What’s Secretly Cutting Your Pet’s Life Short (Big Pharma & Pet Food Lies) w/ Dr. Judy Morgan
15 Apr 2026 · 64 min
In this episode of the Makeshift Happen podcast, host Samantha Daly interviews Dr. Judy Morgan, a holistic veterinarian and bestselling author, to explore why pets are living shorter lives today. Dr. Morgan explains that average life expectancy for medium‑sized dogs has dropped from 17 years in the 1970s to about 10 years now, largely due to toxic household chemicals, pesticide exposure, and especially the prevalence of ultra‑processed, extruded kibble made by a duopoly of pet‑food giants (Nestlé Purina and Mars). She details how chemicals from cleaning products, herbicides, Teflon‑coated cookware, and indoor air accumulate in pets at levels far higher than in humans, and how indoor environments, stress, and poor microbiomes further shorten lifespans. The conversation moves into holistic treatment modalities—chiropractic, acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine, food therapy, and various energy‑based practices—highlighting Dr. Morgan’s philosophy that diet is the foundation of health. She advocates raw, human‑grade feeding, offers practical tips for adding fresh foods (eggs, sardines, berries, leafy greens) to kibble, and warns against vegan diets for obligate carnivores. Dr. Morgan also critiques over‑medication and over‑vaccination, urging pet owners to ask about side‑effects, seek minimal‑effective drug courses, and consider natural alternatives such as probiotics, D‑mannose, and herbal remedies. The episode delves into flea and tick control, emphasizing repellents and environmental management over chemicals that only kill after a bite. Mental health in pets is discussed through a Chinese‑medicine personality framework, linking diet, environment, and owner stress to behavior. Dr. Morgan shares a harrowing investigation into pet‑food safety, describing death threats received after exposing a spike in Purina‑related adverse events, the role of the Association of Animal Feed Control Officials (AAFCO), and resources like Susan Thixton’s “The List” for vetted human‑grade foods. Finally, she offers realistic, budget‑friendly steps for busy pet parents, such as supplementing kibble with 25 % fresh food, using eggshells for calcium, and leveraging her website (naturallyhealthyPets.com) for recipes, product recommendations, and further education.
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Let's go make shit happen. Welcome back to the podcast, you guys. Today I am joined by Dr. Judy Morgan. She is a holistic veterinarian, a bestselling author, and has also been named Holistic Veterinarian of the Decade. I'm so excited to have you on the show, Dr. Judy. I can't wait to dive into all these conversations about our animals, their health, And like I told you before, we are wanting all the juicy information. We're so into the holistic health stuff, and we're also open to a few conspiracy theories. So whatever may unfold in this conversation, I'm so excited for it. Welcome to Makeshift Happen.
Thank you very much. I'm happy to be here.
Excited to have you. Okay, so the first thing that I kind of wanted to talk to you about was the life expectancy of our animals. I posted a video just recently where I was— it was kind of funny, but it also wasn't— like, I'm crying on camera because of how many animal videos I watch on a daily basis that just make me so emotional and sad, and I cry. And then I think about my dog and how my life is going to be horrible one day when I have to live without him. And so I'm interested in your take on, you know, the life expectancy of our pets, especially cats and dogs, because I'm aware of the fact that it used to be longer and now it's getting shorter, and it just seems like we never have enough time with them. So what's your perspective on the life expectancy, and are we unknowingly shortening the life of our animals?
Absolutely. We are. So if we look back to like the 1970s, the average life expectancy for a medium-sized dog, so think like small golden retriever, was 17. Now that's 10. So we've almost cut their life expectancy in half. And I'm like you, when I'm on social media and I see people say, oh, I'm so sad, I just lost my dog. He had a good long life. He lived to 11. And I'm like, uh, he had half a life. Like, it makes me want to cry. And you would think that with the advances in veterinary medicine, advances in diagnostics, advances, advances in treatment, our pets should be living longer, not shorter. But we have changed so many things, in my opinion, for the worse. The pet food has become absolutely horrible, particularly what the veterinarians are recommending. We are very lucky in the past, I would say, decade since I've been really vocal, you know, so I kind of know when I first started reporting and what I'm doing now. We do we have so many more small human-grade, really high-quality pet food companies coming on board. So yay! And really, the drivers behind that are the pet parents, not the veterinarians. So for me, average life expectancy that I would like to see for dogs is 20, and average life expectancy I'd like to see for cats is late 20s or 30. And I have been— my husband and I have been very, very involved in rescue work. Mostly we rescue small spaniels, so not large breeds of dogs, but we are rescuing dogs that are coming from very horrible situations, coming with a lot of disease issues, a lot of, just a lot of problems. And we have been able to turn their lives around no matter what age we get them. I actually work with a senior dog hospice and sanctuary in New Jersey where every single dog that comes in there is a senior with a terminal diagnosis. So the only way the dogs get into Monkey's House is to be in a shelter where nobody wants them. So they don't have an owner. And they have a terminal diagnosis, so the shelter just wants to put them to sleep. These dogs come in with, you know, maybe 3 different cancers, and with our natural and holistic protocols— and we use traditional medicine along with that— if they have a bleeding tumor that needs to be removed, it's going to get removed. So we do all the diagnostic work, but we also do natural therapies, food being the major foundation of that. And the dog who has stayed the longest at Monkey's House has been there for 7 years. This is a dog who had a terminal diagnosis and was given a few weeks to live. So we can turn them around. Most of the Spaniels that I rescue are living to be late teens. That's what we expect. And I was just in Arizona recently and met up with one of my clients that I had when I was back in New Jersey. And we were talking about their German Shepherd that they had brought to me when he was about 4 years old. And they had already for 3 years been dealing with chronic allergies, coat problems, like just so many issues. Took us a couple of years to get that dog's health turned around. And at dinner that night I said, Oh, isn't it great that Max lived to be 13 years old? Because we never expected this 125-pound Shepherd to make that. And they went, Doctor, you forgot, Max lived to 16. This is a 125-pound Shepherd who started out with, you know, all these chemicals and everything going wrong, and just, you know, his immune system was terrible. He died of old age. Like, everything was just starting to sort of fall apart, and his quality of life wasn't good. So So that's what we should be looking for. Yes, you are absolutely right. Their lifespan is much shorter than it used to be.
What are the common household things that we as humans are doing that might be harming our pets? We're gonna get into food and lots, cuz I know that's a big foundation of how we can improve their life, but I'm just curious for us as the pet owners, what are some of the household things that we might be doing that are harming our animals?
So many. So many.
Give it to us.
