Lifestages Part 1: Getting Started - Raising Puppies and Kittens for success with Drew Webster, CBDC Artwork

Paws, Reflect & Heal with Dr. Randy

This channel appeals to conscientious pet owners who prioritize their pets' health and well-being beyond conventional treatments. They are curious about holistic and integrative veterinary approaches and seek to understand their pets' behavior, nutrition, and health issues deeply. They value expert advice that combines traditional medicine with alternative therapies and want to be proactive in preventing and managing their pets' health problems. The channel resonates with those who view their pets as family members and are motivated to provide the best care possible through education and open-mindedness.

All Episodes

Paws, Reflect & Heal with Dr. Randy

Lifestages Part 1: Getting Started - Raising Puppies and Kittens for success with Drew Webster, CBDC

February 17, 2025 • Dr. Randy Pet Vet • Episode 16

In this episode, Dr. Randy Aronson and co-host Mark Drucker engage with Drew Webster, a certified dog behavioral consultant, to discuss the various life stages of pets, focusing on how to set up puppies for success. They explore the importance of socialization, behavior training, and preparing for veterinary visits. The conversation also delves into the adjustment period for both pets and owners, the significance of building resilience in puppies, and the necessity of home proofing for safety. Finally, they address the critical topic of nutrition for pets, emphasizing the benefits of fresh whole foods and the importance of a balanced diet.

Learn more about the essential aspects of pet care, focusing on diet transitions, feeding strategies, behavior training, and the importance of veterinary visits and genetic testing for new pets. See just how important gradual diet changes, enrichment feeding, and proactive veterinary care are to ensuring the health and well-being of your pets. Join us in combating the rising issue of pet obesity and learn the significance of understanding a pet's genetic background for better training and health management.

Takeaways you can expect to get from this conversation:

Setting your dogs up for success is crucial.
Dogs learn through repetitions and successful outcomes.
Building resilience is key for puppies.
Avoid simple carbs in your dog's diet.
Cats have a zero carb requirement.
Don't change a new pet's diet abruptly.
Gradually acclimate pets to new food.
Feeding schedules can aid in potty training.
Enrichment feeding can prevent destructive behavior.
Cats benefit from hunting for their food.
Regular veterinary visits are crucial for new pets.
Genetic testing can reveal potential health issues.
Proactive care can lead to longer, healthier lives.

Connect with Drew Webster

Instagram: @doctrdrewlittle

Website: behaviorofdogs.com

Facebook: Behavior of Dogs

YouTube: Behavior of Dogs with Drew Webster

----------

Send your questions to AskMe@drrandypetvet.com so Dr. Randy can answer them in future episodes!

If you'd like to schedule a telemedicine appointment with me, please send an email to info@pawstucson.com. Make sure to note your telephone number and a brief description of the issue you're having. Someone from my office will respond to your email to schedule an appointment.

Connect with me on my website, social media pages, and all podcast platforms!

Products and Resources I Recommend
Microbiome Testing
Animal Biome - Gut Microbiome Health Test

Nutrition
K9 Natural

Feline Natural

Just for Dogs
Farmers Dog

Other...

SPEAKER_02: 0:00

But I love, love, love doing happy visits with dogs. And dogs of any age, really, it's crucial for puppies. But if I get a new dog or if I bring home a a lovely yellow lab from the shelter mark, one of the first things I want to do is tag Hank to meet the vet when he doesn't have to get a shot, when he doesn't have to do invasive handling. So he says, This place rules. I go in here, Drew gives me a cookie for standing on the scale. I get pet by all these lovely people here, short and sweet, and then we leave. We start having these happy visits, and uh they'll start to think, oh, it's really fun to go in this place.

SPEAKER_00: 0:46

Hey guys, welcome to Pause Reflect and Heal with Dr. Randy. Uh we're really happy to have you on your show. Uh our show, we have two of my favorite people with me, Mr. Mark Trucker from the Love Dog. Uh, we've spent a lot of time together and he's uh helping us and see and watch over the guy that's next to Mr. Drew Webster and I just to make sure we don't get out of life. Uh for those of you uh that maybe have two love dog or not. Drew Webster is a certified dog behavior consultant and a certified professional dog trainer. Uh he's been doing this for quite a while. He's also an active professor at the University of Denver. Uh he teaches graduate school there. And you can find Drew at www.behaviorofdogs.com, which we'll put up on our site so you can see that. Hey Drew, welcome to the show, buddy.

SPEAKER_02: 1:36

Hey, thanks. It's great to be together again.

SPEAKER_03: 1:38

And Mark? Hey, Dr. Randy, and hey Drew. I'm um I'm glad to be back together with all of you, with both of you. Last time we were together, I think, was on the Love Dog podcast, and we had you on, Randy, for uh a couple episodes. And I'm just happy to have any opportunity I can to spend with Drew because, like you said, he is a dog trainer, uh, but he's a certified dog behavior consultant, he's a teacher, and that's the big thing, he's a teacher. And I just don't know anyone who knows more about this than Drew does. And to listen to him speak is a privilege. I always learn. Anybody who's gonna listen to him is going to learn, and that's you know why we're here today. This is part one of our two and potentially three-part series on life stages of pets. We're talking dogs and cats here. I know Drew is mostly dogs, right? That's right. And uh what we wanna we want to take people through just the whole adjustment of bringing the dog or the puppy or the kitten home. It's a big adjustment for them, right, Drew? It's a big adjustment for the humans. And there's a lot that has to go on uh to set these pets of ours up for long-term success. That's gonna be our focus. Training, socialization, best medical practices, which Dr. Grandi will speak to. And even in your case, Drew, getting the pet to just love going to the veterinarian. You know, that's it that's a big part of setting the dog up for success. And so I'm excited. I think people, especially first-time pet parents, really want this information, and we're just lucky to have you. So take it from there. What should these new pet parents get ready for? How can they prepare themselves and take us through it?

