Fuzzybutts & Friends Episode 32: Canine Herbalist Rita Hogan

Welcome to Fuzzy Butts and Friends. Well, as much as it drives Fuzzy Butts all over this crazy world of ours, Absolutely crazy. This is the host of this show, Luke Robinson, your big dog. And I'm glad to have with us this week again as we most often every week. She's the executive director of the Puppy Up Foundation, Ginger Morgan. Ginger, how are you?

I am doing well. I'm really excited to speak with our guest today and learn everything she can tell us in 45 minutes to an hour.

I am, I am. But before we get that, I'm a little bit rusty though. We didn't do any podcast recording last week and that's kind of what I wanted to chat up just a second before we introduce the guest. This week, your big dog, as some of you know, is going on a 300 mile walk for canine cancer with his three legged Pyrenees Grayson and and my launch date is September 4th, so we're just shy of four weeks away that I'll be on the road for 10 plus weeks. How that concerns the audience of Fuzzy Butts and Friends is we, Ginger and I, my occasional copilot and co host and co producer and I had hoped that we'd have enough episodes in the can so that we would not have to do any of the recording record any episodes on the road. However, let's just say that someone, someone didn't really. That did not happen. Let's just say we did not do that. So we're trying to get as many episodes as we can recorded prior to September 4th. Actually, before that, I have to leave Memphis and head up to New York in a couple of weeks. And so that may affect the production quality of subsequent episodes. So if it does, we'll let you know. Our apologies up front, but that's the reality. Your big dog has to get back on the road and walk for Hudson, his fuzzy butt that he lost for cancer almost one year ago. So puppy up, as we say. I hope you stay tuned for the next many months of Fuzzy Butts and Friends as we have many, many, many, many great guests in store. And in particular this one this week, this episode I'm really excited about because it's an area that I'm interested in and I don't know a whole lot about. She is the founder of co founder, I think of Farm Dog Naturals. She is a canine herbalist and her name is Rita Hogan. Rita, how are you?

I'm doing great, how are you?

We're great, thank you. Welcome to Fuzzy Butts and Friends.

Welcome.

I'm Excited to learn about your organization? It sounds great.

Excellent. Well, first off, as Ginger will probably tell you that I yap a lot about Puppy up and what we do and all the great works and stuff like that. But let's start off finding out what you do, because I know what the two words mean independently, canine and herbalist. But I'm very excited to learn about the field. So let's start off for our audience. What is a canine herbalist?

So I am a clinical canine herbalist. I am an herbalist first and foremost. And then I specifically work with dogs and their dogs and their owners to help balance out their dog's body and get them back into health and also work on prevention. I do this with a mixture of flower essences, mature plant tinctures, plant stem cell therapies, herbal powders and diet.

What is so herbalism? I guess the field is really the field of herbs, plants, medicinals. Is that correct? I mean, what is that? So browse. So can you kind of narrow what that area of study encompasses for the audience?

Okay, so I'm a traditional western herbalist, so I use herbs found in the western hemisphere. Basically, you know, you could go outside your door and probably find at least three herbs that I use all the time in most places, except probably the desert. And then you could find other things that I use. But it basically encompasses. I'm not sure the scope of your question, but using herbs to balance out the body and to remind the body how to heal itself is basically the tenant of herbalism. But one of the biggest things I do, holistic herbalism. So it's not really of this for that like 10, 10 herbs for arthritis. And you're going to give your dog all 10 or here's what you know, you should use turmeric for inflammation. That's very allopathic in nature. It's very, it's very pharmaceutical minded uses of herbs. A holistic herbalist, or most herbalists that, that I've been trained under and have mentored with basically are using. Well, basically I would say Hippocrates, our father of medicine, he said that it was better to know the patient than the disease. That's basically a premise of herbalism. To really know the dog or the person, who they are, what their environment is, mind, body, spirit. Before we, you know, go on to anything, we look at, I look at dogs as an individual. And each dog needs individual care according to who they are, their constitution, their energetics and things like that. Absolutely.

I'm sorry to interrupt, but before you kind of Just keep going there. I wanted to qualify that. I often ask questions that I have no idea where I'm going. So when answering, just treat me like the thunderhead that I am. That ginger probably should have.

Ginger.

You probably should have put a disclaimer in the. When. When you. When you invite guests that your big dog is.

No, I think I'm going to do that. I'm going to start doing that.

Hold on.

Yes, off the wall questions.

Exactly. So did want to get to. So is that distinction geographic in that the distinction be you being a Western herbalist, is that you're specifically focused on the herbs that are available in the West? Is that correct? Correct. Is that a correct assertion?

