This content was created by Dr. Conor Brady. This content was uploaded by Dr. Conor Brady. This is a YouTube live Q&A titled "RPM TUESDAY NIGHT LIVE: Q&A" (published April 27, 2022) featuring an informal panel conversation between hosts (BRENDAN, DR. CONOR BRADY, and NICK) with audience questions. The clip mixes light chat about holidays and travel plans with an extended, technical listener Q&A on canine health topics—notably severe watery orange diarrhea, probiotics and autogenous probiotics, Giardia testing, digestive enzymes/EPI, elimination diets and allergy testing—plus references to events (Raw Feeding Veterinary Society conference) and Patreon. The tone is conversational, advisory, and aimed at raw-feeding/pet-health listeners.
Chapters
I believe the faintest, the faintest little bit of a tan with the—
Yeah, he got caught out in the sun for about 25 seconds as he ran to the car. And look what David Bowie called it, a Snow White tan. Snow White tan, yeah, that's acceptable.
But you know what? I didn't go in the sun voluntarily apart from walking from A to B. I did not sit and sunbathe one second for the entire 2 weeks.
I kid you not. That was the result. Is that a normal thing? Is that a normal thing that you do on holidays? Or like, is it just you're just too burny?
I'm too burny. I just— I had— yeah, Rach, I had a great holiday. Thank you very much. It's— I've just given up. I just— I've burnt so many times and I just—
Yes. Yeah.
It's toxic.
You're like a snake crawling out of your skin after about 2 days. It's like, this isn't working.
Not 2 days, 2 hours. You know, it was 38 degrees on one of the days. It was— Crazy. Yeah, Karen, this is me. This is tanned. This is about as brown as I go.
And your fair other half, of course, is going to love the sun. What about your kids, Nick? How do they fare?
Brown as berries. Well, Steve is brown as berry. Ellie's brown as berry. And Arthur's burnt.
He's burnt?
No, he's like me. Because he was in the pool. He was in the pool the whole time. So we were just slathering him with stuff the whole time.
Yeah, we've got a thing planned for, for December because the World Cup is on in December. We usually get together for the European Cup, World Cup, these three friends. Now we've all got kids and the lads are saying, why don't we get this, you know, big villa in Spain and go there for a week for some of the key matches? We thought, that's a great idea. And I've got the youngest kids, I've got particularly the youngest kid, the one and a half wobbly, I want to throw myself into the pool every day. And it's like, uh, I'm just thinking, we all booked this, I paid my deposit, And then myself and Elaine going, actually, this is going to be hell. This is going to be difficult. Like our own pool and a little pool beside us. How do you keep a 1.5-year-old safe? Sellotape a heap of life jackets to her or something? I don't know. These are my problems anyway, lads. I had a brainwave yesterday and I think people took it a bit seriously, but I'm just going to tell you what it is. Somebody, a producer over in New Zealand, had got onto me and said, you know, the dog on your front cover, it's our dog. And I thought it was the photographer's dog. And I get chatting to the producer. She shows me her, her wares. And I'm like, oh my God, what a company, beautiful bits and bobs. And I'm looking at the website, then I check out where the, where the company is, and it's, and it's nestled amongst all these mountains beside a little lake. This is called Puppy Love New Zealand. And I thought, geez, that is beautiful. Then I had a brainwave to finish off the post with, and I thought, wouldn't it be great if RPM went on the road? Yes, yeah, something like, something like, uh, Ramsay and, uh, what's his name, and, uh, what's the other guy's name, the three chefs on the road, Gino something else. I was trying to decide who would be Ramsay, who'd be Gino, and who'd be the French guy. And I'm thinking, Bren has to be the French guy because he looks like him. All right, so one of us has to be the fool, so I'm probably going to be Gino. That makes you Gordon Ramsay. So the three of us— yeah, a bit of rain now and again, and a few more curse words. You don't—
and I can curse a lot if you really want me to.
Yeah, I haven't heard much of that. But I was thinking, what do I say about raw producers? We're looking particularly for ones that are near wineries, certainly sunny places. And all these cool raw producers started coming on go and check out us in South Africa.
Somebody in California that's probably got a really nice winery.
So Napa Valley has probably got some, uh, raw producers.
Anyway, I mean, you know, we'll be, we'll be in the wettest, wildest, bleakest places in Europe.
Yeah, a bit of Britain first, and then, uh, we will get invited to Iceland where I will get a tan.
Oh yeah, we'll be doing that Wim Hof ice diving in there.
Oh yeah, yeah, what a legend that guy is. If people haven't met him, check YouTube, Wim Hof, and see what he does, guys. Yeah, he's sitting in icy water, like 1-degree water, for hours and he doesn't freeze. It's, it's, uh, all about breathing, isn't it? Uh, he's well worth the text. So anyway, the people took it very seriously. It started getting shared on other pages going, look at this, RPM will go on the road. And I thought, how, how cool that people actually look forward to that idea. And I thought, it's not nice to people. And then I thought, is this possible? Could we do that? Could we maybe in a year or two? And I just thought, wouldn't that be brilliant?
Is there anybody in Canada that wants me to call in and just sort of test the water?
Just— oh yeah, you're off to Canada, Brian.
You're off.
You've got an amazing holiday lined up, haven't you? Yeah, we're just talking about our holidays here today, but, uh, yeah, 4 weeks.
4 weeks I'm going to be disappearing, but I might just make an appearance for the sake of—
from when to when?
So I go 2 days' time down to London, fly on Friday, and then I'm out until the 23rd of May, something like that.
Okay, okay, lovely.
Cool.
And you're going to try and chime in with us on a Tuesday, but don't try too hard because when you're on holiday, you really don't want to.
Yeah, yeah, don't worry. I might just put a few posts your way just to sort of make you jealous.
Okay, Brady, you and me for 4 weeks.
No problemo, no problemo. Get rid of the dead weight. Yeah, okay, it's cheaper.
We only need 2 bedrooms.
Take that dagger out. I haven't even gone yet and they're killing me off.
