Hannah Aylward (00:00.066)

The traditional medicines that are used are really good for putting out fires and very good for stopping symptoms. Like your animal’s itching all the time. We have a shot for that. We have a pill for that. We can stop the itch. The problem is you may stop the itch short term with that shot or that pill, but when the shot wears off or the pills run out, the itch comes back because you have not solved the underlying problem.

Or the GI distress or the ear infections or the allergies, whatever it is that you’re arthritis, whatever chronic inflammatory disease they’re dealing with, from a traditional standpoint, we’re really good at stopping symptoms, but we are not really good at getting to the root of the problem and solving it for good.

Hannah Aylward (00:50.03)

Welcome to the Nutrient Dense Podcast. I’m your host, Hannah Aylward, holistic health coach, functional gut health practitioner, and the founder of HAN. So many people are continuously failed by conventional and alternative health care. We are here to do it differently. Alongside my team of functional registered dietitians, I’ve helped hundreds of women around the world overcome their chronic digestive issues when nothing else worked.

I’ve learned a thing or two about what it really takes to transform your health from the inside out, and I’m here to share it all with you. Please keep in mind that this podcast is for educational purposes only and should never be used as medical advice. Now, let’s dive in. Your transformation is waiting. Hello, hello, my dears, and welcome back to another episode of the Nutrient Dense podcast. Today I have Dr. Judy Morgan on the podcast with me.

Dr. Judy Morgan has over 40 years of experience as an integrative veterinarian, an acupuncturist, chiropractor, food therapist, best-selling author, international speaker, podcast host, and the owner of Dr. Judy Morgan’s Naturally Healthy Pets. Her goal is to change the lives of pets by educating and empowering pet parents worldwide in the use of natural healing therapies and minimizing the use of chemicals, vaccinations, and poor qu quality processed food.

Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Judy. We’re so excited to have you. Thank you very much. I’m very happy to be here. Yeah, I’m excited to dive in. This is a little bit of a different topic for our audience, but I think it’s gonna resonate with many because I’m sure many of us have our little pets that we love as our family and want to learn kind of how to better support them. And I know when I’m

I got my cat Winston about six years ago and I had never had a pet before and I knew literally nothing about cats and I was always kind of a dog person. Knew nothing about cats, knew didn’t know how to feed him, didn’t know how to take care of them. And I, of course, was looking for, you know, healthier options of thinking I feed myself healthy food. I want to make sure that I’m feeding him good quality food as well. And I still have so many questions about it and then like detoxing and parasites and all of this. So I’m I’m excited to kind of dive in today. But

Hannah Aylward (03:01.029)

I would love to start with how is what is like what you do in the more holistic veterinary medicine space different than taking your pet to a kind of your run-of-the-mill veterinarian. So the holistic group of veterinarians, and I’m integrated, I was trained initially in traditional medicine, which we all are because the veterinary schools are all very traditional. So we learned that, which and I feel like we really need a good base in order to

Be able to move into the holistic space because we need to understand the anatomy, the physiology, the disease processes. but we look at things differently. So in traditional medicine, it’s kind of like the same as human medicine. The traditional medicines that are used are really good for putting out fires and very good for stopping symptoms. Like your animal’s itching all the time. We have a shot for that. We have a pill for that. We we can stop the itch.

The problem is you may stop the itch short term with that shot or that pill, but when the shot wears off or the pills run out, the itch comes back because you have not solved the underlying problem. Or the GI distress or the ear infections or the, you know, allergies, whatever it is that you’re you arthritis, whatever chronic inflammatory disease they’re dealing with. From a traditional standpoint, we’re really good at stopping symptoms, but we are not really good at getting to the root of the problem.

And solving it for good. So from a holistic standpoint, we look at the whole body. So if you bring in an animal that’s itching, I I’m gonna ask a lot of questions. Well, how many vaccines have they had? How often have they had them? What food are you feeding? Has this always been the food that you’ve been feeding? What do you have in your house? Are you what kind of chemical cleaners do you use? Do you have carpet? Are you burning candles? you know, what is

Their outside environment, what’s their exercise routine, what you so many questions that we will ask from a holistic standpoint that would never be asked if you go in and say, just stop the itch. And so we we need to really start at the very beginning with these animals. And so a lot of times if you come in for a holistic consultation, it’s not going to be 15 minutes, it’s going to be an hour, sometimes it’s even two hours.

Hannah Aylward (05:21.051)

We’re going to want records from the last ten years, everything that’s ever been done with your animal, and we’re going to ask a lot of weird questions. but the reason being we really want to solve the problem for good and not have you coming back every month for another shot or another prescription or another shampoo. We want to help your pet have a very high quality of life without chronic disease and without symptoms that are

Chronically showing. Yeah, that’s beautiful. So it sounds a lot like, I mean, a human, right? Taking care of a human. We’re asking, you know, the work that we do is obviously a lot of nutrition, supplementation, movement, circadian rhythm, toxin exposure, detoxification. So it would make sense that you want to consider those same things in an animal, but so often we kind of don’t. Exactly. Ian, you know, part of the problem is you

Go to the professional. You go to the veterinary office, and there’s somebody standing on the other side of the table who has eight years of college. They’re wearing a white coat and they say, Only this food is the best food. Food from this company is the only one you should feed, which for most traditional veterinarians, you’re going to be told ultr to feed ultra processed food because that’s what they are taught is the best for our pets, and it’s absolutely not, just like we know it’s not for people.

Ultra processed food is really bad for our pets. But they don’t know any different because that’s what they were taught. And they are taught that this is the series of vaccinations that all cats get. This is the series of vaccinations that all dogs get. Whereas from a holistic standpoint, we might look at it and go, Well, you have a chihuahua who lives in a high rise apartment in the city, and you know, your brother has a hunting dog and lives on a farm in the middle of the country.

Right. Very, very different. And so we need to look at each pet as an individual and not say, no, this is what we give to all animals. And we also want to look at what toxins are we giving to our animals. So from a traditional standpoint, they really feel that the flea and tick chemicals are pesticides, they’re neurotoxins, but they feel that these are very safe, very few side effects, no problem using these.

Hannah Aylward (07:46.126)

And from a holistic standpoint, we go, are you kidding me? I’m supposed to feed my pet a pesticide? I’m supposed to put a pesticide on my p and it’s a neurotoxin. And then I’m going to have that in my house and sleep with that animal and snug. Like, no, not happening on my watch. We just have very different beliefs. It’s because of what we’re taught and what we’re spoon-fed by big pharma and big pet food. They buy us lunches. They

Send us on trips, they give us goodies, they give us handouts, they give us speaking fees. They literally are buying our loyalty from the time we get into vet school and all our continuing education afterwards. And you know, I’ve been doing a lot of research on this because I have to give a talk about it at the American Holistic Veterinary Medicine Association in the fall. And it is amazing how easy it is to buy a professional’s loyalty, whether it’s a human doctor or a veterinary doctor.

