Raw Truth. Real Health

Episode 4 - Holistic Cancer Approaches

• Dr. Roz (PhD) • Season 1 • Episode 4

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This week Roz gets interviewed on her views on managing cancer holistically with her favourite integrative vet, Dr. Jeff Grognet.

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Roz Rowen (00:00.27)
you

With me is Dr. Ros Rowan. And Dr. Ros is an animal naturopath and a homeopathic veterinary nurse. And she's in a place called Australia. Her background is in human research and as a university academic, she eventually turned to animal health.

She's a partner in a veterinary rehabilitation center and the owner and founder of a raw food and nutraceutical company, Australian Pet Nutrition. So welcome, Roz. Hello, great to be here. Yeah, it's great. And I love the topic we're going to be hitting here. Something that always hits people's in the gut whenever it's diagnosed is cancer.

It's a fearful thing because some people have dogs, especially that are very prone to that disease. And there's lots of suspicions on what causes it. And so you're going to be sort of delving into this and looking at some cases for us, showing us what, what you have been able to do with them. And I think this is going to be a great conversation. So if you want to start us off on that. Yeah, I think a lot of people get this cancer diagnosis and sort of see it as

or the only things they have in that sort of traditional route is to chop or to go down the chemo path. And that's really two extreme options. And then apart from that, they feel lost. Whereas the holistic path, when we go down holistic management and treatment of cancer is so broad and it's really quite tailored to the individual dog, which I think is owners and also

practitioners so many more options as to how they can manage these cases, which I think is exciting because, you know, two options versus endless is really what we should be exploring. Yeah, it's a great way to look at it because yeah, it is the same thing with us. If I get a diagnosis of cancer, the gut reaction is can they do surgery to get rid of it? Do I have to go on chemo? And especially if you're not conversant with it, you don't know about these alternatives.

Roz Rowen (02:28.489)
Exactly. And so many pets can't cope with the process of chemotherapy. It's lots of travel to and from the clinic hours a day. It's not really quality. And that's the other thing we have to weigh up to when we're dealing with cancer is maintaining quality of life. And what are our parameters for quality of life for that animal? And it's different for every animal and every owner, but it is something that should be at the forefront of every discussion when we're planning for treatment. Yeah. Yeah. The, yeah, the key is that the

when you get the diagnosis, shouldn't be the, lot of people think it's the end and then they've got this sort of salvage procedures that are done routinely versus I think where you look at it is, well, we've got the cancer diagnosis. Now we can start doing some real neat stuff. Yeah. And, you know, depending on when we get the diagnosis or how far progressed it might be, obviously that might.

reduce our options, but it certainly doesn't reduce it to two options, which I think is really important to remember. We still have heaps of tools in the holistic toolbox, which I think it's really important when it comes to this, because we should be exploring many and vast options. And there's a lot out there just because there's not hundreds and hundreds of studies on holistic cancer treatments. And, you know, we can argue that's for a reason.

There's lots of doctors and fantastic people doing really interesting case studies. It's just about connecting with the right people to give us extra options too. Yeah. So, so you're, I mean, one thing you see a lot of is cancer. You see other things too, I hope, but cancer is top of the list. How often are you seeing this? I would say at least once a week there is a consult for cancer, which doesn't sound like

a lot, but in a holistic clinic, this is people seeking out alternatives. So it's not a mainstream conventional clinic. So that is a lot for us in a small town. And I think on a daily basis, you'd be diagnosing that in clinics, but people seeking alternatives, we're getting, you know, one case a week, sometimes more. Last week I had three, but it's just, you know, comes in ebbs and flows. But usually you can see like there was a lot of precursors in this.

Roz Rowen (04:47.501)
and now they're at that cancer diagnosis. So it's unfortunate that we aren't seeing them before. So I think there is a lot of preventative things that we can be considering or educating about without reaching me at that cancer point. Yeah. And that's certainly probably something we really need to focus on. And that is, how do we prevent this disease from popping up in the first place? But you're going to be looking at like