SPEAKER_02: 3:39

Great. Well, thank you for that warm introduction. I'll try to get out of my species bias best I can, but I am all dogs all the time, and and that's really my passion is helping people set them up to set their pets up for success. So we'll dive into it and we'll go from there. So I think one of the biggest things, Randy, that I really want to harp on today for setting your dogs up for success, and your cats for that matter, is really thinking intelligently about what you want that adult version of the animal to be. I think so many people focus on what's right in front of them and they don't think about the life stages that are coming down the line and really making sure that they're building behaviors they want rather than trying to correct them as they pop up. So, one of my big, big things that I want everybody to think about is are you giving too much freedom when you're bringing home that brand new puppy and saying, well, here's here's the house, here's where we live, good luck, and then trying to rework on those things as they become habitualized. So dogs learn things through repetitions, and anything that dogs do that works, that has successful outcomes, or avoids a potential punisher, they're gonna do again and again and again. So when so many people get in trouble with puppies, it's where they just come home and they think, oh, I'll just give the dog feedback as they go. Okay, I've heard of this thing, positive reinforcement. I'm gonna make sure I'm giving the dog lots of that when they do good things, but they end up, you know, getting stuck in these punishment loops of, hey, don't do that. No, stop doing that, don't chew on that, because they didn't do the upfront work. So one of the biggest things you can do right off the bat is prep the home. You know, I love keeping little twisty ties and things when you buy a loaf of bread, it's like the greatest free puppy tool on earth nobody knows about. You twist up those cords behind your computer and you start getting things up off the floor. I actually make my clients get down puppy height and start looking at the world through that dog's point of view and say, oh, look at that fringe on that rug. What else is hanging down that might be really fun and enriching for that puppy to grab and put in their mouth? So today I really want to focus on what are we doing to set them up for long-term success and kind of go over some of those do's and don'ts with you, Randy, and you can kind of guide us from a medical standpoint, and I'll see if I can be helpful from a behavior standpoint.

SPEAKER_03: 6:10

Sounds great. Well, Drew, uh, greetings, welcome, thank you for that. Um, what I want to say is that I know from experience and just from having worked with you before, that when a dog comes home from the breeder or from a shelter, whatever, a puppy, it's a huge adjustment, right, for the dog. And uh it's also a huge adjustment for the humans. It's hey, let's learn how to live together in this space. It could be a studio apartment, it could be a mansion, who knows what it is. But as we've discussed before, when we've worked together, you know, we're taking these dogs out of a natural habitat, we're essentially putting them into captivity, right? So there is this big adjustment that goes on. And one of the things that among the many things that I loved when you talked about was how to set this dog up for success. And Randy, you can talk a little bit about how to set this cat up for success as as we go on in the show today. And so I I just look forward to the conversation um because it is this adjustment, and everybody has to make the space for the new animal and understand it, try to understand it from the animal's point of view. So I'm just uh I'm just really glad that you're here. Do you want to talk a little bit about some of those things right now that you think are important for people to know as they you know, one of the things I want to make sure you talk about is having the dog be able to visit the veteran, the vet successfully as well, you know, and go into that environment because that can be traumatic, right? As they go in for vaccines and everything. So I'll let you take it from here and just teach us what to do. And at some point, and if I have to ask you again, I will. Maybe we can distinguish or differentiate between a dog that comes from a breeder, you know, a wealth, a well-respected breeder, and a dog could be a puppy that comes from a shelter, totally different points of origin, and might offer or deliver a totally different experience to the pet owner, pet parent, right? So you've got a lot to talk about.

SPEAKER_02: 8:29

Let me see if I can answer all that. That's a long, long series of questions. So I I got my notebook here in front of me, so you keep me on track, Mark. Well, I think you nailed it there, Mark, when you're talking about that adjustment period. And I think part of that is our expectations. So if I told Dr. Randy I was bringing home a pygmy goat and I was gonna have it live in my house with me, he would probably think it's pretty silly if I complained about finding goat droppings or if they chewed up my journal. You know, goat's gonna goat, right? The goat's gonna do goat behavior. But when dogs do normal species typical behaviors, we tend to go, what what's wrong with this dog? This dog is being disobedient. This cat is scratching up my couch, but really it's animal behavior in our human environments. So when we think about setting up ourselves for success, one of those first things is expectations. What realistically does a baby dog who's been living in a pile of puppies for four to seven weeks, you know, 24-7, having that social socialization, having those important imprints happening, have constant access to food, they can toilet wherever. How are they all of us supposed to come into our homes and be isolated, like put away from its, you know, litter mates and people and then know where to toilet, what to eat, what to chew on, what not to chew on. And that's really what it comes down to when it it's setting expectations. So in the training world we call it antecedent arrangement, which is a fancy way of saying puppy proofing your house. One of the best things you can do early on is say, I'm gonna give you a small little area that's your your area to do your puppy behavior. So for me, I like to think of them as like zen pens and zendens, where I'm a big fan of positive crate training. And I'll get into that a little bit if you want of what that looks like. But teaching the dog crate trainings not just for house training issues and uh you know, preventing accidents, but also giving them a safe space where they can comfortably lie down um and and really recoup when the environment gets too stimulating. I even use those exercise pens, which are like those foldable accordion metal pens and hook them to the front of the crates and give 'em a little walkout area. That way if I need to say record a podcast or pay attention to my family, cook dinner, and I can't be mindful of the uh uh the animals' activities, then I know they're in a safe space where they can't really do any harm to themselves or to my environment. And I'm not gonna be building behaviors that I have to try to disassemble later. So, Mark, one thing I d I know is important, especially with Dr. Randy here, is getting our dogs ready for our human environments means where are the places we're gonna have to go? And those puppies, one of the first places they have to go is the veterinarian. And if you think about it, we're starting to condition dogs to understanding what is normal in our environment from our feeding routines to what kinds of enrichment things we put in those zen pens and dens for them to interact with. But also when we take them out into the world, am I gonna let people put your hands all over my puppy, or am I gonna be a little more, well, I'm gonna let this person or I'm gonna let my dog interact with this dog because I know it's fully vaccinated, and Dr. Andy can kind of talk about those potential threats and vaccination windows. But I love, love, love doing happy visits with dogs and dogs of any age, really, it's crucial for puppies. But if I get a new dog or if I bring home a lovely yellow lab from the shelter mark, one of the first things I want to do is tag Hank to meet the vet when he doesn't have to get a shot, when he doesn't have to do invasive handling. So he says, This place rules. I go in here, Drew gives me a cookie for standing on the scale, I get pet by all these lovely people here, short and sweet, and then we leave. We start having these happy visits, and uh they'll start to think, oh, it's really fun to go in this place. You'll also get more feedback about what's your dog's stress tolerance gonna look like in that environment. Is that dog gonna be really shell-shocked by going into that space? And how good is that environment at keeping those dogs under what I call threshold? So what what they can tolerate. The the idea, Mark, is building that resilience. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_03: 13:05