Sort of. I mean, I like, I don't. I don't use a lot of South American herbs. I'm not familiar with a lot of them. I use a lot of herbs that are found in like Canada and the United States as well as England, different geographical locations. But I like. I'm not a traditional Chinese medicine. I do use a few herbs from traditional Chinese medicine, like astrologous or ashwagandha, but I'm not a TCM herbalist. That's a completely different way of using herbs and a completely different medicinal. I would say structure.

Yeah. Just out of curiosity, I know because I spent some time with Dr. Shea with the Chi Institute in Florida a number of years ago, and he has. He does the Eastern herbs. I think he's the largest. One of the largest importers. That was a long time ago. And so that, I guess that's kind of what you just spoke to. What is the distinction in terms of. What is the distinction in terms of practices between Eastern and Western herbalism? Or is there any. Or is it just basically just the. The herbs and how they're used medicinally?

I don't think I can answer that question because I'm not a traditional Chinese medicine herbalist, so I can't really speak to that. One really good colleague of mine, Josie Bug, she teaches at the Chi Institute, She's a very good traditional Chinese medicine vet. You use the herbs differently than you would use them here. Most of it is powdered, also larger quantities. And they use a lot of T pills, which are these little round balls of medicine. And their formulas tend to have many, many, many ingredients in them. But definitely learning Chinese medicine would take another lifetime.

Sure, I seem very complex and Dr. Shea seemed very, very knowledgeable. Wealth knowledge there. But I guess I'm looking at from the terms of pet parent when you have diet and health considerations. So As a pet parent, I'm just trying to navigate in what. What circumstances would I look to Eastern herbalism or medicine and what's. What circumstances. What I look to Western. But let's talk about specifically products. I think that will help me understand maybe, maybe products. Understanding products a little better. So you have a. Your company you co founded was Farm Dog Naturals, correct?

Yeah, I no longer own that company.

Oh, I'm sorry. The website is still up and I thought your information was still on there.

It's definitely still. I consult with them.

Okay, all right, well. All right, well, I'll make that correction then. I'll make sure that distinction is correct for the podcast that you're not the co owner, but you're a consultant of it. So what is. But you did those products that you use or use those products?

Yes, I formulated. Yes, I formulated those products. I formulated. It's in early, early 2000. So like 2000. I started formulating them in about 2020, 2003. And, and I made them. I did a hardcore pug dog rescue and I formulated those products for pugs because the rescue dogs kept, you know, coming in with all of these skin issues and, and, and anxiety and things like that. And we really needed to have something that we could use right away externally while we worked internally. And that product line still exists and it really does a great job well.

So you formulated those products, you came up with those products. So those are some products that use when you practice. When you practice, correct?

Well, yes, there's lots of external products that I recommend for people to make their dogs comfortable. Why? We work on the inside, for sure, yes.

Okay, so then are you a consultant to pet parents? Because I guess I get that you're a canine herbalist, but do pet parents come to you and consult with you and hire you?

Yeah. So the different facets of my job is that one, I do consulting full time and I work with pet parents to help balance out their dog. I do a lot of formulation for companies. I do a lot of writing, speaking, getting my first book published on canine herbalism. But the difference between what your distinction that you're looking for is basically the practitioner. So there's different ways. Like for instance, if you have a dog with kidney disease, there's ways that I'm going to work with your dog. And then if you went to see a traditional Chinese medicine doctor, they would just use a different set of herbs and maybe a different methodology. Like they may say, here, take these tea pills and give your dog this many. Or mix these Herbs with water and maybe put it over your dog's food. We all do the same types of things. I use a lot of tinctures, but it's basically the same. It just depends on what practitioner you're using. I know that lots of holistic veterinarians have started learning acupuncture. And with acupuncture, learning acupuncture, you learn a basic set of traditional Chinese medicine herbs that you use. It just depends on how you get to finding different holistic practitioners to use and. And what types of medicines they use. I've been a traditional western herbalist for over 20 years.

Well, that's wonderful. Yeah. I read your website, and you're quite the expert, it seems. And I guess that's how I tend to look at things, is, why would I come to you as a pet parent? Because I'm one of those guys that's always concerned and focused on two things. The optimal health of my fuzzy butts. And then when they get sick, where do I go to get the right answers and to get the right treatments? So how do pet parents find out about you and the services that you offer?

Well, a lot of times people will refer them. A lot of vets will refer me. Some parents are just understanding that a lot of the pharmaceuticals that traditional vets prescribe aren't fixing the issue. They're not. They're not getting to the root of the issue, like why our dogs are so sick. So that they will, you know, they'll Google me, find me through social media. I. I do a lot of work with Adored Beast, Apothecary and Dogs Naturally magazine. I do a lot of work with them, so they find me through there, but they really seek me out for things like anxiety, urinary tract infections, liver disease, high liver values. I get a lot of clients that are just really at the end of their wits. Like they, you know, they've tried so much and nothing's working, but all different facets of imbalances. I don't treat disease because I'm not licensed to practice medicine. So what I do is I work on body systems and balancing out that body system. And I really look at the dog as an ecosystem. So, you know, everything is connected. And when we balance out that ecosystem, everything kind of falls back into place. But the places that I start is diet.

