Holistic Pet Wellness with Angela Ardolino

Our pets are family, and their health deserves the same thoughtful, holistic approach we often seek for ourselves. 

In this episode of Building the Best You, Jeanne Collins sits down with holistic pet wellness expert Angela Ardolino to explore how nutrition, medicinal plants, mushrooms, and hemp can support long-term health for our furry companions. 

Angela shares her remarkable journey from entrepreneur to advocate for natural healing, explains the importance of homeostasis, discusses the growing role of the endocannabinoid system in overall wellness, and offers hope for pet owners facing seizures, dementia, chronic illness, and aging. 

Whether you're passionate about holistic health or simply want your pet to live a longer, healthier life, this conversation will inspire you to think differently about healing—for both animals and yourself.

Angela's book recommendation: Mutant Message Down Under

More about Angela:

Angela Ardolino is a holistic pet-health clinician, formulator, educator, and advocate best known for developing hemp and functional mushroom animal wellness solutions that are safe, ethically sourced, and species-appropriate.​​ 

Wanting to show the efficacy of a mushroom and adaptogen solution for supporting dogs experiencing Canine Cognitive Disorder (CCD), Angela undertook leading The Senior Dog Study, a research initiative created to move beyond guesswork and measure whether a functional mushroom + adaptogen routine may support brain-related behaviors and quality of life in senior dogs. 

A sought-after speaker and media resource, Angela educates doctors, veterinarians, pet professionals, and families nationwide on cannabis medicine, functional mushrooms, adaptogens, and the endocannabinoid system in pets. She also hosts the podcast “Your Natural Dog with Angela Ardolino,” where she brings practical, actionable conversations about natural pet care to a wide audience.

Then, for over a decade, she ran Fire Flake Farm, a rescue operation that provided care for hundreds of, mostly senior, dogs and other animals with complex needs. Those frontline years gave her a practical lens on what families face every day: aging-related decline, chronic pain, anxiety, seizures, and the frustration of “no options” conversations. That the issues she’d see in her many senior dogs were effectively treated with the nootropics and adaptogens of hemp and fungi show that these are often the missing piece for senior dog brain health.

With more than 20 years in holistic animal care, Angela’s work sits at the intersection of clinical education, real-world application, and compassionate rescue. She is a graduate of the University of Vermont’s Larner College of Medicine professional certificate program in Cannabis Science and Medicine/Medical Cannabis for Therapeutic Use, and she is a member of the Society of Cannabis Clinicians—training and affiliations that inform her “do no harm” approach to formulation and education.

angelaardolino.com

@yournaturaldogpodcast

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Transcript

Introducing Angela Ardolino

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome to Building the Best You, a destination for you to reimagine what is possible in your life and then create it. Welcome to the show, everybody. I'm your host, Gene Collins, and today we are talking about pets, one of my personal favorites. I love my dogs so much, they are so meaningful, and I am so excited to talk about wellness for pets. I have Angela Ardolino on the on the line. I'm so excited. We're going to talk about holistic health. I talk about holistic health all the time for people, for humans, especially for women, but I have never had anyone on to talk about it for animals. And so I am so excited to have you on to talk about this because this matters. Taking care of our pets matters. They are like family. So, Angela, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Thanks for having me. And I feel like I am, yes, I do pet health, but I have more women who figure out their own health by figuring out how to take care of their pet holistically. So it's my favorite thing in the world because you know most of us women will take care of everyone else before they take care of themselves. So I love where they learn how to systems work and how holistic health works and how to get back to homeostasis. And when they're able to do that for their own dog, they always turn around and go, Can I do the same thing for myself? And I go, Yep. So it's my favorite thing. And it is. It's I it's kind of like how I ended up doing what I'm doing is that I figured out how to fix my own health. And at the same time, my soul dog was also suffering from something. And the same medicine helped us both. And when I say medicine, I'm always talking about plant, mushroom, and real food medicine.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Right. Yes. Okay. I'm so excited to dig into this because it is so cool. First, I would love to hear how did you get, as you said, there's a story, how did you get into this space? What's your background?

