My Dog Is Better Than Your Dog

A study landed on my desk a few weeks ago and I have not been able to stop thinking about it. If you have a puppy, a young dog, or you know someone who does, this minisode is for you. It is about parvovirus, one of the scariest and most deadly diseases in young dogs, and a new study showing exactly what can be added to the standard of care to give puppies a better shot at survival, and at a fracti...

Who Is Really Behind the Pet Health Advice You Are Getting Every piece of pet health advice reaching you through media, whether it is a food recommendation, a sponsored post, a TV segment, or a YouTube video, somebody paid for it to get to you. The question worth asking is whether it was paid for by someone who wants your pet to be healthy or someone who wants your money. Lara Shannon is a certifi...

What If Your Dog Could Live to 25 w/ Dr. Gary Richter Your dog's cells are aging right now, and by the time you notice the stiffness, the slowing down, the gray around the muzzle, it has already been happening for years. Dr. Gary Richter has spent over 25 years in integrative veterinary medicine asking what else is possible. He is the author of Longevity for Dogs and Longevity for Cats, founder of...

Why a Good Probiotic Is Not Enough and What Your Dog Actually Needs for Real Gut Health w/ Billy Hoekman If you have ever told your vet your dog is already on a good probiotic, this episode is going to make you think differently about that. Billy Hoekman is back. He is Vice President of Nutrition and Communication at Green Juju, and he has been in pet nutrition for 15 years. The last time he was o...

Charlotte Speller spent 15 years as a dog behavior trainer before becoming a veterinary physiotherapist. And the thing that changed her path was something she kept seeing that nobody was talking about. Dogs labeled as difficult, grumpy, or reactive who were actually in pain. Not a behavior problem. A body problem. Nobody had caught it yet. That observation sent her into physiotherapy, where she no...

Three big stories on my mind right now that I think every pet parent should know about. Story one: Chewy just acquired Modern Animal, a tech-forward veterinary chain with 29 clinics. That means the same company selling your dog's food, supplements, and medications now also owns the vet clinics seeing your dog. Is that great news or scary news? Honestly, both. Story two: Loyal is developing a l...

A cardiologist told Weylie her dog had only six to nine months to live. That was over 15 months ago. Her dog's heart disease has actually reversed. And her cardiologist doesn't have a great explanation for it. Weylie Hoang is not a vet. She's not a doctor or a researcher. But she is an expert on her pet. She grew up with zero experience with animals, trusted everything her vet said, fe...

For 50 years, we thought we knew what caused cancer. Billions of dollars in research, the entire human genome sequenced, all of it built on one assumption: cancer is a genetic disease. And then the data came back. And the data said we got it wrong. Dr. Loren Nations is a board-certified veterinary practitioner with almost 35 years in internal medicine, oncology, and cardiology. He's pioneered...

Sanjit Basak-Smith has been doing veterinary work since he was five years old when his father opened their family practice in 1997. He started with kennel work, moved to answering phones, and eventually became a veterinary technician working alongside his dad for years. About 10 years ago, Sanjit started specializing in integrated modalities like stem cell therapy, PRP, photobiomodulation, and mic...

I sat down with Claire Forsyth, a specialist animal kinesiologist with over 25 years of experience, knowing almost nothing about her work. What I got was one of the most fascinating conversations I've had on this show. Claire started in animal behavior, running dog training classes. And she kept noticing something she couldn't explain with training alone. Dogs and their people were walking...

Dr. Ruth Roberts has been practicing integrative veterinary medicine for over 30 years. She's the creator of The Original CrockPet Diet, which has helped thousands of pets with everything from kidney disease to cancer to chronic allergies. And she's the founder of the Holistic Pet Health Coach Certification Program, training a whole new generation of people to fill the massive gap in how o...

This is a quick conversation I had with Esa after we finished our rescue episode. She asked me the questions I think a lot of you might be wondering but maybe don't know how to ask. What am I most excited about in holistic medicine? What new modalities are coming to the practice? How did Integrative Pet Wellness Center even start, and why does it feel so different from a traditional vet hospit...