Yeah. And so it's making me think most people, myself included, would get the puppy, oh, it's time for the first shot. Right. Let's go in. Yep. They're already swimming in the deep end there. Right. So what you're saying is it's almost like go in for an orientation. Yeah. Just let him see the space. Let everybody pet him. In maybe the worst case scenario, let the doctor put the stethoscope on him, you know, which is kind of a gentle thing to do when you think about it. Not much more than that. And maybe you make that really clear to the veterinarian when you're making that appointment. This is a meet and greet, you know, for my dog and your team. So they get to know each other. Is that kind of what you're saying?

SPEAKER_02: 13:49

Absolutely. And Randy, maybe you can tell us as a veterinarian, what do you want to accomplish the first time you see a puppy? What are the places on the body that they need to be touched, and what kinds of things do you need to do on that first visit so we can talk specifics about what kinds of things I might think about doing to prepare them?

SPEAKER_01: 14:07

Yeah, great. Yeah, I mean, I always uh advocate for the owners uh with this this new puppy or kitten, we're talking really very similar situations, to make sure you handle their feet. Uh make sure you put your hands in their mouth, um, you know, play around with their gums and their teeth a little bit. Um, make sure you handle their ears, you know, that you rub their ears, you decise their ears. Um, I love turning the dog the dog over and rubbing its belly and having somebody do that. Um, but I think the most important thing is handling feet and ears and mouth, uh, because that really starts to acclimate this puppy or kitten to that type of uh exam that we would do, but also things like you know, as you know, down the road, grooming and and and you know, working on dental disease, which you know, we we really are proactive about that when we teach our our puppy and kitten owners. So I think those are really important. Um I think that that would be a great start.

SPEAKER_02: 15:09

Yeah. You know, in my work at the University of Denver, we're often working on this model of animal-assisted therapy program. So in my canine interactions class, at some point, the students who are working with a dog have to do these behavioral tests. And one of the test items is body handling. And I always ask, even dogs that are coming in for therapy dogs, I always ask, Does your dog have any sensitive parts of their body? And you would be shocked how many dogs are working to become therapy dogs, and the people are telling me, Oh, you can't touch her feet, or watch out for the rear end, she really doesn't like her tail and her hindquarters being handled. And that's because they might have missed those early opportunities to have that normalized and what we might think of as desensitized, right? And so when we think about those windows, if you're bringing home a dog, Mark, you asked earlier about the differences between, say, getting a dog for a breeder, or even, you know, say you bought a dog through, you know, an organization, or you adopted a dog through a rescue, and you know you're getting the dog in that kind of ideal window, which is kind of that eight to ten weeks is when people like to send those um dogs home, it's a critical learning stage for long-term memory. So this is when they can imprint on their human family and say, Oh, this is the environment I'm gonna live in. Also, if they're gonna be in a multi-pet household, other you know, animals in the home like cats, or if you keep livestock or have backyard chickens or whatever your environment's like, that's when your dog starts to learn these are normal things in our environment. Now, i i if in that window, that long-term memory stage, you're normalizing that we do boring stuff, we get settled in different environments, we touch your feet, we check your mouth, we flip over those floppy ears and take a look inside, and that that's normal and that good things happen when we do that, they're gonna be much more susceptible to that down the road. And then the uh kind of caveat there is it can't just be one person. So if you're an individual living in the home, you gotta get some other nice friendly strangers to come and handle your dog. Um, in our therapy dog test down the road, these dogs are between three and seven years old. We always have to enlist friendly strangers to come and do those touch tests and be those people initiating petting and things like that, so we can see what is their response to actual strangers.

SPEAKER_03: 17:45

So I think this is a I know this is a great conversation because bringing a new dog and or a new cat into the home is it's two parts. It's what am I gonna do behaviorally to create a safe environment at home and outside the home. Um, and then what am I gonna do medically, you know, to create a healthy dog with a with a nice long life. And it goes hand in hand, and you want a responsible pet parent wants to know this stuff and uh and wants to do both and wants to really balance it out. So I think it's a great a great introduction to bringing a new animal, a new pet into the home. And Drew, if I would like to know if you actually do get goats because I've always wanted a goat. So I'm gonna want to come over. I'm gonna want to come over.

SPEAKER_02: 18:50

So I I've had hedgehogs and sugar gliders and nearly had a crow in my house, but uh I never goat.

SPEAKER_03: 18:57

So, Randy, is there anything else that you want to say before we transition into the medical part uh about dogs or about bringing a kitten into a home that you think is important for listeners to know about?

SPEAKER_01: 19:10

No, I think Drew hit on a lot of uh uh really important items uh on the medical side. Uh, I worry a little bit about um the environment in the way of like toxic plants, um, electric orange and whatnot. Uh you know, there are great lists of toxic plants like diffondachia and and um poinsetta that can be really toxic to your dog or cat if you eat on when they're you know when they're young, you have to do those kinds of things. So it's just a you know, houseproof in your house, and like you said, getting down on the ground for your dog and kitten on their level to see what they're seeing, but thinking about those things ahead of time really helps. So I I think you know, Drew did a great job talking about alchemization and and uh um one thing I'd mentioned um I had some very good friends that. Worked with Guide Dogs for the Blind, and she was uh uh raised puppies for them here in Tucson. And they had an incredible in C D that they'd play C D I know maybe aging you know dating myself here, but uh it was every single noise that um a dog uh could be exposed to out in public. You know, there was buses, there were fire trucks, there was fireworks, there was you know plane noises, and it was amazing how well adjusted those puppies were when time came that they're gonna be out in the environment hearing all these things. So I just mentioned that because I thought that was very cool.