Angela's Journey Into Holistic Pet Health

SPEAKER_00 2:09

So I'm a hardcore entrepreneur. Have been, I started my first business when I was 14. So I've been doing this for a while. And when, let's see, it was 2015, I had kind of like a media company, I guess I would call it. I had a magazine, a radio, syndicated like radio segment and TV thing. And all I did was talk about living a more natural lifestyle, getting those toxins out of your life, out of your food. And I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. And I was like, whoa, how'd this happen? I thought I had already cleaned up my diet, removed toxins, and realized that it was because I was such a stressed-out entrepreneur. So I was like, okay, well, I gave myself this disease. I can get rid of this disease. So I started to look at the natural modalities that would help me. And I discovered a full extract of cannabis oil, which is FICO, is the short term for it. And I remember taking it the first time. It was in a bottle, a dropper. I remember taking it the first time. And I knew that I was in pain, but didn't realize how much pain I was in until I felt it all leave my body. So one dropper full, and I was like, what is this? I'm not high. I just feel incredible. So I felt my pain leave my body. I felt my stress and anxiety levels go down. I was like, I don't understand. Why doesn't everybody know about this? So it literally changed my life. And I was like, I want to know more. I want to know what's going on. How do we make a real medicine? And at the time, I lived in Florida, which was not legal yet. It was not medical marijuana was not legal yet. So I became a hardcore advocate to get it legalized in my state, which I did. And then I literally sold my business and threw myself into the industry. And before I sold my business, I traveled all over, interviewed people. And one of the biggest people that I, let's see, hung out with were moms. Moms who were treating their kids, seizures, cancer, tumors, problems with cannabis medicine. So I really started to report on them, go to a lot of conferences, sold my business, threw myself in the industry, having no idea where I would end up. And I hired the best consultant at the time. I literally traveled with him, learned how to source seeds, how to grow medicine, how to formulate, how to extract, all of those things. And in 2016, I was invited to the University of Vermont School of Medicine's first program for the study of cannabis and its therapeutic uses. That's where I learned about the endocannabinoid system, which we all have. All animals have this. And on the other side, I'm a hardcore animal lover. So dogs especially, but I had a rescue for 20 years where I rescued old dogs and farm animals. And I just was like, okay, animals have this system. I could really help them. I'm going to concentrate on helping them. And I went out into the marketplace and there were no products. If there were products on the marketplace at the time, they were usually a human product where someone just slapped a paw label on it. And a lot of times they'd have, first of all, they'd be the wrong dosage. They would have other ingredients that would actually harm or kill an animal. So I'd be at conferences, you know, screaming and yelling, going, get this shit off your table. You can't give this to dogs. So that's literally how it started. And after I got out of school and found out there wasn't anything in the marketplace, I started to source and grow and extract and formulate and then literally test my formulas on the animals in my rescue. So everything cancer, seizures, IVDD, CCD, any and every disease, I was able to take these dogs. And a lot of times I'd get veterinarians, local veterinarians, that go, hey, got a case for you. Owner has surrendered. They don't think there's anything else they want to do or can do. Do you want to see if you can do something? I'm like, heck yeah, let me have them. And I'd always be able to wean them off of, and they'd all be on five to ten different pharmaceutical drugs and shampoos and creams and eye drops. I would be able to wean them off of all of those things, put them on a real food diet, treat them with plant and mushroom medicine, and always bring them back to homeostasis, no matter how sick or how old they were. So this, I just started writing my protocols, started getting involved with more holistic veterinarians, showing them my cases. And then I launched my formulas in 2018 because I had to wait for the farm bill to pass. And it's been crazy ever since. We have had over 100,000 customers now. We have hundreds of vets that use our formulas for medicine and as medicine, and they're all derived from food, plants, and mushrooms, just like pharmaceutical drugs are. And I don't think people realize that. That plants and mushrooms and food, of course, are the original medicine. And every drug out there is derived from something that worked in nature. But nature, you can't patent it and you can't make billions of dollars. So they literally go into a lab and try to recreate what nature, you know, has naturally. And when we do that, there's always a side effect because the body no longer recognizes what this concoction of chemicals are. It recognizes nature. So yeah, just being able to find things that are missing in the marketplace, what are these animals still suffering from? And then lots and lots of education because this endocannabinoid system, which they have now changed the name, it's now called the endocannabinoid ohm because they've incorporated the gut microbiome into this system. There's receptors all over us. And they, our doctors and our veterinarians, aren't taught anything about it. And it's a master system. It is the system that's in charge of all of the other systems. So if you don't interact with the system, you never get back to homeostasis, which is what its main responsibility is, is to keep us balanced and help us get back to balance. So that's kind of how I started and what I'm doing now. And um, it has been a wild ride and also amazing because there always is something you can do. I think that's what drove me the craziest is that a lot of these animals or dogs that I would get, the pet parent either either felt like they had tried everything, or their veterinarian told them there's nothing more that you can do. There's always something more that you can do. And your doctor or your veterinarian probably weren't taught about it. So you gotta do your own research and find what else is out there that could help me get back to normal.