So, yeah, let's. Let's start. That's a lot. So let's start first with holism and holistic medicine, because that's something I'm fascinated with, and I know quite a little Bit about my father is a kidney doctor and was all of his life and loved medicine, loved practicing medicine, learned and really approached medicine holistically. He read the. Though he was a kidney doctor, he read all the other medical journals, you know, cardiovascular medical journals. And because he had to, he understood that, that the kidney is just one organ or one system that's part of a number of other greater ones. And so. But if you ask them today if he believed in or practiced holistic medicine, he would categorically deny it and call it quack science. And I think his generation just didn't understand or doesn't understand, like some people, really what holism is, is. And it's just exactly what you're saying is like, look, the organism is. You can't look at one symptom or a series of symptoms in one organ or one organ system without looking at everything else, because it's all interconnected. And I think that most science today or most scientists today understand that the human organism as well as the canine organism is extremely complex. Holistic medicine or holism, that approach to treatment and preventative medicine, is receiving a lot greater adoption in this country. In western medicine, that's a good thing. But it all is, like you said, linked to diet. We know that diet plays such a big part here at the Puppy Up Foundation. We know based on all of the veterinary oncologists that I've met on my travels, we have on the show, is that when you look at risk factors to. Of cancer in our canine companions, diet, nutrition is in the top three. So. So let's talk about that. What do you know, Rita? What have you learned, rita, in your 20 years of understanding and studying herbalism, the importance about diet and nutrition?

Well, one of the things the tenants that I practice is something called terrain theory. And terrain theory is basically that, you know, you. Well, you've heard it before, you are what you eat. And more specifically, what we put in our bodies can depict gene expression. And that's the field of what's called epigenetics, which is very, you know, up and coming right now in science. But, you know, when it has been proven scientifically that you can take bacteria and bacteria can even can turn into commensal bacteria, which is positive bacteria or pathogenic bacteria, which of course, we do not want specifically from the food that they are fed, they can morph and which is fascinating in the arena of diet. And so what I have learned is that dogs and people are energetic beings, and you have to figure out their energetics, which means the way that their body handles moisture, the way that their body is either cool or warm. And there's other aspects of it. It can get very complicated. But the gist of it is those types of things will depict what types of foods and, and what types of herbs will be good for that organism, will be good for that individual. And that's what I based my practice on. And it wasn't always that way. When I first started out and when I went to a system of energetics which every, basically every traditional herbal based medicine system throughout the world has their own theories on energetics and they always look at energetics. When I adopted that into my practice, my practice just took off and got really successful as far as my ability to turn a dog around or heal disease, not really like balance out that body so that the disease decided to go away. Is that case for everything? No. But as far as cancer is concerned, you have to look at the similarities between humans and dogs, because one out of two dogs will die of cancer and one out of four humans will die of cancer. And back in 2002, that statistic wasn't even a blip on the navigational system of health. I mean, you. I hardly ever heard of a dog that ever had cancer.

I know my first one, Malcolm, this guy right here, my first one, started the foundation, he was DX in 2004 and I was up in New England at the time, went up to Tufts and you know, they just had just a small stack of scientific studies on osteosarcoma and the canine model. And this was just in 2004. And then through the efforts of the foundation and all the great awareness and educational efforts that we've done, as well as other organizations as well, we've now seen, we have such an extensive body of knowledge and understanding in that area, but we still don't understand a lot. Right. But we do know the numbers are striking. As you were saying that actually the last statistic, I think, the statistic that I think everyone's using now is that there are 6 million new cases of cancer in dogs every year. And that's just astonishing. That's unbelievable.

It's unacceptable.

It's unacceptable.

Absolutely unacceptable.

Yeah.

I'm a cancer survivor myself, so I can speak firsthand about having cancer. And before I got cancer, I never thought I would get cancer ever. And I was convinced of it actually. So it was a reckoning for sure. But yeah, it's unacceptable, the numbers of cancer for people and dogs and is completely unacceptable. But you have to look at the, you have to look at what humans and dogs have in common.