SPEAKER_02: 20:36

Yeah, no, that's a really good point, Randy. You see a lot of these dogs that live in busy households tend to think a lot of those sounds are pretty normal versus if they're country dogs or they come from one part of the country. We saw this a lot during COVID. I was working with a group based out of New York City and doing a lot of virtual consulting, and a lot of the dogs we figured out were coming up from the south. So areas that had low areas of live adoption were sending them to areas with high areas of live adoption. So a lot of dogs from the south were going up to the shelters in New York City, and the biggest thing that they struggled with, the adult dogs, was the overwhelm of sensory, especially sound. So even in their apartment, even in their condo, they hadn't been acclimated to all those construction sounds. Mark is a a former New Yorker. I know uh you know these sounds well, and it can just be sensory overload on some of these dogs that didn't have them in critical stages of development.

SPEAKER_03: 21:39

I think about all the bedrooms and the apartments that face the main road, the streets, you know, and all the horns hocking constantly. It's interesting. Absolutely. Hey Randy, you know what I'm thinking? Maybe in the show notes, what we can do is we can provide, and maybe Drew, if you can help us, I don't know, yeah, a list of like some of the house plants to keep away from the dogs and that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_02: 22:00

Yeah, and especially as you move into like garden season, another big one. Everybody uses the outdoors for toilet training and play, but they forget, oh, the dog's gonna go right into the garden. So there's some mulches that are dyed, a lot of um compost and things like that. Sometimes they put chocolate and and fish and things like that into compost and planting soil, so stuff you wouldn't even think about. And also on that, Randy, you mentioned bringing home a new animal. I really encourage people to think about their ethological behaviors. Whether you're bringing home a cat who's gonna need some sort of thing to climb or scratch on, or a puppy who's gonna want to chew and dig, you can either follow them around, you know, trying to stop that behavior, or you can give them a behavioral outlet for that. So we just mentioned gardening. One of my favorite things when people call me and say, Oh, Drew, you gotta help me. My dog is digging up my my garden bed. Like that's our hobby, that's what we love. And and really making sure that they not only do some things to prevent that from happening, but we we often will build a dig pit, you know, put a little kiddie pool out there with sand and soil.

SPEAKER_03: 23:11

All right. So I think with that we can move over into the medical uh side of things. And I know, Dr. Randy, one of the most important things to you, regardless of life stage, regardless of when of when you meet a dog, is nutrition and how to feed the dog. And there's probably no better time than when the dog is young to learn this and to again set them up for success. And in this case, success might mean longevity, life extension, those kinds of things. Um and after we talk a little bit about nutrition, we'll go into a whole host of other topics, medically vaccines and things like that, that need to be looked at. But why don't you start? I can just tell you that over and over and over, when I was working on uh my project, the Love Dog Project, um, people would ask me always, especially first-time people, pet owners, how do I feed my dog? Well, just tell me how to feed my dog. So why don't we start there? I know you like talking about that, and then we'll take it from there.

SPEAKER_01: 24:24

Sure, sure. No, I think this is uh vastly important because even in my consults for all of my second and third opinions that I see in my rehab cases, we have the food conversation. Um, you know, um pet parents want to have the food conversation, and unfortunately, a lot of veterinarians go to what they've been taught, which is the set types of prescription diets, and and um, and you know, part of my my my uh um career has been recently trying to set that notion of these diets being great for these dogs uh in a place where it belongs, which is not very important. And so my conversation on the food diet is the food question for your cats or your dogs is uh remember there's a there's a food hierarchy. Um threshold food is certainly number one. Um threshold food has it has great advantages, but it also has disadvantages, and that is that even as a veterinarian for 43 years, I couldn't balance a homemade diet that I was making myself properly. And when I say that, I mean calcium, vitamin D levels. So um, if you're gonna do a fresh whole food diet, there are some great recipes. Dr. Karen Becker has a book called Forever Life, which is a new cookbook that's out. Um there are tons of really good recipes. Uh Gary Richter has that in his book. Uh they're they're out there. Um, so if you're looking for doing that yourself, that's great. Now remember that that cute 10-pound German shepherd puppy is gonna be you know 70 or 80 pounds. So when we go to feeding fresh old food, it's gonna be a task. Um, and I don't know about you guys, but I don't have the kind of time that it takes to put that together. And so the second down on the list is uh I like uh free um the lightly cooked diets. You know, there's a there's diets like farmer's dog and dress for dogs, and there's some really good diets out there that are slightly cooked, uh they're balanced, and they are much easier to feed because they come prepared. And so most of them are thaw and warm up and you serve to your dog. Um, next step down from that is really raw food. But here in Arizona, we have a problem because um it gets to the 110 during the summer. So if we're getting raw food, uh if it's coming from a market or something like that, I really advise my clients not to do this because we don't know how it's stored, we don't know how it's processed, and the risk of problems with that. But the way we get around that is um I like freeze-dried raw. Uh, I love the freeze-dried raw products. Uh, there's you know hundreds of them out there. And and it's really neat because you add hot water uh for a dog or for a cat, they love it because the olfactory or smell uh sensation is there because it smells great, and then they'll go to town. And then down from there is the complex carb dry foods. So, you know, things that are basically made with lentils or garbanzo beans, where these are not simple carbs. We want to try to avoid rice, white potato, soy corn, and wheat at all costs. Uh, but but sweet potato works great. Um uh there's lots of other diets with, like I said, garbanzo beans, lentils, that type of thing. And even uh some of what I call the Chinese cooling grains like oats, millet, and barley, are fine. I'm not advocating a grain-free diet, uh, but that's kind of how I would go. So you have to look at those food hierarchies and just decide what seems to fit your budget, what seems to fit your time constraints, and that's a great way to go. On your cats, we got to remember that cats have a zero carb requirement. So kibble for cats, uh, even though they love it, um, really is not a great choice. And I tell people try to avoid staying away from the canned foods because then you're paying for water. Most canned foods are 60 to 70 percent water, and that's what you're paying for. So you're just as well off using a freeze-dry product or for them. Um and obviously you can, you know, there are people who will cook for their cats, and there are recipes out there for that.