Why Root Cause Healing Matters for Pets and People

SPEAKER_01 9:35

Yeah, which is such a great message. It's like, don't give up. There is always something. And I think it's your story is no different from what a lot of people personally experience in our healthcare system. And so I have guests on here all the time talking about homeopathy and functional medicine and integrated medicine. And so often they say that our traditional doctors are just not trained in the same way of understanding, you know, root cause ways to heal. And, you know, homeopathy in specifically aligns so much with what you're talking about. It's all about plant-based medicine and minerals and things that are in the earth. It's like, I remember the last guest I had who talked about it. She was like, everything we need to heal ourselves is in the ground.

SPEAKER_00 10:20

Everything is here. Mother Nature, she, she, she does. She provides us with all the food and medicine that we need. But, you know, we can't make millions of dollars off of that. So they literally recreate it and change it or make it addictive or whatever it is. So yeah, that's and I always believe that, you know, Mother Nature provides us with what we want, everything that we need. But then when I started to like really get into it, it's true. I just finished, I just did a clinical research on nootropics, which nootropics are adaptogens, which I don't know if you know or your audience knows what adaptogens are, but adaptogens are plants and mushrooms, sometimes dirt, that when we take them, you and I could take the same tincture, and it's going to adapt to what we need, what the stressors are in our life. And you can't overdose on them. The body knows what they are. And nootropics are adaptogens for the brain. So I just did a uh research study with old dogs with dementia. It's called CCD in dogs, and I was able to reverse it. So that's when I was really like, it really does provide us everything that we need. The fact that mushrooms like lion's mane and uh adaptogens like Bacopa Maneri and astragalus root have already been proven to reverse aging by regrowing our telomeres, which I don't know if you know what our telomeres are, but they're the cross-section in our cells, our DNA, that every time our cells replicate, they shrink. And when they shrink, we age. They literally regrow them. So they truly are anti-aging. And these are mushrooms, roots, and plants that are doing this. So she really does provide everything that we need. And I don't think people understand that dementia is now being called the fourth leading cause of death. And people are like, how don't I know? I used to think dementia was a memory disease. I was like, what's so wrong with losing your memory? And this is how I got into this is that I had a dog. I literally, she was lame, had giant MCT tumor attached to her spine, cleared all that up, brought her back to normal. And then I lost her to dementia, to CCD. And I could not believe that this is what happens. But I would watch her get up. She was probably 17 at the time, get up from her bed, walk over to her water bowl, and just stand there and stare at it. Oh go back, lay down, get up again, do it four times in a row. And it's because you don't remember how to drink and eat. And I that wow, that really affected me. I was like, you're still thirsty. That's heartbreaking. That's still hungry, but you don't remember how to swallow or eat. Oh my gosh. So that's why I was like, let me do something about this. And there was nothing on the marketplace, both for humans or for animals. So when you come in and you're like, my dog is, you know, waking me up all hours of the night, just wandering around, or he never settles down. He's pacing, he's getting lost, he's no longer acting like himself, he's not interacting with us. Oh my God, one of the biggest things that happens is he fell in the pool. Oh, he's 15 years old. It's the pool's been there the whole time. Right. Well, he doesn't remember where the pool is now.