And one thing is the stress that the pets go through with this. So elaborate on that. I think like stress, know in humans that their stress is a very big correlator to causing cancer or contributing to cancer. It's not one in isolation, but I think the same in pets. think the society that we live in is so fast paced in that these owners are

you know, living a really fast paced life and the pets are having to catch up and cope with that. We're putting pets under enormous amounts of stress, even through things like what we feed them. Feeding can be stressful, you know, on the body, taxing internally on the body. So I think we really are underestimating all the different types of stress that our pets are under, not just the stress of an experience, but the stress of things like food and home environment and, you know,

social settings for pets that are all stressful factors that contribute to that overall stress on the body and how the body responds to that. And we don't often see stress as an immediate, you know, an obvious outward expression of stress, but doesn't mean that the body's not having a stress response that can be triggering and contributing to that over time. And I think we really underestimate that. And I think, you know, the stress of poor food is a part of that and also lifestyle of these pets.

in my opinion is very stressful. Whether we are intending for it to be stressful or not, it is very stressful. Yeah. Yeah. The human equivalent, because I've seen this many times, is people will get a diagnosis themselves of cancer and all of a sudden they're going, how should I eat right? Versus five years before that. You're on to money. And a lot of people, you know, there's a trend

Roz Rowen (07:12.427)
And this is a trend, think, in humans and animals that, my dog has cancer. I need to all of a sudden transition it to a ketogenic diet, which there's a lot of merit and a lot of research around that. But if your dog has had a really poor, say, dry food-based diet, and now you're going to flick it over to the extreme of a raw food ketogenic diet, that can be really unsafe. So we have to think about that as well. And there should be a lot of monitoring around that, but maybe like,

actually just a fresh fruit diet is better than going straight to a keto, but there's a lot of hype around that. But that's really two extremes of the spectrum of feeding and it's not always safe. Well, going through that adjustment of one to the other, it's, yeah, the system isn't ready for that one. No, and a lot of people aren't monitoring. So you can feed keto, but if you're not monitoring the state of ketosis, if you're not

making sure that the dog isn't having any other impacts to it. Their glucose isn't dropping, all sorts of, you know, other impacts. can also impact liver, pancreas. So if we're not monitoring that, we could be doing, you know, more harm than actually what we set out to achieve. Whereas sometimes just actually putting them on, you know, a really easy fresh diet could actually be better in the long run. Yeah. Yeah. So definitely dietary therapy is huge from, why you say stress, also nutrition.

and prevention in the first place. All those things. But the other thing that happens when you get a diagnosis of cancer, of course, is that the oncologist will say, you have this certain type of lymphosarcoma in your golden retriever. And because they've done the laboratory tests and they've got it all pinned down to what genes are there. And then they say, and the recipe for this one is this certain

chemotherapy. In other words, this diagnosis, this treatment. And with holistic, we don't have that straight line doing. No, and it changes. So you might see a dog that say has had, you know, like a psych, an osteosarcoma diagnosis and, lymphosarcoma, a cancer diagnosis. And when you see them and you observe the dog and look at the state that they're in at that moment, your treatment plan is there.

Roz Rowen (09:37.661)
and what you're going to come up with and monitor probably in a three week window. And then you want to see that dog again and go, okay, what changes have we observed? Has its energy improved? Am I looking at its tongue and its tongue's gone from lavender to a bit healthier pink? So we've got a bit better maybe circulation happening or where the cancer is, what's happening at that location? Is there restricted blood flow? Is there swelling? Can we do something around herbs?

And then we see an improvement in say two, three weeks. Then we might actually change the track of that treatment plan. So it's not, this is what it is. And it's what we're doing, you know, for six months, we really monitor it closely because the body does change and adapt. We know that the body has the ability to regenerate and cells to regenerate. It's just about the tools that we pull out to facilitate that at each step. And it does change. And if you're, you know, into Chinese and Western herbal medicine, that's what we're looking at. We're not looking at.

this one herbal formula for the whole time because it's great for cancer. It might not even be cancer, you know, preventing herbs or beneficial herbs that we're using. might be, I'm looking at the dog and actually its liver is really stagnant. So I'm going to support the liver and see where we're at in three weeks and see if that actually helped. So it's really looking at the whole animal, not just how you've got sarcoma in the leg. Yeah. And that's, and that's the key. You have to go in looking at the entire

the whole animal, as in the holistic animal. Yeah. And every dog, you can have dogs that have no pain, for example, with cyclones and you've got dogs that are in excruciating pain, but they're also obese. And you've got all these multiple factors to take into consideration. And then if you're going down pain, the pain management path as part of that cancer journey, we've got to understand how those drugs might, you know, speed up or contribute to.

facilitating rapid growth of those cancer cells as well. So do we want to try and go down the natural pain relief and see if we can manage that as well while trying to juggle that, know, slowing down the growth of that as well. So, you know, it's a bit of a juggle, but these are considerations that we make when we think about it holistically. Yeah, that makes total sense. Rather than just using a cookie cutter approach. Yeah, definitely.

