E341-What Your Dog’s Poop Says About Their Health! Dr Holly Ganz

[SPEAKER_00]: So thanks for coming on.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have gone through this whole scenario with my
[SPEAKER_00]: experiment that I've been doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I originally spoke with Ronnie Habib.
[SPEAKER_00]: We worked through all sorts of different stuff about the gut biome and try to figure out what's going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I am this podcast is has just been so amazing for me to be able to connect with people like you and learn more about dogs, but learn more about all sorts of different medical.
[SPEAKER_00]: avenues as we go down to, especially science now is coming out with all these new stuff and I'm so excited to speak with you and if you don't mind could you just give us an introduction of who you are and what you've been doing with your with your company.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, thank you Tom.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm Holly Gantz.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm the Chief Science Officer and the co-founder of Animal Biome, which is a company that is dedicated to improving
[SPEAKER_02]: cats and dogs.
[SPEAKER_02]: I am a microbial ecologist which means that I think about how microbes interact with each other and with their animal hosts.
[SPEAKER_02]: I did my PhD at UC Davis thinking about these kinds of questions and then really started thinking about cats and dogs more deeply when I adopted a herding dog and grad school and she became like you know the love of our lives and just ruled our lives as herding dogs do and eventually.
[SPEAKER_02]: She developed a GI condition called hemorrhagic gastroenteritis, which is basically bloody diarrhea and can also be involved vomiting.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's really severe to acute and acute situation right at the end.
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, she had to be hospitalized and put on fluids because it can be really severe.
[SPEAKER_02]: And prior to that, she'd had like a casser and gut.
[SPEAKER_02]: But she'd had like, she'd been hit by cars and puppies
[SPEAKER_02]: and said's for pain for her whole life and that kind of constant pain management can, you know, whittle away with the gut bacteria.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I developed a way of restoring the gut microbiome with a oral fecal transplant capsule.
[SPEAKER_02]: She was my patient alpha and she, uh, we were able to solve this problem which we had been living with for like a year and a half for literally like if she picked
[SPEAKER_02]: and we weren't looking, she would have bloody diarrhea again, and it was really scary.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we could only feed her, like my vet was like, just give her, like, fimes, kibble, and rice, or like chicken and rice, and that's it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's him weird, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: But anyway, we were able to, it was just, we were living on this nice edge for a long, long time until we figured out how to restore the bacteria that she had lost.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I really wanted to make these tools
[SPEAKER_02]: So I had to get them to work and start in the company.
[SPEAKER_00]: And how long ago was that now, how old you're dog now?
[SPEAKER_02]: She passed away, but she made it at almost 18, which is pretty good for my dog.
[SPEAKER_02]: Of course, I know.
[SPEAKER_02]: We all want them to live to be their 20s, but I thought she might until, of course, she got cancer, but after she was, so this was 10 years ago.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so she was going to be a senior dog at that point, but she like, you know, never had the problem again and was active and playful till like really last few months of her life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, let's back that up a little bit on your on this.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you created, so you found out that the,
[SPEAKER_00]: Basically, you know, to, and lay misterms to somebody who doesn't have a PhD in this, it sounds like the, the gut was really sensitive.
[SPEAKER_00]: So anything that we ate, like if it was a rock or a wood chip, it would then cause more severe bloody stool.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that correct?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it wasn't even just like eating rocks or whatever she and.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like at that point I got one of those boxes with treats and toys and it every month for her whatever but like she yeah she could meet any of the treats so I was like don't send me an industry she can only one treat and one food and if she found some piece of food because yeah people like.
[SPEAKER_02]: drop chicken wings, bones or whatever, like, I mean, she wasn't even a whole bone, but anything.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we never knew, but like something would just send her over the edge again.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we thought, you might think it's food sensitivities, but it was really, it wasn't.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was that her gut had like, was so depleted, it just couldn't process a lot of the different kinds of foods that you come contact with.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's where I think like a lot of people listening and including me, when we have this either it's it's something to do with the poop or it's something to do with the ears or it's something to do with the itchiness or in some cases in my case with my master, it ends up coming out to be this external dermatitis and so so many people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Listening to this and watching this deal with, yeah, my dog has my dog licks their feet every night and my dog's pads the webbing is all read and irritated and there's all this gunk in there or there's there's the ears that are read and flamed and this is such a problem of
[SPEAKER_00]: I think generalize inflammation that's so many dog owners deal with and and I went through and I'll just give you a quick brief really quickly about my dog burly.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a South African master of AKA a bore bull and so it wasn't until I had another that on Dr. Eva Frick.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's a K9 Kyle Proctor and she said.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a really exotic breed and exotic breeds are very difficult to kind of nail down what and like if they're outside of their environment right like because he's his environment in South Africa because his mom and dad were both born and raised in South Africa.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the biome I would assume would be like humans kind of pass down and what's in there, but I'm not sure, but he started off at like eight months old starting to get this, these, these little rings, and they almost, it looked like ringworm if you don't know what ringworm is.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like, oh, I would assume that's ringworm.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's these little red circles on his belly, and then eventually it turned out to just,
[SPEAKER_00]: come over his back and he started losing fur, like they had made.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so for the longest time from an uneducated dog owner, it was, it's got to be allergies, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So then we went to single ingredient protein.
[SPEAKER_00]: That didn't really work.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm still actively working on it, but it wasn't until,
[SPEAKER_00]: my own son had really, really bad exima.
[SPEAKER_00]: And actually, my son's skin condition at like eight months and my dog skin condition at eight months, look the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: Their skin was raised, red, inflamed, tender, uncomfortable.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it wasn't until my wife and I doing all the research on skin
[SPEAKER_00]: that every single reference and scientific evidence and all the research now is pointing towards the gut.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so again, as new parents and again, as just an uneducated dog owner about the microbiome and dogs, once I started tinkering with my son's diet, we started to see a change.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's when I started doing research on the gut, biome for dogs, I said, wait a minute,
[SPEAKER_00]: And so then I started diving into gut health for dogs, and of course, now I've opened up Pandora's Box.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm so interested.
[SPEAKER_00]: So can you just kind of start from the beginning of what a gut biome is for a dog?
[SPEAKER_00]: And what it's responsible for and why it can change not only the dog skin, but even behavior and how they act.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, definitely.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the, yeah, something that really people didn't think about much about before like 20 years ago and just barely the beginning then and so the gut microbiome is really like a ecosystem.
[SPEAKER_02]: That lives inside us and so, you know, yeah, we think about like our food goes through and it comes out right and along the way, they're all these bacteria and other microbes that are found along our GI tract, I mean, less of the stomach, but we all know about helicobacter right like that's part of the stomach microbiome.
[SPEAKER_02]: And these bacteria actually serve important roles.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like we used to think like when I took biology, we learned about digestion, but we just thought about the host genetics and like what enzymes the host makes.
[SPEAKER_02]: But actually the bacteria that live inside us
[SPEAKER_02]: actually encode for hundreds of times more enzymes than weak our own genes encode for.
[SPEAKER_02]: So they're playing really, really critical roles, not just in digestion, but of course starting with that.
[SPEAKER_02]: They also interact with the host immune system and help to train it to function properly.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we get exposed to the, when we're born, we don't have a lot of bacteria in our gut.
[SPEAKER_02]: By these these organisms during birth is different and puppies are because they're in the little case, but then the mother licks them right as soon as they're born and so she's starting to not kill like them with good bacteria and it's been shown at least in people that like the birth can actually the bacteria that are found in the birth now change prior to birth and so.