Natural Approaches to Dementia and Aging in Dogs

SPEAKER_00 13:50

Yeah. So just things like that where I would just hear it over and over again. And I'm like, yeah, that's dementia. And there is something we can do about it. And literally, after I created the formula, I could give dogs that were full blown and watch them get better, watch them sleep through the night, watch them make eye contact again. Like it was incredible that just giving them these extracts of these plants and mushrooms would have such an impact, but they do. So I just want to tell people that there is something. There is always a natural way. I'm not anti-pharmaceuticals. I think that they're very important and needed, especially in emergency situations. But taking a pharmaceutical drug every single day for the rest of your life for you or your pet is not good for you. And it's going to cause other problems because they're literally chemicals. The liver doesn't recognize what they are. The liver has to work over time. And I wanted to know why. So one of the things I did between 2016 and 2018 when I could launch my products was formulate them. And then I got bored and I bought a very busy groom shop. And it I totally transformed it to a holistic groom shop. And I would get on a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday 75 to 100 dogs a day. Oh my goodness. And most of them were suffering. Most of them had skin issues, lumps, bumps, allergies, ear infections, eye, lameness, all of them. And so that's literally how I started developing all my formulas. But I also wanted to know why. Why is just about every dog over nine years old have lumps and bumps on them? Which, of course, at a groom shop is the worst thing because a groomer might be able to might nick one. And then the pet parent says, You cut my dog. And they're like, No, there was this tumor underneath his fur that we didn't even know was there. So we always would inspect them, and that's why I knew there were so many. And I wanted to know what the hell those lumps and bumps are. Lumps and bumps are imagine giving your dog something, and the liver has to metabolize it every single time. And when the liver doesn't recognize what it does, what it is, what this, you know, chemical concoction is, sometimes it'll send it out of the body, get rid of it. Sometimes it'll store it and hold on to it. Sometimes it'll work on it, send it back into the bloodstream, comes back around again. It's like, I don't know what this is. It goes and stores it in the dog's fatty tissues. And that is why old dogs have lumps and bumps all over them.

SPEAKER_02 16:30

Right.

SPEAKER_00 16:31

And the worst thing you could do is aspirate or cut open or try to cut off that thing that has been storing toxins for years. So just like understanding that and understanding what's going on, why is this happening? And that's why I did the research so that I could see can I can I do something for these old dogs? Can I reverse it? And now we have something and we've been able to prove it.

SPEAKER_01 16:58

That is so cool. All right, I have so many questions before we get to questions. And I have a still of like two specific dogs that are in need of your help. Okay, but before I get to my dogs, question, you mentioned a word, and I just want to make sure we say what it is because you said it a couple times, and I'm not sure everyone's gonna know what it is. Homeostasis.

Understanding Homeostasis and Holistic Wellness

SPEAKER_00 17:17

Thank you. Uh, homeostasis is your body doing what it's supposed to do. You know, all everything all the systems are functioning, you feel good, your mood is good, your poops are good, you know, everything's good. You're feeling wonderful. It's basically means being balanced, and that's how we should be. And the endocannabinoid system or ohm is responsible for that. So that's why when you interact with the system, it seems like, what do you mean? How does a cannabis oil or a full spectrum hemp extract do all of these things? Well, it's doing all of these things because it's interacting with that system that's responsible for keeping us balanced or at homeostasis. So you can't, let's say you have a respiratory problem. If you just deal with the respiratory issue without considering the endocannabinoid system, you're probably never going to get balanced again. Or you're taking a med that will help that lung issue, but it has these other ingredients in it that cause a side effect, you're not at homeostasis. Everything that you take into your body, if it's not natural, the immune system is going to react to it. So if autoimmune diseases, I don't believe are autoimmune diseases. I believe that it is our poor immune system constantly having to react to the toxins that we're constantly being bombarded with. So that's what homeostasis means. The lack of homeostasis is what causes aging. So aging is not a disease, it's just a lack of your body doing everything that it's supposed to do.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

Yeah. In a calm state. Yeah. Okay. Thank you for explaining that because not everybody knows that or understands that. And I don't want to assume that they do. So one other question. The word holistic in your world, what does the word holistic mean?

