Dr. Kevin Toman explains how home care extends dog lifespan: feed high-quality, minimally processed food once daily, keep weight optimal to reduce inflammation, use non-slippery flooring and low-impact exercise for joint protection, and get annual dental cleanings and blood panels starting at age six. Periodontal disease alone can cut lifespan by 15%.
Chapters
What's up, you guys? Welcome back to The Longevity Vet. It's good to see you. I'm Dr. Kevin Toman, and today we're going to talk about how your home care can help your pet live longer. So let's get cracking. First topic up, dog diets, because I get more questions about dogs and their foods than any other topic on this list. And so it's not rocket science for each of us to understand that there is no perfect food food for every pet, but I can give you some tips based upon current science, and so here we go. Scientific tip number 1: Home-cooked diets are best because you can control the quality and you can eliminate preservatives from your dog's food. Now, having said that, it's difficult for some folks, like me, to home cook for their dogs, and so we're put in position of sourcing our dog's diets elsewhere. And loosely termed, those diets can take 3 forms: raw, the refrigerated kind of human-quality diets, and then the more traditional canned and dry diets. So let's talk about each of those in turn. Raw diets are a great, a great source of nutrient quality, but they come with a significant fear, and that is bacterial contamination. I have personally seen 2 cases of E. coli contamination which were traced back to their raw diet and in each case, those dogs died. So this is nothing that I would wish on anybody. The moral to the story with raw diets is that if you don't personally know your raw diet manufacturer, I would strongly recommend that you make sure your diets have been high-pressure pasteurized or gone through an HPP process to keep them safe for your dogs. Moving right along, the human quality, the refrigerated diets, happen to be the choice that I make for my pets. Because I think they're a great compromise between quality and convenience. Now, to be clear, I don't think that dogs attach any significance at all to the home— or excuse me, to the human quality ingredients, but I think it is reassuring when you can, you and I can at least look in there and identify broccoli as being broccoli. I do believe nutrient quality counts and it will extend the lifespan of our pets. On that same topic, when I think about canned food or more traditional kibbles, the fact is that you and I cannot see those chunks of broccoli in there. They're highly processed foods, and in the case of canned foods, they contain a number of different preservatives and thickeners and gravy products, etc., all of which make the— make canned foods less healthy for our pets. And something I did not know until recently about kibble diets was that only by using extra glutens or carbohydrates can you glom the carbo— can you glom those kibbles together and have them stay baked together. And so by definition, if you and I are using a kibbled diet, we are feeding our dogs a highly processed, high-gluten, or high-carbohydrate diet. And we all know that that's not the world's best way to eat. And so I can't recommend kibbles at this point in time. Moving right along, we have to pay attention to our dog's treats because, uh, there's many of those treats, the pizzle sticks, the pig ears, etc., are imported, and so there's no way to trace their dietary quality. And this is especially important if those treats have flavorings on them. You simply do not know what is in those flavorings, and I cannot count the number of dogs that I have seen break with vomiting and/or diarrhea as a result of seasoned treats like pig ears. So just be cautious with them. As with everything else, the more simple the treat, the better. So if you can find just chicken or turkey jerky, if you can find Cod Skins that I give my own pets, these are going to be much better diets than the old milk bones that you and I used to get when we took our dogs to the bank. One thing that you should understand is that Not only does dietary quantity— excuse me, let me try that again. Not only does dietary quality count, but quantity and when a pet receives their food also counts. The Dog Aging Project has proven pretty much without a doubt that feeding a dog only one time daily is a much healthier approach than feeding a dog multiple times a day. Let me try that again. If you feed your dog one time a day, they will be healthier than a dog fed two or three times daily. Now I've tried to explain that to my own dogs without much success, but it is something that you should keep in mind. Moving right along, we've talked about quality, we've talked about the number of meals, and the single biggest thing that you can do with regards to diet is weight management. It's not rocket science. I mean, the same thing that applies to— that you and I hear about 10 times a day also applies to our dogs because fat has been proven in both humans and pets not just to be an extra ankle weight for us, but it is actually producing inflammation. And if you're familiar with the concept of inflammaging, the more inflammation you and I have in our system, the shorter our life will be. And so extra fat carries a double-edged sword. Not only does it create orthopedic disease for us by increasing pounds per square inch on our joints and our spine, but it also shortens our life by creating inflammation. So keep your pets thin, boys and girls. Keep your pets thin. All right, that eliminates the dietary component of this little discussion. The other thing you should pay attention to is this. If you have a large breed dog, one of the single biggest challenges as they age is their orthopedic health. In other words, their pain. And so even at a young age, you want to understand that the more times your dog goes up and down a set of stairs, or the more times they slip and fall on hardwood or tile floors, the shorter their lifespans will be. So what can you do for a large breed dog, even as a young puppy? Well, first off, you want to limit or minimize or eliminate their chances to use the stairs. Sometimes a child's gate on one end or the other of the stairs will be the single best medicine for your large breed dog as they grow. From an exercise perspective, you want to keep their exercise linear. You want them to run from point A to point B instead of zigzagging all over the place. And so throw a tennis ball, throw a tennis ball low and on the ground, or run with your dog, or swim with your dog, but don't use Kongs or other toys that make them bounce and change direction in mid-stride because those will create spinal and joint problems for you longer term. We talked about this already, but if you and I were building a perfect home for a dog, it would be a one-level home without any stairs, and it would be a carpeted home or a home with cement floors, i.e., anything that dogs won't slip on. So if you have hardwood, if you have tile, if you have loose rugs, every time your dog slips and falls, they are shortening their lives. So that concludes the home care part of things, but not the parental care. And I'm gonna touch base on two things that I alluded to during the veterinary component of my Dog Longevity Framework, and that is your responsibilities as your own dog's best veterinarian. Specifically, you know, I talked about large dogs and how prone they are to orthopedic issues. Well, small dogs have their cross to bear as well, and that is their dental disease. And so, let's raise our right hands and repeat. If my dog is under 25 pounds of weight, I'm going to have an anesthetic dental procedure done every year. Let me repeat that, an anesthetic, not a non-anesthetic dental, because non-anesthetic dentals suck. They only scare your pet and do nothing for their health. But an anesthetic dental allows x-rays to be taken of every tooth so that your veterinarian can identify and treat and potentially even extract a tooth if needed to keep your pet comfortable. Why is that so important? Because studies have shown that periodontal disease can reduce your dog's lifespan by up to 15%, and that's over a year for most small dogs. The other thing that I would recommend is that beginning at age 6 or so, that all dogs of all sizes have annual blood tests and urine tests done to assess their health. This is a simple procedure that can be done on an outpatient basis by your veterinarian, but it allows us to catch diseases early in the game rather than late, and that will add significant time to your pet's lifespan. All right, you guys, school's out. But I want you to know that if you have questions about these things, please reach out to me. Email me at DrKevinToman@gmail.com. Helpingpetslivelonger.com, and I'm happy to help. That's D-R-K-E-V-I-N, all small, all wedged together, at helping pets— got myself confused— helpingpetslivelonger.com. Listen, we are all in this together. I've learned along the way about how I can help your pet live their longest and best life, and I'm happy to share that knowledge. So email me and I will help you. Have a great day, and we'll talk to you soon.
