening to, these guys do a show called The Inside Scoop. Like, I need to tell you, The Inside Scoop for $10 is the best value show that you guys need to subscribe to. It's a 2 to 3 hour show every, every week, and it only costs $10. I highly advise you to get on it. I was on there talking about omega-3. I just thought I was going to be bestowing some ideas about omega-3, and then Rodney has the world specialist of fish oil on, and like, that was his introduction. I thought, oh, what am I gonna do here for 2 hours? But like, it's so, so interesting. Your shows are brilliant, and I hear you have an incredible one there on Bobby which people are urging to, to listen to. So if you want to hear more about this. We had a number of topics to talk about tonight, but we are going to run out of time. If I could, to change gears, if I could say to people, can we just pause it here? Can we shift to Patreon and get your opinion on a couple of things? I want to get both your opinions on this move with this vegetarian pet food, vegan pet food bonanza of bullshit. And I also wanted to touch on Rodney. I want to hear your bit about antibiotics and this move, this go for it and shifting diets. This, which is so interesting. I think we should shift it to Patreon, guys. If you want to follow us on Patreon, we're Raw Pet Medics, patreon.com/rawpetmedics. For the price of a cup of tea or a pint, we deeply appreciate it. If you can, great. If you can't, we're going to be there anyway. But that's where you're going to find us now. We're just going to do another 15 minutes with Karen and Rodney. And any closing thoughts, lads? Did you want to say anything else before we, before we shift over to Facebook group?

No, I just want to say how easy and how, how light and informative and picturesque that you make the whole thing. It's brilliant. Thank you very much.

And I'd also like to just say very quickly to the guys out there watching, thank you for watching. There is another live coming from us about choking for Dr. Judy's page. We did as a prerecord that's coming out to you guys live. And we've also got Feline Fridays. So on Friday, there'll be myself, Amaya, and Julianne talking to you about asthma in cats for the summer. So if you want to join us on those coming up this week, but for the rest of you, if you want to follow us over onto patreon.com/RealPetMedics, we'll see you over there soon. We'll do our recording and a few little excerpts will then go live. So perfect. See you all guys later.

Thanks, guys.

Nice.