Get the RPM credit card going, guys. We're on patreon.com/rawpetmedics. We do also put out useful information, so we do appreciate any help you can give us on patreon.com. That keeps us going and helps us plan for these amazing holidays that we're going to go on. We'll think of some way you'll benefit from that. I'm not sure. But it is FAQ tonight, guys.
Quick shout out. I should have said it earlier, but I'm doing a summit. You guys are going to be key speakers to that summit. I've told you about that before, and I'm really, really excited. It's in October. So, uh, you guys who are joining us today, if there's anybody who you think is essential viewing, really good value on the raw front, or even just nutrition in general, even human nutrition, please just shout out any names, uh, write down those names, and we'll see if we can't get those people on. That would be really, really great. Thank you. You're doing my work for me, basically.
The Raw Feeding Veterinary Society conference is in Barcelona this year, so it is all go for the old trips away. I'm looking forward to that one. If anybody out there is thinking of going, guys, we are definitely going to that. When's that, lads? That's November, early November, 24th of September.
The fine weather, they, they didn't want us getting rained on in Barcelona.
Lovely, lovely. Nice little hotel with a pool on the roof right off La Rambla. It's, it's perfect. So I can't wait for that, um, that should be good. And learn something about dogs, I'm sure. Would be very nice.
Would you like a question, guys? This one's from Karen Reid, wonderful Karen Reid, who's a great supporter of the, of the show and came on and did a star turn a few weeks ago, I believe. So this is from Liz No Jam Foraging, and she says, quite a long question, but it's good, there's a lot there. Please, please, please, could you talk about protocol to deal with severe acute brackets bug over several days, watery orange diarrhea, brackets, no vomiting. I'm an experienced raw feeder, 20 years plus, that's what makes this interesting. So know all the basics and, but have never experienced anything like that, a watery orange waterfall from my usually very healthy 19-month-old GSD, but nothing would stop over a few days. He lost over 6 kilos over a week and the only thing that stopped him was a probiotic kale and mix with rapeseed oil unhappy face from a conventional vet. In the past, I've always managed to resolve any issues with a mixture of bark, herb, medicinal mushrooms, plus the usual 24-hour fast, then collect myself— that I collect myself. But this time I felt totally powerless and panicked. Still not out of the woods yet, beginning to worry about possible EPI. I would appreciate if you could address this tonight. Very interesting stuff. So basically, she's tried all the basics and dog is still losing weight and really squitty and and what would you do? I think that's a great place to start today. Who would like to start that one?
I'd like, I'd like Brent to start that one, to be honest with you. Let's pass that to the vet.
Oh, hot potato. Absolutely fine. So I look, the things that I would be looking at where you've got, you know, recurrent episodic diarrheas that you sort of get under control, but then they seem to recur and you've been throwing vast amount of supplements and various things into them is actually just think, okay, what do I need to go back to basics? Yeah, we were discussing this amongst ourselves earlier this week just with regards to, you know, the use of probiotics. You know, are, are they a waste of time if you're just throwing them into the turmoil of a gut that's got SIBO and excessive bacterial overgrowth or are you going to affect a change? And there is a great product that Nick has used in the past, and I was looking at something called a Trantil as a way of clearing the weeds, if you like. So it's herbs. So there's heartwood, horse chestnut, and peppermint. And basically it seems to reduce the overall bacterial load that's in the gut. So effectively clearing the weeds out of the way before you then come back in with some appropriate prebiotics. And I know, Conor, you've had some information about possibly just throwing loads of probiotics at the situation and hoping something sticks. Yeah, I find that doesn't work for me. So tell me more about that.
This girl, this Irish equine center in Ireland, is that they do make a lot of probiotics for racehorses. They're kind of one of the world leaders at it because racehorses are so inbred, they get terrible sensitivities and gut issues and that kind of stuff. And you don't want a racehorse getting a gut issue and all the issues that come with that. And so they do probiotics and they do autogenous probiotics where they look at your dog's stool sample and they'll say, oh look, it's all over the place. But then they culture good flora from a probiotic from your dog's own gut flora. So it takes better, the studies show. And she said the initial whack of probiotics is the most important one. And they send you over like a big pink liter. It's pink because of the seaweed it grows on, is a red seaweed. And so it's a big pink liquid and you have to drink lots of that. And she said it's a numbers game and you can get the most amount of live bacteria into a liquid and she says you're drinking lots of that. So the first 2 or 3 weeks is lots of this liquid and throwing it at it. So that would be her opinion. She had a second tip about probiotics for these, for gut issues, which I was going to throw out, which is she said, oh, she didn't really believe that there was any canine probiotics out there. And I thought, oh, well, you're a horsey person, I'm a doggy person. I'm sure there's canine probiotics. There's some very famous brands. She goes, well, send me the best one. So we bring it up on screen and we start talking about it. She goes, yeah, no, that's the exact same as the probiotics in your local health shop. And I'm like, couldn't be, this is a very— this is okay, this is for dogs, it's a different array. And she goes, well, you know, you can't put anaerobic bacteria in a probiotic because it's in the oxygen. You can only put the aerobic guys, which is your lactobacillus and your bifidus and all that kind of stuff, and a couple of others. And so she goes, okay, look at the profile that's in this probiotic. I don't want to name it, but it's very popular and we buy it in from America. And she goes, look at Bio-Kult, B-I-O K-U-L-T, and they make a lot of different probiotics, but they make them specifically for gut issues. And then like Bio Kult Plus, which is twice the amount of colony-forming units in it and all these other things. And she goes, look at the amount of, she goes, it's all the exact same bacteria and they were, but about 5 or 6 extra, but twice the amount of CFUs and stuff. She goes, that'd be a far superior probiotic. And because it's a third of the price, you can take twice as much. And I thought, ooh, that's a kind of, so that's where they are at the moment. And there's another lady in Manchester who echoed something similar, but she's very hesitant. She's a professor of probiotics in Manchester, but she was more hesitant. She said, I just do skin and the gut-skin axis. And typical, like, the more you know about it, the less they want to comment about it. Even in the same part of this, she goes, oh, I don't do guts, I do skin. It's like, what? Surely you would have an opinion. And she goes, it's a numbers game for sure. And she agreed with this girl that the probiotics for dogs is very identical to what's in your local health shop. So that was the tip I would have had. But what's the orange color, guys? Why is it orange?