Well, congratulations to surviving cancer. Whatever state you are, you're in of the treatment recovery. I wish you a lot. I just wish you one thing that I've learned dealing with dogs and cancer. As long as that we have, I have, Is that as much as we like to say that someone is cancer free, once you get cancer, you're much more susceptible. It's really tough to say you're cancer free, but let's hope you are. And I wish you the best health in that because that's frightening, that's absolutely scary to get that diagnosis. But you're right that the 6 million new cases of cancer in our canine companions every year is unacceptable. And we have a treatment approach now in the society that is that 90% of all research goes towards developing drugs to developing novel therapeutics. We have a treatment philosophy here in the United states, whereas only 10% of our research goes to look at risk factors. One of our missions, the mission of our foundation is to try to understand the links between the human and the canine model as far as cancer is concerned. In fact, that's actually where cancer research is really going, this one cancer approach. We have a shared ecosystem and we're really talking about one cancer. Diet and nutrition certainly play an integral part in that. What do you recommend then? What have you learned or do you know? What would you recommend for pet parents from a diet and nutrition standpoint, Rita, that would maybe from a prophylactic standpoint, maybe reduce the incidence of cancer? Is there anything you've learned that through? Are there any herbs or anything that you get to maybe potentially reduce the risk of cancer in dogs?

Feeding a fresh food diet full of enzymes helps immensely. It cancer is toxicity and our livers, and our dogs livers are just completely overrun and overtaxed with toxins from our environment. They've proven that over 90% of all cancers are associated with your environmental factors, which includes diet. Stress. Stress is a big thing. Especially in the last three years, dogs have really been stressed out because their owners are completely stressed out and taxed. So I definitely think fresh food diet is really important. I'm not a huge advocate of kibble feeding, so either home cooked, dehydrated or raw food is definitely my recommendation for a lot of people. Or if you cannot afford that, definitely adding different types of greens and making sure that your dog has enough digestive enzymes in their diet so that they can properly digest their food and take a little bit of load off the liver.

Rita, every time I've Tried to give my dogs like vegetables. It's like, no, even my dog that eats everything, I tried giving her a carrot. And I feed my dogs, and I have several dogs, I feed them in kennels, their rooms. And I found that carrot like three days later, all shriveled up. I was like, surely she was going to eat it at some point. It was just like, no, I'm not eating that orange thing.

Yeah, well, some dogs don't like certain vegetables then, you know, you can act to like mixing powders into their food. It just depends on the dog. Usually they're not going to, I mean, a lot of them will not just like totally eat. Like if you put like raw greens on their food, they're not going to munch it. I usually recommend putting it in a food processor first and getting it pre digested and then they seem to like it much better. But it depends on the dog itself, you know, as an individual.

A friend of mine had this pit bull, Campbell, and when he was diagnosed with cancer, she started feeding him, she fed him some kibble, but she added all kinds of vegetables to his diet. And he would eat broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, carrots, you name it, that dog ate it. It was app. And then she had fruit, apples as well to it. And just hearing him with that crunch, crunch, crunch, it just always makes me, it always made me laugh. And now sometimes if I hear that noise, I just think about him. But yeah, he loved his vegetables. Not so much.

But one thing I wanted.

Blender.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. Ginger, there's a delay, there's just a bit of delay in your, when you speak and when it comes over on my, across the transom. But I just wanted to be clear, Rita, because I, I, I, I don't want to get it confused. So are you a proponent then of, of only raw meat? Raw meats. And so you can cook. So cooked is okay as well? All right?

Yes.

Because ginger, I mean, just of enzymes. Yeah, yeah, Ginger. None of my, I don't think any of my kids, my fuzzy butts like raw anything, raw vegetable anything. So I, I almost always cook them with, you know, chicken and chicken broth or something whenever I want to give them good, good, cooked, healthy, cooked food. But you used the word earlier. And this is where diet plays such a critical role of what I've learned and understand, and that is epigenetics, because your diet, nutrition, basically what you eat, what you were saying, it changes who you are and it changes your Microenvironment and that of itself over time changes your genetics. So epigenetics is such a powerful, powerful concept that we really have just scratched the surface on. So what are you understanding and what are you seeing on as it pertains to herbalism?

Well, I think science is going to catch up with herbalism eventually. As far as the research in general, it's really hard to research herbs because of the potency issues. You know, they can, they'll differ crop to crop. So you see a lot of standardized herbalism, like you know, curcumin versus turmeric or silmarin versus milk thistle, you know, using those standardized herbs. When you use standardized herbs, you're going to get more side effects for sure because it's so much stronger than it normally would be if you were using like the whole plant or what I mean by like the, the natural form of the, the standardized constituent, the ingredient. But what I'm seeing is, you know, a lot of people, like, we just don't understand how herbs work. And you know, I've seen miracles happen with, with many cases of herbs. And I do think that herbs, one of the facets that they do, I do think they have intelligence in that they enter the body and they basically balance out things that we don't even understand as far as science is concerned right now. And I do think that they have the ability to affect gene expression. What's interesting is there's a company called Nature provides, they make the stem cell therapies that I use. They're plant stem cells. There's a scientist called Dr. Canillo, he lives in Italy and him and another doctor are doing some experiments right now, clinical studies of how these plant stem cells are turning off genetic expressions. And you know, those polymorphisms or those gene mutations that people can have, they're doing people people research and they're having very, very, very good success in it and using these plant stem cell therapies to, to basically control gene expression. And I think if I find that really promising.

