205. How to Raise a Healthy Puppy Naturally

0:01 Welcome back, Pat Peron. I'm really excited for today's guest because she's amazing is she's been through so much in such a short time with her dogs and it LED her down a path not that unsimilar from mine. Bree Drake with tails. Well, Health, thank you so much for being here today. How are you? I'm so good. Thank you. And before we get into anything else, I just want to say thank you because this is all kind of come full circle. I was listening to your podcast and that's how I found out about Doctor Ruth Roberts coaching program and they're listening to your podcast and having you mentor me through that. Like I owe you so much for what where I where this journey has led me.

0:44 So I have to give you a lot of credit for that. That's so sweet. Yeah. You've shaped a lot of who I am on this journey and how I look at things. And thank you. I mean, thank you. That is so, so very sweet. But honestly, you still did all the work. So that's why you're here and that matters, doing the work. So I know, I mean, I got to know you through the course and that was amazing. You were such a sweet, wonderful person. So it was like a no brainer for me. I mean, obviously I have a lot of students that go through the program. They're all wonderful and some go on to do really well and create amazing businesses and some are happy just kind of helping their friends and family.

1:28 There's nothing wrong with that, but you're really out there on social media and really kind of jumped right into you seem to be handling the really deep waters very, I want to say effortlessly, but I'm sure there's like internal turmoil that you have to deal with because I've been there. I still go through that. When you put a post out and it has, you know, your heart and soul wrapped into it and you just get so many trolls and haters, but you still keep showing up and you're just like, no, this is my truth. And I love that so much about you and about the content you're putting out. So first of all, if you're not following Bree on Instagram, please go do so at Tails Well Health. It is Tails well Health.

2:13 Is all it is. It is. I mean, obviously you're, you're so like multifaceted. Anyway, I didn't learn until after you graduated that you're also a designer, which makes so much sense with how amazingly beautiful your social is. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, it's definitely, it's definitely been a journey. Everything in life has been such a journey for me. I didn't definitely started out on a very different path. I went to school for accounting and finance and did that for about 10-11 years and met my husband, married him and then I did start doing freelance graphic design work. Actually, I started out doing photography work and I was actually photographing dogs for a while. When COVID happened, I was forced to do something a little more flexible and I could do from home. So I started a graphic design business and that became very successful very quick, which is unexpected, a complete flip flop from what I was doing, very analytical brain, you know, in my creative, obviously I was suppressing a lot of my creative talents because that that career really blossomed and I still do that now, but trying to put a lot more focus on this work, you know, helping people better care for their dogs. It's, it's my main passion.

3:25 So I have a lot of daily struggles with keeping my graphic design business going and paying the bills and helping dog parents because I love it so much. And I definitely definitely trust where my path has led me for sure. And of course, you didn't mention the beautiful home you're in that that y'all have built as well, which you don't have to talk about. But I noticed it and it is gorgeous and I'm really excited for everything going on in your life. But what was it that it helped you find my podcast? What was it that made you like go down the road of I want to, I want to do this because I know I know you've had some dogs and there have been some issues. And I mean, of course, only talk about what you're comfortable with.

4:09 I know this can be a really hard topic to talk about, but there have been some issues and I feel like the more stories we can tell, the more people connect to us. And so whatever you're comfortable sharing, I would love to hear. Yeah, sure. And I've definitely had my concerns, but I've never told this story in this kind of a setting yet. But I'll try to keep it brief. I'm so long winded, like, thank God for APT to help me condense things because I have a very hard time with that. But you know, I had two very beautiful special golden retrievers. I actually had a male golden retriever named Skip going into my marriage, and my husband had female golden retriever named Anne, who's four years older than Skip. So, you know, we made a very beautiful life together, my husband and I. And those two dogs, like our lives revolved around them. They went on so many fishing and camping and surfing adventures with us.

5:00 Like we really tried to give them the best life possible. I mean, they were luckily enough to be our children in that phase of life. So unfortunately, you know, they get older and with Anne getting older, she was starting to have some arthritis issues and I'm just really stiff, having a hard time getting up and down and getting up and down stairs. So I took her to see a traditional vet that was in our area and he tried putting her on pain pills for the rest of her life. Like that was his solution. He did some X-rays and some blood work and said she had some evidence of cruciate ligament tearing, really bad bilateral hip dysplasia, that that was his solution.

5:41 But as as close minded as he was, he had a little bit of open mindedness in there because he did recommend acupuncture to me. And it was through that vet that I saw for acupuncture services that I was just my whole world opened up into like what veterinary care could be. She was amazing. That vet sat me down and talked to me for 45 minutes before she even did any of the acupuncture work. Talked about Anne's diet, talked about her history, talked about what I was feeding her. So she changed everything. She made me realize, I mean, all I knew before that was the vet I had previously seen just prescribe some pills, hope for the best. This is how dogs are.

6:21 This is just her getting old. So I was, you know, that that that changed everything. And she convinced me to switch them from a kibble diet to a fresh food diet. So I did that for both dogs and saw such drastic changes in just a couple weeks. And that was all I needed to just be sold on the whole thing. So I just, I wanted more and dug into it more. I read the Forever Dog book, started listening to podcasts like yours, Angela Ardolino's Doctor Judy Morgan, and just realized there's a whole world around this. And it just, it sort of changed everything. I couldn't get enough. I was mostly, I was curious, but I was very angry too, because I realized that so much of what I was doing was not right.