That's kind of— Conor, what is the— just before we get into that, uh, what's the Irish company that you're mentioning so that people can, uh, look at their map?
If I had that girl and there wasn't— if I had that dog and there was no diagnosis from the vet, like, you know, there was nothing sinister going on, I would— I totally believe in this product. It's called Irish Equine Center. Her name, the girl, the microbiologist is called Kerry. They're extremely busy and they don't advertise the fact that they do dog stuff, but they do. And after they've made the probiotic and they've posted it to you, they store your dog's gut profile cryogenically. So anytime you have an issue, you just send them £20 and they post it to you and you've got more probiotics for a month. But this time they're in pillules as opposed to the liquid. The liquid is the first treatment. It's about £150, I would say, for the whole thing, a bit more than that. She's very busy. If anybody needs it, get on to me. I can give you her email address, her direct email address, and you direct email her and she sets you up on the plan. I've seen it work. I've tried it on some, a number of tricky dogs. I did a post about 2 or 3 years ago. They've refined it since, so now they see a possibility for helping a lot of dogs. I think it'd be something strange to throw— that's the best probiotics you can do in my opinion, but what do I know, you know? But that's, yeah, so that's where I would be.
I don't really know anything about Yeah, I think there are, and it's interesting, the people from the, the FidoSpore have quite a lot of work done on specific probiotics and how to approach that. And this is where the Atrantil stuff comes in really, is you are playing a numbers game if you've got a SIBO, a small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, going on where, you know, you are trying to flood the system which is already flooded. And they can just end up with even worse diarrhea in some of those cases. And I think somebody's commented that, you know, some of those things may be problematic. I do get some feedback from clients that have sent some of those samples in where they're not affecting a change after a time of just flooding the system. And there really is a paper back from about 3, 4 years ago about people saying that probiotics don't really work. And I think in healthy individuals that were being fed these probiotics, they weren't really getting, you know, 99% of them were going straight through the— oh yeah, I believe that. And so it's then down to, are we affecting a change? Do we need to do some groundwork first? So I think try them, simple stuff that what the lady's been doing for her dogs, but if you're getting recurrent diarrhea episodes, there's more investigation to do to look at the digestive enzymes and check that things are going on there. There is a blood test which is looking at the B12, folate, and TLI, so gluten-like immunoreactivity, just to look at those, you know, malabsorption, mal digestion, bacterial overgrowth.
What about Giardia, guys?
Yeah, for me it would be stepping back and going to the basics and just saying, have we got an infection? Let's just rule out an E. coli overgrowth or Salmonella or Giardia or something like that. That's fairly basic. I don't think she's done it just by the way she phrases her question. You know, the vet did all the tests and then gave me a kale, and she didn't say that, she just went straight in. So I think, yeah, once you start, the basics will sort 8 out of 10, 9 out of 10 of these guys, or if you just leave them to it, they'll get over it on their own, just as we do, you know, if you've had a bad takeaway, something like that. But so if it's not, if it hasn't got the same profile, it's just persisting a little bit, then I think a stool sample to the vet, great idea. And also, I just want to talk about pancreas for a second. EPI, exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, it's where your pancreas and is not producing enough digestive enzymes. Very common, especially in German Shepherds. And Michelle is talking about—
she did.
So you can measure EPI, exocrine pancreatic insufficiency. But here's my, my take on pancreatic function. I think that everybody, well, more or less everybody's born with great pancreatic function. Function. Yeah, just as they're born with good energy and, and, you know, vitality and strength and everything else. But as you get older, these things decline. And I think that there are some older dogs— this is not this guy, obviously, but he could have EPI— but there are some older dogs who haven't got EPI, which is where your pancreas has kind of given up producing decent amounts of enzyme, but they're just producing insufficient for really great digestion. And I think in those situations, giving digestive enzymes is really, really useful. And the beauty for me of digestive enzymes is they're super, super, super safe. So yeah, I would say once you've, you know, you've done the basics, that didn't work, you've been to the vet, you've made sure they haven't got E. coli, salmonella, Giardia, anything, any of these infections, then I'd be starting to think about perhaps digestive enzymes in the older dog, not with this guy.
So Oh yeah, I could add to that, the Giardia bit. There's these little test kits, the same test kits you use for your COVID swabs, and there's now— they've developed them for all sorts of illnesses. Parvo, Giardia, it's a rapid test kit. You take a bit of the poo sample, you put it in the little liquid that comes with it, and you drop it on the end and you wait 5 minutes. And it's got a, you know, pretty high— there's two ways you can look at it, but it's got a pretty high specificity and sensitivity. Yeah, I confuse the two terribly, and I'm never— I'm not going to get it right. Well, it doesn't rule out the disease, but if this is— so which one is it, Bren? It's 92% something, the first one.
Sensitivity or specificity. So sensitivity is it's going to detect it really easily, okay? Um, the specificity is it will rule out all other things that might interfere with it. So if it's really high specificity— specificity, that's easy for me to say— uh, then that is going to be something that will not accidentally pick up coccidia and think it's giardia.
Yeah, yeah, okay.
Yeah, so it's false positives and false negatives.