[SPEAKER_02]: Our bodies know from evolutionary, you know, our evolutionary history like to do these things and to promote the growth of certain bacteria so that the babies survive better and.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so getting out to the 70% of the immune cells in our body occur along the gut and that makes sense because we're bringing in like four and objects right and it might have a blue born pathogen right and.
[SPEAKER_02]: Our body has to defend against invasions from the gut into our body and then one, the other two, the will there's many ways in which the gut is foundational to health and
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, so we talk about axes like there's the gut skin access, which you've referred to.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so when the, when the gut becomes chronically inflamed, sometimes manifests with chronic skin inflammation.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we don't really know why that's more in some people than other people.
[SPEAKER_02]: But you know, it's an interaction between our genetics and, um, and our gut and the bacteria and how they're functioning inside our gut.
[SPEAKER_02]: But this, you know, uh,
[SPEAKER_02]: biologists like to talk about that basically skin is our the largest warden in our body.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it makes sense that there's a connection there.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's connection between the gut and the liver and the gut and the brain and some people say like the gut microbiome, this also like a third kidney.
[SPEAKER_02]: It so it can help with our osmotic balance and the clear way, which connects with the brain is that it actually is important for the production of certain neurotransmitters like serotonin.
[SPEAKER_02]: It can also help us feel full and tell us to stop eating.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then like our god bladder produces bile acids which help us digest fat and most of those bile acids are recycled in the body, but like 10% of them keep passing through and they are actually digested and broken down into
[SPEAKER_02]: better forms by the gut bacteria.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if those gut bacteria are not there, then the some of these chemicals can sort of pass through in ways that's irritating and potentially harmful to the body and may contribute to the development of chronic illness, like cancers.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's incredible.
[SPEAKER_00]: What?
[SPEAKER_00]: how everything is connected.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like once you start to go through it, like everything is connected.
[SPEAKER_00]: And at what age does a, you know, obviously, if you say like a puppy comes out, mom is a lick in the puppy, starting to to work on on everything, right, teaching them and and training them and cleaning them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, that that has a bunch of other things going on with the saliva and stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: So
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it kind of a crapshoot on when a puppy's gut starts to develop?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I know, again, like with my son and with people, there's things that you can eat and things that you can take and probiotics and pre-biotics and all that stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: But from a puppy standpoint, for people who are listening and watching
[SPEAKER_00]: Like when you have a younger dog and you're not starting to see the things that I started to see very early on, the inflammation, the the ready or the itching, is there anything like is it kind of like if the dog doesn't show these signs and they have a healthy gut or is there anything that dictates a dog's gut going going south or not not having a good gut got by him or how does that was it look of a draw, how does that work.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, no, this is really important.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think we're looking at them, observing them is really essential.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I feel like no tracker is going to do the same thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just the parent, the parent, watching, and seeing them.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so if they seem happy and playful, then that's good sign right to.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then the obvious thing that people like refocus on is the poop.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, it can tell us some things about what's happening on the inside, so it is one thing that some people find with their puppies is that when they, after they wien, their poop should go through a period of being soft, but then it should firm up, you know, in a normal period of time.
[SPEAKER_02]: And for some of them, it doesn't, and that can be an indication that there's something, but maybe they just didn't get all the right things from mom.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, some, some dogs,
[SPEAKER_02]: Just, I mean, it's breeding is hard on dogs too, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Then mothers have to eat like a vast quantity of food to be able to produce all that milk and they have soft stool during that and sometimes their puppies get diarrhea that other puppies wouldn't have a split, but that a problem within it, sometimes is related to what mom has.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we've done some studies to try and help if we can boost the microbiome of the mom, can we reduce some of those problems?
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're starting to see like when a puppy starts to maybe when you pick up your puppy at eight to ten weeks and the puppy has a loose stool for you know for a couple weeks then after after you switch to your to your puppy food or whatever is that when you're starting to see because I feel like all puppies have like a soft like soft serve like you know stool typically.
[SPEAKER_00]: So but but is that is out of sign that
[SPEAKER_00]: You should start researching into your, your, your puppies got biome or start supplementing or doing probiotics or how does, how does, how does, how does one when they get a puppy because that's the thing is a lot of people who are listening to this either have a puppy or of course they're dog people so they're going to get a puppy and their friends have puppies and so can you walk me through okay if your puppy does have loose stool what what's the first line of defense that you would recommend.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, I mean, yeah, I feel like if you have the right sort of time scale like several weeks like so it's normal for a week or two right when they're in a new place they're getting a new food for the stool to be soft and they're also puppies right.
[SPEAKER_02]: If this it doesn't start to firm up ads after several weeks then you know I might might to start to be concerned.
[SPEAKER_02]: Also, there are things you can do even right away like adding a, like a yeast probiotic, like sacromyce bilarii can help to alleviate some of that soft stool and there are many different companies that have it.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's actually a probiotic that was developed in France over a hundred years ago.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's widely used in Europe and it's only more recently been becoming popular here.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it helps to coat the intestinal lining and reduce inflammation.
[SPEAKER_02]: um, came from a traditional medicine from Polynesia that helped people with cholera.
[SPEAKER_02]: So okay, it's how long people are using that, but that's one thing you can just add a little bit and honestly like my rule of thumb with that is if you
[SPEAKER_02]: If you add too much, maybe they get constipated right goes to far the other direction.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then you can just back off.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not going to cause any harm.
[SPEAKER_02]: To be a queen and I and it like so if it's soft, if it, if it smells funny, if it's a weird color.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I know a lot of people think poop like dog poop just smells terrible, but There's degrees of that and I know getting pretty familiar with that can be helpful for your dog even though it sounds gross.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think it's the reality, you know, I was a professional dog walker for many years before I came a professional trainer, you know, I think I was I did it like five or six years before I even started training and so dog poop to me is like, I mean, it's like second nature I used to be a professional.
[SPEAKER_00]: poop pick her up her and then I worked at a manage and daycare for a long time.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, it's the same thing I think with doctors who who work in the medical field like they is just things that they see that other people would be like kind of like grossed out by and they're like it's it's nothing anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: So.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the so for and you do have my dogs test results for the gut buy on which we're going to dig into, because that's really, you know, fascinating to me, because when it came over, of course, I, and I said it over to Rodney, Ronnie, help me break it down and we started a game plan, but I'm really interested to see what you think about it as well, because it is your.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, your whole, you know, whole company, your whole ethos.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like for my dog at eight, at six to eight months, I can't remember exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, he started to get these, these little rings on his belly, like where he's bald, you know, underneath his, his groin area.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's where it started for him.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it started, you know, well before a year, is there, one of the, here's the frustrating thing from a dog owner's perspective is it seems that
[SPEAKER_00]: The medical veterinarians or the small animal that's aren't, and I'm, and this is more of a question.
[SPEAKER_00]: It seems like they're not educated on gut biome hardly at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: It seems.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when you initially, and I know this is, this is what happened to me as I presented this to a vet, and they said, well, we could do an allergy test, but like with humans, it's 50 50 chance it's going to be accurate or not it's really hard to know if a dog is actually allergic to something unless you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, really just start doing literally like one ingredient meals, which is obviously, you know, really difficult and and with a big he's a 160 something pounds with a big growing dog that's really, you know, it's it's tough to only give him one thing and not the other thing so.