SPEAKER_03: 28:57

One thing that I want to I just want to be sensitive to most people and budgets. And I think we know that well, the two things I want to say is number one, the good news is that there are lots more choices today than than there were 10 and 20 years ago. I mean, I talk about this whole nutritionist thing in the pet food sector, as there's really been a revolution. And one of the big things is the freeze-dried raw. On the other hand, the freeze-dried raw tends to be extremely expensive. The bags are relatively small, the price tag is high. So I I just from what I've learned is you can get yourself a good quality kibble and then you can top it with the freeze-dried raw kind of thing, and that helps out with the budget and it makes it go a lot farther. I just wanted to kind of get that in there if I could, so people know that we're sensitive to how expensive these foods can become.

SPEAKER_01: 29:53

Um, don't forget that you can't just bring this puppy or kitten home and change the diet. Okay? That's a really big mistake. So you have to start feeding what the breeder, um, the shelter, whatever they were feeding, you have to have that for a little while. And I tell people you slowly want to acclimate them to what you want to feed them. So quarter of the new diet to three-quarters of their old diet for a few days, half and half for a few days, three quarters, one quarter, then you have them switched over, and you're not going to really attack your GI tract because you're obviously most of the diets we're talking about are richer and can cause, certainly cause higher miclate.

SPEAKER_02: 30:34

Yeah, that's one of those big things that sets people back on the whole potty training uh progression, Dr. Randy, is they quickly think, well, I'm gonna be the best pet parent out there, I'm gonna go buy the most expensive food, I'm gonna do this. And to your point, Mark, I always ask, is that sustainable? Meaning, can you find that food uh on a regular basis? And is it in your budget? And does it match kind of all your values? Um, which I'll touch on another thing here. But I wanted to add not just what we're feeding, but how um how we're feeding and when we're feeding, because this is one of those things from um an ethological lens that we don't give enough consideration to when it comes to puppies. So we feed dogs two to three times a day because it's really helpful for us. It helps us with potty training, it helps us um provide energy when they're you know trying to get through their day if we can break those feedings into little things. But from a species consideration, dogs, their classification would be opportunistic scavengers. So they would go through these big periods of times of fasting and then gorging. And so really what we see is puppies start to get a little bit older, and some of those potty train things have been really stabilized in habits, is I really start encouraging people to kind of ditch that food bowl at least for one meal a day and really focus on some enrichment feeding. Uh my dog's 13, Ozzy just paid us a little visit here, and I still do his breakfast in some kind of wobbler or you know, a puzzle toy or something because I have to leave, and now he's got all this period of time where there's nothing in the house to do. And so I love using his breakfast as a way to give him an activity, something to focus on, and that's where Mark all throw in some of those special proteins. You know, I might uh this morning in his wobbler, he had, you know, kind of a premium kibble. He had a little bit of like a nut butter and some sardines in there and all sorts of fun stuff for him to investigate. And, you know, not enough that it's gonna be his main protein in his diet or upset his GI, but just to give him a little something new. Randy said old fashioned, and dogs are basically noses with four legs. Even our flat-faced and brachiocephalic dogs love to sniff and follow the nose. So you give them a puzzle or something where they're following that scent and and utilizing all their skills and their mouth, you can often regulate chewing, destructive behavior, and all those kinds of things by giving them an activity-based meal rather than just dropping it in the food bowl. Also, if you're gonna go to a puppy class and let's say your class is in the evening, I can't tell you how many people come to class and they're like, oh, my dog just had dinner before the class. I'm like, why don't you just bring the dinner? Let's hand feed during class. If you've got a dog that loves to eat and loves to eat their kibble, if that's what you're using, or a freeze-dried raw, you can totally put that in a little treat pouch and bring it on the go. This is a really good training tip in the training world. There's a acronym called SMART. It's C, Mark, and reward training. And so when we say mark, we're not talking about Mark Drucker, we're talking about marking behaviors we like with something like yes or a clicker, and basically a way of giving the dog a uh audio feedback for I like that behavior, and then marking that before I give food. But the most important thing is they get a reinforcer for a desirable behavior. Mark, earlier you mentioned something about um building behavior, and this is one of my favorite topics because I think it's so much easier to put the work in up front. Let's say we're building good or desirable behaviors versus if your dog starts to make a habit of digging in the garden or chewing up the furniture or those baseboards or whatever they're doing to relieve stress and boredom at home. Now you've got to deconstruct those behavior. And if they've become habitualized, like barking out the front window while you're gone all day, that's gonna be much harder to undo that behavior than to build it up. So if you want your dog to behave at the groomer and to be um confident at the veterinarians, you've got to do those things on a frequent enough basis for them to become habitualized good behaviors. So why not bring some of that food with you and use that as a reinforcer while you're out in the world?

SPEAKER_01: 35:08

You know, let me mention also about cats, um, because you know, cats hunt for their prey. Um, that's what they're trained to do. And so uh a lot of times putting um, as Drew mentioned, a drop of food in a food bowl for a cat, um, obviously they're gonna eat, uh, but it's really not the best thing to do, especially in multi-cat households. They don't like to eat around other cats a lot of times. So the food bowl often being hidden or in a different place is important. But I tell my cat owners, have a few food bowls or um these uh really neat toys that they can they can play with and eat at the same time, so that they're actually hunting for their food instead of just uh being presented with one food bowl and calling it good. Uh that works really well for cats.