Food is one and, and we'll do a whole section on food, but things that we use in our homes, around our homes, things that our veterinarians recommend that we use on our pets, pesticides, all kinds of chemicals that we are feeding them, putting on them. Dogs who live in yards where, uh, yards herbicides are sprayed have a much higher risk of developing bladder cancer. Things that we use to spray in our homes, uh, candles, cooking materials, utensils that are coated with Teflon, all these things that emit chemicals into the air. When we buy new furniture, new carpets, we paint the walls. Studies show that our animals concentrate those chemicals much more, sometimes up to 28 times more. So if we were to take blood and urine samples from everybody in your household, including your dogs and your cats, we would find the cats have the highest levels of all those chemicals, then dogs, then people way below that. When we clean that out of our environment for ourselves, we are helping our pets dramatically because they are much more sensitive. You never wanna have birds in your kitchen area because a lot of the fumes that are given off during cooking are deadly to birds. That's why they had the canaries in the coal mine. If the canary drops dead, you know that you've got stuff in the air that is going to kill you eventually. So birds are actually one of the best sentinels. But so if you have someone come in and clean your house every week, what are they spraying in the air? Like I told my cleaning lady, like, this is the only spray that we will use in our house. And then I see her running around the house with the Febreze, spraying it all over the place.
I'm like, aha.
So my my house for weed spray. I use dish detergent and strong vinegar and water, and it works really, really well. I'm not thrilled about the dish detergent part. The vinegar part's absolutely fine, but that's a lot better than an herbicide or, you know, some other pesticide that could be sprayed out there. And frankly, my lawn has a lot of weeds.
Oh well, it's better than your dog having cancer. Exactly. Yeah, I know. I've thought about the cleaning situation because we, we got more natural cleaners in our house. But when we have the house cleaned by professionals, they come in and they have all their own products. And I've always just felt a little bit— I don't know, I need to, I need to like step on the toes to be like, hey, can you not use your stuff and can you use mine? Because I notice it. And it's, it's funny, like when we live in a building, and so sometimes when other parts of the building are being cleaned and I'm going up or down with the dog, if it's like they've really been cleaning, he'll start sneezing. I'm like, he's so sensitive to the fumes of this stuff. And I am too now. I think the that you start to clean out your environment, you get hypersensitive to it. You're like, oh my God, how did I ever—
the more you clean up your diet, the more hypersensitive you will find. Because we grow all of our own organic vegetables now. We process our own meat chickens. We raise our own eggs. We have a dairy cow for raw milk and cheese. And now I can't eat anything else. It's like I'm so spoiled now by the good stuff. When I eat anything that has any kind of preservative or anything in it, it's an immediate reaction. So got to be a little careful. You clean up your environment too much and it's like, well, now I'm stuck at home.
Right. Yeah. You can't live, you're not made for this world anymore because everything is so, yeah, the toxic load is, is intense. I'm curious about if you can explain a little bit of your modalities. So obviously you're a holistic veterinarian, but what are the specific kind of modalities that you use or used in your practice? Was it Chinese medicine? Like what are the kind of philosophies that are guiding how you treat animals?
There are so many, so many. The first thing that I learned was chiropractic therapy and it, it was actually accidental. A flyer came across our desk in the mail that said, you know, learn how to treat your patients to help them heal more quickly from surgery, you know, reduce orthopedic problems, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, well, that'd be cool. But I didn't know what it was. I was thinking it was like some sort of rehab or physical therapy or something. And I went, and after I was there for a few hours, I was like, this guy's talking about chiropractic. I don't know if I believe in this stuff. And I was very traditional at the time, but I paid a lot for the course, so I stuck it out. And then when I went back to work the next week, I started using it and I was like, I was like, oh, that is amazing. The changes were so drastic. So once I did that, it was like, well, what else is out there? What else can I learn? And I had a client who was a third-generation homeopath, and she said, oh, I have all of Richard Pitcairn, who is probably the most famous veterinary homeopath ever. She said, I have all of his lectures on tape. I've, you know, I've taken all of his stuff. I have all his lecture notes here. I'll just give it to you and you can learn all It was hundreds of hours of stuff. And I started going through it and started listening to it. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I hate this. Like, this is so boring. I have no interest in this. And I, and this is the thing, there's so many modalities. It's like, well, that one would be great to add to my toolbox, but I don't really like it. And so I'm not going to use it because it's not calling to me. So the next thing I took was acupuncture. Absolutely loved it. Acupuncture had me in hook, line, and sinker. And the four branches of Chinese medicine are acupuncture, Chinese herbal therapy, Tui Reiki, which is sort of a combination massage chiropractic. So I was like, well, that fits in. And then food therapy. And I never realized how much of an effect food has on the body until I started studying it. And for me, that was the one that grabbed hold of me and said, come on, we're going this way. We would always start with, we've gotta get the right diet for the right pet and for the problems that your pet is having. So food is, for me, is always the foundation. And I would say for most holistic veterinarians, they're gonna look at food first, which is really weird because when you talk to doctors, they rarely talk about food. For people. It's like, oh, you eat every day at McDonald's, no problem. Yeah, it's a problem. So from there, once I started getting a name and people started learning that I was doing things a little bit differently, I started getting all these holistic clients who were doing their own things. And so I had clients who came in and taught me about light therapy and essential oil therapy, color therapy, raindrop therapy. There's so many different things. So I usually had my things that I would like acupuncture, chiropractic, and food kind of went for every case pretty much. But then we would add in other things based on is that working? Oh, that didn't work. The food wasn't strong enough. Let's add some herbs. Herbs are like superfoods. It's like more powerful because it's concentrated. One of the great things about it, if you have an open mind and you're a practitioner, clients are gonna get— like the first client who came in to me and she had this set of cards with her and they were raindrops. Crystals on the cards. And I was like, where's she going with that? And, you know, so I forget what we were doing, but we're sitting on the floor with the animal and she's holding up cards and, you know, like applied kinesiology. And, you know, there, there's so many things that you could do. And, you know, most holistic practitioners are a little more open-minded. So when people come in and they're doing something really weird in front of you, you just go, oh, what can I learn from that? Some of it is harder for us to wrap our head around. Sometimes, you know, like acupuncture. Okay, I'm sticking a needle in, I know that I'm hitting nerve endings. A lot of it I can, I can look at it and I'm like, there's a physical basis for this, I get it. When we get into some of the energy medicine, that can be a little bit harder for people to wrap their head around. But if you really get into quantum physics and, and a lot of other things, we're basically all just bundles of energy. And realigning that energy, I mean, that's what Chinese medicine is about— realigning your chi, getting things flowing in the right direction. And balancing the body. So, you know, you have to be a little more open-minded to, to get into this.
Of course. I know that's so funny. The raindrop therapy is crazy, but I mean, we all thought these different modalities that we use as humans are crazy a little bit until you get into it and you do understand that everything is energy and there's ways to work with that energy. I'm curious about the tongues because in traditional Chinese medicine, I know it's a big practice to evaluate and look at the tongue and the tongue can tell you a lot about your qi deficiency sees, or if you're like stagnant in something, or you have dampness or whatever. Do you also look at animals' tongues?