[SPEAKER_00]: My, my, the first thing I did, which a lot of dog owners out here are listening, they go to their vet and they say, hey, my dogs ears are gross, my dogs pads are yucky they're itching all night they're chewing all night or in my case, which I think is in my opinion a little bit more like severe when you start to get like the dermatitis on the skin and you actually start to get like external.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess things going on like I don't like they were they ended up being like little like spots so when I went to the vet it was kind of like well he could be allergic he could not be allergic you need to go see a dermatologist to really figure it out and we went through.
[SPEAKER_00]: So much money, and I'm still going through it, by the way, it's a journey.
[SPEAKER_00]: So much money, so much time, and I felt really bad for everybody involved because the the veterinarians, which I loved dearly, I have them on my podcast regularly, they were like,
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't really know what this is.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to do a skin scrape and we're going to send it off and then they call and they say, hey, it's not ringworm.
[SPEAKER_00]: So then they would refer me to a specialist at dermatologist, which, of course, specialty for dogs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your months out, it's expensive.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I was just told, you know, God bless her.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was just like, hey, we're going to do we could do a shot quarterly.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't know if it's going to be the food allergy, we don't know if it's going to be an environmental allergy with the pollen or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: but our protocol as dermatologist are to do like topical anti-fungal and a quarterly shot to reduce.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I believe that would have been a steroid shot, I think, to reduce the inflammation.
[SPEAKER_00]: So can you help me and maybe you don't know, I'm assuming you do, but can you help me navigate
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, firstly, why the average veterinarian doesn't lean more in towards gut-buy, biome, can you just help me with that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because, you know, obviously that was really frustrating because once I started to look into gut-buyome and started doing FMTs, things started changing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I didn't have to do the shot and I didn't have to do this and these other things.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I think it's certainly been challenging.
[SPEAKER_02]: for me too because I thought I'm going to make these tools available for veterinarians and help like I think they really could be beneficial.
[SPEAKER_02]: But the way that people are taught to practice medicine is really like they're told this is how to practice medicine and they're not like
[SPEAKER_02]: Who has to come up with it on their own right and so it's only like the specialist or the more holistic practitioners who are really looking at what's the like cutting edge lay to staying to try and implement in my practice a lot of them are more conservative and if they didn't learn about it in school.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're reluctant to take it on.
[SPEAKER_02]: And why didn't they learn about it in school is really because I think up until like there are like 2,000 people who studied there were people working on bacteria and poop before that, but there weren't that many of them because that we didn't have the tools that DNA sequencing to see that a lot of these bacteria so there was important work that was happening, but it was kind of I feel like relegated to like the fringe or they were not friends scientists, but you know, it was just not.
[SPEAKER_02]: part of medicine.
[SPEAKER_02]: But then once they did the human genome project and they developed new technology, all of a sudden, we could see, wow, there's this vast ecosystem that's like another organ in the body.
[SPEAKER_02]: But the vet's schools didn't have the expertise.
[SPEAKER_02]: They weren't, like, they weren't into genomics at that point, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And they were starting to think about the dog genome or the leader of the catch genome.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, the human medicine is still ahead on this, I think.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now they are starting to get, you know, I think a few classes on it, they also didn't get a lot of nutrition either, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And these things kind of go hand in hand, nutrition in the microbiome.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know this generation who's in school, they want to learn about these things.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I have talked to some other veterinarians who were like, I mean, don't come around.
[SPEAKER_02]: We work with several thousand to some of them, you know, it is changing, but I had some others who just told
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, and I've been digging into that too with nutrition as well, the more I dig into, you know, because as a dog owner, we just, and we should just trust our vets, like that's we just that's, you know, why they went to school for so long, that's why, and they do and they're, and they're wonderful, but it's, you know, it's really frustrating, but it's also.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, to me, I just questioned everything now where and shout out to Dr. G at the VCA in my neighborhood because he was like, you know, whatever I want to work with your holistic vet, I want to know what Rodney says, I want to know what the gut biome says, like help us help you because we we don't we know how important this is, but you know, we don't this not our forte and it's so from a dog owners perspective, of course, we
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we're like, hey, we're going to go to the doctor and the doctor's going to tell us what to do, but I had to go down this, you know, really interesting path to then go to a specialist of dermatology to say,
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, this is, you know, super, and flame the super uncomfortable.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're gonna do, you know, a steroid shot.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, but it's a, but it's the same thing with my son.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we did a topical steroid.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it did reduce the inflammation and half of it were more comfortable, which of course is number one.
[SPEAKER_00]: But of course it's not sustainable and it's not the, it's not, it's not going to the source of the inflammation of the gut, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think that that's, what can, is there any recommendation
[SPEAKER_00]: to a regular dog owner who goes to the veterinarian that is showing signs of an imbalance gut where the veterinarian says, we need to go to a dermatologist or a specialist or you need to do this cream.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there any, like, I want to dig into the things that your company's doing where you can check by yourself because I know with the test that we did, it's like any other test you do for yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: You send it back out and then you get results and then you can actually see.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's start with the classical science, what are the classical signs of a dog that has an imbalance gut?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what are the things people are going to see?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, so typically it's either like the what they call like a chronic interoperacy, which is like chronic, like diarrhea, or could be chronic constipation, catacults would be like having trouble passing hairballs right a lot of vomiting
[SPEAKER_02]: But it also can be skin, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Some of these skin conditions really are another manifestation of what the callic imbalance or dyspiosis in the gut.
[SPEAKER_02]: And for my perspective, like what we've, because like not all veterinarians want to like, do microbiome testing, even though it's more affordable than the blood work that they're sending out, usually a long shot.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can just do it directly.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then like we have veterinary technicians who will like go through the results with you and help you like figure out
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, we really want to, when possible, to involve the veterinarian in that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, but they don't always, you know, I understand they're like, putting out fires, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: They've like, doing surgery and making sure that people aren't bleeding out and all that stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, they may not have time, but there are practices for, especially like, I think some of the smaller practices or holistic practitioners or the specialists take more time with each case, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: But they allow that and they can really focus more and really consider things.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I do recommend like if, I mean, and you can go to one of two ways like you could not test and just assume they're just biotic, which probably most of the time they are.
[SPEAKER_02]: But for my perspective, I think the test is reasonably priced and get less you know that that that they really are like missing some of the bacteria that help the gut function or.
[SPEAKER_02]: Or not, and then if you do something and you can sort of check back and see how it's responding, of course, and make them at matters is like, this is skin better, the diarrhea better, and you can rely on that to I just think I like to have all the data and like be able to see things when I can.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, so with our test you basically like we send you a kit you basically put like a pea sized amount of stool in it.
[SPEAKER_02]: A tube, we have you do two tubes just so we have a backup because occasionally like the the poop has some weird chemistry that makes it so we can't get a good result.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we like to have one of the one.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just I think some severe GI cases that there's something off of the chemistry that's weird, but I'm usually it's it works well and like 99% of the time we get really good results for the small amount of poop.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then you just pop it now we do FedEx because.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks, God won't keep it the mail, but then we'll send you results that you can look at online.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so like a console to talk to somebody about it to include a free console to go over the results because they can be a little bit like a lot of bacterial names and what is that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I was I was like reading like swahili there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, what is all of this mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's all all so excited to speak with you on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, having friends and colleagues like Rodney to help me dissect this.
[SPEAKER_00]: So am I wrong by thinking that the gut biome is related to the itchy skin in the ears and the pause?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I know you didn't mention that.
[SPEAKER_00]: You said they're they're
[SPEAKER_02]: Or is that more like an allergic thing or an environmental thing oh no I mean it was hard to know because all of those things can play a role with with skin.