It could be handy to have in the back. They cost absolutely nothing. There's natural solutions to giardia. There's a great paper there on ginger and cinnamon being used together in India on giardia in dogs and giardia in another animal. I think it was a type of monkey or something, so they must all— everyone must get this disease. Disease, but ginger and cinnamon did as well as the drug they were trying to treat it for. So I'll post that link up on Facebook for people to see after this, so you can have a look at it. But it'd be nice to know what it is. 5 or 6 days, I'd be feeding broth at this stage. I don't think the dog's doing any sort of digesting of any manner. I wouldn't be lobbing in hard-to-digest stuff at the moment. I'd be going really nutritious broth and any cheaty way of getting nutrients in there. Such as like any sort of nutrient booster, even try your spirulina, try your seaweed, try your whatever, any cheats that you can get to get some nutrients in there and put broth, broth. And he's going to be putting out a savage amount of electrolytes now, which control the osmotic potential of your gut. And so you can offer him a different couple of different types of water. So you can have his plain filtered water, no chlorinated water for a dog with terrible guts. So no tap water with chlorine in it. Let your water stand for 10 or 12 hours, the gas comes out, or boiled and cooled, whatever. Filtered water would be nice. So that's one bowl. And in the second bowl, he gets filtered water, but I'd get a mug and I'd get some local honey, which is antibacterial and full of energy. And you get a big tablespoon of that, and then you get a healthy pinch of good quality salt, rock salt, of any— anything with a name that's not refined crap. They're your electrolytes. And then you put some hot water in, dissolve that in, and lob it into the second bowl of water. There's no exact measurements on that because this is zoo pharmacosy, and what you're hoping is that the dog will say, I bloody need some potassium. And so he'll drink the water until he's topped up for what he needs. And I've great faith in that because the experiment was done on me and I saw how it worked. But it's great. So you can actually do different types of water. You can have honey in one water, water in the other. So liquids, you know, any way to cheat, put the liquids in there. Spoonful of probiotic yogurt should be okay. But broth, broth, broth, incredibly nutritious. It's full of the bits that the gut needs. Marshmallow, which might help with a bit of the mucous lining, but I think you have a problem there that hasn't been detected. So that's like a plaster on gangrene until you find out what the issue is itself.
We could do a whole evening on this. We've got 1,000 questions. Should we move on?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So look out for the diarrhea episode later this year. This is one for you guys as well, just what your experience has been. A lot of Patreon people have asked and a lot of Facebook people and people that crossover. So, and this is about allergy testing. Okay. What's your experience with allergy testing? So many people. So in South Africa, they're finding it difficult to do allergy testing. They're, you know, sending it to the States or to the UK. They're then sort of trying to work out if the game meats are going to be included because they call everything venison if it's game, rather than everything from giraffe through to whatever. And the other side is the, you know, so is venison the same in the States as it is in the UK? And what do you think about these tests? Do you think they're effective? Do you think there's other ways to address a dietary sensitivity especially when you're looking at raw foods.
Okay, I'm gonna jump in on this one. And I always say to clients that when you're doing blood testing for sensitivities, there's 3 major sensitivities. You've got indoor allergens, which is house dust, house dust mites. You've got outdoor allergens, which is pollens. Okay, so they're usually seasonal. And you've got food. The tests for indoor and outdoor allergens are pretty good. Yeah, you talk to any dermatologist, they'll say that they're pretty they stack up quite well with the intradermal test, which is the gold standard for which is— but it's a pain to do. And but the— when you're testing for foods, it's not that reliable. I would say it's a guide at best. If you've got some big fat zeros next to venison and next to duck, say, that's maybe a good place to start. But if it looks like there's some sensitivity to beef, You might be sensitive to beef, but you might not be sensitive to beef. So for me, these blood tests, I will use them as a guide. Jean Dodds does a saliva test. You get the dog to just chew on a piece of rope for a minute, and then you send it off to Jean Dodds, and she will do the same. And she will claim that it's very, very, very good. But people I've spoken to, dermatologists and what have you, they'll say it's about as reliable as the blood test. So Yeah, guys, that's, that's, that's me. You got any thoughts on that?
Yeah, I would definitely verify that. There was a great study, and my bloody computer won't let me open it, but there's a great study there from 2016 by Bethlehem et al., and there was an award-winning study where they compared— they got 25 dogs that they knew were sensitive to certain proteins, and they put tests to the test. So they did patch tests and blood work and for food allergies, okay, for food sensitivities, it's not necessarily an allergy you're looking at. So the patch test, for anybody that doesn't know, is a pretty, pretty tough looking thing where you shave the dog and it's a prick test and you're pricking them with the antigen, with the allergen, and you're waiting for a reaction. And the other one is a blood test that would be seen as one of the better ways to do it with saliva and bioresonance and stuff, perhaps a good bit behind that. But so the blood test turns out, uh, there's a positive and there's a negative. So if there's a reaction, the blood test is utterly unreliable. It was like 35-40% right in a blood test because they were— what they were testing for, as somebody else was explaining, that you produce these antibodies all the time. So when you eat a piece of lamb, you might produce antibodies for lamb. It doesn't mean you've actually got a problem with it, but the soldiers there just keeping an eye and making sure that kind of thing. That was my explanation for IgA, IgG around the gut. But so the blood tests, on a positive note, so if the beef or chicken was on the list, and now they've got grades— medium, you're a little bit allergic to beef— and it's like, hmm, uh, so they were entirely unreliable. But if the thing wasn't on the list, blood tests got to 85% reliability. But even that's not enough. That means 15% of those tests are not going to be accurate, which, if you're trying to do a food exclusion diet, that is the only way to do it. An allergy test, if you can't depend— the patch test, by the way, if the thing, if the dog did not react to a patch test, it was 99% effective. The problem is nobody wants to do that to their dog because it's pretty horrific looking, pretty tough on the dog. So the blood test is kind of your option, and it's shit. So it's like, oh my god, what do we do? So that exclusion diet, guys, everybody's writing about it. You'll see a million articles on it. That's definitive, cheap, quick. It's in front of you. It's nutritious. Do you like lamb? Are you okay on lamb? 2 or 3 weeks. Are you okay on, you know, start with the outside ones, goat and venison and fish, and then come to your beef and then leave chicken to the last because chicken is often an issue because of your chicken and beef-based dry food and all the issues we've talked about before. That'd be my advice. What about you, Bren? Where are you on that?