Veterinary students are given either free pet food from these companies or very big discounts on the pet food. And same thing happened to me when I was in vet school, and the pharmaceutical companies wined and dined us and gave us trips. And so, of course, when we graduate, we we have loyalty to those companies. And when we go to these big conferences, the advertising and the money spent

on the booths is in the millions of dollars. And so of course you’re going to be loyal to them because you’re like, look, they they sponsored this whole conference. This is so great. Like we couldn’t have this if they weren’t putting the money in. But you know, at some point a lot of us stand back and go, wait just a minute. this might not be so good. And you know, veterinarians are overworked, basically underpaid if we compare them to human doctors who have the same

Education. And so they don’t have time to research every time a new drug comes out and the drug rep comes in and says, we’re not seeing any side effects. This is great. This is going to heal all your patients. And you go, Okay. And then you start to use it. And maybe you see side effects and maybe you don’t. But you know, for me, once I went to a more holistic practice, when they would come in with something new, I’d say, That’s great. Come back to me in five years, because after it has been used on a couple million pets.

Hannah Aylward (10:07.977)

Then I want to see what the side effects are. And then I can make a more informed decision. But you know, I don’t think people realize that sometimes drugs will hit the market after being tested on a couple hundred animals and that the real test subjects are our pets once these things hit the market. I don’t want my pets to be those test subjects. Yeah, me neither. I remember, I mean

To to be honest, I’m gonna out I’m gonna out myself to everyone. I have not put flea in tech medicine on my cat in a long time. Good for you. My animals are chemical free. Absolutely chemical free. My house is chemical free. My animals are chemical free. There’s no way I’m feeding pesticides at everybody. Yeah. And I just remember having to put it on and it was like the smell of it was so strong. I cannot stand it.

I was just like, this is not right. And then I felt like I don’t know if it’s said to watch your pets after or I just chose to do that. I can’t remember because it’s honestly been years at this point. But I have an indoor cat. He doesn’t he’s not outside. He’s not running around. He’s not you know, and I’m like, I don’t think this is necessary and maybe I’ll get some eye rolls there. But I just was like, This just doesn’t feel right and then the smell of it and then he hated it and I was just like, it was awful. But we had an issue with

with fleas and it was a nightmare having all of these fleas in the house. So I was like, after this, we’re using this medication and that that lasted probably like four doses. And I was like, I’m not doing this. But so he’s really had very minimal exposure. And, you know, I’m very conscious of the chemicals in my home as well. But it makes sense to me. It’s like this it’s like the same thing that we want to do with humans. But I feel like there’s this difference with

Animals because they can’t like communicate to us in the same way. And maybe the we don’t have as much research or s or something, or there’s not maybe there’s not as much funding dedicated. Maybe I’m wrong with that, but it just feels like it’s like we’re starting to ask these questions with humans, of course, now and there’s more holistic modalities and there’s more research being done and all of that. And then it’s these pets, it’s like we kind of are just doing what we’re told a little bit. And I think that’s evolving a lot and

Hannah Aylward (12:07.466)

That conversation is expanding, which I think is really exciting. But for me, I was like, if I’m if I’m putting quality food into my body, then of course I want to be mindful of what I’m putting into my little animal that I love so much in in his little body, but they can’t like communicate with us the same way of like, hey, I’m feeling sick or I’m feeling weird or my stomach hurts. Particularly cats, because cats are they’re small and they don’t I mean, they’ve got good teeth and nails, but they’re they can’t defend themselves from something big.

And so they are so good at hiding their symptoms. Like cats can literally be down to ten percent kidney function before they start saying, Hey, I don’t feel good. god. yeah, they’re pretty amazing little creatures. They’re also desert animals, so they don’t drink very much. Yeah. And we tend to feed them completely wrong, and that’s why we have so many issues with them. I have

Nine cats right now, seven of which live outside because I have a farm and I have barn cats that without barn cats in a barn, let me tell you, life gets really ugly really fast. So anybody who wants to complain about me having outside cats, if I didn’t have cats in my barn, the mouse population would be yeah unreal. But because they’re outside and they’re catching mice and whatever other critters, they have a much higher exposure to fleas and ticks. Right. So we have about twenty three acres on the farm.

Part of it is fields and then it’s surrounded by a ring of woods with a little tiny stream. Well, tiny, tiny stream going through it. And so the cats love to go down in the woods and hunt and hang out in the shade. and you would think that and we live in the south, so you would think that these cats would be loaded with fleas and loaded with ticks. It between the seven cats out there, if I pull off one or two ticks a year, that is a lot. Like they just do not bring them home.

And we have one who tends to be very susceptible to fleas. the rest of them are kind of like not a big deal. And part of that is the healthier the immune system and the healthier the animal, the less likely they are to become infested. So when I was in practice, I would have families that had a dozen cats and they would bring a dozen cats in for their annual exam. And three of the cats would have no fleas.

Hannah Aylward (14:27.413)

Six of the cats would have a couple of fleas, and then you’d have a couple of the old skinny ratty looking cats and they’d have a thousand fleas. And it’s because their immune system was struggling trying to keep up with everything else. Fleas and ticks are parasites. Parasites parasitize the weak. And that’s why it’s so important that our animals have a healthy immune system, that they have a good diet, that they’re not overvaccinated, that they’re not bombarded with chemicals. Because if they have a good immune system,

They’re not going to be the one that gets infested. So for our barn cats, they can’t wear collars or harnesses. I don’t want them getting hung up on anything. So they can’t wear any kind of a tag or anything. But I have a powder that is all natural. It’s herbs. It’s neem, yarrow, and diatomaceous earth. I sprinkle it in my hand, pet the cat, I’m done. Do that a couple times a week. That’s all I need to do. we have a couple of them that won’t let us touch them. So as they run by, I’m sprinkling powder and they run through the dust.

Not the ideal way to do it, but if I can’t touch them, that’s what I’m gonna do. So we have so many natural ways that we can do things with herbs and and you know, ultrasonic tags, scalar wave tags, other things that we can use. Why essential oils like why would I give them a pesticide that’s a neurotoxin if I could solve this problem otherwise? And so one of the big problems, like with your cat having the flea infestation.

Ninety-five percent of the life cycle of fleas and ticks is spent in the environment. Only five percent is on your cat. So we get so wound up in treating our animals that we totally forget that, hey, I’ve got to treat the other ninety-five percent. It’s living in my house or in my yard. And so again, we don’t want to spray pesticides all over the house because we’re all breathing it in and, you know, getting it in our system.

We don’t want to do that. So we look for water natural ways that we can treat the environment. So for the yard, you know, my sister lives in Massachusetts huge tick area. Yeah. She keeps her yard mode short and she has somebody come in and spray cedar oil on her yard at regular intervals. And that keeps her tick population down, at least in her yard. Yeah. you can also use beneficial nematodes, which again are these little itty bitty bugs that you mix with water and spray on your yard, and they don’t allow fleas and ticks to

Hannah Aylward (16:49.143)

mature to adulthood, so they don’t bother your animals. And then in the house, we can use essential oil sprays. We can use diatomaceous earth. Vacuuming is just huge. Not having carpet is big. It’s really looking at the big picture, not just zoning in on one piece. Again, it’s traditional versus holistic. We need to treat the whole thing, not just zoning in on one thing. And so feeding neurotoxins to our pets is treating the pet, but it’s still ignoring the environment. And so we have to look at that as well.