SPEAKER_00 20:06

That's a great question. And I'm glad you asked it because it's being used as a marketing term now. So holistic in my world or definition is getting to the root of the problem, finding out what the root cause is, and bringing solving it and bringing a person back to homeostasis without doing any harm, using plant and mushroom medicine and real food as medicine instead of turning to a pharmaceutical drug. So holistic means do no harm, which do no harm is what our doctors and veterinarians take an oath to do, which is total hypocritical because all drugs have a side effect and cause harm. So how does that make any sense? We don't turn to the holistic natural stuff first, which we should, and then turn to the pharmaceuticals when we need to stop something. And that's literally what what these pharmaceuticals are supposed to do, right? We take that steroid to stop what's going on so that we can then figure out what's going on and deal with that problem. Instead, we give steroids forever or for long periods of time, which has horrible side effects. So that's what I don't think people understand is that a conventional doctor is taught a standard of care. The hospital, well, and veterinarians, the hospitals, the schools, the food, the every the drugs are all controlled by the same people. So they teach them their standard of care. You have a kidney issue, this is what we do. Here's the procedure you get, the drugs you take, and a candy company has made a food that the doctor is now prescribing for that kidney issue. When instead we need to get to what is causing that kidney issue. Oh, probably because he's eating an ultra-processed diet with no moisture in it whatsoever, and probably not getting access to fresh, clean water. That's probably what the kidney issue is. Right. But this endocannabinoid system is a system that has receptors all over the body. The main two receptors are the CB1 and CB2 receptors, and they're literally all over our organs, skin, all throughout our gut, all over our brain, all down our central nervous system. And we produce something called endocannabinoids. And some people can have a deficiency in their endocannabinoid system as babies, because the first time we get a lot of our important endocannabinoids are from our mother's. Breast milk. So if we weren't breastfed, or that puppy or that kitty or whatever your pet is wasn't breastfed, then it may have an endocannabinoid deficiency as a baby. And if you never address that and you never get them back to homeostasis, that's where how early problems can start. And what's beautiful is that we have this beautiful cannabis plant that produces phytocannabinoids that when we take them fill those deficiencies and bring us back to homeostasis. So that's why everything from anxiety to pain to cancer to you name it, it seems like how is this plant do everything, do all of this? Well, that's why. It's because it's literally interacting with that master system.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

Okay, fascinating. All right, I have three dogs. All three of my dogs need you, but I'm gonna ask specifically about one just to use myself as a case study of someone who might reach out to you. And I will reach out to you, by the way. But let's just talk about me. We'll talk about me right now, just so I can use my life as a case study for you to help us understand how someone like myself would come to you and how you would help my dog. Because I live in Connecticut and you live in California. So I have a I have a dog who suffers from seizures and he has suffered from seizures. He's now seven. He's suffered from seizures since he was about three. This morning he had a terrible seizure. He's been he's on all kinds of medicine.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

So he takes a because this never makes sense to me. Yeah. He's on all of these medicines and he's still having seizures.

SPEAKER_01 24:25

He does. He

Helping Dogs With Seizures Through Natural Medicine

SPEAKER_01 24:26

just has them.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

So that medicine isn't working. And not and this is not a judgment at all. And I don't I also want to say that because sometimes I've been up on stages talking and I've seen people start crying because they thought they made a mistake or they did something wrong. I killed my first dog. Yeah. She was dead at age seven because I put her health in the hands of a conventional doctor and did everything that they told me to do. I blindly trusted that person in the white coat, and no one should ever do that. The per no one knows your pet or your you or your kids better than you do. You question everything. Never put anything in or on them without researching the hell out of it first. Because every drug, everything has a little pamphlet that goes with it that you're never given that you have to read. And the side effects most likely are there. There's also something called black box warnings. So you can literally take a drug and go, give me the black box warnings for this drug, and you can look at them and go, Whoa, no, thank you. I don't want to give my dog cancer to stop, you know, whatever it is. We already have so much research on both nootropics and hemp, not even marijuana, hemp stopping seizures. That is one of my first and earliest experiences was with that, because I'd have dogs at the groom shop or at boarding or at my rescue that would have seizures. I could stop them while they're happening by simply putting a powerful, well-made hemp extract right on their gums. So, yes, what you have to do is you have to find their dose. So seizure drugs are hard because you have to wean your dog off of them slowly because a lot of times it will trigger one by doing it. But giving them a full spectrum hemp extract, and then I have the the actual same formula that I did the research on, it's a nootropic, I would do that too, because they're all to help support the brain and calm that brain down in that activity. Absolutely, you can control seizures with a full spectrum hemp extract if it's made right. So when I say that, you go, well, how do you know if it's made right? Well, you gotta you gotta do research again because people, I don't think people understand because I certainly didn't know this. Anyone can make anything and put it in a bottle and sell it. Sure. A supplement. Of course. There's no regulation. No one is making sure that it's effective or even safe. So the only way that you could tell whether a full spectrum hemp extract is safe or a full extract of cannabis oil is by getting a COA, which is a certificate of analysis, which should be easy to find on the website. I put a QR code on every single one of my labels that you scan with your phone and it takes you to that COA to show you that it is a full spectrum hemp extract, meaning it has that little bit of THC in there. If that little bit of THC is not in there, it is not, it's useless. It has to be in there to make it work. Otherwise, you've chopped off an arm. You've taken off one of the most important compounds out of there. And it's just a little bit. You don't feel high. It's just enough to make it work. What happens is those receptors, that CB1 and CB2 receptor, if CHC is not in the formula, CBD never binds to the receptor. So it's literally useless, but not without it. Without it. So it's just a matter of finding your dog's dose for that seizure and and then making sure that you keep giving it to them every single day so that they're always at that same level where they never have it. And then if for some reason, while you're trying to figure out that dose, they do have one, you could stop it immediately by putting it on the gums and the seizure will stop. So, yes, that's what I always like to ask people is that if the drug is working, great. That means I would suggest to you, okay, well, how are you going to support the body's detoxification, its uh detox pathways, its liver, its kidneys to help support getting those other chemicals out. Yeah. But if it's not working, I would ask you, why are you still giving it?