Yeah, I would generally look, I always use the, at best it's a guide, at worst it's misleading, especially for any of these tests. There's limited, you know, any test for that you do, they're going to be limited. Even the skin tests, they'll only test 20 to 30 proteins. There's a lot more in foods out there that can cause allergies and sensitivities, you know, so without there being necessarily a positive on those tests. So I think we've got to be really cautious. Doing the food trial, I think, is absolutely right, Conor. You know, no problems with that. I think you're a little bit short on your timings. I think, you know, certainly if it's just a sensitivity rather than an allergy, then 2 to 3 weeks, you might see a marked difference. I think if it's truly an allergy, that can take 6 to 8 weeks to get out of the system. And that's the thing that, you know, although it's something that you can affect at home and it's quick to implement, it's not necessarily quick to get a result because if you're sort of 6 to 8 weeks in and you're not getting a change, you need to look at another protein. But if you're 6 to 8 weeks in and you're getting a change, you actually need to persevere through to 12 weeks to see if it's totally eliminated. That can be a long time for some people that are on very limited proteins and worrying about the other additions that they're adding into their foods. Now, don't get me wrong, this is the fallacy about why diet trials that are so short can be totally misleading because they can cope for that length of time quite happily, slowly depleting their stores of nutrients. But getting on for long term, don't then just stick with, I've done this for 12 weeks, he's allergic to the world, turkey. Okay, therefore I'm going to avoid turkey. In fact, actually, do you know what, I'm going to stick with this venison diet for the rest of its life because, you know, I worked out that it can cope on that diet. No, no, you need to start exploring other proteins again to make sure you get a good enough mix and rounded diet for your dog. So please don't just say, oh, I found they're okay on this, on goat as this one thing, or giraffe if you're in South Africa.
Bring a—
I don't know whether that's legal or not, but you know, I think from a point of view of, you know, don't stick to one meat and think that's going to be—
I often give the analogy of when people come to me with this, with a dog with a clearly shot gut, you know, and he's in bits and he's been through a number of vets, which is always a bit daunting because it's like, oh my God, now he's in a bad way, what am I going to do? But I often give the analogy now at the start of the So, to set expectations correct, and I say, look, you're coming to me and you're looking to buy a new car. And I'm looking at the car you drove in on and the wheels have fallen off and it's cutting the bottom and there's muck all over the bottom half. I'm looking at it going, looks like a clown's car, it's falling apart. And the person's trying to buy a Porsche off me and I'm saying, listen, I can sell you a Porsche, but can I ask, where are you driving this car? Is it a farmyard? The state of it, just give me the Porsche, Conor. So, I sell you the Porsche, you head off, you come back in a week and the wheels have fallen off the Porsche and the shocks are gone. And you want another car, and this time you want a different type of Porsche, new Ferrari. I say, guys, it's the road you're driving on is the problem. So people want to jump to raw and assume that that's going to fix the issue, and when it doesn't work for some vets that don't know what they're looking at, they say raw didn't work. Of course it didn't, but actually the gut is ruined and you've got a lot of rehab to go through before you can expect it to be happy and processing again. So there is a lot of— it's not just an elimination trial. Ben's totally right. But here's the question, guys, okay? There's other bits and things you do to to help fix the gut. Here's the main question: how long do you persist with, with bad poos on the protein you're on before you say this isn't working?
2 to 4 weeks. I would usually go 2 to 4 weeks because I think people, people won't do 8 weeks because, you know, it's hard to say that. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Uh, if you're not sure at 4 weeks, but you know, dog is brighter, maybe coat is better, but still the stool is still not so good, then you might push on. I think you would, yeah, you would. My general inclination though is 2 to 4 weeks, you know, because if you've got 4 proteins and you do 2 weeks, 2 weeks, 2 weeks, it means that you've been off everything else for at least 6 weeks. And so that gives you a little bit of space, allows, you know, IgG levels to come down. So I think you have to look, but I think 2 weeks, you can tell an awful lot in 2 weeks. You know, I've got dogs who've been squinting through the eye of a needle for 5 years. You put them on the right protein, and within 48 hours, owner is on the phone in tears saying he's watching perfect poo.
Yeah, yeah, you know, that's the dream. But I try to balance, like, you know, I want the person to succeed, and I'm thinking, how long I'm going to have this dog failing in front of them before they dump the idea and go back to the conventional, which can, you can put a bandage on it and it goes away for 2 or 3 weeks or whatever. And so it's trying to balance that expectation. So that's why I've decreased down to this figure. Lynn Thompson, actually, who would have been the boss of this sort of field and totally educated me on it, would have said the same thing as Bren there and say, no, no, Conor, push it on because you've got the gut is in bits and she would have had a better explanation than I have for it. But so she would have pushed it on and I'm like, oh, 'Now I'm shortening it because I kind of don't want the dog to have diarrhea all over the kitchen for a week, a week and a half, and somebody in the house that's not on side saying this is not working clearly.' You know, so it's a tough one, isn't it, to balance up and try to get people to hold steady until we have an answer. And, you know, anyway, that's it. That's a tricky one.
And I will often bring them in to, you know, repeat consults at that point to actually allow them some support and just to go through. And absolutely, you don't do it in isolation. You've got to look at, you know, sort of prepping the ground, making sure— I mean, some of it is down to— will be gut sensitivity, you'll get diarrhea, but there's also the skin issues and things like that. You know, you've got to give some guidance and support. You've got to help that dog in those early stages to ease their itch, at the very least, whilst you're going through this process of elimination. And, you know, those are the challenges. And also be aware a lot of the done-for-you diets that are out there that are pre-minced, they will add in other proteins underneath the headline. So you'll get a headline of this is turkey, but then they'll use beef liver to effectively balance the diet for you. Or there'll be beef tripe in some of these if they've got a lamb diet. You'd hope they'd use lamb tripe, but not all of them do. So look out for those single protein ones. There are certain companies that do them. There are certain companies that will project that they're doing them, but actually underneath the headline, there is actually other meats in there.