Absolutely. It's just a little bit trickier with them. It's funny, I do phone consult, you know, distance consultations with people through Zoom. And you know, so sometimes they're trying to hold their animal up in front of the computer. It doesn't work, but you can't take the mouth and crank it open to look at the tongue because as soon as you wrestle your dog or cat and then you crank their mouth open, they instantly draw their tongue to the back of their mouth and curl it up. And so you we don't get a true picture of what's going on in there. However, we can usually get a pretty good idea because God made them in such a way that they have a gap between their teeth. So you've got the incisors and canines in the front, then there's a gap on the side, and then you've got all the molars. And so usually we just try to open the lips on the side and get a peek at what's going on on the side of the tongue. And that doesn't give us the whole picture of the entire tongue, but we can get a lot of information. Is it quivering? Is it thin? Is it thick? Is it swollen? Does it have indentations? Is it fuzzy? Does it have a, you know, what color is it? So we can still get a ton of information. It's just a little bit trickier to do. But even when I work on horses, cows, large animals, same thing. There's a gap there. So you can always just kind of part the lips and see what the side of the tongue looks like.
Super interesting. Okay. So you mentioned that food is the foundation that you always look at with all of your patients. And I love that because even for humans, doctors should be more well-trained in nutrition because your food makes such a big difference on all of your health outcomes. So we know that that's gonna be really, really important. So let's get into it and really talk about the pet food situation. What are the biggest lies about pet food right now?
The biggest lies that are pushed by the veterinary profession and large pet food companies is that extruded dry ultra-processed kibble is the best way to feed your pets. It's absolutely the worst way to feed your pets. It's ultra-processed. And we know what's going around right now in the human world about, hey, we need to get away from ultra-processed food and we need to get back to what nature intended for us to eat. Blue catfish caught in the Chesapeake Bay region in Maryland is toxic for people to eat if it's over 30 inches, or if you don't trim away the kind of dark belly meat where all of the PCBs and chemicals are— heavy metals are concentrated. So they just passed a law saying that all that toxic fish can go to pet food. Now, who thinks that our pets don't concentrate PCBs and heavy metals and that they're not going to be toxic for them? If you're feeding a food, pet food, that is fish-based, and if it has a dried fish meal or catfish meal, call up the company that makes that food and say, are you testing for heavy metals and contaminants in that fish meal? Because if you're not, I'm not buying it. So ultra-processed food, the dry kibble that goes through the extrusion process, which the extrusion process was originated by the Kellogg's brothers to make breakfast cereal. And we now know that breakfast cereal is really not one of those things we should eat either, but it's what the veterinary industry keeps telling people. No, you just need to put these dry, dead brown balls into your pet's food bowl twice a day. Our pets should eat human-grade food. There is no such thing as people food. Food. So two major companies run the pet food market, and that's Nestlé Purina and Mars. Mars unfortunately also has a monopoly on veterinary hospitals, veterinary diagnostics. So why is this not getting better? Why am I at the veterinary office spending hundreds of dollars every month with the same problems over and over again? The ear infections never clear up no matter how much medication we put in A lot of veterinarians are not saying, hey, what's the root cause? How can I fix that root cause? By throwing more dead brown balls sprayed with fats and synthetic vitamins, our pets have zero requirements for carbohydrates in their diet.
Zero.
AAFCO, the Association of Animal Feed Control Officials, in their official publication that says this is how much of each vitamin you have to have, this is how much of each mineral you have to have, this is how much protein you have to have, and under carbohydrate it's zero. Yet these extruded pet foods have about 50 to 60% carbohydrates.
Well, it makes sense. Like, what carbs would a dog be eating in the wild?
Well, exactly. They do— they don't go graze in the wheat field. It just doesn't happen. Uh, and cats are obligate carnivores, so why are we feeding them diets filled with corn and soy and wheat and peas? Their body doesn't even know what to do with it. So we end up— our cats are raised so unnaturally. We have made the environment dangerous for cats to go outside, and then people also get mad because they do things that cats are supposed to do, like catch birds and mice. So I have a farm, so I have a different situation than the majority of people. But on our farm, we have 2 indoor cats, and they've been indoor for 18 years, so not about to throw them outside. They're welcome to go, but they don't want to. And I have 7 outdoor cats. And I have outdoor cats because I have a barn and I have mice and I have voles. And, you know, I don't need my rodent population to take over and eat all of the grain that I'm paying— the organic grain that I'm paying for, for the big animals. So I like my cats. And I will tell— all of my cats are raw fed and they're minimally vaccinated, even the ones who live outside. And my outdoor cats are the healthiest cats I have ever had. They get fresh raw milk from the cow every day. They get fresh raw eggs from the chickens. And, you know, they catch a lot of things, but they're, oh, they're doing what cats do. They climb, they hunt, they pounce, they stalk. It's what cats do. And studies show that over 80% of indoor cats are highly, highly stressed. Their cortisol levels are through the roof. Their microbiome is out of whack. I did microbiome testing on all 9 of my cats, and believe me, my indoor cats are well-loved and well-cared indoor. But the microbiome differences— so this is the, the gut microbiome, we're looking at the bacteria, the fungal elements, you know, all the things that live in there. My indoor cats looked awful. My outdoor cats, perfect. Every one of them, no antibiotic-resistant bacteria, nice even diversity in their microbiome. And it's because they're, they're, I mean, they're eating soil, they're eating plants, they're eating grasshoppers, They're like the best grasshopper couches in the world. They're doing what cats are supposed to do and they don't have any stress.
I was gonna say the stress probably impacts the gut health as well.
Is huge. Is really huge. And we don't realize it. So for anybody who has indoor kitties, they need climbing. They need high spaces. Cats are supposed to climb. That's why they always sit on top of your refrigerator. They're looking for those high places. So get 'em a really tall cat tree, get them something to play with and climb. They need to hunt and pounce. So a lot of people use laser lights and cats love them. You notice they'll like literally climb up the wall to get to the laser light. The problem is you have to let them catch something at the end. If you play with the laser light and then you just turn it off and walk away, the cat's like, um, where'd it go?
It's not satisfying.
Right. Totally not satisfying. Now I'm really stressed. Cause I got to spend the rest of the night trying to find that stupid thing. Where did it go? So you always, at the end of your laser tag, throw them a treat, throw them a toy, something they can pounce on, grab and take with them. They need to win. And really the same for our dogs, like dogs who live in apartments. Oh my gosh. I get clients who, you know, live in a one-bedroom apartment. They're like, I'm going to get a Border Collie. So I love them. And I'm like, they kind of need a job and they kind of need work. And you're going to be at work for 8 hours a day. What are you planning on doing with your dog? Especially if you have like a high drive breed, you better make sure that you're taking them out to do agility training or dock diving or barn hunt, or I don't care what, but they need a job. Like, I used to have clients, I'd say, could you get some sheep or some chickens and let your dog herd them? Okay, do you have grandchildren? Can they herd them? I mean, like, give your dog a job. You know, dogs are very social creatures and they're not meant to sit home alone all day. It makes them a little crazy.