SPEAKER_02: 35:58

Well, and Dr. Randy, how many pets do you see of every species in this country that are suffering from not calorie deficits but overweight pets and obesity? Think about how you can use enrichment like hunting for food with cats, scavenging for dogs, and you know, these variable feeding times and schedules to help combat that with movement, and also it's easier to regulate those calories. I have so many clients who kind of shame their dogs in the winter, like, oh, he's putting on weight. I'm like, well, you're feeding the same amount of calories as you were doing all summer long. You need to either regulate those if your activity has gone down, which a lot of people and our animals tend to mirror us if their activity levels have gone down as well.

SPEAKER_01: 36:45

Yep. Yeah, I mean, we know that you know 60% of dogs are over or are obese at this point, and and a lot the number is hard to know, especially for cats, because a lot of times the vets don't get to see cats quite as often, but that number is quite up there. And yet, when you ask the client, less than six percent are going to admit that their their animals' body school, which we grade when we see them as a veterinarian, is abnormal. Uh so it's it's an interesting kind of phenomenon.

SPEAKER_03: 37:14

I think a last point we'll make here before moving on is I just spent four months on the East Coast, you know, uh in the eastern end of Long Island, and I had been living for a couple of years prior to that with my dog in Colorado, near you, Drew, and up in Boulder. And um not only are the people much more fit and they get a lot more exercised, you know, it's just part of the lifestyle in these places, but the dogs are also much more fit. You don't see a lot of obesity in the dogs, or at least not nearly as much as you see on the East Coast. You know, some guy came up to me that had a lab, this is when I was on Long Island, and uh he had a lab too, both white labs. He just looks at me and he says to me, When are you gonna uh start feeding that dog? Because my dog is so thin and fit. I mean, he's 86 pounds, he's actually perfect. And I just looked at him and I said, And when are you gonna stop feeding yours? You know, it it's the obesity thing, especially in certain parts of the country, it um it's a big deal. And you know, it's it's sometimes you don't even notice it.

SPEAKER_01: 38:22

Right, right. And we know from the dog aging project and also the pet obesity um group that um if dogs get or cats get to an area where they've actually getting into the right body score um and and they're actually in a good situation, they can live on average two and a half years longer. So we're talking here all about setting up these animals for a very successful life. Let's really pay attention to this because, like Mark, you're right. I mean, that that guy was killing his dog with love. I mean, that's kind of what it comes down to.

SPEAKER_02: 38:56

Yeah, we tend to often do that with training too, and trainers get blamed for this a lot because people are feeding in food bowls two or three meals a day. Then they're coming to a say a puppy class and they're shoving these really calorie-dense quote unquote treats into their pet. So now they're given Snickers after dinner, and these puppies are just turning into roly-poly pudgies, and everybody's like, oh, well, how cute. But you're also setting the expectation for that dog of, oh, this is the sort of calorie consumption I'm gonna have throughout the day. And then, Dr. Randy, I'm sure you know how dangerous that is once you start looking at these pets, especially the larger breeds and some of these breeds with histories of you know arthritis and joint issues, what happens when you start throwing even a couple extra pounds on these dogs later in life. So it it's crucial that we really think smart about not just what we're feeding, but how and when we're feeding and and changing that throughout their life and matching those like energy requirements. Requirements.

SPEAKER_03: 40:02

Let's um, Dr. Randy and Drew, let's move on to some of the medical stuff. Uh you know, you bring home this new puppy, you bring home this new kitten, uh, and you want to get it over to the doctor, to the veterinarian, just to see how it's doing and start start the regimen, start the protocols, right? So, Dr. Randy, why don't you talk about I don't know, some of the tests, the ex the exam, the test, the vaccines. I'd I I'd like I'd love to have a conversation at some point in this section about heartworm, since it's all over the country at this point, um, and just teach us what to do.

SPEAKER_01: 40:40

Sure, sure. Well, I mean, you know, um proactive practices like POS Veterinary Center here in Tucson, um, we set up our puppies and kittens with a plan, basically. Um, and the reason why we do that is we want multiple exams uh through the early stages of puppy and kittenhood to, you know, not only make sure that they're uh getting the right vaccines, but also to make sure that you know uh we've we've checked fecal exams on these animals, make sure there's no parasites that they've come with. Um we, you know, we basically talk a lot about what we've talked about here, um, but we also want to set them up for preventative stuff like heartworm and tick situations. So just to give you an example, like at Pause, um, we'll do um really about four, about four visits. Um, and we start them, the puppies at about eight or nine weeks. Um, and that includes uh uh uh an initial heartworm prevention that we give the owners for free, um, their first vaccine, obviously a consultation, and a very, very good physical examination to identify any issues. Um, and then it moves on to like 12 weeks, to 12 to 13 weeks, and then we do another exam at 14 to 15 weeks, usually 16 and 17 weeks. And one of the things that we do here, uh, unlike a lot of practices, is our last exam for these puppies and kittens is often to do a titer, uh a blood test to identify the fact that these vaccines, and we use only the best, um, are have taken effect and are protective. Um, why do we do that? Because we recommend titers going forward from there, from then on. I mean, I've had puppies and kittens I've had puppies and kittens who have been vaccinated early on through these series, but have never gotten another vaccine again. Um, and you know, is one of the biggest things that I shudder about is you you have a three-year-old dog who is getting its yearly distemper polva vaccines from the veterinarian. No one's ever checked to see if it's protected, and you're just putting, and if you check that dog and it was protected, which I would say 99% of the cases are, um, you're putting a vaccine on top of this a well-vaccinated animal, and you're creating an immunological response that's gonna have a problem. Uh, and so be aware that uh, you know, these um I'm totally for vaccines in the puppy and kittenhood phase. Uh we've we've we've basically eliminated parvovirus, you know, distemper is the same thing. Um, obviously the rabies protection becomes important. Uh, but you know, there's definitely reasons to have these vaccines, but there's also reasons to really make sure that they're limited and done properly. And like checking at the end of that, um, that that puppy or kitten visits uh is a great way to go. Um we also, you mark, you mentioned um heartworm. Um we we also I want to tell everybody that there's a tremendous increase in tick-borne diseases across the United States. Um, you know, we live in the Southwest. It's so dry here, um, you wouldn't think that uh uh the you know your your normal tick would survive in this area, or heartworm for that matter. Yet um when I moved here from Pennsylvania, um my first practice was South of Tucson, and there were 12,000 acres of irrigated pecan groves. And the first dog that came to see me in that practice, honestly God, the first dog was coughing. And um and it was really a severe cough. And so I, you know, talked to the clients and we we obtained chest radiographs or x-rays. And I looked at these x-rays and I said, you know, if I was in Philadelphia, this would be heartworm disease. Um, and sure enough, that dog was positive for heartworm because mosquitoes know no boundaries. You know, it it was really funny down there because the pecan groves were on the east side of the freeway and their homes were on the west. And I used to have clients come in and say, Oh, we don't have heartworm because they're all on the other side with the pecan groves, and you couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, just to give people an idea, we've had two indoor cats last week that were positive for heartworm. Indoor cats. So mosquitoes get in the house. And and then, you know, as far as the tick-borne diseases, you know, not only Lyme's disease, but something called errlichosis, which is tick fever. Um, we also see babesiosis, we see anaplasmosis, and and they're on the rise. In fact, in Tucson, um we've got a 60% increase in diagnosed tick-borne diseases in our dogs. And people say, Well, I don't know how that's possible, because we check them every year with an in-house quick test. Um, and I go back to the client and they go, I don't know how that's possible. I've never seen a tick on my dog. Well, they get bit, the tick drops off, the tick injects uh the parasite into the blood system when it takes a bite, and you're off and running. So we often incorporate heartworm and tick prevent in the same thing, uh, in the same process, and have had much, much better luck preventing these things.