Roz Rowen (12:03.723)
And there's so many, even, I guess you can say pharmaceutical, but there are, there is studies now on some pharmaceuticals that do, you know, have benefit to slowing down the growth of cancer cells, but they're not impacting good cells. So, Fembendazole, Panacure, that's the, there's studies on that in certain types of cancers, but it's also, there's not a lot of studies.

So you really need to be talking to holistic vets that are using these. We've had great results with that here, but it's not, you do that? You know, it's not like chemo and now we're just taking penbenazol. It's part of a plan still that it's not one thing is going to solve all our problems. It's like slow it down, but what else can we do as part of that management plan as well? And again, I prefer to look for people who have been

in case studies and researchers who are doing independent research on these kinds of things purely because that's where the money is in terms of, and I mean money not in terms of dollar amount, but the gold in terms of where you're going to get great ideas for managing cancer where they've had hundreds and thousands of studies that is never going to get funded to be published. No, no, unfortunately not, especially in holistic world. It's not going to happen. Yeah. But we talked about

pharmaceuticals, chemotherapeutic agents not being suited for every dog. The flip side is not when you have a something, penbendazole is a good example. That will not suit every cancer either. No, definitely not. You know, and from the conventional world, peroxocam, which is a painkiller, has shown good evidence that it can slow down the growth of bladder tumors.

Yeah. And I, so I'm a big fan of a Spanish, he's a Spanish researcher called Andreas Calca. Definitely recommend looking him up. He's done a lot of study and a lot of research on chlorine dioxide as a diluted solution. And he's got hundreds and thousands of case studies and a team of researchers that you can reach out to for, you know, designing protocols and things like that with great results, particularly with topical

Roz Rowen (14:30.017)
you know, obvious topical cancers and things like that. I've had amazing success with that in terms of some fibrosarcomas and also like oral papillomas that obviously the treatment for that is always surgical removal. What happens? So that is part of a treatment plan we've had amazing success with. just, you know, that's a really simple solution.

that actually can be paid, you can make it yourself or you can have it especially made with the right dilution, but we've had fantastic success with that. And there's like, document all their case studies and there's hundreds and thousands of them. So simple things sometimes can be very helpful in management of conditions. Yeah. Okay. So that gives us a little bit of an introduction. So this is where we get to the meat of this one.

Are you going to tell us about some cases that you've had and what you've used to pull them through? Yeah. So I've got sort of two different cases I thought I would share in terms of to give a bit of perspective on, know, it's not always rosy, but we've got ways we can, you know, give an animal quality for as long as possible. So the first case I thought I'd talk about, which is a very common cancer is an osteosarcoma case.

a dog I met when he was 10. So a 10 year old ball mastiff with quite advanced osteosarcoma, extremely lame, extremely obese, had obviously had a kibble diet its whole life and a very stressful life. So when I actually went to the house, this dog was already in a state of stress. So a lot of what I do is mobile as well. So I get to see the environment that the animal lives in.

From an outsider, it's sometimes good and it's not a criticism of owners, but they don't often observe stress. You know, they just think that that's how the animal behaves in that environment and that's the norm. But when you see multiple dogs in multiple environments, you realize what a norm is and what a norm isn't. So this dog had been on steroids and was as management of it. So it was on pred to manage it and no pain relief, but it was very obvious that the lameness in the leg was painful.

Roz Rowen (16:47.565)
the age of dog, the obesity, had lots of comorbidities and challenges with this dog with the owners goal was an understanding that we're not here to cure osteosarcoma. That's that advanced and had also started to hamster size, which we know it can hamster size, into the lungs, which it had started to. So we managed to agree to get the vet to wean it off.