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Yeah, I know our dog, his behavior was so amazing once we started working from home. Like, we have a husky and we do live in an apartment, but we— he is such a prince. Like, he's out for 4 30 to 40 minute walks every day. He's running on the beach, he's digging holes, he's playing soccer, he's going to parks. We used to live in Spain with him and there are so many dogs dog parks there, and there would just be tons of dogs jumping on each other, playing all the time. So he was really well socialized from a really young age. So he just loves, loves like being outdoors and running and playing. He's 8 now, but he still has so much energy.
And everyone thinks that's a breed that absolutely needs that. Like, if I lived in an apartment, I'd be like, oh my gosh, what am I going to do with this husky? So great you live near the beach, you can take the dog to— but you need to do that.
It gets us out of the house so much. We've got so many walks.
And a lot of times people don't, don't realize— like, I had a client once in New Jersey and they had a little poodle. After the poodle passed away, the woman said, well, my husband really wants to get a Newfoundland and we're moving to Florida. And I went, Newfoundland in Florida? Okay, this is a northern breed with a big heavy coat, big heavy dog. I think he is not going to be really happy in Florida. You're gonna have to do a lot of work to keep that— like, it's gonna have to swim. It's, you know, you're gonna have to do a lot to keep this dog happy. She did finally talk him into getting something that was a little more appropriate. Uh, and I said, it's not that you can't do it, but you're taking a dog from what would be its natural environment up north in a cold environment and saying, okay, we're going to take you totally out of your environment. You're just supposed to adapt. Well, you're gonna have to make a lot of adaptations to, to make that work. So, you know, that's why in one of my books, in Raising Naturally Healthy Pets, pets. It actually is for the person who hasn't really gotten a pet yet. And so there's a whole chapter on what to consider when you're thinking about getting a pet. Like, you know, am I a vegetarian? Am I not going to be able to feed this dog meat? Is that going to make me crazy? Maybe I should get a hamster, uh, you know, or a bunny rabbit or a rabbit. You know, let's get something, you know, if you're an herbivore, you might be happier with an herbivore pet. I do have a lot of vegetarian and vegan clients, parents who love their pets enough that, you know, especially their cats, they're like, yep, I'm okay with handling that raw meat, gonna have to do it because that's what my cat is meant to eat. So this is just a word of caution, anybody who has a cat, if you want to make it into a vegetarian or vegan, it's going to die young.
Oh, I know, that's so weird, so weird when people do that. They're like, my dog is vegan. I'm like, you are stupid.
Your dog is not vegan. He did not choose to be vegan. I guarantee No.
Okay. So speaking of the, the food situation, you mentioned, you know, the influence that big pharma and big food has on our pets' diets. There's a couple of really big, you know, major companies that kind of own everything. I'd love for you to tell the story about what happened when you started to really dig deeper into researching one of those brands in particular and understanding what was really going on. I had seen something about, about Purina. Okay, I know what you're talking about. That there were some stories, yeah, coming out from like insiders in the brand and you guys trying to just speak out about, you know, what was in the food.
It got so ugly. It got so ugly. In January of 2024, well, actually, yeah, it was January 2024. We have our first meeting of the year at my office with the content team and my daughter, who's the COO of the company, says, you know, people really like it when you get on your soapbox and rant. I think we need more rants this year. This year. And I just looked at her and I said, uh, rants are spontaneous. Soapboxes are spontaneous. I can't just plan them. You can't say every Friday I'm going to get on a soapbox and yell about something. I have to— you know, something has to make me mad enough to, to make me do that. She's like, oh, that's kind of a shame. I'm like, well, not really, because, you know, it's— you know, I would hope that there's not that much bad stuff going on in the industry that I, I need to be able to soapbox every week. But literally, like, the day after this meeting where she says I need to rant, I I got an email from a good friend who is the admin and started a page called Saving Pets One at a Time. And she started the page in 2019 because her dog died from tainted pet food. And it was at a time when hundreds of, probably thousands of pet foods were recalled because there was excess vitamin D in the vitamin mineral mix. And all of a sudden veterinarians started saying, hey, we're seeing a lot more kidney kidney failure that we used to see. Hey, we have a lot of animals dying here. What is going on? And so, you know, that's kind of a lot of times how recalls happen because we start to see a trend. Like, look at all these animals dying of kidney failure all of a sudden. Like, what, what changed? And so somebody finally tested the food and said, oh, and it was a vitamin mineral mix that was coming in from China that a lot of companies were using. So a lot of companies had the same problem. Excess vitamin D kill animals with kidney failure. And she said, I don't know what's going on, but in the month of December, I had hundreds of reports of dogs and cats dying or having extreme bloody vomiting and diarrhea or seizures after opening a new bag or can of food. And so I went live with it a few days later, and I said, hey, I'm just giving everybody a heads up, like, we're seeing this trend, we don't know what's going on, If you are having a problem, please let us know. And over a course of about 3 months, we had thousands. And I would say that 85% of the reports were Purina products. And so we started making a list of reports that we were getting, and we got so much pushback, and we actually got death threats. I had someone who said they knew where my farm was and they were going to come take out my mother, my husband, and I, and all of our animals. No. And this was somebody local. And so I was on my way to walk out the door.