Well, yeah, we just, in the last decade or so have learned the complexity of the stomach in humans and also in dogs as well, that it's lying, it's chock full of a network of neurons that we never really knew existed. Which means there's definitely some type of intelligence interaction between what your body needs from nutrition, from a nutritional standpoint and then what you're actually doing. It's kind of like the old wives tale or the myth that you grow up with that maybe you didn't, but I did that. My mom always told you that if you're craving a banana, it means that you need potassium, right? And you always thought that was really weird because there's no way that your stomach could say, hey, to your brain, I need, I need sodium, so therefore potassium, therefore I need a banana. But, you know, that was decades ago and now we know. Well, okay, well, there is a network of neurons and so there is a degree of gastric intelligence. And so we don't even know what that degree is. Right. So we're really just on the front end of that whole frontier about the intelligence of your, of your gastric system and as it pertains to diet and nutrition. So you're right, it is very, very exciting. Science is always an exciting thing. But you did say something about we don't know what, we don't have herbs and dosage of quantities, we don't have clinical trials. And that's something that certainly the Puppy up foundation has had its fair share of frustrations because in the dog world, clinical trials, we're just still a rounding error on human trials that pertains not only to cancer research, but also diabetes, some of the less well known diseases that dogs are getting now. So in the area of diet, nutrition and herbs, I mean, there's really no funding at all for that issue with that.

So, I mean, you know, you, a lot of it's about the money, okay? So you know, when you're coming, you know, the issue with a lot of herbal research is that the research has to be paid for.

Sure.

Okay. Number two, it has to have the end result, has to be a money stream. Okay. I mean, it's just business. You know, healthcare is business. And so you're not going to get all, you're not going to get some of those research, you're not going to get a research grant to study, let's just say New England Aster and how it dilates the lungs. Right. Unless they can modify New England Aster so that they can make a, a drug or a supplement that ends up in a money stream. So I mean, those are just basic facts of clinical research. So a lot of, you know, I get a lot of grief with, with people that are saying, well, you know, can you show me a scientific study that New England Aster dilates the lung tissue? Right? No, I can't. However, I can give you a person having an asthma attack. I can give them one dropper of new ging and aster and see them start to breathe fully in just a few minutes. In fact, Yesterday, I. I had a woman that. This is just like an everyday case of herbal rescue. You know, she was bailing hay. It caused her breathing to just be unregulated. She used an inhaler. Didn't do much. She used a stronger inhaler. Didn't do much. I gave her two dropper fulls of New England aster and she was breathing like a champ. Couldn't believe it. I sent her home with some New England aster and everything is fine this morning. So, you know, do I have a clinical study for that? No, I don't. But herbalism had been around for hundreds of thousands of years, so.

Right. Well, you completed my loop, actually, because that's exactly where I was going is. It's. It's a chicken and egg situation. Right, because you have the western practitioners that want data and they want scientific evidence that herbs produce a certain outcome and a large enough sample size. Right. But there aren't the studies that give them the data because nobody's funding them because there's not that downstream financial interest. So that's exactly what I was going to say. But my question I was going to pose to you though, Britta, because this is something that our foundation that we're confronted with, but ours is nonprofit, so we don't have that downstream profit motive. We're doing things because we're truly trying to understand the link between cancer and. The link between cancer and pets and people. Right. And we. We partner with other potentially for profit organizations because obviously in the United States of America and our system, everything is sort of profit center, profit motivated. But. But we have to get out of that. We have to break out of that being the only model that predominates, that dominates scientific research. Because we do know there is, like you said, Chinese herbalism. I don't know about western herbalism because western medicine has not been around, but for hundreds of years, Chinese medicine or herbalism has been around for thousands of years, if not longer. So we do know that. We do know that certain things produce certain results, but we don't have that data. So are you working with organizations that are trying to solve that problem, that chicken egg problem? That. Yes, we need data, but we need money to fund the trials to produce that data.

The only organization that I work with is the Nature provides, which uses the stem cells. They're highly clinically researched. And what was the name of that organization?

I'm going to look it up and maybe get them on the show.