SPEAKER_01 28:55

Right. Well, it's better than it was, would be the answer to that. Okay, good. It's better. It's oh, it's significantly better than it was. You know, he would be dead already if they stayed the way they were. They were so bad. So it's definitely better than it was. It's like at a nice maintenance point for him, but it's still not great. And I do, you know, phenobarbital is one of the main drugs that he's on. And phenobarbital is terrible for your liver. And, you know, so he does take supplements to help his liver, but it's like you know that the medicine that is potentially controlling the seizures definitely is coming with a whole lot of side effects and coming with side effects for his body too, drooling and being lethargic and terrible for his liver. And, you know, he could die of liver failure long before he dies from a seizure at this point.

SPEAKER_00 29:43

It really is. And I don't think people uh recognize that. You know, these drugs are supposed to be used temporarily to stop something while we figure out what it is and then solve the issue. All that's doing is like trying to prevent it from happening and it doesn't always work. And what's beautiful about natural modalities is that if you want to keep using that, you can add the natural to it. And it's only going to help. It's not going to make things worse. So if someone is worried, meaning you can start a full spectrum and medicinal mushrooms to help support him, to help support that it never happens again while he's on the phenobarbital, and then slowly wean off the phenobarbital. Because it depends on how long they've been on it, they have gotten used to it. It's almost like they're addicted to it. So there is a way. I've done it many, many times, and I know it's scary. It was scary at first when I started doing it because I took what I learned at school and then started practicing, formulating and practicing. And I was like, all right, let's see. And I'd be like, oh, like tumors were my first thing where I was like, all right, let me put my salve and put it in his mouth and see what happens. And literally within a week, I would start seeing that tumor change, shape, size, get more inflamed and angry, then start to shrivel and die, ooze, and completely disappear and never come back again. And I just was like, oh my God, this is amazing. So I've been doing this now for 10 years, seeing, you name it, one of my other cases. I had a dog that hadn't walked for four years with IVDD. One dose, he gave, he's like, I'm like, please give it to her, please, please. He gave her one dose. He was like, whatever, lady, squirt it in his mouth, squirt it in her mouth, went upstairs to his office, turned around, and there she was. She had brought herself up the stairs and he didn't believe it. So yeah, it is really amazing when you take potent, well-made hemp, plant, mushroom extracts, the difference that they can make in your life. For you and your pet. This is everything I'm saying applies to humans too.

SPEAKER_01 31:56

Of course, of course it does. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 31:58

And there's no difference. Meaning, how well, there is a difference, meaning dogs need less than we do, because we have shown in research that they have more receptors than we do. So that's why they're more sensitive to THC. But THC is not toxic to dogs. If it there's an incident and you can type into uh Google, is THC toxic to dogs? And you're gonna get pages and pages saying that it is, including veterinarians saying that it is, and that's bullshit. What you can't, what I'm talking about are is medicine. I'm talking about cannabis and mushroom medicine. I'm not talking about recreational products. Right. Recreational products are all about getting you high. They have horrendous amounts of THC and all the other THCVs and A's, and now they have synthetic THC. So all of that is being put in those gummies and powders and liquids and cookies and all the things. Now, if your dog gets into that, yeah, that's probably going to be toxic. But there was a literal uh research study done in 1973 called the Rosencrantz Study, where they literally wanted to see how much THC it would take to kill a person. And unfortunately, on most research, they do it on animals.

SPEAKER_02 33:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:17

So they did it on uh rats, uh beagles, and chimpanzees. Two rats died. Uh I'm sorry, they gave them 9,000 milligrams of THC. Oh my goodness. Which I can't even imagine. And two rats died uh in their sleep. They uh regurgitated and asphyxiated themselves, so nothing to do with the THC. Right. And no beagles died, and the chimpanzees within a very short period of time metabolized it and made it didn't even seem high anymore. Wow. And I've practiced this myself. So we literally proved uh and in dogs, it's called LD50. There is no lethal dose that you can give a dog that would kill them with a pure product. So I I want people to get away from the fear of, you know, oh my gosh, it's marijuana and they're no. And I'm also talking about hemp because hemp, because dogs are more sensitive, are perfect for our pets. So it has just that a little bit amount of THC that they don't get high, they just get better.