And we started it on a combination of, and bend as well, purely just to try and slow it down. So it was having that, three days a week at 50 milligrams per kilo. we also put it on PEA. So palmitoyl ethanolamide, which is a pain relieving compound that's naturally occurring, at 50 milligrams per kilo as well. So a little bit higher than normal, but studies show that it can be.

pushed into that upper limit as well. And we put it on a liquid mushroom extract formula. And that's all we did because that's all the owner wanted to do. With the exception that the owner was really into essential oils. So I showed her a lot around self-medication or zoo farmer cognosy. So we picked oils like wintergreen, copaiba, lavender because the dog was a little stressed and just

I got her to put them out, spaced out about a meter apart and just see what the dog would do. And what this dog would do is come over and just lay in front of constantly lay in front of winter green and copaiba, which we know are pain relieving essential oil. And then when it had had enough, it would just flop onto its side and, does off. So she played around a lot with that and did notice like changes in the home.

So, you sometimes it's like for future generations of pet ownership, they will make changes. And in this case, we didn't change the food because it wasn't an option for the owner for cost. So we couldn't do all the things that we ideally would do, but we got 18 months out of that dog. So that's pretty good for a highly advanced osteosarcoma. Yeah. Yeah. The common.

Roz Rowen (19:09.163)
number that I gave in practice was three months would be really good. You know, but just, to, so people can understand that tumor. It's a bone tumor that grows inside the bone and there's certain locations where it's really prone. And in the front leg, right down in the bone here of what you call the radius bone. That's, that's where the most common spot is, but it can occur anywhere, any bone in the body. it's the thing is it's a crippling cancer.

because it destroys the bone, the bone itself becomes unstable and then you get little micro fractures and then you get real fractures over time. that when they break, when they literally break their leg, it's that you're in trouble. And, but if you amputate the leg and put them on chemo, they've got some benefit with the chemo, but we're talking months.

We're not talking any length of time. And the chemo itself, I've only had a couple of dogs ever go through it with a veterinary oncologist. And it is not nice, you know. And the other thing they do with it just as a plug, they also do radiation therapy on it to take the pain down. So that's another thing, if that's available, very expensive to do that.

You know, in Australia you're looking at 15 to $20,000. Yeah. Exactly. is a huge commitment and you're not, you're not guaranteed anything. So that that's always a factor too. We sometimes like to work in absolute, but we can't. And that's huge factors for owners. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's a, it's a real bad disease when you see it, you know, it's a usually a case of your diagnosis and then you say, and when they really get sore, it'll be time to help them go.

You know, the thing is, really are. Yeah. But you've got, rather than saying, rather than just going from diagnosis to I'll see you when it's time, you've got all these things that you can do in between to make them feel a whole lot better. Definitely. I think too, a lot of during that time is also just like talking to the owners and revisiting their parameters for quality of life. Because often it's not something we talk about, right? When our pets are healthy, we never talk about

Roz Rowen (21:32.691)
if and when, what are we gonna do? But it's something I do talk about with cancer patients because I think it's a conversation that has to be had and the parameters need to be set to say like, you know, if you, think your dog's having great quality of life, what does that look like? if they're able to run around and they're able to do this and they're able to do that, okay. But if they can't do that, that's not quality. Yes, all right. So these are things we need to revisit when we're making these calls around what we're doing.

And it's not fun to have, but I think people appreciate it because when they get to that end point, they're so much better prepared for it. Yeah. Yeah. I've also got another speaker on in this conference who's talks about end of life as in animal communication.

So that way you can actually figure out what the animal really wants to do as well. Yeah. think, and I think that's a beautiful thing because they do know, you know, and they do tell us it's just sometimes we want to hang on, but you know, they're saying like, let me go and all those kinds of things. that, that's important too. That energetic side of, of treatment is really important. Like if they're not liking the treatment, then well, is that quality as well?

So that's a big thing too, even when we're looking at like herbs or homeopathy or chemo, whatever, we have to really observe, you know, how's the animal coping with this? You know, what's their demeanor like? You know, if they're miserable, is this really quality or are we actually doing the right thing? And that same principle applies for herbs because dogs can have reactions to herbs as well. And it can impact, you know, how they feel, like what's it doing on the inside.

and how do they appear on the outside? that's something we should really be paying attention to. So that energetic side of it as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's so, there's so, the point is there's so much more that you can do rather than just taking the diagnosis and then living in fear until the last day. 100%. 100%. Okay. So the next case is actually my own dog. So this is probably a little bit more.