Sue is saying, I'm poo obsessed. No question, just I'm poo obsessed. Okay, so I thought I'd throw that out there. Another person said Can you join the club? Yeah. Can you comment on nutritional deficiencies during elimination diets? I think that, yeah, you need to kind of— people will say, is this a complete diet that you're on? Sometimes it's like, just feed lamb if they can't find other organ meats or whatever. It's not about the perfect diet for the next— your dog has got big problems you're trying to get over, so you're not— you don't need to worry about this idea of complete, which doesn't exist. Or your dog is shot, and if you were to look under the hood at his bloods, his bloods will be off, his vitamin and mineral his vitamin levels will be off because his gut flora is shot, he's not digesting properly. And so you will see problems, but you're not going to start putting things in there to try to fix those problems with a George Jetson pill. You've got to fix the road, and then the right diet will come in, and then the nutrients will come after it. Your dog's not going to drop down on the ground for want of a particular vitamin mineral while you're feeding good quality meat on the bone with organ meat and stuff. So don't quite worry about the nutritional deficiency. That is an issue and a concern that can be sold by people that don't quite understand you can give them very nutritious broth, you can add in your little cheaty kind of nutritional supplement as an extra ingredient. There's many ways, but I would say if you want to look at those things, look after, look after it like 2 or 3 months down the line. Where am I? Is there something I'm missing? Is he terribly low on iron? Things that you'd expect if you're good for us and bits. But initially I would put that to the back of my mind. My dog's got bigger problems than the complete diet that I'm not giving them. I wouldn't worry about that at all.
And have you come across the venison question? Is venison in the States the same as venison in the UK?
Surely, surely, isn't it? No.
Wow.
Well, that's a question because actually venison in the UK is the same as, uh, you know, whether it's red deer or roe deer, it's going to be the same. Now the question then comes, are they different enough, like a lamb and a cow, to be different proteins?
That's interesting.
Um, for, you know, what are they doing in the States? Is it whitetail deer? Is it you know, something different, um, or actually they've taken the same test.
Yeah, but they're all the same species, aren't they? They're all, they're all, um, they're all deer. So what you're comparing is a Hereford, uh, cow, yeah, with a Friesian cow with a Devon Rex.
But, but I would say those cows might interbreed. Deer don't interbreed. So maybe they're far enough removed from each other. No, well, oh, they do, of course they do. Sure, I've got, I've got sika red deer crosses here. What am I saying? I haven't seen a, I haven't seen a roe deer cross because probably they're so small and they just don't want to do it to them. But, uh, yeah, no, the problem with our red deer populations here in Ireland, we've got some of the oldest deer in the world in the Wicklow and Kerry Mountains, and the problem is the sika deer from Japan, because these are the lads I studied, they come in and they, they start getting along with each other and you get these hybrids that are, that are sullying the pool like the, like the dingo population, you know. So, uh, Yeah, actually they probably are close enough that it's a different breed of dog but it's still a dog, isn't it?
Yes.
I wonder, good though, that's interesting, Brandon. I want to explore that.
I've got a question for the last, we got our last, the final furlong. Here we go, quite an interesting one, quite a light one but an interesting understanding. This is, it says, when my dog was a puppy from 8 weeks to 8 months old, he ate Every food I gave him and supplements, I follow yours, Dr. Becker's, Rodney, and other holistic staff and vets' advice on nutrition, close brackets. But since about 9 months old, he became a really fussy eater. He rejects banana, berries, veg, sardines, offals, all nutritious foods, of course. Yes, I can't do my 80/10/10 anymore. He's only going for the meat and that's it. Do they stay fussy eaters or is this a stage and eventually get their appetite back? Isn't that an interesting one?
Oh, I see a few of those questions popping up, you know, through some of the food companies sort of experienced that with puppies sort of transitioning through that sort of puberty and then coming into, you know, that that sort of later life stuff. And I always question, is it truly that they've been put off the food? Sorry, is it truly that they're fussy or have they been put off the food through an aversion that something they've tasted hasn't been quite right? You know, there are so many different foods out there that you just always query, you know, has there been something that they've just not gone? Is it zoopharmacognosy? Is somebody adding too much herbage into a mix, you know, so I know there's a few companies out there adding some of the dewormer herbs into the mix and sometimes, you know, if that's ZooPharma, they're gonna say, I don't have worms and that's too strong a flavor for me, I'm not into that. So sometimes I would always say go back to basics and say, will they just eat, you know, chopped up duck breast or whatever as an option. And if they'll take that, then just think, is it the done-for-you diets that are maybe causing the problem? What's your thoughts?
I'd say if it's a puberty thing, the first thing that came to my mind was feed them pizza and Mars bars.
Yes, now we're talking.
Let them sleep in till midday. Yes, I'm not being serious, guys. Do not feed your dogs pizza and Mars bars. So my thought is, if it is just your hormones are in turmoil, I mean, I've never recognized that personally, but, you know, we do it. Why don't they do it? So it could be just a temporary thing and they'll find their feet the other side of it. Don't know. Tell us what happens, please. That would be really interesting. But I would say I would go to— if you've tried every meat and every offal and everything and they're just not into it, I just lightly cook it. Because it's a rare dog that will refuse, you know, 3, 4 different types of meat that are lightly cooked. So it's raw in the middle and it's just sealed on the outside, says he who doesn't cook anything.
Yeah, that's spot on, surely.
And there is one other thing that I'd like to add there, which is sometimes I see these cases in the clinic and actually they don't need that amount of food. People are perceiving them to be fussy, but actually what they've done is they're just like, whoa, I don't need that much. You know, I just give me a break. I don't need another bowl shoveling under my nose. So for the feeders out there, I'm not saying this question person was, but I do see some in the clinics and I would just say, look, if their body condition score is like, you know, the palm of your hand— I know Nick loves this, this way of doing it— if it's the back of the hand, that's perfect. If it's the palm of your hand, they're too fat. If it's their knuckles, they're too thin. And literally, and actually, you know, we've had this discussion before, they're probably better halfway between the knuckles and the back of your hand than they are being the palm of your hand and fatter. So just be cautious that you haven't hit sort of, you know what, they've downregulated their metabolism, they've reached the end of their growth curve, and you're still trying to shovel in at 5% plus because you're sort of feeding them as a puppy and you haven't realized that they've sort of downregulated and they're down at 2% requirement and just going, do you know what, I don't need that food.