What is it Nature Provides? U R E Dash provides the CEO, the owner of the company. Her name is Jennifer. And. But, you know, so when, you know, when people say western herbalism, you think of western medicine. And so the two of them have nothing to do with each other. So western herbalism has been around for hundreds, hundreds of years. So that's what kind of gets people perplexed when I say I'm a western herbalist. They think western medicine, as in like allopathic medicine, hospital, pharmaceutical medicine, and has nothing to do with that. It, you know, it, it stemmed off from that. Because when, you know, there used to be over 3,000 homeopaths in this country, and there used to be a ton of herbalists practicing medicine in this country until. We won't want to get into that. Until a group of certain people decided that only certain people could go to medical college. And that isolated a whole community of healers. And that's where western herbalism got its sea legs, basically, in this country. But before pharmaceutical medicine took over, there was just herbalists and homeopaths. So it's an interesting history, but yeah, I mean, I don't know.

It's a complex. It's a complex. Well, it's something I think about a lot because clinical trials are very expensive. They are anywhere from 10 to $15,000 a patient. And that certainly depends on how long you're studying them for. And if you're looking at something like herbs and how herbs affect, especially from a prevention standpoint or prophylactic standpoint, then you're talking about a lifetime study. Right. And we know a lifetime study can cost millions and millions of dollars for a very small sample size. So I have always been trying to look at a more efficient way to do, to get data, get data validated and get data out there of a large enough sample size and get it out there for people to make educated decisions, to streamline the process, to make it a little bit more efficient, as it were. So it's something I kind of kick the tires on and talk about with different people from time to time. So thank you for indulging me on that. All right, Rita, we covered a lot. Is there anything that I am missing? And then more importantly, that you would like pet parents to know and understand about your area of scientific research and concern and interest.

I have a question.

Sure.

Have you read the forever dog?

I have not.

Okay, so the forever dog by Rodney Habib and Dr. Karen Becker. It's the number one best selling book that I think of all time in health and wellness for dogs. So if you're someone who loves scientific studies The Forever Dog is a really great book to get your feet wet. Pet parents in how to have more longevity in your dog or in your animals. Because, you know, most of the things that are in the Forever Dog can, you know, be applied to cats. But Rodney and Karen put down. Put together a lovely research, kind of like, data bank that the web address is in that book of all the research they did for their book, which is just a wonderful contribution to anyone that's interested in longevity and dogs, and especially dogs with cancer. So I definitely look into that.

Absolutely. Yeah. We'd love to have them on the show. Ginger, think you can work your magic then?

Yeah, Rodney and Karen are awesome. Yeah. So. But I think that in general, the biggest message that I like to give to people is that dogs are individuals. And true healing really happens with individual expression and individual. I hate to use the word treatment, but treatment of. Of disease. Looking at your dog as an individual, as an ecosystem, and at the, like, the pillar. The foundational thing for healing disease is diet. And our, you know, our agricultural system is messed up right now. It's completely toxified. You know, pesticides and herbicides are not working. They're killing so many things that, you know, the. The planet is an ecosystem and we're messing with it real bad. And so, you know, there's a lot of things that need to get turned around, but I do think that there definitely is. People are frustrated. People are understanding that what we're doing isn't working. You know, allopathic medicine has its place, and it saves lives. And antibiotics saves lives, steroids save lives. They all save lives. Unfortunately, they're used too much, and I think we're definitely seeing the repercussions of that. One of the things that humans and dogs have in common, a huge aspect of this is antibiotic usage. And science has definitely found a huge correlation between antibiotic use and cancer. Then next thing that I would love to tell people is that kind of like if you don't deal with your stuff, your. Your dogs will. You know, your dogs are a mirror of what's going on with you. And our dogs take on all of our stress. They have their own reasons for stress. I mean, some things like a ball under the couch, they can't get to. It stresses them out, but it's very acute stress. But our chronic stress dogs live in our houses with us, and the more that they are inside, the more stressed they are, and we have to be mindful of that. So we have to deal with our own stress and kind of Put our oxygen mask on first and really be mindful of our stress around our animals because they're taking it on. And this definitely has been proven during this period of COVID 19. Dogs are stressed out of their brains. They are just really, I have had more. I thought that for sure I might lose my practice when, you know, Covid hit. And I don't think I've ever been busier. And the number one thing right now is dogs that are anxious, stressed and fearful. So. And you know, again, back to the science. Science has proven that stress has a huge effect on your microbiome, on your liver's ability to detoxify. You know, there's a little nerve in this, in the, that runs through the gut called the vagus nerve. And the vagus nerve is your ability, is your connection to digestion, to rest and relaxation, to getting out of your head, to calming yourself down. And the opposite of that is sympathetic excess, which is your fight or flight. And a lot of people are in a constant state of fight or flight. Our cell phones keep us in a constant state of fight or flight being available 24 7. It never used to happen. That's not how was set up. And now every bell and whistle puts us in a state of anxiety. Like I've got to get to that, I've got to figure out who that is. And I think stress is at an all time high. But the unfortunate part of stress is that it doesn't allow you to digest, it doesn't allow you to detoxify correctly because the liver needs a parasympathetic state which is, is basically accessing the vagus nerve. And I think it's overlooked. And science is definitely starting to take notice of the effects of stress. I know for a fact that one of the reasons why I got cancer is stress. Prior to my cancer diagnosis. I think that in the 50 years of my life, I was the most stressed during the three years leading up to my diagnosis.