SPEAKER_03: 45:56

In the case of heartworm, would you say that there's been an increase in the diagnosis of the disease partly due to the fact that a lot of the rescues that are coming up are traveling long distances, say from New Mexico up into Seattle, for example, you know, and they're bringing the heartworm with them or from South Carolina up into New York and up into Massachusetts, you know. This is also part of what's going on, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01: 46:29

Yes. Yeah. In fact, just to give you a little backstory, in um when uh when Kachina hit uh New Orleans in that area, our Tucson got 14 rescue dogs from shelters there to the Tucson rescue. Um, and all 14 were heartworm positive. And if people understand how heartworm works, um a mosquito can bite a dog that has heartworm, pick up the parasite, and then spreads it. And now in Arizona, we have like 35% of our coyotes are carrying heartworm disease. So now we have this reservoir that any mosquito that's you know not carrying heartworm can get and pass to our animals. And so um there's been, you know, heartworm was an East Coast uh Gulf Coast disease. And you you really there are very few places that can say they don't have it. Now, in some of the places where they get a hard freeze, uh where we don't get that in Arizona, obviously, it will kill off some of the mosquito population, and people say, well, I don't want to go year-round heartworm preventative because really it's you know it's time of the freeze and we're not gonna see it. Um and so there are places with where they do that, but in general, most of the time the heartworm tip prevention is year-round.

SPEAKER_02: 47:47

Yeah, Colorado is one of those places. And Mark, you were talking about lifestyle, and and that's sort of a good point of what vaccines do you need to get that aren't necessarily required. So, for instance, if you are, you know, living in New York City and you need your dog to go into one of these busy dog runs or area where there's a lot of dogs, you might be a person that's looking at, you know, um more vaccines than somebody whose dog doesn't really interact with that many other dogs. Or here we have, you know, a l a lot of raccoon and um you mentioned coyotes and foxes and all sorts of populations, so leptospirosis and things like that often become required for those of us that play in the outdoors a lot, and even you know, just understanding bacteria and and things we think, oh, I'm doing something nice for my dog, taking him for a swim, but if it's really hot here, we get that blue-green algae on our our still lakes and things like that. So it's it's one of those things you've really got to work with your veterinarian to understand there's certain times of year and there's certain lifestyles that you might need different vaccines than if you just Google what vaccines does my dog need. And like Dr. Randy said, if you're not checking for titers, you could be over-vaccinating. And if you're not matching your lifestyle, you could be under-vaccinating.

SPEAKER_03: 49:07

Well, I just feel like the whole titer conversation is huge. Yeah. I mean you could do a whole show on just titers because it's really a lot of the dogs are over-vaccinated. And uh, you know, like you said, Dr. Randy, that's just trouble down the road.

SPEAKER_02: 49:27

Well, and from a behavior standpoint, Dr. Randy said a r a word I love, which is proactive, and you were talking about those proactive visits, and I think what so many pet parents are doing is they're reacting to situations, whether they're reacting to illness or sickness, or they're reacting to a timeline, like, okay, it's time to go to the vet. And one of the biggest things that uh I've been thrilled to see in the last 10 plus years is trainers who are starting to incorporate cooperative care, what we used to call husbandry training, into working with pets. And that is basically preparing them. So, you know, if Dr. Randy's got to do a five-point touch test and a cold stethoscope on that dog, can I be doing things around my house to help my puppy get ready for that thing? And you'd be surprised a nice uh metal spoon makes a pretty good fake stethoscope when you're doing these practice sessions. So I like to teach all puppies to stand for what I call a five-point touch test, looking in those ears in the mouth, um, squeezing that belly, doing all those things with the feet, uh flicking toenails while I'm doing affection, but also while we're standing on a mat. And maybe I'll just have somebody, you know, holding a lickable treat. Lickable treats are such a great way to teach your dog grooming skills. We have all these um these pet stations and things like that where you can go in and walk the dog into like a bathing tub. And I always encourage my uh classes, we've even taken field trips to go in there and just stand in the tub and feed them high value food while we turn the water and the air on and off, not even spraying the dogs, just to acclimate them to that procedure and then slowly helping them get used to. We're gonna stand in here and be bored for a little bit, but it's gonna be really valuable. And those experiences happening when they're young can really help set them up for resilience down the road and and at the very least to tolerate those experiences so that they're not going into distress the first time they hear the sound of that air blower or you know, have to go get that vaccine because Dr. Randy said, Hey, we've got a a ton of heartworm going on, we need to do a blood draw to make sure your dog can have this. Um, and and that's to me should be just crucial parts of training. Everybody likes to do the sit-down shake stuff, but we need to be involving more cooperative care and really creating a community for our dogs and our and our cats that they that's not such a distressing thing for them to do.