Most of us can't imagine doing rescue work the way Esa Van Dusen does. This isn't about fostering a dog here and there. This is about finding a pit bull chained to a tree with no access to water. Getting a video of a terrified dog living in spray paint cans and bushes. Driving straight into a hurricane to pull animals out of abandoned boarding kennels. Esa has been rescuing animals for 15...

What if the most powerful medicine for your pet isn't a supplement or a drug, but something as simple as light? Jackie Jolie, founder of AnimaSol, believes light is the foundation of health. Every cell in every mammal's body has a light sensor called a melanopsin, waiting to receive information from photons. And yet, we and our pets are spending 98% of our lives indoors, cut off from the v...

In Part 1, we talked about the cases that changed us. In Part 2, we're talking about what needs to change in veterinary medicine. Dr. Judy Morgan doesn't hold back. We go deep into the drugs that concern us most, why prescription diets were only supposed to be temporary fixes, and how corporate medicine is reshaping the profession in ways that aren't always serving pets or their parent...

What happens when one of the most influential voices in holistic veterinary medicine walks into the biggest conventional veterinary conference in the world? I spotted Dr. Judy Morgan at VMX in Orlando, and honestly, I had to do a double take. Here was a woman who has dedicated nearly 40 years to transforming pet wellness, walking confidently into rooms full of conventional practitioners, educating...

Picture this: 35 dogs running free in a 175-acre forest. No leashes. No commands. No chaos. Just one guy leading the pack, and every single dog follows him. How is that even possible? In this episode, I sit down with Sam Amalsadvala , a former merchant navy chef who accidentally became one of the most insightful natural dog trainers I've ever met. Sam doesn't train dogs — he listens to the...

What if the key to a faster, easier surgical recovery wasn't more drugs — but better preparation? In this episode, I continue my conversation with Dr. Lindsey Wendt, and we're going somewhere deeper. We're talking about the future of veterinary medicine, the power of pre-op integrative care, and what happens when conventional and integrative doctors actually work together instead of st...

You probably stood in a pet store aisle staring at rows and rows of colorful bags, all promising to be natural, holistic, or premium. You probably grabbed one, read the ingredient list, thought it looked pretty good, and tossed it in your cart. Here's what you didn't know. Less than 10% of pet treat companies actually test to see if their product is still good before the best-by date on th...

In this episode, I continue my conversation with Dr. David Haworth, and we're going somewhere deeper—into the human-animal bond that saves lives. Not metaphorically. Literally. We explore what enrichment actually looks like for your individual dog (hint: it's not one-size-fits-all), the real stories of heart dogs and the lessons they teach us, what the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study revea...

We've made being a dog safer than ever before. But is safer actually better? Think about it: We leave our dogs alone for 8-10 hours a day. We live in apartments where they can't run free. We keep them away from other dogs until they're 16 weeks old. And then we create an entire industry—TVs for dogs, automatic ball launchers, anxiety medications—to manage the fallout of a lifestyle tha...

I know what you're thinking. Wait, isn't this podcast about dogs? Yes. Yes it is. But today, we're doing something different because sometimes there's information so important, so lifesaving, that it doesn't matter if you're a dog person, a cat person, or both. If you're listening to this episode, there's a good chance your heart is heavy. Maybe you just heard the w...

Have you ever noticed that when you're anxious, your dog seems anxious too? Or that you and your pet struggle with the same health issues — digestive problems, autoimmune diseases, even the same kind of anxiety? You're not imagining it. In this powerful conversation, Dr. Lily sits down with Dr. Lisa Fiorenza, an integrative veterinarian who sees this pattern every single day in her practic...

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Bharat Kumar, once an emergency vet, now a holistic house call vet, to explore a part of pet health that's often overlooked: the emotional, energetic, and spiritual lives of our animals. Dr. Kumar blends Ayurveda, psychology, meditation, Reiki, acupressure, and holistic medicine to better understand the rich emotional and mental landscape our pets navigate....

In this personal minisode, Dr. Lily Chen opens up about her word for 2026, a surprising case that's changing how she practices medicine, and an important study every pet parent (and human) taking gabapentin should know about. This isn't a typical episode with a guest expert or clinical protocols. This is Dr. Lily, fresh back from Taiwan and about to head to VMX, sitting with you and sharin...