SPEAKER_01 34:25

Yeah, which is a beautiful thing. Yeah. And for and for our anxious dogs, honestly, them being a little high and chill is not so bad. Nope. It's not, to be quite honest. I've got one of those too. So you're gonna definitely be hearing from me after this call.

SPEAKER_00 34:41

I be happy. I'm I wish I had sent you stuff beforehand so that you could be like, oh my gosh, what is this stuff?

SPEAKER_01 34:47

It's all good. I will try it and talk all about it on social media. So it's all good. So I'm so curious because

Finding Holistic Veterinarians and Becoming Your Pet's Advocate

SPEAKER_01 34:54

I've never heard of a holistic vet. How does one even find a holistic vet?

SPEAKER_00 35:01

It's very difficult because it's very different than from the human side of things. A human can go, a regular doctor, human doctor goes to the same school as a conventional doctor does, which so does a veterinarian. They go to the same school. But a um holistic practitioner for humans goes to a school and learns everything that's also holistic. Veterinarians go to the regular conventional school, get out, don't know anything, and have to continue to fund their education. So to me, there are heroes of the world, but they are going away and many are retiring. And corpse big corpse, the same company, candy company that's making the shitty dog food, is also buying up all the private practices. So it's very hard to find a holistic veterinarian nowadays. But that holistic veterinarian has the conventional training and then they learned about diet and nutrition because they're not taught anything about diet and nutrition.

SPEAKER_01 36:06

No. Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 36:07

I have a podcast too, so all I do is interview holistic and integrative veterinarians where they tell me, uh, I got zero, or I got six hours, or that's what gets cut out of the curriculum when they run out of time, which makes no sense because the top three causes of death for humans and animals are the first and second are heart disease and cancer. Both of those are lifestyle diseases that your doctor is taught nothing about. So, how are they gonna help you with that disease that was caused by your lifestyle, what you ate, where you live, what you're breathing, if you're exercising, all of that. They're not taught any of that. So, how are they gonna help you avoid those? Do you know what the third leading cause of death is? I do not.

SPEAKER_01 37:01

Medical error. Medical error.

SPEAKER_00 37:05

Medical error. So that to me is painful proof that they don't know right, of course, what they're doing, that they're literally following a standard of care. And this is the drug that we're supposed to give, and this is the um procedures that we're supposed to do. Right instead of treating everyone like an individual and dealing with that master system to get them back to normal, which is what the goal should be.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

Right. And understanding the root cause of why they have what they have. So yeah, and you mentioned your podcast. I want to make sure I mentioned your podcast. It'll be in the show notes too, but I want to make sure I mention it. Your natural dog podcast is what it's called. So that people who are listening or watching can go and go find you and listen to that because I think that is anything about naturalness. I mean, I think the more you talked about food. I mean, we could talk for hours about the state of animal food in our country and the, you know, how terrible it is and how expensive it is to have food that's actually good for your dogs and how much stuff they garbage they put into the food, but that's a whole nother show. Yes. Um, it is. It is, it is so. But before we run out of time, I would love to know how do most people find you?

SPEAKER_00 38:17

Uh my website, which is my name, angelaartalino.com, um, and my podcast. All my formulations are human grade, so I have a lot of people taking taking them. But yeah, that's probably the best way, is my website.

SPEAKER_01 38:32

Yeah. Okay, great. Because I'll put all that in the show notes and you know, that way everybody can go and find you. And because you do have you have resources on your website as well, which is really interesting. Okay. Before we run out of time, is there anything I didn't ask you that you think is really important to communicate about what you're doing, your business, everything related to holistic health for animals? Did we miss anything?

SPEAKER_00 38:54

Uh, not that I could think of. I just, you know, I know so much about how research is done and how medicine is made. And I just want people to know that they have a choice, you know, when it comes to health care for yourself and for your animal. And to, you know, don't put it into someone else's hands because they don't know you or your animal or your kids as well as you do and to research everything. So I think that's about it. I just want people to know that, you know, having a diagnosis is, you know, kind of scary sometimes, but don't believe the prognosis because you can, this body of ours and our pet's bodies, it's made to get back to normal. And if we support that instead of work against it, we really can't get back to normal.