Yeah, that’s amazing. That’s really good to know. I’m gonna I’ve just learned some new things there that I’m gonna take with me. So thank you for that. I wanna talk a little a little bit more about the the vaccines and stuff, but I also want to talk about food therapy. So, you know, I think there’s this I don’t know. I felt so just completely blind going into like owning an animal. I was like, I don’t know anything and I know all the things about human nutrition, but I was just like, I have no idea when it comes to pets and then certain foods are toxic for them and

You know, you hear like raisins or chocolate or this or that or whatever. But then it’s like, what do we feed them day in and day out? And I feed my cat like a mixture of it’s like salmon and whitefish and carrots and peas, I believe is like the mixture. But he’s very picky and he does not want a lot of the other food. But I’ve tried to choose better options. But I would love to talk to you about like the concept of food therapy for animals and if you could expand on that and like what should we be feeling feeding our our our dogs and cats? So it’s pretty similar to

To us actually. Think about what’s in the grocery store. And I don’t recommend ever buying pet food in the grocery store. And this is the reason why. Where is all of the ultra-processed food in the grocery store? It’s in the middle. Where’s the pet food aisle? It’s in the middle. It’s ultra-processed food. So when we’re feeding our pets, we want them to not eat ultra processed food. It has the same detrimental effects on them as it does on us. So kibble, which is dry.

food that you know little brown pellets that is goes through an extrusion process which is how they make cereal the Kellogg’s brothers invented that to make cereal back in the early 1900s and we now know that yeah cereal’s not so good for us it’s you know loaded with sugars and dyes and all kinds of bad things. the same goes for pet food. If it goes through an extrusion process, one, we’re using rendered ingredients. So rendering like just look up what rendering is it’s really bad. It uses really bad ingredients.

Hannah Aylward (19:15.472)

So that and all the waste products from the human food industry go to the pet food industry. So if you think about when a cow or pig or chicken goes to the slaughterhouse and they’re cutting up the pieces of meat, if they find a piece of meat that that does not pass USDA inspection for human consumption, it goes into a big barrel and that goes to pet food. no, all the grains that are not fit for human consumption go to pet food. So if they’re broken or if they’re moldy.

They go to pet food, they’re fumigated, and then it gets used there. We have a lot of problems with mold toxins because we can fumigate and kill the molds, but we can’t kill the mold toxins. So there’s been a lot of recalls for that. so when we’re looking at food, we want to make sure that what we’re buying is not the waste products from the human food industry. The two largest pet food companies in the world are Mars and Nestle Purine.

You might notice those names are also candy companies and food companies. They make human food. What do they do with with stuff that they can’t use? So there was a a an open truck that overturned on the highway in Wisconsin a few years ago and it was filled with Skittles. So an open truck full of Skittles. And you’re like, why would there be an open truck of Skittles on the highway? It was on its way to a dairy farm because the Skittles came out misprinted. They didn’t have the right markings on them, and so they were going to the dairy farm.

food industry the dairy industry as food for cows. Like, that’s great. And then we drink the milk from those cows. Perfect. And only a few dyes and sugars in there. anyway, so you know, there has to be a repository for human waste. And the, you know, the pet food industry says what? You want it to go to the landfill? And I’m like, well, I don’t care where it goes, but I don’t want it going into my pet. Yeah. So that’s part of it. the extruded dry products only have six to eight percent moisture in them.

Cats are desert animals. They don’t drink very much. So when we feed them a dry food that only has six to eight percent moisture, and then they don’t drink very much, we end up with kidney problems, we end up with lower urinary tract problems, we end up with crystals in the urine. We end up with cats not using their litter boxes and owners saying, I can’t stand this cat, I gotta get rid of it, because it won’t pee in its box. And then we end up with a lot of cats that are on psychological drugs trying to make them use their litter box and all they’re doing is saying, My bladder really hurts and it hurts when I go in there.

Hannah Aylward (21:40.53)

And so, you know, we need to look at that a little differently. So for my own animals, for my cats, for my dogs, they are fed whole food products where everything on the label is easy to know what it is. So it doesn’t say meat meal. I mean meat meal, meat from what? It says beef, beef liver, beef heart, beef kidney. By the way, all those organs are really good for our animals. They’re good for too, but we just have a taboo against eating them. And then it’ll say, you know.

Broccoli, carrots, peas, sweet potatoes, whatever. But you can look at it and go, I know what those are. And it doesn’t have corn in their sixteen different ways. Our pets have no requirement for grains in their diet. That’s a big myth. And I don’t like to see a long list of chemical ins. So when we see that long list, that’s synthetic vitamins and minerals.

You know, sometimes we need to add a little bit of zinc or a little bit of vitamin D because those things can be a little bit harder to to formulate using whole foods. so sometimes you’ll see a little bit of that in there. But I actually want to be able to look at the food and say, I see the carrots. that that’s real me. Like, you know, like I kinda want to be able to tell. Now what I feed my pets is either gently cooked or raw. The big scare about raw, like you’ll

From salmonella and E. coli and Listeria. FDA has a zero tolerance policy for bacteria in raw pet food. so they test, and if there’s bacteria in there, they’re gonna do a recall. My pets have eaten raw, raw, or gently cooked food for 25 years. I’ve never had an issue with it. Well, but they’re eating whole foods and for and they’re eating gently processed or minimally processed foods, which is the same as what

we should be doing ourselves. And it’s one of the reasons I have a farm. I originally got chickens because I wanted fresh eggs for my dogs. Not for people. I wanted them for the dogs. So now we process our own meat chickens. We have our own eggs. We have dairy cows. So we’ve got raw milk and yogurt and cheese and you know, it’s and I raise all of our own organic vegetables. It’s living a different lifestyle because I can and because to me it’s fun. Not everybody’s going to be able to do that, but you can go out and source

Hannah Aylward (24:00.7)

really high quality, gently cooked or raw, minimally processed foods for your pets. And that is so much better, particularly for our cats. Our cats are obligate carnivores. They’re metasauruses. And so we don’t want to see a lot of plant material in cat food. It should be two to four percent of the diet, not 30-40% of the diet. So that’s what we’re looking for. cats

Unfortunately, they get very addicted to whatever they’re raised on. So if you get a kitten and they’re raised on dry kibble, they’re addicted to that texture, they’re addicted to that flavor. this the dry kibbles are sprayed with fats and palatins. A palatin is something like MSG to make it taste good. It’s it’s umami for for the pets. And so they get very, very addicted to that. And before I knew any better, my

I got my first cat the day I got home from my honeymoon. So that was a year after I graduated from vet school. My dad didn’t like cats, so I never had a cat. I always wanted a cat. I come home with this kit and I’m like, What do I do with the cat? Pretty much. And so, you know, I put it on the kibble that I was told in vet school was, you know, the ideal. And my cat became very addicted to kibble. And I stuck with that for the next few cats until I learned better.

And then when I s looked at my cats and said, Okay, you’re not getting any more of this kitty crack. We’re gonna eat good food. And they all looked at me and said, No, we are not. And it took me about six months to get them switched over. And so what I did is I got freeze dried raw food because it’s dry and it’s small and it has the texture of kibble. And so I sprinkled a little bit of that in their bowl with their kibble.

And you know, eventually they’re gonna eat some of it because it’s in the bowl with their kibble. And then over six months I put in more of that, took out a little more kibble, and then it’s supposed the freeze-dried is supposed to be rehydrated back to a high moisture diet. Yep. But you know, if I put that in front of my cats right at the beginning, they’re like, We don’t do that. It d it’s not crunchy. so it took six months to, you know, sprinkle a little bit water, a little more water, a little more water until I finally got them to where I wanted them to be.