They were gonna come kill you because you were sharing—
because I'm sharing information about pet food. I mean, this is how crazy pet food is. I was on my way with my husband to the police station. We're walking out the door and my daughter texts me on my phone and says, hey, I'm gonna contact this person with the death threat. And I said, are you crazy? Like, why do you want to— this person's obviously nuts. Why do you want to talk to them? She said, no, I'm going to reach out. I'm going to find out why are they sending his death threats. And I'm like, You're brave, you go for it. So I said, all right, I'll give you a few minutes before I go to the police. And so she emailed the guy and he said, look, my family is low income and on Cyber Week over Thanksgiving, Black Friday, they had a bunch of pets and they had gone and bought hundreds and hundreds of pounds of Purina food. They took it as I was telling them that that was poison food and they had to throw it all away and waste all that money. Money. Now, you know, a sane person might have said, maybe I can return it, but an insane person says, I think I'll kill the person who's the messenger and their whole family and their whole family and all their animals. So I kind of went, oh. He apologized. He's like, I'm really sorry, I shouldn't have done that. I was just out of my mind thinking, you know. And, you know, she explained to him, like, this isn't every bag, box, or can. We don't know. All we're doing is telling you to be alert. And if your pet says, I don't think so, then maybe you got a bad bag. Throw that one away. If your pet's eating it and you don't have any symptoms or problems, okay, no different than normal. And then she called me back and she said he apologized. And I was like, okay, do I need a gate across my driveway? Do I need locks? Do I need, you know, and actually we did end up putting in all kinds of, uh, cameras, alarm systems. But the same thing happened years ago. So AFCO is the Association of Animal Feed Control Officials, and they sort of set the rules for what can go into pet food. And their meetings are horrible. One year it was going to be in San Diego, and right before, like a couple of weeks before the meeting, there was a pet food debacle where an owner in California had 5 dogs and she opened new cans of a different company's food, fed all 5 dogs, and within a few minutes all 5 dogs fell all over. She rushed them all to the vet. One died, four survived, and they tested the stomach contents, they tested the food, and it ends up there was euthanasia solution in high levels in the food. So that particular pet company, pet food company, on their website it said that all of their food is USDA inspected. They left off a little word: condemned. It was all USDA inspected and condemned meats that they were using in their food. Food, but their website didn't say that. So people thought that they were feeding human-grade food. It was so far from human-grade food. That company still exists, but what happened is they had this fanatical follower, and he— because when this happened, of course, me and a few other people in my realm, we all went online and said, hey, don't feed this food, this is a big problem, you know, like. So this guy goes online and threatens to kill all us, threatens to kill any of us who say anything negative about this company. So AFCO doesn't like us consumer advocates. Like, we make them crazy because we want them to clean up their act and we want them to clean up pet food.
You expose them and make their job harder.
So who do they invite to the meeting? That guy. They literally invited him to come to the meeting and sit in the audience with us, who he has threatened to kill. And this guy is like a big big army guy, you know, who's got lots of firepower. I'm not against guns, but I am against guns when somebody's pointing at me saying he wants to kill me.
Oh my God, yeah.
So my husband and I were already in San Diego when we found out that they had invited this guy, and he's like sitting out in front of the meeting waiting for us. So my husband says, I'm not letting you go to the meeting, and if you insist on going to the meeting, I'm going with you. And I just looked at him, I said, when did you become bulletproof? Because if you're standing in front of me, I don't think that's a help. We had a nice trip to San Diego and never made it to the meeting. None of us went. None of us. There were like 4 consumer advocates that go and we couldn't go.
And that's probably what they wanted by inviting you. Exactly.
They're like, oh, then these people aren't gonna make us crazy this meeting cuz they can't get in the door. So this is the craziness of pet food. And so we had some insider information for this whole 2024 thing, but interestingly, our insider showed up dead.
No, that— it's not funny. It's so—
it's not funny. Uh, it's very sad.
And so, like, mysteriously died?
Mysteriously died.
Didn't have, like, an illness or, you know, pet food?
I don't— I don't know who had anything to do with that. I don't, you know, so I guess I should be careful what I say and who I out, and, you know, but all— I'm just— I'm just the reporter. I'm reporting the facts. I'm report— and we did a FOIA with FDA to see how many complaints came in for all the different pet foods during that time period. And the Purina complaints, 15 to 1 minimum over any other foods, probably more than that. And we spent about $20,000 sending out food for testing, tested for everything we could think of and couldn't find anything that was out of whack. And the one thing that we had information on that we were trying to test for, we couldn't find a lab that I could do the test. So we don't know. But the only thing I can say to consumers is go for human-grade food and make sure that it truly is. The, the best way to find out the top level, not necessarily the most expensive, but the top level companies who are doing it right for pet food, Susan Thixton, truthaboutpetfood.com. Every year she puts out something called The List. And companies cannot buy their way onto the list. The only way they get on that list is they have to supply their bills of lading for every single ingredient in their food, where it came from. And they also have to report how the animals are raised that go into the pet food. So are they humanely raised? Are they grass-fed? And then she actually gives you the cost to feed per day of each of the kinds of foods. So she has foods for cats and dogs on the list. Totally worth it. Cost you like $10 to get it. She puts it out once a year. Totally worth it.
That's a really cool resource for people that are really trying to understand.
Great resource. Yeah. If you really, you know, and you can make your own food. We have a ton of recipes on our website. We, I write dog cookbooks. The cat ones haven't come out yet, although I do have a few cat recipes in Keeping Your Pets Naturally Healthy. But you know, not everybody can make their own food. Not everybody has the resources, the storage capabilities. So it's really nice. Nice to find, you know, foods that are either freeze-dried, easy to store and travel with, and you know, what resonates with you. For me, I'm a raw feeder. My dogs will, and cats will eat gently cooked, but I really like raw. I think that's, you know, how nature intended for them to eat. You have to blame the veterinary industry for this. People are scared to death to feed raw. Oh my gosh, it'll poison your whole family. You'll all die of salmonella. Well, many more people have died of salmonella in dry kibble than— I don't think we've ever had any deaths associated with salmonella in raw pet food, but we've had lots associated with salmonella and kibble.
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Love you guys, and thanks for supporting Makeshift Happen. So the food, you know, we've got to clean, clean it up for our pets. We can utilize that resource or start looking into alternatives that we know are human-grade food, at least, and trying to get our animals a balanced diet. If we can feed raw, that's amazing. But I also want to talk about something that you alluded to earlier in terms of the overmedication of our animals and, and how often that happens, especially with just every time you take them to the vet, it seems like the bill's $1,000 and there's, you know, a million things that you need to do. I I just last year had a situation with my dog where he had this one spot that he wouldn't stop licking. The vet was like, maybe it's a hotspot. I don't know, it might be allergies. So they prescribed and put him on prednisone. Now, I learned my lesson the hard way of not doing my own research and going, well, what is this medication and what are the potential side effects? And do we actually need this? And, you know, is this the right thing to do? And just kind of trust trusted the vet in their assessment of, you know, this was going to be helpful to figure out, is this allergies, or, you know, is it going to help this, this situation resolve? And unfortunately, because I had no idea about the side effects, I one day find that my poor dog has urinated all over the house, which he absolutely never does. Then come to find out, oh yeah, it makes them super thirsty and they're like gonna drink so much more water. I'm like, oh my gosh, my, my poor dog. Well, thank you for telling me that. I had no idea. I guess my bad for not asking, but like, my goodness.
And then I should have told you.