Roz Rowen (23:42.419)
radical because I've had so much more control over the case and so much sort of, yeah, ability to sort of be a bit more exploratory with things, but it's a really good example of success in like a nasty sort of cancer. So I have a six year old Greyhound who was diagnosed about four months ago with highly aggressive malignant fibrosarcoma. So not in the bone,

in the tissue, just proximal to the accessory carpal bone. So the little pad that sits on the front leg. So this appeared very, very rapidly, very, very large. So we did decide to obviously find out what it was, because it was hard to determine whether it was in the bone or in the tendon. So my instruction to the surgeon was they were able to do an FNA or a biopsy so we could determine what it was.

but they were not to touch the tendon. because for me in a gray hand who's been rescued, what do they love doing? Running, digging. So for me, quality was automatically impacted. If I had to have, you know, a three plus months window where we're doing, you know, daily bandage changes and we're trying to have a tendon heal. So that was a no go for me that they weren't to sever the tendon, which

Obviously, surgeons wanted to completely excise it, but that was not the brief. And greyhounds have a high likelihood that any surgical wound will de-his, which we had. So we had prolonged healing just of that tiny little biopsy site anyway. So she was started on, again, three days a week, 50 milligrams per kilo of fembendazole.

So no studies on this, but lots of vet case studies who have used from vendors or for fibrosarcomas with great success. also started her on two Chinese herbal formulas. One that's like just to help inhibit cancer cell growth. But given it was on the front leg, I also started her on a Chinese herbal formula. Because what you could see when you observed the leg that there was just like congestion in the leg in terms of a little bit of heat.

Roz Rowen (26:05.121)
You could see that the veins were quite protruded. So there wasn't just like optimal blood flow there. And then when you look at her tongue, she normally has a really pink, beautiful, healthy tongue. It was very lavender. So you could, we could see that there was a bit of blood flow there. And then also a little bit of liver stagnation, which can be to be expected. So I also started her on milk thistle just to support that. Nothing in her bloods that

showed that there was any liver issues, but her body was showing that she had some stagnation there. And then I also started her on CBD. And also we started the chlorine dioxide solution as a quite intense protocol, which is you have to do it every two hours for the first sort of three days. Yeah. So that's intense, right? So I have a bit of flexibility in that.

but then after it goes to only three times a day. So it's just like, load them onto it. so we're about four or five months in now, you can see that it's significantly shrunk, which is not to be expected. it, and she is just like a different dog. So her demeanor has improved. Her coat has improved. her tongue has improved. So we're back to that nice pink as well. And she's just a different dog.

which makes me think, you know, there was before we see the lump or before we see something obvious, like a dog limping, there's all these other signs that we sort of dismiss. and for me, I was like, my God, I should have observed these other things, subtle things and thought to do other things earlier. So doesn't mean if you're in the game either that we don't miss things as well. but yeah, so that was my protocol for her and we've had fantastic success.

and I spent a lot of time talking to the Andreas Calcutta's team in Spain around a specific protocol for her, and monitoring that as well. And also monitoring just any changes in diagnostics. Cause again, it's a lot of herbs to give. So I do like to just make sure we're not doing anything wrong, but yeah, five months and it's much tinier. So we're talking about, you know, a good

Roz Rowen (28:30.221)
four centimetres in diameter, it's now probably half that in size. Yeah, with no other treatment, so to speak. No. So obviously I was recommended chemo radiation and or amputation because greyhounds can live great lives after amputation. But for me, that's not quality. You know, a three legged greyhound, just isn't quality of life, in my opinion. That might differ to other people, but these are my

parameters that I set. And that's what I was talking about before. It's important to have these parameters and these discussions. For me, a dog that is now able to run free on a property and loves digging, well, I think she should be able to do that. So she needs a leg to do that. And she needs the tendon to be able to facilitate that motion. So they were all factors in this treatment plan. Yeah. And you've done these two tumors and there's a huge

contrast between these two in terms of their behavior and that is osteosarcoma. Once you diagnose it, there's a fit, as they say, there's about a 50 % chance it's already spread to the lungs. You know, so it is, it's fast to move really fast to move. Fibrosarcomas don't, you know, it's, it's, they, they just grow where they are, but they get their fingers into all those places, which make, which make the only way you can treat it. If it's on a leg is amputation to get rid of it.