Hannah Aylward (26:24.645)

the cats that I have now were all raised on raw food. So they’re like, yeah, this is what we’re supposed to eat. They’ve never been exposed to kibble, but because it is literally made into kitty crack, I’m sure if they ever got the opportunity, they would dive in head first. They’d probably puke it back up afterwards, but they would dive in head first because that’s what they do. And it’s made to make them do that. Yeah. Yeah, it’s so interesting. So

they should be eating, yeah, less of the dry food, more of the wet food that I’m familiar with. do you have any of a favorite brands that you usually recommend? I do. There’s actually a list on my website of the foods that I’m willing to feed my animals, both dogs and cats. And then if you also look on our website, we don’t sell the frozen or the refrigerated because I’m not ship I’m not storing all of that. I don’t have refrigerators of breezers and I’m not shipping on dry ice, but there are a lot of companies who do.

The companies that we have on our website, we have the freeze-dried food because that’s easy to ship and it’s shelf stable. But those companies also make raw or gently cooked refrigerated or frozen food, and you can order direct from them or from independent pet stores. another really good website that people should know about is truthaboutpetfood.com. and she puts out a list every year. It’s Susan Thicston. She has been the pet

Food consumer advocate for about 20 years, aga up against all the government officials. And she puts out a list every year of the top companies that have to actually supply to her all of their invoices for every ingredient in every recipe that they make, where it comes from, is it humanely sourced, is it organic?

you know, everything about the company and if they meet all of her requirements, they can make the list. But it’s hard to get on the list. Yeah. That’s amazing. Okay. Good to know. Yeah. We use I think it’s called Earthborne Holistic. I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s very good or not. It’s not good. You could do worse. You could do worse. Yeah. but for cats, dry kibble is absolutely the worst thing we could ever feed them.

Hannah Aylward (28:39.859)

Yeah. This is a wet food. So I get the canned. It’s Canned is canned is definitely better because again, you’ve got the moisture. Yeah. and and it’s gently cooked, like it’s at a much lower temperature than the extruded food. So absolutely. You’re you’re doing much better by getting your cat addicted more to to that.

yeah, he doesn’t really eat dry food. Yeah. So what we want to look at is, you know, what’s the carbohydrate content in there? Is it very, very meat heavy? Because that’s what our cats are supposed to eat. Yeah. And can we pronounce all the ingredients that are on there? That’s pretty critical. So yes, you could do a lot worse. and so for anybody who has kitty cats, like just start with can we find a high quality canned food and maybe put a little spoonful of that and see if we can get them to accept the high moisture?

Them will not. I mean cats are just they’re really funny. And we do have recipes on the website if you want to make your own food for your cats. Cats don’t like leftovers. So and you cannot feed them well, dogs or cats, you should not feed them anything cold. So let’s say you only use half the can and so you put that second half in the refrigerator. When you take it out, you’ve got to warm it up. They don’t like it cold. It’s not good for their digestion. So we want to warm things up. So for

Stop I buy my food frozen. My cats have a freezer. My dogs have a freezer. We have a couple of freezers. So I thaw it out in the refrigerator for a couple of days. And then before I serve it, I’m bringing it up to room temperature so that it’s not a shock to their system when they eat that. Okay. Okay. Good to know. Yeah, I chose this one because it was like I can see the chunks of the fish in it. Awesome. It’s those are the main ingredients. And then there’s carrots and peas. But there are there is a list of psych synthetic vitamins.

And I was like, I don’t know if the he needs this, if this is good or if this Well, they need they need, you know, those vitamins are making that food come up to the level that is required for your cat to survive. Yeah. And and you know, without those vitamins, you will end up with problems. So with B vitamin deficiencies, we see neurologic problems. With taurine deficiency in cats, we see blindness and heart failure. So we need all that in there.

Hannah Aylward (30:57.991)

It’s harder to find cat foods that don’t have added supplements in them because cats have different requirements. It’s easier to actually to formulate for dogs and get everything in there. But like I said, there are certain things that it’s hard. Even if you look at the recipes that we have for free downloads on the website, you might see, okay, you have to add this vitamin or this mineral to bring it up to what is required. And the more

Processed the food is, the more highly processed it is, the more vitamin and mineral mix gets added back in because we do lose nutrients in process.

Hannah Aylward (31:40.331)

We are big fans of eating enough protein over here on Team Han. Protein is essential for muscle repair, a strong gut lining, balanced blood sugar levels, and so much more. For most of our clients, we like recommending around 100 grams of protein per day to start, and adding in a good quality protein powder can be super helpful for hitting those numbers. It’s an easy add-in, you can throw it into a smoothie or even add it to oatmeal. Choosing the right protein powder can feel so overwhelming.

Half of them are full of fillers and crap ingredients, and the other half honestly just taste bad. Equip protein is one of my go-to recommendations for our clients and one of my personal favorites. We love it because it only has a small handful of ingredients. It’s 100% carefully sourced, real foods, no additives, allergens, chemicals, fillers, or other junk. It’s gluten-free and it contains 21 grams of protein per serving. Equip’s Prime Protein also offers

a complete amino acid profile. It’s also independently tested to make sure that the protein powder is free of harmful amounts of heavy metals and toxins like glyphosate, which is honestly super hard to find. Equip prime protein is a grass-fed beef protein. So it is animal based, but it’s dairy free, unlike whey or casein protein powders. Grass-fed beef protein is packed with collagen, gelatin, and micronutrients that your body needs.

We also see that it’s typically much better tolerated in our clients with chronic gut and digestive issues over something like a plant-based protein powder. In addition, some of their flavors do contain natural flavors, but they’re distilled vapors from natural and organic compounds or fruits like vanilla, coconut, and strawberry, and are processed without any chemicals, fillers, binders, or artificial ingredients, which once again is incredibly hard to find. Personally, I buy both the chocolate and the vanilla.

Flavors of the Equip Prime Protein, but honestly, they have like so many other incredible flavors out now. If you’re interested in trying out Equip Prime Protein, you can use the code HANNAHAYLWARDHHC at checkout for 15% off. And we’ll pop that code in the show notes of this episode for you as well. So once again, you can go to equipfoods.com, choose the flavor of protein powder that you want, and then use code HANNAHAYLWARDHHC for 15% off.

Hannah Aylward (33:57.515)

Think about adding like bone broth, beef liver, or things like that to your pet’s food. They’re awesome. So bone broth is just so good for gut health. It’s so it’s good for so many things. And I’m a huge fan of adding whole foods to their diet. So I have a few favorites. canned sardines are always in my cupboard. Eggs are just a super food for our pets. Fresh berries, just like for us, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, really good. Huge fan of mushrooms.

Any kind of mushrooms that are healthy for us, they’re so good for our pets. Mine are all on mushroom supplements because it’s so good for gut health, it’s so good for immune health, longevity. mine all get an omega-3 supplement. So either fish oil or an algae oil, phytoplankton, something along curl oil, something along those lines. is that good for brain health, heart health, joint health, skin health, like just everything in general? And most processed foods, the EPA and DHA.