Yeah, I've got some— I've got some history.
A lady came in to me very distressed and very worried about the dog, and, you know, I couldn't see her for 10 days. And she said, my dog isn't eating any food. And I said, okay, listen, I'll just— I'll get you in as soon as possible, okay? And I was really worried about this dog. So she came over, and dog, 2-year-old dog, waddles into the practice, and i.e., it's really, really fat. And I looked at the history, and I give a questionnaire, and on the history I said, what treats are you using? And that there were 14 different treats on this, this, this list. And for a dog who's not eating any food, I thought, that's quite a lot of treats. And so what was actually happening was, unbeknownst to her, she drifted into the situation aware, if dog was off its food just a tiny bit, didn't want his breakfast because he was kind of growing out of having breakfast perhaps, she would give a treat. And then dog was less keen to eat a bit of lunch, and so she'd give a treat. And then he was less keen to eat his dinner, and therefore she'd give a treat. And so she gradually gone from a food-based diet to a treat-based diet. And thus she thought, oh my goodness, she woke up one day and thought, oh my goodness, dog isn't eating a substantial amount of food, what am I going to do? So all we did was we withdrew the treats for a month, dog found his appetite, and off we go. And what, uh, my bitch Bluebell, she said, I just want to eat once a day from puberty, actually. So that's quite interesting. Maybe there was a switch there. And Mouse, who's as skinny as a rake— Bluebell, she's fat Whippet. God forgive me. But Mouse is skinny as anything, and she eats once a day as well. So there's a kind of horses for courses. But I would say if the dog is not as fussy, once a day feeding.
I'd say some tips for picky dogs in case he is hungry and doesn't like the food for whatever reason. Behavior comes into it a lot, so we had this in guide dogs a bit. Tips for picky dogs, I would definitely go with what Nick said there and cook the food. So I'd get some burger meat, fatty burger burger meat and you flatten it into a patty and you put it on a hot pan, that browning of the meat is called a Maillard reaction. And the smell you get that makes your tummy rumble, that is— they put that— they used to put into supermarkets, into foods and pet food and stuff too. It's a taste enhancer. So people love cooked meat. The black lines on it, that's an MRP as well. So a bit of cooking. I'd cook it for a certain amount of time each side, 30 seconds each side. I'd even put a little bit of salt on it. I'd say, right, here is some cooked salted beef. No vegetarians can say no to that. And you give it to the dog and he goes, oh sweet, cooked salted beef on less meals a day, as Nick was saying. Okay, great. Next time you do it, you cook it less salt or less cooked, that's until he's back onto his meat and bone diet. And you can do it all different meats and stuff. But like you said, this cooked meat diet you can move on to for a while, you can change it. There's raw dog food companies that are cooking their mixes, taking the bone out and putting in calcium carbonate and stuff, which is a poor man's substitute for the real deal, but he can have his meaty bones. So there is solutions there for the picky dogs. Tins of fish and tins of salmon, you know, tasty. So you could try all that, but I would say when you start going down that road and it's like, my dog doesn't like to eat, he only likes mussels from the Scottish Highlands, I was gonna say, as opposed to the Welsh. It's like, give me a break. Or you're feeding the dog from your hand, he'll only eat from my hand. So we had that in guide dogs where the pup was such an expert and put so much value and strange connection on his food that he was eventually having to person feed the food from her hand as if a dog needs to be fed by hand kibble. So as opposed to starving the dog into submission, we would see a behavioral issue here where the owner was the bit of an issue. And the advice for that would be that you need to totally shake up the dinner routine. You would change the bowl, change the feed time, change how he's fed, change what he's fed, and in a different room where you can't see him because he could be looking at his food and looking at your reaction. You're standing there going, are you doing it? Are you doing it? It's like you're sitting on the toilet and someone's saying, are you going to the toilet? Are you going? It's like, well, I was there until you started looking at me. So I think you need to swap who feeds the dog. You need to remove yourself. If you're the one feeding the dog all the time, you need to change it. You need to change where the dog is fed. Put him in the room on his own for 2 minutes with some new food, cooked burger with salt on it. You have 2 minutes to eat that, buddy. There you go. You don't want? No problem. Back in the fridge and see if you want it in, you know, at the next meal. I wouldn't stress too much about it. Like Bren said, your dog's not going to starve to to death, but you could be crossing into— golden retrievers are notorious for this. Of all dogs, golden retrievers would refuse to go on their walks once they hit puberty and they just start to find out where the boundaries are. So they're hiding under the table, they don't want to go for a walk, and they'd start doing funny things with their food. The stories of Westies starving themselves because they won't eat the kibble when it's put in front of them because they're food guarding it. So behavior comes into it in a very strange way, and just shake it up, change what he's been fed in, change the way the food is scattered out in the garden and close the curtains, you know, that kind of thing. And when the seagulls come down to take it, he'll get in there pretty, pretty quick. It's unusual, it's not normal, but perhaps he's overfed. So there are some options, I'd say. Here's two last ones.
Don't stare at him, don't go down there and stare at him saying, 'You will eat.' Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Here's, here's one from Amy. So let's do two rapid-fire ones here. What causes sulfur-smelling gas and poo in a dog that eats a grain-free diet? You what?
Say that again.
Sorry, did you hear the question? I was thinking, am I gone? What causes foul-smelling gas and poo from a dog eating grain-free dry food? I think the answer is kind of clear there. Well, I would say, yeah, yeah, I would say see it as a backfiring engine. And, you know, what you're seeing there is bacteria farts. That's what you're smelling. I would shake it up and start feeding them some real food. Get rid of the kibble preservatives. Nourish the good flora a bit with some real food and you'll have lovely poos you can't smell and you can just throw them into the neighbors. Nobody knows. Here's another one.