Yeah, well, there's a lot to unpack. And the two things, the two points that you just made. So I had to take a bunch of notes, but I think, I hope I got the gist of them, but take that right there. So you're absolutely correct because we know stress is an inflammatory process, right? Stress on the body physically, let's just say the knees, like when I'm walking and carrying weight, that causes an inflammatory response. Stress for me, causing an inflammatory response in my stomach. My stomach is not like my stomach is weak. I've stressed my stomach out a lot in My lifetime, for sure, and many, many different ways. So you're absolutely right. And it also translates to or translates for mental stress as well. Because if you look at it, your mind, how you see the world, how you. Your general perception of things in the future, your outlook, your disposition, certainly affects everything else in your life. So we certainly understand that's part of this holistic model that you're speaking about. So let me just kind of ask you a question and I'll throw this out there and then I'll get back to the other point. Is it, do you believe in your lifetime? Because I believe this is where we're going. Because we're closer now than we ever been, and next year, five years, we'll be closer then than we are now. Do you believe in your lifetime, Rita, that we will understand the human organism and or canine organism holistically? Like we understand how all of these independent systems, organ structures, work together at a biochemical, genetic, organ system and holistic level. So do you think that we'll. We'll achieve that? Because that's what we're trying to get to, right? Understand 100% how everything in our body interacts and relates, and then more importantly, how that interaction relates with everything external to us. Right. Do you think we'll see that in your lifetime?

My lifetime, I think we already do. If you want to break it down to the most simple components, and this goes for cancer, autoimmune disease, inflammation, any type of imbalance that I can think of that are major imbalances in dogs that I work with. If you want to look at, break it down to the most simplest things, you have assimilation of nutrients, you have elimination the body, you know, the body as ecosystem, it assimilates nutrients. That's a very high priority. The other priority is elimination. You know, going to the bathroom correctly, detoxifying correctly, you have assimilation, initial elimination. Nutrition, though, that is the body. Right?

Right. I understand that we, we understand at the top level how, how everything is interconnected, but I'm talking specifically at the atomic, subatomic, how the specifics, right. We know exactly what vitamin deficiencies effect cause certain, all these diseases. We know the genetic basis for these. So we have an understanding of how everything is interlinked, but we just, I don't think that we truly have. What would they be called for dogs? The singularity, I guess, where we see how the dog is interconnected and how that relates to disease, the etiology of disease. Anyway, I like to think about the future a lot, and I get a little bit scientific And Ginger, I'm sure it just bores the heck out of her. But I did want to get back before we kind of wrap things up up, which we have to do here momentarily, I did want to get back to something that you were speaking about before that, because that does pertain to the future and dogs.

And.

And that is if we look at the 6 million new cases of cancer in dogs as just one example, I talked to a lot of the veterinary oncologists and asked them, what are we trying to accomplish? What are we really trying to do? Are we just trying to develop novel therapeutics for cancer? And that's all we're doing. We get new cases of cancer, we're treating them. Or is the ultimate goal of what we're trying to achieve, are we really trying to reduce the incidence of cancer in our population? Because as we were speaking earlier, we know that cancer can reach 50, 60% in certain breeds, like golden retrievers. I'm 100% in Great Pyrenees. In my family, I've had 3D. All three that have died, have died from cancer. I posed this question to just about every veterinary oncologist that I see on my travels is, what really are we trying to do? Are we just treating dogs with cancer, or are we trying to reduce the incidence? Which means then we have an understanding of the risk factors. I got to say that I won't name them specifically, but one of the top veterinary oncologists, if not the top veterinary oncologist, just looked at me plainly and flatly, said, I don't think we'll ever get cancer levels back to normal or down ever again. If you think about that, you think, wow, that's a game changer, isn't it? It's a game changer because if we're not, the levels are already high. I mean, I call them supernormal. Right? Nature never meant cancer to be this high. Right? If you look at. If you look at nature, nature never lets get anything. Lets anything get above 10%. If you start having diseases above 10%, nature gets weird about that. You don't really see genetic diseases in a population that are higher than 10% cancer. Now, as we've been talking about 60% in some breeds, that's not normal. If that's not the goal of what we're trying to do to reduce cancer levels in our companion animals and our fuzzy buzz, then all we're doing is just paying for treatment, right? That's all we're doing, right? We're just getting more cancer dogs. And all we're doing is paying for big. We're paying Big Pharma. Right. Cutting. Just paying them. And I'm not sure that's. That's not the game that I signed up for. That's not what I'm here to do. And I don't think that's what Ginger should do. So you're right in that there is an inherent. I wouldn't say conflict. There's a dynamic that we're dealing with because that is the business that Big Pharma is in. They're in the business of selling treatments of diagnosing diseases and selling treatments that's inimical to a much bigger goal of reducing cancer levels in our companion levels. We do have to have that holistic understanding. We do have to understand precisely what risk factors are jacking up the cancer levels so high. Your last thoughts on that? I know it's a little bit out there, but I think a lot about this topic. Go ahead.