Which are the omega-3s that we want. Yep. By the time it goes through processing, whether it’s a canned, cooked, whatever, a lot of times those levels really drop. and it’s it’s actually a really good idea, particularly with older animals, when you take them in for their exam and you have lab work done, to add on a vitamin D test. I would say probably 75% of our animals are vitamin D deficient, just like people.

And our animals don’t convert sunlight into vitamin D like we can when we I was just gonna ask. Yeah. They do not. but you also don’t want to just supplement vitamin D because too there are no human supplements that you can give to animals because they’re way too strong. Too much vitamin D will cause your pet to go into kidney failure and die. So you you never want to just supplement and go, well, he’s older, he might need it. You always want to do that test first, find out where they are, how deficient they are.

so for instance, we had two dogs. One was older, one was younger. They were both on diets that were labeled as complete and balanced, formulated to be complete and balanced. And an acceptable level of vitamin D is a hundred to a hundred and fifty. The younger dog came in at like eighty-three and the older dog came in at forty on the same diet, but it’s just the older dogs not absorbing and assimilating as well. So we see that in our older pets. They’re not

Hannah Aylward (36:23.462)

going to get the nutrient value out of the p out of the food as well as the younger pets a lot of time. So it’s worth, you know, doing some testing, looking at that, and maybe saying with my older animal, maybe I need to add a digestive enzyme. Maybe I need to add a probiotic. Maybe I need to help them along a little bit to support them because as we age, our systems don’t work as well. Yeah. I that’s that is a it’s a great point and a question that I had. It’s like when you go to the pet store, you see

I mean, there’s a whole supplement aisle, just like for humans, you know? And I went the other day to buy litter and I we use like the natural pine litter because I just don’t like the chemicals, even though it’s kind of like a pain, but whatever. I don’t want the chemicals around my house, so I use the natural pine stuff. And I went to the store and I was like, There are so many supplements. And then I’m thinking, should he be on a supplement? How I mean my cat really presents with like no issues. However, maybe he’s hiding things, but I feel grateful.

But I mean, there’s no c like I don’t clean with any chemicals. Perfect. I’ve he’s had very, very minimal exposure to any vaccines, any medication, anything like that. He’s been eating this food, which I’m sure could be better, but it’s not dried. It’s like you I can see the fish. I I see the fish in the food. I see the vegetables in the food. And I’m mindful of air quality. We have air purifiers. We have like I he gets filtered water, all of that. He’s a lucky kid. He’s chilling and he’s never really shown any issues except for the one

fleet incident that we had and then he got like tapeworms and it was like a whole disaster. But go ahead. my and I had no idea. I was like, what is happening? But my little brother was like on this kick of saving cats and then bringing them into the house. And then this is how it happened. Which is beautiful in thought. And then you know it escalated. But I’m I’m like, do does he need more? And I had a probiotic supplement for him before, but I would love to talk about that and and testing. So like if I if if anyone listening was gonna take their

their pet to the vet, like what are good labs that we should be running? Should we be doing stool tests? Should we be checking for parasites and things like that? Vitamin D. And then also if we were to add supplements that were I mean, I know a lot of the work that we do, it’s like we test and we customize supplement interventions based on the labs for for humans, right? Is it the same with animals or is it more like broad spectrum probiotic okay? Or what are your thoughts there? So you absolutely can do a lot of testing. And some of it you can do yourself.

Hannah Aylward (38:47.416)

And some of it you need blood draw, so gonna require the veterinarian. So for instance, microbiome, send in a poop sample. We’ve got test kits for that on the website. And you don’t need to go to the veterinarian. You can look at the microbiome. And interestingly, I took my my healthiest dog, my one with, you know, no anything going on, great GI tract, never had any issues, middle age, and I said, you know what, I’m just gonna send in her microbiome test and see what we get. And we came back, looked really good, everything’s in the

You know, gr they give you green, yellow, red. Everything’s in green. I’m like, it looks good. I looked at it a little closer and I went, she’s got some antibiotic resistant bacteria in there. Why? Like that’s a little crazy. So I did an FMT, which is a fecal microbiome transplant, which basically I gave her one capsule a day for a month. And I was doing this as an experiment. And then I rechecked. And when it came back, all the antibiotic resistant bacteria were gone.

And her yeast and fungal diversity had gone up by a lot just by doing that. So I took an animal who seemed very, very healthy, but there was actually some underlying stuff simmering that I didn’t know about, and then we made it great. So that anybody could do. We also have a hair mineral analysis. So if you want to say, Okay, does does my dog have a zinc deficiency or a magnesium deficiency, it’s amazing how many.

things we find are out of whack. Or, you know, sometimes you’ll get it back and it says his cadmium level or, you know, something nasty is really high. And then you go, might need to detox. I might need to make some changes, might need to make some supplements. So that is something that anybody could send in on their own as well. Vitamin D, vitamin B, folate, cobalamin, those kinds of things, that’s going to require a blood test. We have the kits for that, but you still got to take it to your veterinarian to get the blood draw. Or, you know, they may

have the ability to, you know, add it on to lab tests at their office. With my own animals, I take them in once a year and just have a CBC chemistry, urinalysis, and stool sample. And it depends on your pet’s lifestyle. We live on a farm. Your indoor cat never goes outside, stool sample is going to probably be negative year after year. If you he has no exposure except for when you got the fleas and you got tapeworms. Hey, do you need to do that every year? And

Hannah Aylward (41:12.394)

My god, the prices I’m seeing lately are crazy. Like $75 to run a stool sample. It’s like, get out It doesn’t go outside, it doesn’t go anywhere. My dogs have never had a positive stool sample. But again, I live on a farm and I’m like, yeah, maybe. Totally. And if you have a younger animal, maybe you don’t need to go every year. Maybe you go, you know, every few years or you wait until they hit middle age, whatever that is. I my goal is to have our dogs living to 20 and our cats living to 30. So where’s middle age? Middle

What I consider middle age, most people consider one foot or three feet in the grave. So you know, big difference. But you know, so it depends. If you have a pet with chronic problems, you you might be there more often and you but monitoring things. So, like when I had my clinics for animals that were on chronic medications, and our goal was always to get them off as much as possible. But for instance, if we had dogs who were chronically on non-steroidal anti-inflammation.

For arthritis or you know, whatever pain. And you know, we’re because a lot of times they’re on something like that while we’re working on okay, we’re gonna do acupuncture, we’re gonna do cold laser, we’re gonna do chiropractic, but they’re painful right now, and I’ve got to use something until we get things going in the right direction. And that could take some time. But I would insist that we do lab work and look at their kidney and liver function every three months, which most people would say that’s overkill. And my answer is: listen, the second

something changes in their kidney or liver function, I want to know. So I’m on top of it and I change it immediately. I don’t want to wait a year and then they come in and I go, crap. He’s in like stage three kidney failure right now. No it so because they’re so good at hiding their symptoms. So it really just depends. You know, like right now I’ve got one who takes one heart medication and everybody else is drug free.

And their lab work looks great. I still do it every year just because that’s who I am, but looks great every year. And I’m like, that’s awesome. Yeah. I love I love normal lab results on my own pets. Yes. Yes, we do. I know. So the work that we do is like we run stool samples on humans, right? That’s like the core of our work. So I’ve been curious to run one on him and just see. I mean, and then you hear how like we check for H. pylori in humans, and you hear how cats can be.