Yeah. And then realizing that, oh, it's, you know, because it's a steroid, it like suppresses their immune system or whatever. So he contracts a UTI while he's on the prednisone. The UTI lasts for weeks and weeks. The antibiotics aren't clearing it, so we have to do multiple tests to figure out what strain of antibiotics he actually needs, because whatever ones he were on weren't working. Then they wanted to do an ultrasound of his bladder because they were worried that it might be, you know, something cancerous that's pushing on him. Why is it not clearing? We did the cancer test, more antibiotics. I mean, this whole freaking mess over a spot on his leg that he was just licking. And I— it was that moment where I just realized, my goodness, like, you know, we— the same way that a lot of humans have found for themselves and their own health, like, we have to advocate and ask questions. But I think it's a really real situation that we are just throwing medications at animals without really understanding or at first looking at— like, of course, the vet never asked me, what is the dog eating? Or like, you know, anything to start. And so So I'd love to hear your insight as, you know, more of a holistic practitioner of, are we overmedicating and over-vaccinating our animals? And what does that look like?
Absolutely, we are. So we know that overuse of antibiotics is a huge problem in humans and animals. And now we have antibiotic resistance and antibiotics in our waterways. It is, it's a nightmare. And thankfully, I'm starting to see in the veterinary journals that they're saying, hey, every time a dog has diarrhea, we don't have to give it metronidazole, which is an antibiotic. 99% of them are— even if it's bloody diarrhea, they're going to clear up if you give them a probiotic, a bland diet, and some fiber. Going to clear up, and it'll clear up in 2 days versus with the metronidazole. Now you've messed up their microbiome for at least 30 days, probably a lot longer. And metronidazole is not without its side effects. One of my dogs, if she got a dose of metronidazole, became paralyzed. It's really fun. So, uh, it has neurologic side effects in some animals. We give so many toxic chemicals to our pets all the time, and if you are given a medication or a medication is recommended for your pet— I don't know anybody who doesn't walk around with one of these— if you ask, and you always should ask, are there any side effects to this medication? What should I watch for? If they can't right off the top of their head give you that answer, you could ask them to go look it up in their PDF, which is the Physician's Desk Reference. But all that's in your phone, so you could easily— like, you could have at that time, had you thought about it while you're standing there in the vet office, you could have gone, 'Side effects of prednisone in dogs,' and all of that would have come up. And then at that point, you'd be able to say, hey, is there something topical I can spray on this instead? Like, is there a cream I can use instead of giving him this oral medication? What I find with, uh, steroids and immunosuppressants, they're given at much higher doses than what we need. Think about it, when you go to the pharmacy and pick up a prescription, you get about 4 pages of these are the side effects. You get all that information. I've never seen that given out in a veterinary office. Now I know in my office if you got prednisone on your receipt, it had on there, this will cause your pet to drink and urinate more. So, but not everybody does that. So, you should always, always, always ask. And if you look at it and you go, I don't think I like those, like that sounds a little scary. Then the next question out of your mouth should be, is there something else I could do? You know, and unfortunately, 95% of the veterinarians are not trained in anything alternative, anything holistic, They might offer you a different antibiotic or a different immunosuppressant, you know, and then if you say to them, well, can I use a little calendula cream on that instead? They're going to look at you like you have 6 heads. Like, I don't know. I don't even know what that is. I don't know what you're talking about. I get that all the time, uh, you know, with the cardiologists because I have a breed who's prone to heart disease. And so most of them end up on medication because it's a genetic problem, but I also have a huge protocol of supplements. Diet changes, things that I do with them. Like, one of mine who went into heart failure was given 3 months to live, and I got 24 months. But that was because I was doing a lot of things differently. But if you say to the cardiologist, well, can I give them CoQ10? Can I use hawthorn with that? You know, you can have your whole list, and they'll look at you and go, I don't know anything about any of that, so I wouldn't recommend it. There's no proof that it works. Okay, is there proof that it doesn't work? Don't have that either. So a lot of times it is up to you to do your own research, but I would say you want to go with the minimum. And so like for urinary tract infections, it used to be standard to give a minimum of 14 days of antibiotics. Studies are now showing 3 to 5 days is probably just fine. And you know what, you get a lot less antibiotic resistance when you do it that way. So we always have to be looking, and there are so many alternatives it, like for your dog with the urinary tract infection, you know, his bladder's inflamed and he's got bacteria that are sticking to the bladder wall. Well, you know what helps with that? D-mannose is very soothing. Marshmallow root is very soothing. And cranberry extract keeps E. coli from sticking to the bladder wall. How about we add all those things in?
I ended up finding a holistic veterinarian and, and we got the cranberry supplements. And of course I was giving him fish oil and other things that would help with his inflammation. And then I was crazy with the probiotics, 'cause I was like, this poor dog has just gotten an atomic bomb in his gut with these antibiotics.
But— So there's just, you know, there's so much more that we can do other than, and, and part of this is the pet owner fault as well. Like if you walk into the office with your pet having a problem, you want to walk out with something in your hand to fix the problem. And so, you know, veterinarians a lot of times will say, well, the owner owner was pretty insistent that I give them something. And so I picked an antibiotic off the shelf. Yeah, it didn't really need it. Yeah. So don't be that person. Don't be insistent on that. You know, if they say, well, you know, this isn't really something because there's a lot of viral infections, you know, upper respiratory. Your dog goes to the kennel, the boarding, the grooming, they come back, they've got a cough, a sniffle, a sneeze. 99% of those do not need antibiotics. 90% of them get antibiotics because you go to the vet with your dog coughing and sneezing and the vet says, oh, I got to give them something to make them feel better about this. Just treat them like a kid with a cold.
Yeah. Yeah, totally. So not, not everything needs, needs a crazy medication for sure. I'm curious about the flea and tick situation because that's something that is really pushed on us and really, really encouraged along with the rabies vaccines and certain things that just feel like like you actually cannot operate in this world without following these strict guidelines of what they expect you to be doing in terms of medicating them.
Yeah. Again, for rabies vaccine, we are at the hands of the government on that. Almost every township, state requires, you know, boarding, grooming, daycare require rabies vaccine every 3 years. That's pretty much the national standard. So we're a little bit stuck with that. That, although you can do a rabies titer and find out if your pet is protected, but not especially for licensing. And a lot of times for boarding, grooming, daycare, they won't accept a titer, which blows my mind. It's just because they're not educated. They don't know that that means, yes, my dog is actually protected.