It's traditional way to do it. Yep. A hundred percent. And it's, highly recommended. And I mean, there's nothing against that, but you know, in, just my holistic view on things, you know, dogs have four legs for a reason. you know, from a, obviously I'm involved in rehab too, just to go like what that does when we take a limb out to the body in terms of then trying to maintain the muscle strength and all sorts of things. whole nother.

rehab arm to a cancer treatment plan. Yeah. So, and the other side with this is if you've got a dog with fibrosarcoma, you're treating it holistically, you're not under the gun to do surgery now. No. And so what that means is that you can do holistic and if that thing goes south on you, you've still got that option.

Roz Rowen (30:51.213)
100 % in Iran. If you, if you want to go that route, right? So, and I've hit that so many times where we have a locally invasive tumor, you know, that's an important point, Jeff, because you know, it's a, it's a final thing to take a limo or, know, you can't, you can't put it back on, but you can give yourself time to really weigh up your options and test the holistic theory and go, you know, are we seeing any results or not? No. Yes.

Well, then maybe we need to go down that path, but it doesn't have to be, you know, when emotions are heightened, when everything's sort of running through our body, we have to make these really big decisions. We can buy ourselves some time. Something I want you to hit on, because I know you'll have an answer to this one. When you have a dog or a cat that comes up with a diagnosis of cancer, one of the things that people always want to know is what's the best thing to feed this kid?

And conventionally we have this diet and then I think it's the only one called MD. I'm assuming you have that in Australia, you know, and so that one was, that one was tested in dogs with lymphosarcoma period. And the only thing it did really was to maintain their weight. It didn't extend their time of survivability. Okay. It just made them maintain their weight so they didn't go downhill at the end as fast. That's how, that's my interpretation of the study.

Right. And so what would you get this happening? What, what, where's, what's your go-to in terms of food or is, is, is there one go-to? I don't think there should ever be one go-to in terms of food because there's so many factors in that in terms of one, what are they already eating? And two, if say, for example, they've been eating one type of dry food their entire life to then just dramatically change that to say a fresh food.

we could have significant issues with that. But I definitely think a transition off dry for all cancer dogs is key, but it has to be done the right way for that individual dog. Some dogs might just like blow us away and like overnight they can switch and there's no issues, but it really depends on sort of that individual dog. I've had dogs that have done that. We just go, we're gonna do it. There's strong and resilient and they're not gonna get.

Roz Rowen (33:21.753)
gastric upsets, then your smaller breed dogs tend to need to take that a little bit slower and steadier. But yeah, it is important. don't like to say that's just switch them to this particular diet. I mean, there are lots of like commercial pre-made cancer raw foods now. And again, I think we run the risk of doing what the dry food industry has done in saying that one food solves all these problems. And that's just not the case.

When you think about, you know, human health conditions and what I can eat in my body that makes me maintain my lose weight, whatever is very different to say what would be yours. you know, that be gender, age, health, what our blood say. There's just so many factors in that. I really think the raw food industry has to be careful with that as well.

So we've got to look at the dog and go, what can we do? That's right for them. And that might be like really basic. might be some meat offal and some green veg, or it might be a more complete and balanced that, or it might be that keto is appropriate if we have compliant owners that are actually going to measure ketones and glucose and do it safely. But yeah, sorry, that's not a straightforward answer, but I get really, as you can see, I get really animated and passionate about it because we,

so quick to want to do one thing, but there's not one best way. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the current thinking is cancer. You want to feed them a diet that's high in fat, high in protein, really low in carbs. And I mean, for example, for people that are struggling with that, with cats, I just said, hey, just start, a canned cat food that's 95 % meat.

And just feed that because we're going to take them off the kibble and put them on there. That's usually an okay switch. We can usually get away with that. And dogs, especially little dogs, I'll feed them canned cat food. It's better than what they had. Yeah, it is. Anything that's lowering carbohydrate, just generally speaking, is a great transition to make for general health for dogs like that.

Roz Rowen (35:44.037)
particularly cats because we know, you know, the prevalence of, you know, kidney problems in cats. Yeah. No, there's, there's so many things we can do dietary wise. It's good to get information on that from a holistic practitioner. know, that's what I think every time I do a consultation, that question always comes up. What should we feed? You know, and there I am going, well, what's suited, what's suited for you guys.