Hannah Aylward (43:29.434)

sure. Like giving humans H. pylori and all of that kind of stuff. And you can test for all that. It’s just, you know, just like hormonal panels that we do on people. It’s very rarely added on to a pet panel. But, you know, unless we see there’s a problem. But I kind of feel like we should be looking at their cortisol levels and their thyroid levels. And you know, we should be looking at a lot of these hormone levels a lot more. It just gets ridiculously expensive. Yeah.

And so for most pet parents, it’s a I can’t do that. You know, in human medicine, some of it’s covered by insurance, some of it isn’t. I I know that because I go to a naturopath and sometimes they get a really big bill. but for me, it’s important for me to know. so you know, our our goal is that we could get things kind of packaged up and maybe make it a little better for our our pets. But in general, veterinarians are not going to look at cortisol unless they think that your pet has a

and you know, enough symptoms of an adrenal problem. but I would say that for a lot of our pets with behavior problems, anxiety, aggression, we need to be looking at their vitamin levels, we need to be looking at their hormone levels, and we definitely need to look at their microbiome. But the gut brain axis, it talks all the time. And if we’re having behavior problems, I guarantee we’ve got gut problems going on that we may or may not know about.

It’s so fascinating. Cause I mean, we’re we’re speaking the same language just with humans and then animals. Yep. Exactly. Right. So that’s really, yeah, really amazing to to hear and not surprising at all, right? They mean hydration, sleep, you know, sun exposure, all of that kind of stuff. Did they have speaking of sun exposure briefly, you know, I try to my cat Winston, he goes outside every morning, like on the balcony and like gets sunlight and he wants to do that and I do that.

Pay own health, so we get our circadian rhythm syncing together. Is is that important for animals as well? Absolutely. So light in general is very important and we’re learning more and more about that. And we’re doing a lot more red light therapy with the animals. It is really critical. And it’s interesting. Many years ago before I was holistic.

Hannah Aylward (45:47.223)

I had good friends and clients that had five cats, and they also had two big dogs, and the dogs would chase the cats. So the cats were basement cats. They lived in the basement. And they had a very nice area to live. It wasn’t like, you know, it wasn’t like being in the dungeon. But it was a basement. It was below ground. It had a couple tiny windows. And their cats ended up all getting ringworm. So they all had a fungus growing on their skin. And so, you know, we

Tried the shampoos and we tried medications and we went through all the different things and could not get these cats to clear up. And I said, Well, they’re living in a basement in New Jersey. So, you know, we’ve got, you know, kind of mold issues just from being in that sort of environment. And I said, Okay, I need you to get big wire dog crates. I need to put your cats in And every day in the morning, you’re gonna take your caps and their crates, put them in the backyard in the bright sun.

And then every night they can go back in the basement for overnight. And it only took a few days and everything cleared up because sunlight is the best treatment for mold problems. So you know, we don’t think about how critical it is. And for people with indoor I mean, most of our dogs go outside, but for our cats, yeah, it’s indoor air pollution for one thing that is a problem. I I had to do a talk on that once, and it is amazing.

When we test urine, blood, and hair from cats, dogs, and people all living in the same environment. If there are toxins like chemical cleaners, VOCs, whatever in your environment, we have sort of the baseline that we find in people. And then a dog living in the same household is going to have levels like six to eight times higher than the people. Cats are like 20 times higher. Cats like super concentrate everything in their bodies.

And yeah, I mean it’s amazing that they we we see a lot of cancers in dogs. The rate right now is one point six eight out of every two dogs. That’s my god. That’s like most dogs are going to have a cancer diagnosis of some sort in their lifetime. Really bad. it’s not quite as high in cats, and I don’t know why. I th yeah, personally, I think it’s just because we don’t get them diagnosed because they don’t go to the vet as often. Yeah. That’s I think that’s the only reason. Because I think that particularly for our cats who are exposed to indoor air issues.

Hannah Aylward (48:10.071)

Yeah. and no sunlight and you know, cigarette smoke and chemicals. I mean it’s just it’s a huge problem for them. And most of them are fed wrong. Most people are feeding highly processed kibble to their cats and it’s absolutely the wrong thing to feed them. So, you know, I think that’s why we have so many issues. But very like the percentage of cats that go to the veterinarian is so low.

Very, very I know. I’m I’m not gonna lie, he admitted the vet now. Well, and can you blame people? Like you’ve got something with eighteen sharp weapons and then, you know, thirty sharp weapons up here and put in a box. Yeah. he does not want to. Well, the other thing, and I I have so many comments to make on this. So one of them is I’ve heard so we see a lot of people with mold illness, and it causes chronic gut issues in humans, skin issues, fungal overgrowth in the gut that can then express on the skin, rashes.

yeast infections, right? So it’s once again, it’s like we’re speaking the same language, just like slightly in different areas, which is just fascinating to me, but not surprising. And it’s just truly amazing. But we see a lot of people with mold issues. And I lived in mold and he was with me when we were there and I got out, I tested myself, I got out, I detoxed myself, and then I was looking, how do I detox him? Because he’s had the exposure as well. So

I wasn’t sure what to do. And I was looking, I was trying to research companies. And I’m like, you know, for humans, we give them like bio support and binder and nutrient binders and nutrients and all of that. And we get them sweating, but he’s not sweating. So I’m like, how is he excreting these toxins? And in my research, I was also finding that it’s very common for the animals to get sick as well. And then you bring them to the vet and no one has any idea. But of course, my brain already thinks that way. So I’m thinking, I’m immediately thinking I need to detox him in some in some way. And I was also reading that.

Since they’re usually lower to the floor, like dogs are on the floor and cats are on the floor, and these mycotoxins from mold settle in dust and they fall on the floor oftentimes or like on the windowsill where like the cats love to sit, that they’re just getting all of this exposure to the That’s why their levels are so much higher. Yeah, exactly. So I mean, if someone is like dealing with mold, which I want I wanted to touch on, and fortunately now we’re we’re not, and I do a lot to keep that out, and I’m like very conscious of that.

Hannah Aylward (50:25.787)

But it’s like, what does someone do? How do they take care of their pet if while they’re taking care of themselves? We actually have a mold detox protocol that’s a free download on the website. Perfect. I’m gonna I’m gonna get it. I love that. Is it is is there supplementation involved? Yeah. Yeah. So you know, we’re gonna want to detox the liver because the liver is the you know, it’s the filter. So we use things for that, like milk thistle, dandelion, yeah, you know, a lot of different things for that.