Is a titer something that just verifies that they're still—
Yes. So a titer's a blood test. And what it does is it shows you whether your dog has antibodies against a certain disease. So you can do a titer for distemper. For parvo and for rabies, and I highly recommend doing that. So we did a ton of titers in our practice. The problem is that a lot of veterinarians are charging ridiculously exorbitant fees. If they will set up an account with Kansas State University and send the titers directly to them, it's not horribly expensive. If they're doing it through the veterinary labs, the veterinary labs are sending them to Kansas State and they're marking it up, and so you're double paying on everything, and then it gets expensive. So if you go to your vet and you say, hey, I want titers for distemper, parvo, and rabies, and they say, well, that'll be $700, say, do you have an account with Kansas State University? You should set up directly with them. It'll be a lot cheaper, and then I can get it cheaper. And there actually are some online groups where you can send blood to get the titers cheaper, but you still need your blood— your veterinarian to draw the blood for you. So it's still kind of a double-edged sword. And as far as the lifestyle vaccines, I didn't use I use almost all of them in my practice. I just don't think that they're necessary. It's not a matter of protecting one against one tick-borne disease, which the vaccine is only about 60% effective for Lyme disease. So we're not worried about protecting against one tick-borne disease. There's a dozen tick-borne diseases that your dog can get. So if you give the Lyme vaccine, that doesn't mean, woohoo, we can just let them get bitten by ticks. You know, really the big thing is keeping fleas and ticks off your pets. And the problem is that 95% of the products on the market do not repel fleas and ticks. They have to bite your pet in order to die. So how does that prevent the spread of all the tick-borne diseases if the tick has to bite your pet in order to die? It doesn't. So what we want to use is products, which happen to be the natural ones, that actually repel the fleas and ticks. If you feed fresh garlic it makes them taste bad, smell bad. The pests do not like them. We have doses on the website and in my books, so you can feed your pet something that's going to make them not attractive to fleas and ticks. We also have ultrasonic or scalar wave tags, and I recommend if you're in a really high tick area that you use multiple layers of protection. So you probably want a tag, you want to put something in the food, and then you want to use something topical on the pet. So we use essential oil sprays They're very, very highly effective. And believe it or not, in different areas of the country, different scents work better. My sister lives in Massachusetts. It's like tick central, Lyme disease central. She has her yard sprayed with cedar oil every month from spring to fall. You can use nematodes for people in the South, like Florida, Alabama, Louisiana. Spraying your yard with nematodes can be highly, highly beneficial. The fleas and ticks that you see on your pet are only 5% of the life cycle. 95% of the flea and tick life cycle is in your house, in your yard, in the woods. So everybody gets so crazy, and, and the veterinarians get so crazy with, well, we'll give a, we'll give a chemical to your, to your dog that takes care of 5% of the life cycle. What about the other 95%? If you get a flea on your dog, a flea can lay 2,000 eggs. What are you doing for the 2,000 eggs? We need to be doing something different. So we need to treat the environment, and that's the part that is often overlooked. Like, if I lived in your apartment building and I had to walk my dogs on grass that was always sprayed, I would either get boots or one of the best things ever invented by a lady in New York City because she had a little tiny white dog and she didn't like it walking through the streets of New York City and then being on her bed, you know, after walking through your and everything else that's on the streets of New York City. She made this product called Walkie Paws. They're literally leggings for your dog that you just slide on and they clip on and you put them on and off when your dog goes in and outside. They're very comfortable. I have a friend who moved to Portugal, and every time I see a picture of her Cavalier, it's got its little Walkie Paws on walking all over the place. But it keeps their feet clean. It keeps them from being exposed to those chemicals.
Is it helpful to wash their feet?
Yes. Yes. So that would be the other thing. You can, you know, wash the feet really well when they come in. So they actually make those little boot dip, dip things you can use.
It's almost like a, what you clean like a golf club with. Yeah, exactly. Stick their paw in and it's all sudsy and scrubs.
Probably the person who invented that plays golf. Probably. Yeah. You wanna try to protect them from those chemicals and you know, unfortunately we don't have control over every piece of ground that our pets walk on. I think it's up to us to, to make their environment as clean as possible. Because we do want them to live longer.
A quick question about like mental health for dogs, because I know a lot of people will say like, oh, my dog has such bad anxiety, or there's these dogs that are constantly whining, or maybe you have a dog that's like— this probably happens in cats too— that are just like really lethargic, or you feel like they might be depressed. Like, how can people know if maybe something is going on with their dog mentally?
So it's kind of what we were talking about before. Mental stimulation is so, so, so critical. Diet can have a lot to do with that. So we actually have a pet personality quiz on the website. It's pretty cool. It's going to give you their personality from a Chinese medicine perspective, so it's going to tell you what element they are— fire, water, metal, wood. But once you figure out what their element is, it also tells you what the problems are that they could experience. So So for fire personality animals, a lot of them have a Shen disturbance, which is a disturbance of the mind. So we find that a lot of these animals with fire personalities really do have a lot of separation anxiety, those sort of things. And then we tell you how to feed them to try to calm that down. Animals who are a wood personality are ruled by their liver, and so those are like the Border Collies, the Rottweilers. Rottweilers, Dobermans, the Shepherds, the, the ones who are supposed to be working dogs. And if they get frustrated from inactivity, they're not moving enough, oh, it's going to come out as aggression and frustration and lashing out. That's one of the reasons I love Chinese medicine, because it's like, oh, I can even see why he acts the way he does, and then I can figure out how I can fix it with either food or herbs, or, you know, do they need to move more, do they do they need to move less? What kind of stimulation do they need? Mental health is a huge, huge part of our pet's health. So I have two— my two youngest dogs, they're the COVID babies, so they didn't see anybody for the first year of their life. My one, I got him when he was like 14 weeks old. He didn't leave our farm. So when he was almost a year old, we bought a new truck and I said, oh, let's take the dog with us to go pick up the new truck. So we drive downtown, and we live in a— it's a small town. I get out of the car with him, and I have him on a leash, and a car drives by on the street. He lost his mind. He wanted to kill it. And I realized he's never seen a car drive down a street. He thought that was just something he was supposed to attack. So I had to pick him up and carry him. And, you know, then we walk into the car dealership, and there's all these strange people. He's never seen strange people. He's seen our family. It was actually the same thing when my granddaughter— she was a COVID baby— when she was 9 months old, she first went to daycare, and it was the first time she had seen small children. She thought that all people were adults, you know. And we don't think about that. So a lot of people adopted dogs during COVID and they were home with them, and then everybody went back to work or started going back to their normal life and taking their dogs places with them. And a lot of these dogs are like mine, lose their mind, because it was I didn't even know this part of the world existed. Almost all behavior problems with our animals are driven by us. Our mental state affects them. Actually, our physical state affects them a lot too.
They kind of say— people say that your pet almost like mirrors you.
They do, and they will take on your issues.
Your pet has like a similar personality to you, and if you're a really anxious individual, you probably have like an anxious dog.
Yeah, because you made them that way. I was working with— I can't call her a communicator, but we'll use that term because I can't think of exactly what term I should use for her.
But we were doing a phone thing together, like an animal psychic, kind of, kind of.
But she was actually more of a people psychic. But she— I asked her if she could help me with learn how to talk to my animals, or how to figure out what was going on with a couple of them. I said something about chest problems or breathing problems or something. And she was like, yeah, there's something going on in your household. And I'm like, okay, I don't know what that is, but I'm gonna figure it out. So within the 2 weeks following that conversation, my cat was diagnosed with lung cancer, my 21-year-old cat, and my 17-year-old cocker spaniel was diagnosed with lung cancer. And then she said, you know, you really should look at all the people in your household and make sure that none of you have a problem. So we did, we were all fine, but two of my animals within a couple of weeks of each other, and they were older, but you know, how did a dog and a cat both end up with lung cancer at the same time?