SPEAKER_01 39:43

It's true. And I think we, I know I myself personally, I spend so much time on this podcast talking about wellness and health and wellness for people. And really, when I think about how much time I spend on that for my animals relative to how much I care about my animals and the amount of research I've done for my animals is like, you know, embarrassingly almost like solo because I also don't know where to go or even think that there is other research out there and there are other modalities. So I am so grateful that you came onto the show because I feel like I'm exposed to a lot in the healthcare space. And the fact that I didn't know means that, you know, 99.9% of my listeners and watchers don't know either. So I thank you.

SPEAKER_00 40:27

That's what happened is when I lost my first dog doing everything I was supposed to do, I was like, wait a minute, I gotta. And then I looked into everything and I just got it's all about the money. You know, it's all about, you know, making when I every time I would be like, why is that in there? Or why did we do that? Or why is that happening? So just if you are a person who, you know, treats yourself holistically, you can do the same thing with your pet. Real food is real food. Plant and mushroom medicine works on both of us. All of the research is out there. So anytime you have a question, one of my favorite sites is called um projectcbd.org. You literally can go in there and type in any disease or ailment. It will show you the pages and pages of research proving already that cannabis or even mushrooms and adaptogens can help and solve the issue. So it's not out there. We're not gonna hear about it on the news. It's not gonna be on sometimes it makes front page, but yeah, it's there. It's out there. You're just not being told about it.

SPEAKER_01 41:34

Yeah. Well, and thank you for the website because half the time that's the battle. People don't know where to go and they don't know what to trust as well, because AI has made it so it sometimes is hard to find fact fact from fiction. It is. So I always tell people, like, go to perplexity. It's a little more about the research than going to chat if you're trying to do some research. But oh, good. I like that. Yeah, perplexity is definitely better from that perspective. Okay, wonderful. So I love to ask all my guests, even though we're talking about animals. I, you know, you live a very healthy lifestyle. I am sure you are walking the walk and talking the talk for yourself. You don't just do it for your pets. So I would love to know if there's a book that you would recommend to our listeners about anything that changed you personally or professionally.

SPEAKER_00 42:17

My favorite book of all time is a book called Uh The Mutant Message Down Under. And it's about a woman

Favorite Books and Inspirations Including Mutant Message Down Under

SPEAKER_00 42:24

who goes and lives with the Aborigines. And it's just a beautiful book about, you know, your beliefs, you know, your belief system and how different things could be. And then if for business, Rich Dad, Poor Dad changed my life because I didn't pay myself. I did not have the correct relationship with money. So that really helped. Um, because trying to do good in the world and make a difference without concentrating, making sure that the bills are being paid or whatever at the same time, you know, you can't do what you want to do if you don't figure that out. So that was really important. But as far as health, my favorite book is um Dr. Nicole Apalion's The Holistic Guide to Wellness. She literally has every protocol for just about everything that you could possibly think of in there. And it's all based on diet, plants, and mushrooms. She, I cured myself of rheumatoid arthritis. She cured herself uh from MS. So knowing, you know, it's a lot. It's hard to do those things and to trust yourself and trust what you know. But you can. You do have the power to bring yourself back to normal.

SPEAKER_01 43:39

You do. And I think the gift that I have of having a podcast is the more I can expose people to more people like you who are living proof that it is possible and there are options out there, and you don't have to settle being in pain or being not your best self, both for yourself and for your pet, that there are options. There are people that are really invested in helping other people heal, and there are ways to do it that aren't toxic and that can help you live a longer, better life, both for yourself and your pet. So uh I am I am so excited you're on the show. I am 100% gonna reach out to you after this show to see how we can help my poor fur baby with his seizures. That is incredible. I thank you for the work that you do, and I thank you for being just so passionate and doing the research to really find ways to help both our fur friends and humans as well. So thank you for being a great guest.

SPEAKER_00 44:32

You bet. Thanks for having me on, and thank you for what you do.

SPEAKER_01 44:34

Uh, thank you.

Closing Thoughts

SPEAKER_01 44:36

Thank you for joining us for this week's episode of Building the Best You. If you are ready to take a deeper dive into transforming your life, check out my Empowerment Fundamentals course on my website, houseofgermar.com. Thank you, and I will see you next week with another inspiring guest.