Yeah. And it's the people too, like what sustainable as an owner for you to feed. I can give you the, you know, the be all and end all, but if you can't maintain that, well, then let's not bother. Let's do something that is really easy for you to sustain so we can get, you know, longevity out of this for the, for the animal as well. Yeah. So something that's coming up now and, it's so much debate on it. And I have a speaker talking about

vegetarian diets at this conference as well, right? What's your thinking on, I mean, every dog's different, but if we're talking high meat diet, vegetarian diet, do you have a preference on which way to go? I would like, prefer a high meat diet, but I have had cases where like it's not an option for a number of reasons. I've had cases where it's not an option because

like there's ethical reasons for the owner and we have to respect that because we then have to respect what's right for that animal. So we need to create balance in that. So finding ways to get high protein and this owner was, we ended up getting it through things like lentils and tofu and the dog ended up, you know, living till 13, 14 and pretty much his whole life was on a very well crafted vegetarian diet.

But then I've, yeah, and I've seen ones that do it purely because the dog really struggles on meat. And this is the thing where there's not a one best way. There's not a one size fits You get these cases and you're like, okay, well, we know dogs should eat meat and yada yada. But then you get this case and you're like, well, this dog can't. So we've got to do something. Otherwise, what's it going to eat? Right. And so, you know, it did sustain on that. again, you know, horses for courses.

Roz Rowen (38:02.049)
We can't, we're quick to judge, but what we can do is create a recipe that, you know, is as best as it can be to get all those essential vitamins and minerals and macronutrients that keep the same as we would if we were feeding me. And it can be done. it just needs to be done properly rather than I have seen ad hoc. that's where you can see dogs that, know, are really low in iron, you know, are really deficient in, in potassium and things like that, because it's just been ad hoc.

but if you wanna go down that path, it needs to be well formulated. Yeah, and I agree completely. Years ago, I had a lady who came to me for a second opinion and she had gone into the thing of making a full meat diet and she was using fish and meat for her dog with, and it was lymphosarcoma, right? But when she came to me, she was in tears.

because she says, I can't feed this meat anymore. I said, well, the dog looked pretty good. I said, well, why not? And she says, well, I'm vegetarian. And when I'm even handling the meat, I'm vomiting. It's like, no. She did well to do it that long then. She did. She did. It was amazing. So we made a whole lot of compromises and it also involved her neighbor who'd come over and feed the dog periodically. But the

The point is there's so many factors that come into this. isn't the dog. This is the owner that we have to work with too. Exactly. And we can make assumptions and generalizations that this is what dogs did in the wild, they're our captors. We keep them captive. So we have to look at the total environment and that heavily, heavily involves people. as you know, most of what we do on a daily basis,

is work with people and the animals do come secondary sometimes. nature of it. Yeah, that's exactly it. Yeah. But anyway, so you've opened up some doors here for people and you can see that, it's when she got the diagnosis, you have these doors that open. You don't have it all closed. You know, so yeah. Any final thoughts on that at all, Ross?

Roz Rowen (40:23.049)
My final thoughts would be like, just remember that it's not, it's not a final thing. Quality of life matters and like really be willing to explore and push the boundaries because we can't all be an expert in everything. So, you know, it's really about reaching out and connecting. That's the whole point of what you're doing, Jeff, is to bring all these different perspectives to light. So people have avenues to go down. So I think that's really important no matter what it is that you're seeking more information for.

But cancer is just one of those things. Yeah. Yeah. And then it applies to everything. I you've got a cat with bad allergies. You've got a dog that's got inflammatory bowel disease. You don't just go through the one conventional route. You you look at all these other possibilities and say, will work best for this kid? Yeah. And, you know, the world, you know, we've opened up the world with technology, right? So, you know, you're not

you're not confined to your town that you're in for answers. The world is our answer now. So we're very lucky for that. Yeah, no, very lucky. So, but anyway, thank you very much for bringing all this up, Roz. It's very well, great. It's great to get all this information out. And I know people are clamouring for information on cancer and things like that. So you prepared something for them?

Yeah. So I've put a few case studies together with what we've done in some common treatments for cancer. And then we've also, I've put my top preventative guide for, you know, supporting and preventing cancer that you can get access to. Perfect. Okay. And I'll put the link below the webinar. So everyone can snap, snaffle that up, take it home with them. And that way you can, and this is the key. You start doing this before you have a diagnosis of cancer. Yep.

Exactly right. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Yeah. And so, yeah, that's the whole key with this. And the very much the holistic way, feeding the right food, limiting vaccines, getting the toxin levels down are all geared for preventing cancer. 100%. Along with all the other things that we can dream up to. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Anyway, thank you very much, Ross.