Yeah, like an air quality thing, or I don't know.
I mean, we had 10 dogs at the time and probably 5 cats, but still, you know, my two oldest ones, and you know, cancers do tend to show up more in older animals, but a little weird. So, but our animals do mirror us, uh, both emotionally and I mean, come on, when you're sad, your dog is in your face like, what can I do to cheer you up? Do I have to be sad too? I don't know what to do right now.
Or as soon as you— what I love is like that I can just make my dog so excited if I just get so excited. Like, I can just, I can just start using my happy voice and praising and talking to him, and then the tail goes right up, starts wagging. I'm like, I love this.
Yeah, they're so attached to us. I mean, and let's Let's face it, you can be out of the house all day and you can have the worst day in the world and you come in and you're like, ah, and your dog is like, hi, you're home. Yay. You know, and then within 3 minutes, if you don't like cheer up and match them, they're like, you just ruined their whole day.
I know. Yeah, it's so true. It's like if it was a person that was so excited for you to come home and greeting you, but if you ignored them and were just, you know, moved on, I mean, yeah, that person would feel pretty discouraged. Yeah, it's kind of the same. Okay, so in closing, if pet parents are wanting to give their animals the best health and the best life possible, but maybe they are working full-time or they're trying to do this on a budget, what do you think are the most important changes that they could realistically make right now? What are the main, like, areas that you would look at for them?
So we do get a lot of pushback from people saying, I don't have time to make my own food. I don't want to— I don't cook. I'm not I'm not going to do that. That's fine. There's a lot of companies that make good food. If you're really stuck on a budget and you're like, you know, I have to keep buying this kibble because it's the most affordable thing that I can do, put whatever fresh food you can in the bowl. It's a great study done at Purdue years and years ago where they just replaced 25% of the food with fresh food in the bowl, and the dogs that had that 25% of fresh food lived 3 years longer than their littermates who were only fed highly processed food. That's huge. So eggs, can of sardines in water, blueberry, you know, any kind of berries. No grapes, no grapes, no raisins. Mushrooms. If you're sautéing mushrooms or cooking mushrooms for dinner, please throw some in the bowl. Dark leafy greens. Uh, you're making spinach, collards, kale. A lot of what you're having is fresh food that they could have as well. And you know, by fresh, it's if it's frozen and you took it out of your freezer, Frozen foods are actually pretty good cuz they're usually flash frozen. So it retains all the, um, the nutrient benefits. All that stuff is super, super, super great for our dogs. My dogs will sit and eat a salad. Like that's just what they're used to. A lot of dogs are like me. Actually, the reason we originally got chickens was to have eggs for the dogs, not for us. I wanted fresh eggs for my dogs. Now, now we have a lot of eggs.
I've heard you can give them the shells too.
Oh yeah. Yeah. The eggs, uh, the shells are a great calcium source and The membrane inside the shell, if you've ever had to peel hard-boiled eggs, you know what I'm talking about with that membrane. That stuff is super powerful joint support, super powerful. You can actually buy— I don't know how they separate this out, but you can buy eggshell membrane supplements. I don't know how they separate that out of there, but it is, it is super good. So if I'm ever peeling eggs, I'm peeling out those membranes and feeding them to the the dogs. There's just so much good fresh food that we can feed them that we don't even think about. I make frozen treats for my dogs from our raw cow milk. I have way too much milk, I don't know what to do with it all, so I just freeze it in little frozen treats. And so they get that, the whey leftover, which has all kinds of probiotics. It's the clear liquid that comes after you make it. Our chickens thrive on that stuff. They drink a big bowl of whey every single day. So, and my dogs could drink it too. Uh, it's super, super good. Like it's actually super good for us and we should, I should use it to make bread. We just don't eat very many carbs, but if you make bread, anything, or, you know, pancakes or anywhere where you need to use the liquid, whey is super powerful. Look around, look at what you're eating. If you're eating all processed food, your dog doesn't want it, doesn't need it. But if you're eating some fresh foods, get just a little bit of extra and add that to their bowl. Whole, and you'll, you'll see big differences.
Where can people learn more from you and get your top recommendations? Because I know you have lots of brands and things that you recommend, foods that you recommend, how to plan your dog's plate. Like, there's so many good things. So tell us where to go— podcast, book, website.
Got all the above. Uh, so our podcast, our website, naturallyhealthyPets.com. We also have Dr. Judy Yu, which is listed on there, and that's where we have a lot of courses if people want to really dive deep. Not all courses are taught by me, there's a lot of other holistic experts on there as well. I am working on book number 10, and for your listeners, we have an offer. If they use the code MAKESHIFTHAPPEN50, they'll get 50% off any of the books that I've written on our website, naturallyhealthyPets.com. Wow. So the books are a great resource if you don't want to spend money on books. They're also on Amazon, but if you don't want to spend money on books, that's fine. There are so many informative things on our website— our blogs, our recipes. We have almost 700 different products on the website that are all approved by me. They're all human grade. Any food and products that are on our website, I have to be willing to eat them or use them myself in order for them to— like I keep saying, if the world goes Keflouy, I'm guarding that warehouse because I've got enough freeze-dried food in that warehouse to support my family for a very long time. Oh my gosh.
No, but that's amazing. That is such a huge— your, your website and stuff is such a huge resource. I'm definitely going to be on it. We're going to be looking at all kinds of stuff for our dog for food and beyond. And I'm definitely going to take the personality quiz for him because I'm so interested.
There's a human personality quiz on there too, if you want to figure out how you and your significant other tick.
Okay. All right, cool. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much, Dr. Judy, for coming on and sharing so much time and wisdom with us. Let everybody know where they can follow you on socials to connect.
Most of my socials are under Dr. Judy Morgan's Naturally Healthy Pets, and we're pretty much on every platform. So just go, you know, put it in your search engine. You're gonna put it, put my name in your search engine and a bunch of stuff is gonna You can't miss it.
We'll link everything below for you guys in the show notes as well. Thank you for tuning in. If you have a fellow pet lover who you know needs to listen to this episode, copy the link, send it to them in a message. We want our dogs and cats and animals to be living as long and as healthy as possible. Thank you guys so much for tuning in and we'll talk to you next week.
Bye.
If you loved this episode, make sure to check out the show notes where I've linked a few similar episodes I know you're also going to love.
You'll find them under the similar episodes section. In the description down below with direct links so you can dive in and start listening right away, or add them to your queue for later. Binge away for even more growth, expansion, abundance, and fire motivation.
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