A little bit of apple cider vinegar, something like that to the food, maybe another thing. Just watch out for bacterial overgrowth spilling back out into the stomach as well as causing problems. So that's sometimes that foul breath that's coming where their teeth are absolutely immaculate, but they're really getting sort of malodorous.
What is that? Yeah, sometimes.
So I've improved it by using something similar to a Trantolin, trying to effectively get rid of bacterial overgrowth first and then putting in probiotics and just getting the digestion working better. So increasing the stomach acid as much as you can just by getting you know, the fats and protein levels right and making sure they're not overdoing the sort of vegetable additions and things like that.
Yeah, I always wondered that. Last one on bloat here, Nick. 48 kg German Shepherd, he's a big boy. Everyone thinks I worry too much about bloat. She chills the dog for at least an hour before and after eating. Am I being cautious or is this right? Bloat is a big long one. We've done a show on bloat already, haven't we guys? Is there an RPM on bloat?
I think so, last year.
Yeah, just type it into Facebook, just type bloat into Facebook, you'll find the link. But yeah, the resting an hour before and after, I think that's kind of been put to bed a little bit because we used to think it was an— now we know most of 80%, 90%, 80% of bloat cases happen an hour after eating. So the hour window is not quite right. It's now happening an hour after. So even resting that dog before and after is probably not the issue. We used to believe it was an aerophagia issue, air coming in the mouth.
It was the query, wasn't it, as to whether they're ingesting air because they're running around like nuts and that side of things. And that was put to bed quite a long time ago with the knowing that the gas that they extracted from these bloat cases was far too high in hydrogen and basically post-fermentation products rather than it being CO2 that's equivalent to air. So people still use that, that, oh no, it's aerophagia that causes it. But no, I mean, as a practice, this is really critical. So pre, really promoting raw and So previous practices, we used to see at least one bloat a month. Okay, so we used to actually see them and have to operate on them usually once a month in a raw feeding practice. And we are a crossover, so we basically have, you know, some people that still come to us and they may be feeding kibble from home, from a supermarket, whatever, and we've not managed to persuade them to change. So we're quite a big mixed practice in that sense. But I would say by promoting the increase in raw food feeding, we're down to probably one every 6 months, maybe one a year of bloat cases.
Amazing.
And those bloat cases are the kibble-fed dogs. They're never the raw ones. So I would just say, you know, that to me has been more than enough evidence to say You know, if your German Shepherd's on raw diet, I would not have a problem with that. Now, obviously, deep-chested dogs, full stomach, you never know, messing them around, there's a risk of a twist, but that's separate from bloat.
Yeah, I have a very extensive article on my website, dogsfirst.ie, on bloat. It's very long, 6,000 words. I go through the 6 or 8 hypotheses and where we are on that, but there's 3 studies saying bloat has increased 1,500 100% since 1972, and all three of those studies point the finger at dry food. It's incorrect indigestion, it's fermentation, intestines, gas coming up into the gut, and you being unlucky with your body shape. So it's something to do with probably the two things they're pointing the finger at now is soluble fiber, which feeds bacteria, or the presence of Clostridium and bacteria farts and stuff. So we're not quite sure exactly what the cause is, but dry food is definitely aggravating the situation. You want good digestion. You want— you don't want a backfiring engine and all that kind of stuff. So feed the dog a good diet as you're doing, and you should be okay. Keep the— there's a few other warning factors in there as well, but it's all in the article. There was one more question, guys, that came up. Cod liver oil, yes or no? I would not use cod liver oil, guys. It's got vitamin A and D in it, and you don't need to add that stuff into the dog's diet too much. So if you had it, I'd use a tiny bit of it, no problem. But to be honest, fish oil a knock cod liver oil would probably be a little bit better. Refined fish oil is my favorite, or sardine oil, pollock oil. There's great algal oil now that has really high EPA, guys. Have you seen this? This is a new thing as of a few months ago. Like, it's almost like it's sold as a vegan oil, but it's from algae and it's really high in EPA and DHA, which is the stuff we're after when you're supplementing the dogs.
So we need to do a little plug of that next week or the week after, Many of our dogs are low in vitamin D, as are we, and therefore I think liver really is the key there.
Oh yeah, cool.
Yeah, so liver for that, for us as well, for humans, unless you're veggie, in which case, you know, you have to use algal oil or something.
I want to just say to the viewers that are out there that have lost Facebook— Facebook have taken us off for some reason, they've stopped our broadcast. Um, something bad about the kibble companies. Um, and, um, so We are on YouTube still, still going. So for those of you on YouTube, hi there. We will be posting the recording, so it should be able to be seen later on.
Okay, yeah, sounds good, guys. Better, better dash here. It's 5 to 8. That was enjoyable. Look at the questions are getting just better and more tricky, you know, as people get better and better educated, the questions get Better. We need to save those questions. We will, we will collect those questions and we'll do FAQ at the end of next, next month. I love this. This is great.
Conor, what are we going to do next week? What do you fancy?
I haven't even thought about it, Nick. Let's just go to Patreon and see what people are asking us for and then we'll pick one of them.
There's so many topics come up in the Q&A that I'm sure you'll be able to find some really great information about. Fiber. I think you should do fiber. Soluble fiber, insoluble fiber. Fiber.
Yes, that's the whole idea.
Yeah.
Okay, well, listen, Brendan, happy travels. Um, I hope you go well, mate. Come back, uh, come back safe, uh, in 4 weeks.
Absolutely.
And, uh, we'll see you then.
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for coming, guys. Appreciate it.
Thank you. Join us on, um, the, uh, Patreon site if you haven't already. And please do realize this, uh, video will be reposted to Facebook, so You should see the entirety of it if you haven't already. Okay, take care. Speak to you soon.
Toodle-oo.
See you guys.
Thank you.