SPEAKER_03: 52:06

What about the all the genetic testing that we hear about uh when our dogs are puppies? Do you recommend it as do you recommend it? Is it a puppy thing? Is it a teenager thing? What what is the genetic testing story all about?

SPEAKER_01: 52:20

That's a great question. You know, we're we've been harping on proactive type things on the show, and here's a situation where you can really learn a lot um about your new puppy and kitten uh through these tests. Uh in in for dogs, um, there's the embark test, there's the wisdom panel. Um, these are tests that not only um will identify, like if you have a mixed breed dog, what genetics are involved, but really what they may be set up for down the road as far as health issues, looking at things like um heart congenital, um you know congenital type heart diseases, um, even as simple things as arthritis, which is so important, um, and looking at uh a lot of other issues. I mean, I think the embark test looks at I think 125 diseases. Um, and in cats, you have uh the wisdom panel, and you also have um uh uh it's called I think it's called Brew Pause, I'm not exactly sure. I always forget the name of that um that test, but um it's you know, uh it's base pause. I'm sorry, base pause. And so these are really helpful, and really helpful because people will say, well, you know, what good is it that I find out that my dad's gonna get heart disease? Which it's very important because I can do things like starting to use ubiquinol to strengthen the heart muscle, starting to use things like uh cardio pet shoes, which are you know amino acids and hotorn that's gonna strengthen the muscle. There, so there are proactive things that we can do. Um, so I think these genetic testings are amazing, and I think that they really give the owner and the veterinarian a leg up on helping our pets uh for the future.

SPEAKER_03: 54:08

So embark, is that something you buy? Do you buy embark online? Does your vet prescribe it? E M B A R K Embark, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 54:17

Yeah, embark and wisdom are and and base paws are all available online, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 54:22

So those are three different brands essentially that do the same thing.

SPEAKER_01: 54:25

And there are others, but those are the ones that I've used the most. And they're typically um uh a saliva test. So you're basically getting a kit with Q tips, very simple, to swab the inside of your pet's mouth, send it off, and and and boom, and in a very short period of time, you get some great answers.

SPEAKER_02: 54:44

Um with those genetic testings, you know, a lot of people think about doing those breed profiles just for fun to know, you know, aesthetically, they get these mixed breed dogs from shelters and they want to know what's in there, but it can be really helpful from a training standpoint too, if I know that you know, your dog has terrier lineage or a dog who is used for herding or livestock protection, because a lot of the behaviors that people describe or label often have these sort of latent modal patterns that are part of their genetic makeup. You know, if you're getting frustrated with your dog and labeling him as stubborn because he doesn't listen to you when you're in the field and you find out, oh, well, he he's got a lot of uh lineage from the hound dogs, he he is designed to be obsessed with odor and to put that nose on the ground. And same if they get distracted by little furry bunnies running through the field and and you've got terrier genetics or or they chase the bikes when they go by on the trail, and you're working with some herding dog material. So rather than us getting frustrated, if we have that information, we can say, Oh, I need to improve my ethological framework on setting this dog up for success. I have always loved there's a woman named Kim Brophy who's an applied ethologist, and she has this great model called LEGs that is an acronym for learning, education, genetics, and self, and saying we need to be looking at dogs with this idea that they are this accumulation of those things. So not just the genetic material or just our training and not just our environment, but all and self, which what's happening for the animal that day. And I really think that's a good way to think about setting your puppy up for success is breaking down some of these cultural norms and saying, okay, how do I get proactive rather than reactive? And and my kind of last point on that is we tend to define dogs by their behavior. So I get people who, you know, are are feeling really s like they're struggling if their dog has an incident with another dog or with a human and they say, Oh, my dog is aggressive. And we have to remember that behavior is the language of animals. So that behavior is coming not only based on those genetic factors, but also the pressures of the environment. So if we're really setting our dogs up for success, hopefully we're in front of those behaviors. But if they happen, we have to be careful we don't pigeonhole them and say, ah, my dog is stubborn, my dog is aggressive, my dog is a barker. Say, oh, that's something my dog does. That's an expression of that genetic material combined with the environment, combined with the pressures of everything that's going on in their life. So my little hope is that people can work closely with their veterinarians to set those animals up for success and really get proactive with their training so that those dogs are prepared for all these different things they're gonna have to deal with in different life stages.

SPEAKER_01: 57:51

Great point, Drew. Great point.

SPEAKER_03: 57:53

Amen. I think it's a great place for us to stop. I think we've learned a lot today. This is like going to an entire course. So uh I will say to Drew, thank you.

SPEAKER_02: 58:06

Yeah. Well, if you like that, I'm gonna have a course ready for you, Mark. You know, I'll get you guys some links, but I'm gonna have some online courses because I really think that's an important paradigm shift for people to have. And it really not only sets your dog up for success, but you up for success. If you start approaching this problem with new eyes and a new lens and new information, you're gonna do better and you're gonna train better, and you're gonna enjoy your life with your dog a lot more.

SPEAKER_01: 58:32

So, this is Dr. Randy PetFett for Pause, Reflect, and Heal. Thanks. Uh, hope you enjoyed the show. This is so much information. Mark, great job, Drew. Great job. Uh, we will come back to you with more. Um, remember to subscribe to us on your streaming service. And also uh don't forget um our newsletter is coming. And so get on uh uh on the website, drrandypetfett.com, and and and hit hit newsletter, and and we'll be glad to send you that information. And uh we could be available for you know telemedicine consults, and I know Drew does a lot of consults, so uh you know make sure you utilize us because we want your dog and cat to be the healthiest uh you know long living animal as possible.