[SPEAKER_02]: But if they if they have if they have an imbalance got it's probably going to make those things worse.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think those can definitely be a sign of just biosis I mean it's the thing with.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, at least the literature let's publish literature is that it's like some dogs with severe skin conditions have dyspiosis and some of them don't to this place some of them is genetic.
[SPEAKER_02]: But you know if they're dyspatic that you should fix that for a number of reasons.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it probably will help us get to And do you have a stat on how many dogs on average have a bad gut.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, so this is, you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: It can be hard to get it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But we did a number of surveys.
[SPEAKER_02]: And what we came out with was really interesting basically, it's one in five, have, well, that's really something like having a chronic GI condition.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I didn't include skin in that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it would be more than one in five if you're going to be more broad of having dyspiosicits severely impacting them.
[SPEAKER_02]: The interesting thing about the one in five stat is that it's the same for people.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we came up with the independently.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think it's just maybe our modern lifestyles and process foods and a lot of sanitation and less exposure to the healthy environment that's just impacting our bodies ability to manage.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and how much because I know with people the your diet matters a lot and and not only how you feel but how you look and how your skin is and and of course and in some cases like with my son who had you know severe eggs and how much does the diet matter to the dogs got and and creating that leaky gut or creating that healthy gut.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's foundational, just like, I mean, the gut microbiome is foundational for health, but the diet that you feed feeds not just the body, but also this ecosystem.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I'd say I guess some individuals may be resilient to having a less perfect diet, but in general, it's like, you know, you are re-u-eat.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that you know, really should be my full of what you feed your pet.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, some can survive on the same food for 15 years, but I think that's part of what, you know, with my first dog, the one I've started with.
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't know what I was doing.
[SPEAKER_02]: She was my first dog as an adult, and so I just sort of did what, like they told me the pet food store, like I just got some, some kibble, and I fed her the same thing for a long time.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, and you get sort of fearful of making changes because you don't want to have soft stool, but now I really believe in fresh food is better.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't need like process pre-cooked meals.
[SPEAKER_02]: I cook for myself, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I cook for her for a while, but that is hot fatigue.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I feed a commercial raw now.
[SPEAKER_02]: I wasn't able to transition her to that, but that I did transition her to a fresh diet later in life.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I also think for us, fermented foods are good.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's also really beneficial for our pets too.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's another way to get exposed to good microbespectia
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, every, you know, every single doctor that I've talked to.
[SPEAKER_00]: has pretty much agreed for the most part that a fresh food, whether it's freshly cooked or a raw, is a better quality of food for rather than the kibble.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of like people are, say, I think safety with humans, I think things like this, like a podcast where you can just, I mean, have access to somebody like you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, how many years did you spend in school all together?
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm too long, I mean, I mean, yeah, if I don't count my post-doc, it's like 30 years probably.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we'll say, about 30.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a long time.
[SPEAKER_00]: So people, yeah, no, and I appreciate you and people who are listening, but my point is, is you have a tremendous amount of education and expertise in this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm able to email your company and say, hey, I have a bunch of people listening that our dog owners that really want to do the best for their dog.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we are so podcasting is becoming such a,
[SPEAKER_00]: a blessing for so many people because we're able to take your 30 years of artwork and just cherry pick what's good for our dogs, which is incredible.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think most people, including humans are now starting to look like, you know what, maybe I shouldn't be eating this process food because it's making me feel a certain way.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's pretty a general consensus with everybody
[SPEAKER_00]: talking about your so okay so a nutrition is important.
[SPEAKER_00]: Diet is important.
[SPEAKER_00]: How much in your experience has environmental played into the gut biome or if you have any experience with the skin and it's a little bit kind of off topic with the skin and environment but that was one of the things again it's so frustrating from a from a consumer standpoint a dog owner standpoint to have somebody
[SPEAKER_00]: OK, how much in your opinion has the environment changed the gut?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or is that a thing, the environment?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think a lot of us get seasonal allergies, too, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we get sort of,
[SPEAKER_02]: more sensitive to things.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there are, like, supplements that we can take that will really help produce it, like, course it in.
[SPEAKER_02]: Fish oil is really helpful, right, for skin.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if you're probably, I'd love to, I want to hear more about what you're doing.
[SPEAKER_02]: I, one thing I've been come really concerned about is my oldest, my, my, my second dog who passed away last year, he loved rolling in grass and then he ended up getting a bladder cancer and, um, and I later
[SPEAKER_02]: Some of the lawn fertilizers can actually cause cancers and dogs.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I kind of, he had so much joy rolling and grass, but I didn't know what my neighbors were putting on their lawns.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I just mentioned it to like encourage everybody, you don't really need to fertilize your lawn with this kind of, you know, like, your lawn does need to be perfect.
[SPEAKER_02]: We wanted to be safe for puppies and babies to play in and not get sick.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's funny that you say that, but it's ironic that you say that I should say, because when Rodney and I were talking, one of the things that he started to talk about was the fertilizers and how much it's tied in with cancer and even just skin issues in general.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was like,
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, I was for years trying to get my lawn nice without the weeds and and look full and thick and I always grew up with like, you know, a sand pit for a front lawn or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was like, don't tell me this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't tell me this.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was like, but the problem is, as people
[SPEAKER_00]: When even if you stop putting pesticides and fertilizer because you can still do fertilizer, but there's organic natural fertilizer, you know, and that's what I've been I do a lot of as well, but what he was saying was, and it makes sense where even if you stop doing these things and you live directly next to somebody and they do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really just still coming through the water system and the roots and of course the wind and so you really especially like I live in the suburbs I live in a called a sack where my nearest neighbors may be 50 feet on both sides.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I kind of stink if even if you're doing the right things and it's better than nothing for sure, but you know knowing that your neighbors is still laying that down spring and twice a summer and and I get it like once you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: and it makes sense too, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like these, these little beads of pesticides with a sprays are going to be sprayed onto the grass to kill certain things.
[SPEAKER_00]: contact.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then our naked dogs go out and start rolling in these things shortly thereafter and in some cases you just forget I've done that before where you forget that they put out the little signs and you let your dog out back and a half an hour later you're, you know, oh, get back in here you forget.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course their pads are, you know, like sponges soaking in all the tissue in between the web and soaking it up all those pesticides and fertilizers and
[SPEAKER_00]: chemicals really to kill things so it makes sense but I just you know that's why again I love talking to people like you and I love doing this podcast because you If you don't you know you don't know you don't know and so yeah it's a it's a big thing so environments
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, really challenging.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm really interested to hear about this FMT, because I'm doing the FMT right now with my dog.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'd love for you to explain to me what the FMT is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that something I know that you said in the beginning of our conversation?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that something you created or is that something that you just figured out how to do on your own?
[SPEAKER_02]: No, it was a thing like I saw I was working at UC Davis and I had a collaborator at the vet school who was doing fecal transplants with his material from his neighbor's dog and he had this whole elaborate procedure where he'd do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: By anima and then like had the dog like elevated and sit there for a long time and sort of do what a surgeon would come up with I think for how to do that and I told him we really need to have a two pill because.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, people don't really want to have to have their dog go on her anesthesia and all that right.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's what was happening for people.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I wasn't like I.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I did develop a way of basically freeze drying the poop and grinding it and putting it into a capsule that could be delivered at home and and I also.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think really was the first to say like let's do Stu a little bit over time instead of doing it all once like that in human medicine they were really focused on like let's blast it with antibiotics or maybe even like the blast it with ozone or whatever, but and then clean it out and then put the good stuff in.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I was also thinking about like cats and like you just it's not really something a cat's going to want to put up with and so.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, because in my research, I also worked with a bunch of cats with IBD and like they, I wanted something that would be more gentle and less stressful and I
[SPEAKER_02]: Basically, I'm a gardener, so I thought, let's see the system with the good stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: And hopefully they can colonize.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's also was influenced by the work on C-diff, a lot of familiar with like the C-diff infections and people, which can be acquired in hospitals.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's like multi-drug resistant and life threatening.