Sometimes we’ll use some sort of a clay as a binder. Yeah. MCT oil is really beneficial. So there’s there’s a lot of different things listed. And you know, the biggest problem with cats is getting things into them. Some things cats will take no problem. You can put it in their food. Yeah, no big deal. Other things they’re like, yeah, no, I’m not going to. And so usually and dogs are pretty good. Like if you give them good

Good food and mix stuff it. They’re like, Why food? Yeah. You like wrap it in a piece of meat or something. They’ll just eat it. Like my I can I my dogs get so many supplements and a lot of them are powders, but they’re eating raw or gently cooked food. So it’s really easy to mix stuff in with it. And they don’t notice, they don’t care. It’s you know, it’s no big deal. most of the supplements that I have for our cats, again, I’m mixing it in their food and they’re like, whatever, I don’t care. Okay. but

So if you have a cat and if there’s, you know, five things on the list, start with one and see if your cat will take that one and you know, then kind of move to the next one and see if they’ll take that one so that you don’t, you know, buy six things at once and then your cat says, I’m not eating any of those. I know. He’s so picky. They’re so picky. He doesn’t even want to change food. That’s a cat. Yeah. Cause I tried to get this better quality food too. That was like literally, I think the only ingredient was like wild salmon. Like that was it.

was some brand that I’d read about. Maybe there was one other thing and he just wouldn’t eat it. And I spent like, of course it’s pricey and which is whatever, but I’m like, Well now you can get him to eat it. That’s the great thing about the the independent pet stores, the smaller ones, not the big box stores. A lot of times they can give you a little sample or you can just buy like one can. or they may have little sample bags. so that you can kind of take things home and try them and you know, and they can also

Hannah Aylward (52:43.431)

The people at those stores are usually pretty highly trained and they can kind of give you ideas like, yeah, most pet parents say their cats love this one. Yeah, this one’s kinda like, yeah, it’s hit or miss. you know, so I would definitely recommend using them as a resource. Yeah. No, that’s great. Okay. So biggest things like that I’m taking away from all of this is some some lab work and potentially moldy talks. And I’m gonna trial maybe adding in

Some bone broth and seeing if he’ll if he’ll do it. He should. If he’ll yeah. Just like even like a tablespoon to start or something. Like yeah, just mix it, you know, just mix it in with his food. He’s already eating high moisture food. So caps are kind of funny. They’re they’re very texture sensitive. So I would start with a small amount and see how soupy he’ll let you make it. and he may surprise you. You may put it in a bowl and he decides to just drink it. You you just never know. all caps are different. And like eat we

give raw milk to our barn cats and some of them love it. They’re standing in line twice a day and others are like, I don’t really care. So you know, they’re all different. And then potentially other supplements, maybe, maybe probiotic, maybe enzymes. And then I I think the omega is, yeah, the EPA and DHA is is a is a great call there too. And then, you know, this once again I’m out I’m outing myself on this podcast, but hopefully I don’t sound like a bad pet parent. I think he’s pretty happy and he’s doing pretty good. So there’s that. But

The other thing is like if I were to take him to the vet, he hasn’t had a rabies shot in years. So they won’t take you. I think it’s like I you know, they not all the vets will take you. He’s had it before because you have to get him to live certain places and things like that. But I wanted to to talk about that because it’s like for for pet owners that do try to be more mindful of the exposure to these things, like what do we do? ‘Cause I I think I don’t even know if I could

Take him into a va. I know they’re gonna try to give him a rabies vax, which is like fine, I guess. But I’m like, I don’t really want to do it because he doesn’t even go outside. So rabies is the hard one because it’s zoonotic, so you know, you don’t want to be bitten by a rabid animal. Right. and it’s also required, like legally required. And you know, the big thing is that on the vaccine.

Hannah Aylward (55:03.229)

labels on the inserts for all vaccines, not just rabies, it says to be given to a healthy pet. Well, I I would posit that at least half the pets out there are not healthy. And you know they’re dealing with chronic inflammatory diseases, many of them. But if you ask the traditional veterinarians, like one of my dogs had cancer and I took her to an oncologist and I said, let’s just say that she was due for a rabies vaccine. Would you say that she could get it? She has cancer and you’re giving her chemotherapy

And she said, yeah, that’d be no problem. I’m like, why is that no problem? Like, our immune system can’t even process that. How is that no problem? It is a problem for pet owners who want to minimally vaccinate. and so here’s the weird conundrum. You want to take your cat to the veterinarian to get blood work. And they tell you that your cat has to be up to date on rabies to be seen. So they will make you an appointment to.

Bring your unvaccinated cat in to get vaccinated. And while you’re there, they’ll be happy to pull the lab work. But the vaccine hasn’t had time to take effect. So how did that protect anybody? Like this is this is pretzel logic. And so I don’t get it. I’m also just like, he’s not even outside. He never is outside. I understand he could like get loose and like that is he could get loose. And the big thing is if you live in so on the East Coast, we have raccoon.

rabies and fox rabies on the west coast and southwest we have bat rabies. So if you live there and you get a bat in your house and there’s no way to tell if it bit your cat because they make these little tiny razor bites that you can’t see would never find. and if your pet isn’t up to date on vaccines, it’s like, okay, now they’re quarantined, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, yeah. That gets to be like I found a bat in my house once and I was like and it was dead. And I’m like, did the cats kill it? Did it come down the chimney? Like how did this thing get here?

It’s a minuscule chance. what I would say to people, if you have to get a rabies vaccine, tell we’ve got these new messenger RNA or self-amplifying RNA vaccines that the pharmaceutical companies are saying these are much safer, lower dose, blah, blah, blah. They haven’t been out very long. We don’t know anything about them. We don’t know if they shed. We don’t know how they amplify. I would insist that we’re not using that. Okay. and then I would also insist on a

Hannah Aylward (57:28.969)

thimerosol free. So thimerosol is the preservative and there is a thimerosol free rabies vaccine available. So, you know, if I called up and said I want an appointment to get some blood work done and they said you have to have a rabies vaccine, I would say, Good, do you carry the thimerosol free that is not a messenger RNA vaccine, that will talk. Okay. And I would want to see the label. Like I would want to know exactly which vaccine they were using so I could look it up.

It’s it’s getting more and more difficult to find a veterinarian who will see an animal that’s not up to date on and some of them are really crazy. And they’re like, they have to be up date on Distemper, Parvo, rabies, Kennel cop, and that would be my I’ll go elsewhere. Thank you very much. Okay. If you can find a holistic veterinarian, there aren’t that many, but if you can find best way for people to find one is AHVMA dot org, which is the American Holistic Veterinarian Medical Association dot org. H V A.

they do have a vet finder by state. Now, I give you the caveat that that means they’re a member. They may or may not be really holistic. They may do acupuncture, but they’re also selling pesticides. So you’d have to still do your due diligence and ask questions. you know, sometimes we can find house call vets that will come and do these things, which for cats is amazing.

The other thing that I’m seeing more and more of in traditional medicine is that if you want to bring your cat in, they’re going to tell you to give it gapapentin so it’ll be sedate when it gets there because they want all the animals sedated and I am not in agreement with that. But I would also so you said your cat doesn’t like his box. I would take your carrier and put it out in your living room and throw treats in there.

