Raw Truth. Real Health

Episode 1 - Our Pet Health Origin Story

• Season 1 • Episode 1

Share episode

Welcome to our debut episode. Learn about our origin story into the complex pet health industry and join me as I navigate the wild world of pet food, pet health, science and much more.

To follow and connect with Dr. Roz and Australian Pet Nutrition
Follow on socials - @australianpetnutrition or connect for education, nutraceuticals, food and more at australianpetnutrition.com.au

Roz (00:12)
Welcome to Raw Truth, Real Health, hosted by Dr. With over 15 years of transforming pet wellness and empowering pet parents, Dr. Rose dives deep into the revolutionary world of raw food and cutting edge nutraceuticals. Get ready for unfiltered insights, groundbreaking advice, and the bold truths you need to elevate your pet's health. Tune in for fearless conversations and real solutions.

that disrupt the norm and redefine what it means to care for your furry companions.

Dr. Roz (00:57)
Hello and welcome to episode one of the Raw Truth Real Health podcast. I'm so excited to launch this podcast, a podcast I believe that brings a completely different perspective to the pet health industry. But.

Like any good podcast, it's important to share our story. And this episode is all about sharing our origin story. So you can get to know me as your host and what we're all about here on the Raw Truth Real Health podcast. Now, of course, naturally, like any good story, it all starts with a dog. That's right. My dog sent me on a journey.

like no other. Here I was happily sitting in my academic career, writing papers, researching, teaching. Life was good. Then my husband and I did something crazy, so outlandish that I think every person in their mid-20s does this. We got a dog. That's right. Enter CID.

Sid came into my life having grown up on a farm, grown up with animals, grown up with dogs, and I thought, you know what, I'm so awesome, I have this. I grew up with dogs, there's nothing to it, I've got it all in the bag, we get a dog, life goes on happily ever after. Holy bejesus, I had no idea what I was in for. Not that I didn't know anything about dogs, arguably I knew more than the average person about dogs, but.

I didn't know much about dogs in this day and age. Things had changed a lot since my childhood. And I was now having a dog in the city, not on a farm. Things I thought that were once normal that we did with dogs apparently wasn't so normal anymore. So Sid set out to change the course of history for me and many people who entered my life in the years to come.

So as I've mentioned, I grew up on a farm. So it made complete sense that my first adult dog would be a working dog and I would house him in the city. Now, I know what you're all thinking. That's common sense. It's logical that you shouldn't have done that. Well, I agree, it is common sense and it is logical. But often when it comes to animals,

we fall in love or we have these preconceived ideas and we defy logic. We do things that are not common sense. We do things that are just freaking stupid and we do it all for the love of that animal. So here I was, Sid came into my life. He was neurotic.

He was anxious, he was aggressive, he was in poor condition and I really didn't know which way to go. There was so much information out there and I thought, right, Rose, you're an academic, you're a scientist, you're a researcher, what's the most logical step? I thought, yeah, duh, we'll take him to the vet. But that's where it all didn't make sense for me. The things that were suggested to me on that initial consultation,

at the vet to fix his anxiety, to fix his behavioral problems, to improve his overall condition weren't things that seem to go hand in hand with animals and nature and the way we look after ourselves, for example, and our health. It was all geared towards drugs and processed food. And I know this is the experience for many people. But to me, in my opinion,

Then when I was recommended behavioral modification training methods, these were also really excessive. It was all about punishing the dog, using equipment to control the dog. There was nothing around relationship building or understanding that maybe health and behavior go hand in hand. And I thought, I'm supposed to take one person's advice and that's gonna change everything about this dog, our life, and what if it's not?

right because it certainly didn't sit right with me. It didn't make sense. When I'm sick, I don't reach for drugs. I assess, you know, am I stressed? I assess, you know, what's my diet like? But that wasn't even asked. And this was his first visit. There wasn't even a thorough health check done. So I thought, I've got to do some digging here. I've got to find out some information for myself and how, you know, pet health works in the 21st century. So.

Being a high level researcher, I got to researching. That was not a difficult thing for me to do, but I did realize it was a difficult minefield to navigate. Not so much that there wasn't research out there. There was so much research out there, but that research completely conflicted what pet owners are being told about their animals.

That was so bizarre to me because it's like when we have a growing body of evidence, we should really be questioning, well, hey, maybe we should be doing things differently. But here we are.

well into the 2000s and we haven't changed views on training methods, haven't changed our views on nutrition, we haven't changed our views on the use of drugs and many other things to do with health, but there's a growing body of evidence that's suggesting the opposite of that.

The only way I can describe what happened for me finding this sort of contradictory evidence is I describe it as a very early midlife crisis was triggered in my life by my dog. So I decided to park my academic career, not completely, but enough that I could engross myself in understanding animals and the animal health world.