[SPEAKER_02]: And people can die from it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And for a while, the FDA was allowing people to do
[SPEAKER_02]: the bacteria that were like seed if that were becoming so overgrown and causing all these problems are actually really wimpy competitors and when you just add in good bacteria from someone else's poop they they go back to being normal.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm like it's not bad to have a tiny bit of seed if it's normal I'm the one to get in the hospital might have all these antibiotic resistance genes that
[SPEAKER_02]: got with a lot of different kinds of good bacteria.
[SPEAKER_02]: They can keep these will be call a path of violence.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like a pathogen, but it's a pathogen that is normally living inside us, but it's just doesn't cause any problems when it has a full system.
[SPEAKER_02]: But when it's like neighbors get all killed by antibiotics, then it goes kind of crazy.
[SPEAKER_02]: So,
[SPEAKER_02]: I also knew that with people that giving an oral capsules of fecal material helped not down seat if although at the time they were having people I think swallows something like 30 capsules at once in a doctor's office for which just also sounded terrible like a swallowing frozen things.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I guess yes, so the innovation I had was let's freeze dry it so it's more stable around temperature, more pleasant to take and just do a little bit over time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes you may need to blast things with antibiotics.
[SPEAKER_02]: But the reason I wouldn't as an ecologist want to do that is that some of the good stuff in our gut, a lot of them are really killed, really sensitive to antibiotics.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you can blast them, and they may never come back.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so you want to really judicious when about using antibiotics.
[SPEAKER_02]: And of course, antibiotics save lives.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not against them, but you should be mindful, I think it's best when you take or prescribe them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, so for those of you who are listening so essentially the FMT is a fecal matter transplant.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what they're doing, because the first time I heard it, I'm like, wait, can you say that again, because I don't, I don't understand.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think I heard you right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what, so what what you're talking about is if your dog, so if you if your dog has any of the signs of a potential leaky gut or a bad gut with the loose stool or with the itching.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're going through maybe allergy tests or you're working with the dermatologist and things just aren't adding up.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not making sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: You could pay I think a couple hundred bucks to get the the test for your dogs got and then you can review it with somebody a veterinarian on your team and the FMT.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll say it first and then you could correct me or add essentially is what you're talking about is you're taking fecal matter from a dog that has a healthy gut biome, a really good gut biome it's operating perfectly and you're taking that poop from that dog and you're creating capsules and then what you're doing is when when your dog does have leaky gut or your dog is a bad gut has all these symptoms like my both of my dogs do unfortunately.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then what you do is we order that pill that basically we're ordering poop pills and these poop pills are from a dog that has really good gut biome and we're taking that pill and we're giving it to our dog.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then that pill goes all the way down the intestines into the gut and then it helps create a healthier gut biome for your dog.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that what we're talking about?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's a poop pill.
[SPEAKER_02]: It looks like a just another probiotic, but it's different because it actually has got bacteria and it that come from dogs for dogs or cats for cats and.
[SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, really good.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like you mentioned, like we, so we have a stool bank.
[SPEAKER_02]: We have over 100 donors contributing material to us in a daily basis.
[SPEAKER_02]: We do testing for parasites and pathogens because it's just like a blood bank right we.
[SPEAKER_02]: make sure that we keep it safe for the recipients and we do donor by donor.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you get a bottle, it's all from one donor because that donor had a healthy ecosystem and we don't want to mix ecosystems because that can create instability.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we know usually they're young dogs, super-healthy and they're sharing their material and it's a paid job for those dogs and they
[SPEAKER_02]: And we have this in once or twice a day for 30 days usually and the idea is that they'll colonize and you won't have to keep doing it, but there are some individuals where the immune systems just kind of jacked up and it can take longer to like train it to not so over reactive to everything and then they're.
[SPEAKER_02]: Some of us are just less lucky and we need to do it longer.
[SPEAKER_02]: And usually the strategy there is just, I'm just like, what can you get it down to?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, can you do it once a week or like every other day?
[SPEAKER_02]: Or like, what's the minimum you can get to?
[SPEAKER_02]: Or keep things going, once you get things settled down.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and so that pill will enter into the gut biom of your own dog and then create healthy biome and regenerate and keep and basically like keep like a sourdough bacteria just keeps there and and hopefully you can just keep having that gut biome recycle and create and multiply and create good gut biome, good bacteria, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_02]: And like half the time is like
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, lovely.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you don't mind, we can get into, because I, because you guys have my test and I'm eager and excited for people to hear what's going on to give you context.
[SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, this is my luck when battling my dogs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Health health issues or skin issues in particular, Berlin, my massive in particular.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did get him FMT.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as soon as I start to see these spots start to come up, I treated them with two pills a day and it stopped them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, holy shit, this is actually working.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is incredible.
[SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, I went to London to do a dog training seminar and my dog.
[SPEAKER_00]: chewed on the stick, cut his throat, then had an esophagus build up of bacteria and unfortunately had intervenes antibiotics for two days and then was sent home with another two weeks of antibiotics.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was a couple months ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so this test may be, like it may be too late because it, I mean, anything that I, and I don't know as why I'm, I mean, you're to, to speak with you on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did build his gut health backup.
[SPEAKER_00]: I resumed because his skin got better.
[SPEAKER_00]: He looked the best he ever did.
[SPEAKER_00]: He looked like a puppy again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then that happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now we're kind of back to square one.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I just wanted to give you that context for the test results.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'll just go.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the, it's basically like his, he now has an imbalance to get it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But fortunately, he doesn't have like elevated levels so if you call I or like, or see Diff or other pathogens that sometimes, you know, it's always good to know a few.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he has to get some good things like,
[SPEAKER_02]: Clustridium, or Pepsi-to-backter here in Onus, which is a really important group for bi-lastic conversion, like I was mentioning earlier, like he has them, and they are really sensitive to antibiotics.
[SPEAKER_02]: He has a few sub-actarium, which is a good group, bacteri-radi, splaudia.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's see.
[SPEAKER_02]: He, it looks like he's on a good diet.
[SPEAKER_02]: What are you feeding just curiosity?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he's on we feed raw.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, we have three different proteins
[SPEAKER_02]: That's perfect.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we don't think he needs any diet changes.
[SPEAKER_02]: So he's low levels of prevetella, but that's normal and dogs that are on a raw diet, like if they're on a kibble diet, that one can become really elevated.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's still within the healthy range.
[SPEAKER_02]: Low and mega-monus, but so
[SPEAKER_00]: And then for those of you who are listening to watching, she is now reading off Burley's Got Check.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can put it on the screen.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's fine.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, later.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I can put it on the screen later so that way you don't, I don't, we've, we've had, we've, we had some technical difficulties before we started.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to mess anything up here because we're on a roll.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are on a roll.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, good.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I mean, so I mean, I have to say I've seen worse, like I mean, he's missing a bunch of things, but I've seen there are a lot of dogs who are missing everything and it's just really hard to sad and hard to, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have to see, so he is definitely imbalanced and low on some of the things we'd like to see, but at least he has some of the really good groups.
[SPEAKER_02]: He doesn't any doesn't have any of these.