Put a nice cushy bed or some catnip toys in there and just leave it open and leave it there as a piece of furniture so that your cat’s like, this is kind of fun. I like it in here. Like it’s my hidey hole. Yeah. so we need to train our cats to be better citizens for travel. So that’s one of the ways that anybody can do that. Take your carrier and just leave it out where your cat can go in and out, in and out, and make it so that it’s a good thing, so that the day you want to take him somewhere, if you can kind of

Hannah Aylward (59:44.139)

Catch him when he’s in already. Like put his morning food or whatever in there and then just close the door. Yeah. You know, try to make it not so I mean, think about it. If if you’re a small animal and you’re put in a box and then this person is walking along swinging you back and forth, and then they put you in this loud vehicle that’s vibrating and you know, half the time the box is rolling around the backseat, you know, and then you get somewhere that smells really

Weird and there’s all these strangers who want to touch you and they’re scruffing you. And you know, I just imagine being like a tiny person and the giants coming along and grabbing me by the back of the neck and telling me what I was gonna do. No, totally. He freaking hates the car. my gosh. But he’s so friendly and he’ll walk right up to you and he is not faced, he’s not scared, he’s not hiding. He’s like

So great like that. I think I got I don’t know if I got lucky. I don’t know what happened, but he’s like kind of a cat with like a dog’s personality. Friendly and and kind of chill and is not really freaking out. But the car he’s like he does he really doesn’t love it. But that makes sense because he also doesn’t get in the carrier a ton. So it’s like every time like if the only time you get in something, you have a bad experience. Like we’re going somewhere. I’m not doing that. so things like C B D. yes, I do give him these little flower essences, you know, herbs.

And there’s essential oils, there’s a lot of things that we can do to try to like get, you know, there are homeopathic drops for anxiety and you can layer on things and just say, okay, like so for instance, this morning our cleaning ladies were coming and I have two five year old dogs who get really stupid. They’re small, but they get really stupid when the cleaning ladies come. And so I end up having to put them in a crate and keep them in a room with Mickey.

So that they can’t run around and be fools and do stupid things. And so last night I gave them their tranquil times, herbal drops, and C B D. And this morning they got that again. And today they were much better than usual. But it’s like, okay, I gotta be a little proactive. I have to remember that you’re gonna go stupid tomorrow. So I’m gonna make you smarter right now. I’m gonna make you be like, Okay, there’s somebody here.

Hannah Aylward (01:02:01.301)

So, you know, there’s a lot that we can do to and you know when it’s no fun for them when they’re in that high anxiety state, things that you can do to try to take the edge off. And you might need to start a couple days ahead of time. Like, yeah, okay, we’re just gonna make you really mellow. Yeah. No, that’s a great call. And are things like this, do you have like a store on your website for things like that as well? Yep. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Awesome. So we have a great resource. So just to kind of I feel like I c we could talk forever, but j for anyone who’s

Been like this is really eye opening. I want to take better care of my pets. I haven’t really thought that much about this, to be honest. What are like three to five things that they can do and start to implement to kind of better the quality of life and and longevity and health for their pets? So as much fresh food as possible. so even if you’re feeding a dry kibble to your cat or your dog, see if you can get them to eat some fresh foods, eggs, sardines, berries. And this raw eggs? It can be raw or cooked, it doesn’t matter. If you’re scared of feeding raw, that’s fine. Okay.

My dogs will eat whatever. So will my cats. if I leave a a dozen eggs in a carton in my barn and forget to lock it up somewhere, I’ve got cats eating a dozen, like they open it and they just eat them. so so some fresh food is is really, really critical. If you’re using chemical pesticides on your pets, we need to get rid of that right now. and then, you know.

really look at your pet’s lifestyle as far, you know, if your vet is saying they need to get all these vaccines every single year. And the biggest problem is for people with dogs that go to boarding grooming daycare, we need to educate those people better about how long vaccines last because a lot of them last five to seven or more years. and we don’t need to give them all the time. So it’s a matter of educating. And we can also do blood titers to see whether they have protection. And if they do, don’t give any more. so our website

And our social media is all under naturally healthy pets, and we have just tons of free resources available. And then I’m working on book number 10, but on our website, if you use Nutrient50, you can get 50% off any of the books that I’ve written. It’s really about empowering yourself through education. We also have Dr. Judy U with courses available if people want to learn how to make your own food or how to get your cat to change his diet.

Hannah Aylward (01:04:22.256)

Just tons of information. So the most important thing that people can do is get educated so that, you know, when you’re standing in the veterinary office, you have that knowledge and you can say, I I I really don’t think he needs that. And I really don’t want to do that. And it’s okay if we agree to disagree, but I’m gonna say no today. You know, make up your mind before you go. Like this is okay. This is not okay. I’m gonna stand my ground, but I’m gonna be nice about it.

and then, you know, maybe your pet is doing really well and you’re like, okay, he looks great, he’s doing great. I don’t take him to the vet a lot. That’s fine. But still, let’s get some fresh food in the bowl if we’re not doing that already. Make sure they’re getting exercise, they’re getting outside, they have that mental stimulation. By the way, cats, over 80% of cats that live in the house are highly, highly stressed because they don’t get to do cat things. Cats climb, cats pounce.

Cats hunt and we don’t give them the opportunity to do that. So when your cat is climbing on top of your refrigerator, on your cabinets, he’s doing that because cats like to be up high. And we keep telling them not to do that, but they’re that’s a normal cat behavior. And then as far as the hunting and pouncing, one it’s their exercise too, it’s their nature. They are prey animals.

So a lot of people will do like laser tag with their cats. By the way, you can teach your cats to do anything. My daughter taught hers to sit and come and fetch and do all these things with a high-value treat. She used freeze-dried chicken hearts. They work really well. But if you’re playing laser tag with your cat, which is a great form of exercise and it does make them really crazy and they act like they’ve totally lost their mind, make sure at the end of laser tag, they win. They get the prey. So you can’t just turn off the light and walk away. Your cat’s gonna be like,

It was right there. I don’t know where it went. So make sure you throw a a catnip toy or a little fuzzy mouse or a tree. Something has to land where they last saw that laser. So they go and then they walk away like I’m the king of the forest. it’s really important for our cats that they have that mental stimulation. We think they don’t need exercise and then they’re just, you know, lap blankets. Not true. They need movement, they need height, they need hunting.

Hannah Aylward (01:06:42.626)

like if I watch my outside cats with they’re active a lot. I’m sure. They’re they’re leaping through the air grabbing grasshoppers. I mean, it’s kind of amazing to watch. and when they have a mouse, they play with the mouse for like they spent they brought a rat, a water rat, up out of the woods onto my back patio. I didn’t realize it. I knew they were doing something out on the back patio all day. And finally, like dinner time, I’m like, I’m gonna go see what the heck these cats are doing out here.

They had a water rat that they brought up from the woods and cornered it under one of the chairs. And so they had been chasing it back and forth under the furniture all day. It was a great game. my god. And I’m like, guys, doesn’t no. Yeah. So the the poor rat, I felt really bad for it. So I had to kind of herd all the caps in one direction and then chase the rat back to the woods. And I’m like, listen, if they come down there and get you, you know, that’s on you. But I just I know you escape for now, but it was a really rough day.

my gosh. Yeah. So lots of like stimulation and and movement. Yeah. That makes sense. I know sometimes I feel bad because I’m like, he’s just in this apartment. I try to play with him, but I’m like, I feel like he would love to run around, you know? So yeah. Balls. We throw balls and toys and have him jumping for things and stuff like that. So it’s good to I sometimes I’m like, he needs to get his steps in. I’m over here counting my steps. Yeah. Exactly. I I do my brain does think this way. So

Well, yeah, thank you so much for all of this. We covered so much. We touched on like circadian rhythm. We touched on diet. We touched on toxin exposure, detoxification, supplements, testing. There’s so much that we can do to better take care of our pets. And you give us some great ways to connect further with you. So I know I’m gonna go dive into those resources myself, like truly. So yeah, thanks so much for your time. Thank you very much. Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Nutrient Dense Podcast.

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