It also started me to question what's going on in academia, that this is how potentially pet health professionals are being trained in an industry that I work in training other health professionals and other career professionals. So me temporarily parking my academic career set me down, lots of scientific article reading. questioned people, I called people that I knew. I started to undertake courses that

were aligned with pharmaceutical companies that weren't aligned with pharmaceutical companies that were aligned with universities to try and get a balance of knowledge to understand what's going on here, what's right, what's wrong, what should we know as pet owners, what should we know as pet health professionals. So along the way I gained many, many new qualifications and I probably got more questions than answers to be honest. But I definitely got

the picture that what I had been told in that first visit around behaviour modification, drugs and diet was complete nutter bullshit. And I'm glad I didn't take that advice and I sought my own view of what should happen.

So I then decided to explore my own nutritional path with Sid, my own behavioral training modification path, looking at his environment, looking at his stress factors, looking at him as a whole being that involves us as people. And what did I find? That, well, he actually wasn't.

anxious, he wasn't aggressive and his condition was definitely to do with nutrition. All things that I could change without having to, you know, put lots of things on him, put lots of chemicals in him, all those kind of things. Now Sid's still around, he's 13 years old now, he's in Mickey Mouse condition and he's never had a piece of pharmaceutical medication in his body since I got him from the shelter that day.

nor has he had any highly processed food put in his mouth, and he has never had a vet visit since. Now, those decisions weren't made lightly. They were based on what I felt were informed decisions after I consulted many people, many vets, many health professionals, many research articles, many courses, as I could. And did I still finish and retrain all these

career pathways thinking that I always want to go down the holistic path. No, I found out that, you know, certain things were to happen to him, I probably would go down a pharmaceutical path or I would go down a more conventional medical path. I think what I did find out was that in veterinary health, we are still so likely to see a symptom and match it straight away to a medication or

see a behavior and match that straight away to a behavior modification training tool. And I think that's not critical thinking. I think that's just being lazy and not taking the time to see a case as a puzzle or see a dog as a puzzle and what pieces are there and not fitting and what pieces are missing that we need to fill in. So I really wanna share

the importance of you being your own pet health advocate. And I think that personally in the way of our own health, think doctors are there and health professionals are there to help us, but ultimately only we know our bodies, only we know our dogs, and we need to drive the car for them as to where they're going on their journey. So let me add another dog to my story.

in entered Trevor. Now I found Trevor on the side of the Stuart Highway that leads straight up from Adelaide to Darwin in a cardboard box. Now he was in there with his mum and three other litter mates. So naturally I decided it would be a fantastic idea to rent a monsoon rain in the Northern Territory to go and rescue him, his litter mates and his mum.

That was a successful mission. I managed to retrieve him. I managed to bring him back to my house. And I had linked in with a local rescue organization to find immediate foster care for his mum and his siblings. And I kept Trevor. Trevor was four weeks old, so great idea naturally to split him immediately from his mum.

lesson learnt immediately on that day that I learnt years later, but in hindsight, he was riddled with fleas, he had a worm burden like I'd never seen in a dog before, he was a two kilo four week old puppy who was defecating 20 to 30 worms that were 20 to 30 centimetres at a time. Horrific. And I wormed him and he was treated for fleas and ticks. But in that instance, I realised I knew what to do.

did his foster carers know to do the same? Now when a dog goes into foster care, not always does the rescue organisation provide that medication. Often that's paid for by the foster carer or the foster carer requests it. So it may be covered by that organisation. So I thought about telling the foster carers what I had discovered and was likely the same for the rest of siblings. Unfortunately, that wasn't a priority for that rescue organisation and the foster carers.

and he was the only surviving dog in a few weeks. So that's another story for another day about welfare, but it also highlighted that in that instance, pharmaceutical worming actually saved his life. And it was the best option and the best treatment plan. And also it was a cost-effective treatment. We're talking about a 10 to $20 treatment that could have saved three other dogs.

Now, like all my dogs, Trevor was anything but simple and it was a different kind of complex to what I had with Sid. When he was eight months old, he fractured his paw. He fractured a bone in his paw and the recommendation by the vet was to immediately amputate given the complexity of the fracture. And I thought to myself that again,

It doesn't make sense that amputation is the only option and that was the only option I was presented with at the time. And if I didn't amputate, I was doing a massive disservice to my dog. But I was adamant that I wasn't amputating an eight month dog. Or when he was going to be a very large breed dog. We're talking about a dog that's going to be 35 to 40 kilos, maybe more. I'm not even sure what he's crossed with, so I haven't got that information yet. And missing one limb.

doesn't exercise logic to me that that's going to be easy on his body for his entire life. So enter me on a journey, on a mission to find out that does rehab exist in the animal world? And it does. I couldn't believe it because it wasn't recommended to me.