[SPEAKER_02]: The pathobiance I mentioned, which would be like the C-Diff or E-Koli or like, clustering for friendships, it's probably another group that you've run into.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then sometimes they have salmonella or canphobacter, some other bad things.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, the main thing I'm seeing is just that he probably from the antibiotics is missing things like Megamonus and has a little too much of some things like Aliprovetella to receive actors another really group nice group to that I like to see that he doesn't have but that can happen in healthy dogs, low and Contella.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that by doing doesn't have
[SPEAKER_02]: Also can be found in absent and healthy dogs, but it's a really good group that I like to see.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so hopefully we'll be able to get some of these groups back into him.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if I have an earlier report, but from what I'm seeing here, the main thing is just that he's missing our low and some of these groups that can help to reduce inflammation in the body.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, that makes sense.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so yes, but I mean, in a way, it's good.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's not having any GI signs, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So you, because I feel like the one barrier to like being able to recolonize the gut can be if the gut's all like inflamed and produced in diarrhea, then it sort of pushes things out too fast and it doesn't give the bugs a chance to set up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can tell you what.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, one of the things that I was looking at and and and speaking with with Rodney Habib and for those who don't know is another kind of a No, you know, I always want to call him doctor run Habib but because he talks like one and he's so educated.
[SPEAKER_00]: It seems like he was talking about one of the things that he said on the test.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could tell you what we're supplementing with because I got the test results back a couple weeks ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is he said one of the things is like he's he doesn't have any fiber.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he's super low on fiber because his diet doesn't have any fiber currently.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we started we started putting in There's a company called gussies gut which essentially is fermented greens like so I don't know them off the top of my head, but it's like it's all the greens right like the broccoli and the dandelion stuff and and so we're we're supplementing with with sprouts and with greens fermented
[SPEAKER_00]: and it's just literally either dehydrated or freeze-dried, I can't remember, but they're just flakes, you know, they look like oregano.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're adding that and then we're on Ion, got support.
[SPEAKER_00]: I, oh, and got support and then I put a little bit of inulin, which I believe is a, see, they're pro or a pre about probotic powder.
[SPEAKER_00]: I should have had those things handy, but that's what I'm doing right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you, what do you, so what do you see with that test, like, is what you're seeing makes sense about his skin.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a good question.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a big test too.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how you're reading it that fast, but there's, there's like, I've been doing it a while.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think I usually like just go to the appendix and just look at the groups because I know them.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like the, I mean, Colin Selle is one that I do think he's kind of associated with skin and he is low on that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, I think,
[SPEAKER_02]: That's just good amount of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, so I do think that what you're doing is good, especially in regards to the fermented greens.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think, I think, inulinus fine, we have a fiber.
[SPEAKER_02]: I do recommend more of a fiber blend, because inulinus kind of a fast fermenting fiber.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it can, like, well, we have one, but you can, I mean, like, there's others where we had, like, so how quickly the fiber is fermented in the gut influences what bacteria it supports.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so a fast fermenting fiber will support more of the small intestine
[SPEAKER_02]: large intestine too in the colon and so having like a fiber blend that has slower fermenting fibers too can be helpful and perhaps the greens will be able to to play that role.
[SPEAKER_00]: And is this what is this what you would consider like leaky gut is all the symptoms that he has leaky gut stamp there whatever that means.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what I've heard.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I do think so when
[SPEAKER_02]: When you have this kind of imbalance or dyspiosis, it is usually associated with a leaky gut where basically bacteria and other chemicals can sort of more easily pass from the gut into the body.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then that can cause science like the skin red skin in itch years, all of that, because they're not supposed to be getting across.
[SPEAKER_02]: basically.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that to basically mean system gets very heightened response.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because that's what it kind of goes like this where all of a sudden, like he'll be clear, skin will be clear.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he'll start getting these little round like scabby type things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, oh, man, it's coming back.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I think because he itch is there was last summer, his skin was like inflamed so bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like my son's axiomite.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like sticking up, you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it was so bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they gave him a bunch of different stuff to reduce the inflammation because he was probably in so it's basically walk around like a burn victim.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he was like his all of his belly was like bright red pink sticky like sticking up off the skin like a basketball was really bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's kind of this vicious cycle that we we get in.
[SPEAKER_00]: where he gets better and then he and and so what right when we started the FMT he did get better and I was like great and then again unfortunately he got you know so what does so reading reading that test you would say okay leaky got
[SPEAKER_00]: and Lakota, my shepherd as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: She has, I think, similar, I don't know if I sent you that test, but she has similar results.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what type of things would you recommend?
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, if you guys do do the test, you're going to be consulting specifically with your dog on your test.
[SPEAKER_00]: But for me, what are products and things that you can recommend for me with that
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think what I think you I think you're I'm doing like the Ion by I'm to support the guy I another you consider in addition to or instead of would be something like the Escalarii which will like coat the lining and try and help reduce inflammation.
[SPEAKER_02]: In the in the got barrier and hopefully reduce some of that leaky guy.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, so we'd like, we have like a SPU plus FOS, which is also FOS, um, through Doligo Saccharides are a fast fermenting fiber that is also really helpful to help support the small intestine.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the Ion product that I'm that I'm giving now do because I'm just kind of like let go let God like take the steering will baby I don't know what is going on I'm just trusting the people I trust that that do this for a living and kind of just yep okay that sounds good so I have the gut Ion support or restore I can't remember exactly what it's called what is that exactly doing.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have to say, you know, I sort of have to say that I'm agnostic about it, and that I know some of our veterinarians who use our products really believe in that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just haven't seen like studies to understand what it's going to know their bigger big fans.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just can't tell you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Perna.
[SPEAKER_02]: But.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I sort of supposing that it might do something in health.
[SPEAKER_02]: word and reduce the leaky gut, but I don't, I know how esfilarity I works, and there's like a thousand papers on it, so I can really talk to that one better.
[SPEAKER_02]: And what we have a product, there are others who have it too.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm proud of ours, it's like made with a human grade strain, and
[SPEAKER_02]: But there are a lot of choices, so I don't want to just be like self promoting promoting and it's something that people with cats with IBV taught me about that it was helpful for them.
[SPEAKER_02]: And when we started it, we were running the only people to have it, but we weren't the first and we're not the only only one there.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was going to, you know, at my dog, I started with Yuki.
[SPEAKER_02]: She also had a skin condition called Pempsigus, and she would get very red, terrible spots.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was more like all around the mouth and around her privates, like it was related to sort of those areas.
[SPEAKER_02]: And for a long time, they had her take systemic steroids for it, which I think is well, really good.
[SPEAKER_02]: probably caused damage to her gotten the long run.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we ended up moving more towards topical steroids for it and that was so much better for her.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was, it would've been nice to, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: She didn't have it, by the time she did FMT and we were able to resolve the hemorrhagic gastroenteritis or HE, she knows the hem, the hem, the hem figures wasn't an issue anymore because she was already old and I think the immune system starts to wane.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think it's partly having a hyper-vigilant immune system that can contribute to some of these conditions.
[SPEAKER_02]: And
[SPEAKER_02]: And they thought that it might there might be a genetic component also like her she was part McNabb and McNabb sort of known to have some of those skin problems and it's not a well-known breed and probably a little bit in bread because it's sort of from a pocket of California that you know it's like you know like ranchers to spread in these dogs over time and um not like with it I don't know genetic engagement program and place or anything it's just a ranch dog
[SPEAKER_02]: But so yeah, for us actually the thing that really help which I'm not going to advocate here, what I feel like worth mentioning is that we were able to get off.