Well, I mean, I think it's a great topic. So there's a zoologist, her name is Pennywood. She's a zoologist based in the uk. We were just talking the other day about. She's doing a longevity segment for animals and humans, and she was talking about her work as a zoologist and that wild populations of cats do not get cancer hardly at all. Wild populations, when you bring them into captivity, that's when their organism starts to degrade, basically, and a lot. And what does that have in common? Processed food. Processed food. And processed food, you know. Okay, so a lot of people that have heard me speak, hear me talk about my dog Susie. So when I was growing up, I had a dog named Susie. She was a husky German shepherd mix, so. Oh, no, I'm sorry. A collie German shepherd mix. And she lived until she was either 25 or 27. It's. Our family's been trying to figure that one out, but it was at least 25, and she was never spayed. She had two litters of puppies. She was fed farm scraps. And she spent most of her day outside, you know, with her paws on the earth and breathing fresh air. Slept inside with us. You know, she. She'd follow you all around the farm, and she ate raw milk and meat scraps with veggies that we never balanced out her diet. She just had a bowl of meat scraps, raw milk and veggies. She lived. No vaccinations. She lived until she was 25. So. And the crazy thing is, is I had two friends. Well, I'm 51. Years old. I've had two friends that have had two dogs that are my. A little bit older than me that had two dogs that lived until their middle age, middle 20s, when they were kids. What has changed? The baseline theory for longevity. Geriatric dog is known at 8 years old now. Okay. It used to be almost 18 that it would be geriatric when I was a kid. Okay, so that was. I was born in 1971. What has changed? Okay, Processed food, processed treats, high, high vaccination levels, vaccinating where no dog should be vaccinated every year for the same thing. You don't build on vaccination. It's not like a piggy bank where you keep adding vaccination power. That's not how vaccines work. Okay, so you've got that, you've got unnecessary deworming, you've got stress. And then you have our environmental factors of how the environment has changed. Glycophate, which is huge, affects the microbiome found in Roundup. It needs to be taken off the market. You know, you've got herbicides and pesticides being sprayed like crazy. So those environmental factors and then you've got a lot of modern living things like, you know, electromagnetic frequencies leaving WI fi on all night long that doesn't allow your cells to fully recuperate. So we have all these factors, like what has changed? And so when we look at what has changed between 1970 and 2022, there lies the answer in why cancer has went crazy. And when you combine that with zoologist research on what's the difference between wild populations. Coyotes and wolves don't die of cancer. What's the difference? What is the difference? They're not vaccinated all the time. I'm not saying I don't believe in vaccines, but I don't believe in yearly vaccination. They don't eat processed diets. They get a lot of their moisture from their prey. Okay, We've got dogs drinking toxic water. Most of the time, you know, our water has changed, our food has changed.

Right.

Our stress levels have changed much more, Much more often.

Absolutely. Those are the top risk factors. If you ask anybody that. Anybody, if you ask, really, the veterinary oncologist and I think that the stakeholders or the people that have been looking at this cancer and the incidence of cancer in dogs for some time. Not all of them are veterinary oncologists. I found that know what they're talking about. Indeed. And every one of them feel like the major risk factors are precisely what you said. Diet, nutrition, multiple vaccinations That's a much more complex and nuanced conversation and discussion I hope we'll have here on Fuzzy Butts and Friends. Because as you were saying, we know vaccinations are required and necessary in some cases, but the question becomes multiple vaccinations and then the other risk factors, the environmental risk factors, because we know Roundup being the key one, the glycophase phosphates. So those are all of the risk factors. So, indeed, we need to be cognizant and wary of those things. But did Susie really live 20 to be 25 years? Is that correct?

She could have lived 27. We can't. My mom passed that way. Yeah, but Susie definitely did. And my late partner's dog, Yankee, lived to 23, and then her best friend's dog, and she was 63. So a little bit older than me. Like, what, 13 years or 12 years old.