And I again went down this rabbit hole of going, well, what options? What can I do myself? What can I take control of as a pet owner who's now got qualifications, but I need to add something to my repertoire.

and I found all these wonderful things that could encourage bone healing, know, mitigate risk of early onset arthritis without having to put him on pharmaceutical medication. I could do exercises, I could modify his routine, I could use his diet, I could do herbs, I could do vitamin supplementation, I could do repeat x-rays and see how that's working, but I didn't have to amputate him.

So fast forward, I did all those things, no amputation and absolutely no pharmaceutical drugs, not because I wasn't looking out for his best interest. If I felt like he was in pain or he needed it at that point, I would have done that. Trevor seven, he has all four limbs and he has very chronic arthritis in that foot, which you can see under x-ray. It's actually.

quite horrific to look at under x-ray, but he has full mobility, he is not showing any signs of pain, he has a modified exercise routine, he also has a regular at-home physical therapy routine, and he has cold laser therapy, he's on a number of nutraceuticals that support that, and I will manage that for the rest of his life, and intervene with pharmaceuticals if I need. But in his case,

Given his age. He's doing really well without pharmaceuticals at this point and may never need them This was a pivotal moment for me and I thought if people don't know where to research or Don't know where else to seek information and don't have the capacity to do that What happens to those animals are they forced into and forced down a path that?

potentially is really costly, both on the owner's hip pocket, but also the health of that animal. Are they lured into a life of heavy medication that has implications on the rest of their body? And I thought, shit, yeah, they are, they are. This is the path, this is the model that is the health model for pets. And I thought, can't sit.

I can't sit with that. That's terrible for people. I need to create a platform which gives different options for pet owners to at least try. So I started a business. I continued to park my academic career and started a business that was all about

using all the new qualifications that I had to provide products and services to people, above all to provide education to people and also to show people how to research thoroughly because it's a minefield.

I wanted to teach people skills, skills that I'd not only learnt in my own journey with animals, but that I'd learnt in my own academic career, that I'd spent 15 years teaching people as they go into the world to take with them as valuable skills, critical thinking, research, all those tools that we can use every day in our life. And here we are. This is where I hope to encourage people

to tackle questions, to tackle topics, to tackle their pet's health in a way that's not just superficial. We need to continue to question beyond the surface level. We need to understand how to look at research papers and make decisions as to whether they're valid, are they compromised, are they biased. Is it informative but not definitive?

assess credibility and that's not just assessing credibility of studies, assessing credibility of what our veterinary professionals tell us because we know in our own life we have our own values and we take those values no matter where we go into our jobs, into our life, into our relationships. We can't just always park them, we're human beings. That is the same for our veterinary professionals. They take with them their views on health and that can sometimes mean we're not offered options that

align with our own values, but it aligns with them. So we need to consider the merit and ethics of this in the first place, but also to encourage you what questions to ask and above all else, put the animal first. That is something that has really shocked me over the past 10 years is that we operate in a pet health industry, but the pet is always second. It's always about us and what we want to do.

it should be about the animal, what suits them, what's going to be best for them and how can we facilitate that.

So I really want to share this episode as a way to say this is what this podcast is all about. It's about talking to people, getting their perspectives and helping you.

find new information, but think about the pet health industry a little bit differently. I'm not here to tell you something is what it is because nothing is what it is. And that really annoys me about pet health podcasts. So we're bringing you something different. We want to go beyond the surface. We want to go into the deep and critical where it challenges you to your core, where you question whether that's the belief you want to continue to have, or you want to change it, or you want to investigate further.

This is the podcast to encourage that. There's no right and wrong. It's about challenging the way we think, the way we do things, and maybe encouraging you to flip the narrative and not think about you, but think about the animal first and then you.

So it's not going to be every episode, me talking. There will be some of those episodes where I share my knowledge and wisdom of many, many years in my academic career and teaching you those skills that you can put to use. But it's about hearing different perspectives from pet owners, from pet health professionals. So you're building your repertoire of knowledge and becoming your own animal's pet advocate.

pet professional. There is no reason why we can't build your skill and knowledge base to be able to take better care of your animals. Above all, we take this from a welfare and the ethics of welfare perspective. Animals are a huge part of my life. This podcast is being recorded from my farm and the ethos on our farm is low stress, low handling, give animals the best

life possible that is appropriate to their species. And I really want to dig deep into those kind of philosophies and topics with you. So welcome once again to the Raw Truth, Real Health podcast. I hope I've struck a chord with you, whether it be good, whether it be controversial. I do look forward to seeing you in episode two when I introduce you to a very interesting Australian vet.