[SPEAKER_02]: The drugs that were preventing our immune system from functioning normally for the rest of our body and put neopred F powder on her spots it actually like allowed us to manage those really painful spots without having to, you know, cause other problems which, you know, like taking steroids can, you know, like the immune system has to fight cancer and other things that are really important and you don't want to be crippling it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So thank you for going through that test with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm glad to get confirmation that it does seem like his gut is in balance and the FMT and can you can you go over that supplement again, you said FOS.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that a supplement?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that a powder?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that a pill?
[SPEAKER_00]: What is that?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's sacromesis, belardei.
[SPEAKER_02]: with FOS.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I tend to call S. Boo, S. Boo plus FOS, and it's a powder, just put it on food.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I really think it's great to have it on the shelf because if my doggy is something random and has soft stool one morning, I just put a quarter of a teaspoon on his food and it resolves it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just think it's really great thing to have just on your shelf.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I will say, like, for the chronic diarrhea cases is not going to work for everybody.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it will work so like 80% of the time, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's some, you're always like, you can be the unlucky one.
[SPEAKER_02]: And but at least you try it, you know, like, because usually it will work, okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, with the edge cases and it's sex when you're one of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, and is that, is that a natural, like, what is it?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, what is it do?
[SPEAKER_00]: What is it countering in the gut?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, what is it actually doing?
[SPEAKER_02]: a yeast that was isolated from the skin of a leechie fruit in French Polynesia.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it had been part of a traditional medicine practice where the indigenous people would like suck on it to reduce diarrhea and other symptoms of cholera.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so this French microbiologist decided to try and isolate it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's just it's a beneficial yeast.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like a cousin of the yeast that they use to like for making bread.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there are a lot of wild yeast there on vegetables and in the air and and there.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think sometimes we think of like the yeast on skin or like in our bodies and that some of them are problematic, but they're a lot of good ones.
[SPEAKER_02]: Most of them are good.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just, you know, like Candida is not good, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't want that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's really beneficial used to probably can help fight if there's a overgrowth of a yeast that's problematic might be good.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're some dogs or people say like my dog doesn't do well with yeast, but I think.
[SPEAKER_02]: In general, I think that's just to become fearful of it, but it's not, this is a good one.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the OS is just a, it's some it sometimes comes from like apples and it's basically like it's their different sources for it, um, just like like annual income from Jerusalem artichoke so that like FOS can be it comes from different plants and
[SPEAKER_02]: is just a fruit dough, a lago saccharide, so it's a simple sugar, but that's made into a powder and that health support got bacteria.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so that's a pretty pretty safe thing to use for my dog with the results that you have and other people potentially if their dog has diarrhea or inconsistent stools.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, and it's actually seems to help both with constipation and diarrhea, which is, I think it's just helping to improve got motility bite.
[SPEAKER_02]: So what it does is it, like sort of seems to line the intestinal wall and to help support that barrier.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, awesome.
[SPEAKER_02]: Got it inside.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you get that on your on your website?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll link that in the description.
[SPEAKER_00]: Awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what type of what type of other stuff like a lot of people like you talked about, you talk about different antibiotics where again, like I actually am on a box of selling right now because I had a sinus infection that just would not is just kicking my butt.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so yeah, so obviously antibiotics are are super important and, and I'm countering with all sorts of pro and pre biotics and eating the foods to help my gut, but with with dogs is, is there, is there something, what do you recommend for dog owners if their dog has to go on a set of antibiotics or in some cases like me, multiple sets of antibiotics to help with that gut.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I just recommend taking like a yeast-based probiotic like sacromysees, belardei, esplardei, espoop because it's not going to be harmed by the antibiotics, which are fighting off to bacteria, and it can help support the gut during that time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Likewise, giving the FOS can give a little bit of food to some of the good bacteria that are being harmed by the antibiotics.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I recommend that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think, yeah, for FMT or the poop pills, I would wait till afterwards, if they have to take antibiotics, like for a long time, you can sort of stagger it like antibiotics in the morning and wait 12 hours and do the poop pill.
[SPEAKER_02]: In the evening, so that it has some time to try and like do some work before the next course.
[SPEAKER_02]: I did want to mention we have a new skin product that we're really excited about that was based on a study that we did and we're re-liked it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's this post-biotic that is made by fermenting a different yeast, second-my-servcy, which is used like for various purposes and baking and brewing and fermentation.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's not the active yeast, it's just a...
[SPEAKER_02]: the beneficial compounds that are produced while it's growing and it's dead, and but it's it was shown at the core was shown to help reduce up like seasonal flu's in people and so they were making it for other reasons and then they realized that their workers weren't getting sick.
[SPEAKER_02]: So like this was like 30 years ago or more maybe actually in the 60s I think and um and so they developed it as a supplement for people
[SPEAKER_02]: And more recently, it became developed for pets.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we did a study to look at for skin conditions.
[SPEAKER_02]: What's the dose that you would need to see a benefit?
[SPEAKER_02]: And so anyway, so we just launched that in December and to it has that post-biotic.
[SPEAKER_02]: It also has like marshmallow, rude and mushrooms.
[SPEAKER_02]: I definitely do recommend daily.
[SPEAKER_02]: like mushrooms for people and pets, helps the immune system function better.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's something you can incorporate for your dog.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this one also has a really bio-available form of versatile in, which is beneficial, marine phytoplankton.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then there's a kind of zinc protein aid, which is also very helpful for skin.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the thing I would add to this, this one's called Skin Rescue.
[SPEAKER_02]: I do recommend it strongly.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're very excited about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like people were very eager for this new product, so please to see that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I also recommend a fish oil or another source of those amagas.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I've been doing for the dogs, and for me, I've been doing fish oil every day.
[SPEAKER_00]: For my big guy, he gets two capsules for my shepherd who's only like 40 pounds.
[SPEAKER_00]: She gets a capsule.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, fish oil is like incredible.
[SPEAKER_00]: For many, many, many, many reasons.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, again, everybody that I've talked to, and everybody that I listen to in a podcast form for different doctors, specialists and PhDs, they all say like fish oil is like king.
[SPEAKER_00]: I get them from Thorn, which is like a third party testing because you could get some, I mean, supplements are so wonky, like I, I did a, I did a podcast with these guys and the seed life is there is their, their company name and they tested some fish oils that they were regularly getting and it was like.
[SPEAKER_00]: not really fish oil was like just oil and it wasn't it wasn't good which which stinks because not only are you paying for it but you're not getting what you think you're getting to to you know for inflammation and and skin and all those amegas that's new like we were we were thinking about having a official product and we were we thought we had a really good one and we were like ours isn't going to be rancid and we did a bunch of rancidity testing
[SPEAKER_02]: And actually ours and we found that we, it just doesn't keep well.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you need to be really careful with the fish oil that you're buying.
[SPEAKER_02]: And also don't get a giant container of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Just get enough like small amounts by and more often because it does go bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, quick, probably.
[SPEAKER_00]: So with that product, this skin, that's the skin rescue you're talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're it's like music to my ears right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to have a giant animal biome cart check out after this.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is what tell I know that I know you said you said that had a bunch of different stuff in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is that good for is it good for dogs like mine who who are having inflamed skin and and issues with the skin and and and and all that fun stuff that I'm dealing with.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what it's designed for and we also figured out how to do one, how to how to dose it for cats to because some cats get it all over their bellies and then people don't even know they have it anyway at least with I've said for their dogs we it's more obvious because they're I don't know all over us so we see their bellies and they're pa like in and they're it's also a hotspots red red and flame skin like dry flaky skin.
[SPEAKER_02]: flare-ups.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's good for these seasonal and environmental allergies.
[SPEAKER_02]: Also.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you said mushrooms are a big part of your research and things that you're doing now is mushrooms are in that product.
[SPEAKER_02]: They are.
[SPEAKER_02]: We have a separate mushroom product and we put them in this.
[SPEAKER_02]: We both really believe in the mushrooms and think that I may also think
[SPEAKER_02]: This can just also, even if you don't your dog doesn't have a skin condition, it can just help general wellness.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think all of the ingredients in this are really just good for supporting health.
[SPEAKER_02]: Great.
[SPEAKER_00]: In what's the, what, what are you finding with the mushrooms and what type of mushrooms?
[SPEAKER_00]: What, what, what, what have you been seen results with that with?
[SPEAKER_02]: So we have a blend of eight different ones and said and we selected them based on
[SPEAKER_02]: So we can't talk about like some of the reasons we chose it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can just put it this way that I'm a cancer survivor and I knew that things like Turquetel mushrooms can help reduce relapse.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we did a lot of deep dive and to try and to help reduce recurrence or occurance of some of these things but we can't claim any of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: But we just basically selected mushrooms that from published papers looked like they would be really supportive of a healthy function
[SPEAKER_02]: Hopefully, hopefully help promote a long healthy life.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's incredible.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a big, big mushroom guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Take him every morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have new tropic shots and mushroom pills and all sorts of different stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And mushrooms have been.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually helped me wien off coffee completely.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like interesting enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it wasn't that I started taking mushroom.
[SPEAKER_00]: That I was like, I don't want coffee.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was one of those things where I was like, okay, I'm having too much coffee.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's giving me anxiety.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's it's making me too anxious and then I switched to like a new tropic blend matcha tea with mushrooms and then I started taking supplements with with you know zero caffeine, but it's it's like there's a supplement called on it makes it and IT is called alpha brain where it's like cognitive support and it's a game changer for me and so mushrooms are
[SPEAKER_00]: I could, you know, sometimes it doesn't, you know, it doesn't, I don't know, for me, it's been an absolute game changer, but I have started to hear mushrooms more and more in dogs and more people I talked to that in coconut water and fish oil has been like the things that people are like, hey, or coconut oil even to it's been like, hey, this is, this is where we we need to go down.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, um, okay, cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: So is there any probiotics or prebiotics?
[SPEAKER_00]: I know that you've, and by the way, I love that you have products and I know I'm like you a lot sometimes, too, where you almost get self-conscious about promoting what you're doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the reality is is, you know, for me, if I'm using a particular leash or I'm using a particular treat or I'm using a particular treat pouch or a collar,
[SPEAKER_00]: I end up just making my own because so many people where do you get it where do you get it and I'm like I'm going to make my own and make it better and so I sometimes or like if I sell courses or something people are like how do I get more information on this I'm like I do of course we don't have to buy it but you can you know it's like this I'm with you on that I'm not a.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I do try to like tell people like I did make this specifically for this reason.
[SPEAKER_00]: So do you guys do you guys have probiotics and pre-products being in the gut space?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that something that's in your gut restore foundation or or no?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I will say like in the beginning, I have from the testing and I was like, go buy these things on Amazon and people were like,
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd rather buy something from you because I trust you and like we don't really know how people are testing their supplements and so we we do rigorous testing of everything and it is really critical and and quality confirmed you know like it's just.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, we do actually so we actually have we have these poo pills were they're amazing we're maybe never able to do anything it's good but we have isolated a lot of these just good got bacteria the good bugs and we're creating what we call next generation probiotics which.
[SPEAKER_02]: Nobody else has.
[SPEAKER_02]: Cause then, like I said, SPO, they're really good probiotics on the market, much better to go to for diarrhea than antibiotic.
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't need to do antibiotics for diarrhea, but some vet still prescribes them.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not against mainstream probiotics, but
[SPEAKER_02]: We realize that these gut bacteria aren't available yet in probiotics.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we've been isolating them.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're creating what we call next generation probiotics.
[SPEAKER_02]: We are just launching actually for dogs tomorrow.
[SPEAKER_02]: Our P hereononus, which is really a keystone species for biol acid conversion in dogs.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we launched the cat version a month ago.
[SPEAKER_02]: Which is actually new species that we're going to need to name, which is kind of fun, and we have many more in the pipeline that are coming.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we're, that's where my dream is a microbiologist was to say, like, these bacteria co evolved with our our pets and that's what they need after antibiotics and I mean, I think, who pill is amazing, but not everybody wants to do that.
[SPEAKER_02]: They'd rather have something that's like, you know, it's defined, you can like, grow it and I don't know, some people prefer.
[SPEAKER_02]: The cleanliness of that as opposed to having donors and all that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Also, I would say that poop pill operation is a labor of love.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're driving around, you know, getting donations from people.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so there's something beautiful about that, but it's, it's, it's a lot of work.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is and it can it can add up, especially when you have because what what I plan on doing is after this round of FMT with my dog is we're going to do another round we're going to do another test see where he's at and then You know, maybe do another set of FMT if we need it and how often and it just to say it's a continual thing I can tell you this dog has taught me more about dogs.
[SPEAKER_00]: than, you know, I could have ever imagined.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he is a big pain in the butt and, you know, he's very, very expensive, but at least I am because of what I do.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have an opportunity to really go down these paths with people like you who have spent their entire lives and bed in school for almost longer than I've been alive, studying these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I get to have these,
[SPEAKER_00]: awesome candid conversations with to learn more about what you guys are doing and it's incredible and I really appreciate you coming on here and educating me and the people who are listening and telling people and I'm sure we'll talk again in the future as I continue down this road with my dog.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you give people all your information and where they can find you and
[SPEAKER_00]: and where they can find your products.
[SPEAKER_00]: And even on your website, you guys have such a good education system on your supplements, but your packages and your pills.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so can you just plug a ways for people who want more information about what you're doing, how to get the tests, the FMTs, et cetera?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, definitely.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it should all be clear and available on our website, which is animal biome, like animal ANI, MAL.
[SPEAKER_02]: BIOME.com and you can reach out to us by email at team at animalbiome.com and if you want to talk to me, Holly, just tell them you're looking for me and they'll pass along to me that team keeps me honest because sometimes I don't keep up on my email and those are the easiest ways to reach us, I think.
[SPEAKER_00]: careful what you wish for because you might get thousands of emails now of people saying hey my dog ears are gross and has diarrhea and stuff but I think honestly and again it's important for people to know too like when I'm working with somebody like you who owns a company this is genuine and authentic and and I have I've used your products and I've used your your team and I'm so grateful to be able to to speak with you but also you guys do have that test
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that that's a really good place to start because it's super low hanging fruit, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: They send you out of packet, you order it, they send out of package, you send the test in.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then that way, you have something to work off of because if a bunch of people email doing your team and said, hey, my dog's this, that and the other thing, they're probably going to say, well, we really need to see some data.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need to see a test and that's that's pretty incredible.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Holly, thank you so much for, for hopping on here.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was, it's an incredible honor to speak with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, selfishly, like I, it's, it's, it's such a fitting podcast because I'm genuinely going through all of this as, as a consumer of yours, uh, you know, with my own dog.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this has been huge, uh, for me, and, and I opening an educational, and I appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, thank you for this conversation, Tom, and I also think it's wonderful how much you've been open to learning from your dog and it is amazing what they can teach us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and inexpensive, but that's okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, Holly, thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you everybody for listening.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, bye.