7:02 And I prided myself on being a really good dog parent. I mean, they were my top priority in every aspect of my life. So to learn that the people that I trusted with their health were not necessarily giving me the best information was just such a wake up call and such a slap in the face. So I I tried not to get too overwhelmed and tried to slowly change everything at my own pace. The forever dog life will really overwhelm me when you read it for the first time. Yeah, got my own pace. And I got both of them switched over to an entirely raw diet. I stopped flea and tick prevention. I stopped vaccines. I mean, they're both seniors at this point, so they were well beyond immune and fine. And unfortunately, about 8 months or so after making all these good changes, Sweet Anne was diagnosed with oral cancer. I noticed her breath smelling really bad, took her into that acupuncture vet and she confirmed that she had oral cancer.

8:00 So that was hard. But Anne was I think 12:00 or so when she was diagnosed. So I knew, you know, I wasn't too hard on myself. I knew and I still trusted in all of this holistic lifestyle and holistic way of life. I knew that it just it takes a long time to undo the years of doing things the wrong way, the year of toxic toxic build up that was hard to take. So I ended up and you can stop me. I feel like I'm rambling. On go ahead. That's great. I mean, that's. So, yeah, when she was diagnosed with cancer, that obviously hit me like a ton of bricks. Last thing I expected because I was like, I'm doing all these things right. This feels so good.

8:42 So it kind of took some wind out of my sails, But I knew that I was not going to go chemo route, not going to go radiation. She was too old. And I just don't think I would subject a dog to that anyway. So it's kind of I left out of that, you know, She told me. So while she was an acupuncture specialist or specialized in Chinese medicine, she still was very traditional and conventional and she didn't have a lot of other tools in her toolbox. So she told me that if I wasn't going to do chemo or radiation that my list of options was very short. So that left me feeling helpless for a week or spending every second I had. I'm sorry the sun is so bad. I spent every spare second I had just researching and trying to figure out how I could help her. And eventually I got kind of frustrated and I almost went through with scheduling an appointment with an oncologist. I reached out to them and everything, like, you know what, I need to get a second opinion.

9:33 I need some more guidance. And I was starting to second guess myself, like maybe I should do like a, you know, see if there's surgery options, see if I should do chemo and radiation. It was like a divine intervention. I listened to one of Doctor Judy Morgan's podcast episodes interviewing Dr. Judy Jasik, and anyone listening knows that she is. She specializes in canine cancer. She's brilliant, and listening back to that was perfectly timed. I immediately scheduled an appointment with her and she taught me so much about how we can support our dogs with cancer naturally. And I forgot to mention too, that that original vet that diagnosed Anne's cancer let me know that she would probably only live 60 days or so if I didn't do the conventional treatments. And with Doctor J6 help and be focusing on the body as a whole and not attacking the cancer, we were able to keep her for an additional nine months was just incredible. And then unfortunately, during Anne's cancer journey, we were so worried about her.

10:37 And a couple months later, while we were traveling, while we were on the road, our dog Skip had an emergency situation where he just, he was refusing to eat. And I knew something was really wrong with him. We were in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico and we took him to an emergency vet there. And they, you know, I didn't expect that it would be anything super serious. I thought he was just dehydrated, got into something bad. We've been bouncing around a different campsite. So I was just thinking, God only knows what he may have gotten into here. So I went into it a little concerned because he had never not eaten before in his entire life. But unfortunately I was pulled into one of the exam rooms and hit with the hard news that he had a mass on his spleen that had ruptured and that was what made him weak and lethargic and not want to eat.

11:24 So Long story short, they kind of backed me in the corner, used a lot of fear and me being on the road too, it was just I was so scared he was going to, you know, have have a major incident while we're on the road. So I went ahead and went through with splenectomy surgery while we were on the road and he had to spend 3 days there getting pumped full of all kinds of anesthesia and antibiotics and you know, Lord knows what else. Just a very stressful situation for him and a situation where he was already not feeling himself. And I have a lot of regrets around that. I never, I'll never know if that was the right decision or not. But regardless, we, we went through with that surgery and we got six more weeks with him. So I have to be thankful for that. But it was still very heartbreaking because six weeks later he did end up collapsing and passing on us.

12:14 But it was, it was 6 beautiful weeks where he was still very much himself and playing and like nothing was wrong. He literally went out one day chasing a ball. So yeah, that's the shortest version I can give you on skip and ends. You know I'm going to cry, so maybe you're going to cry. I'm trying to mentally. No, that's so hard with our babies. Oh my gosh, it was terrible, terrible thing to go through. I mean, what in Anne's case it was we had time to prepare ourselves and which we finally did make the decision to put her down. We knew she was ready and it was very peaceful and very plan. But with Skip, it was a situation where we, you know, for that six weeks, we were still traveling on the road, we were still going fishing on a river. And I was just everyday thinking he could die while we're out here on the boat.

13:05 And, you know, it was just anytime I left him for more than just a couple of minutes, I was so worried he could be gone because that was very much the case. But it worked out beautifully to where, you know, he was literally playing with a ball at the end. He got a little weak, collapsed, and we tried to get him to an emergency vet. He actually passed in in the car on the way. But my husband and I were both with him. You know, I'm. I'm thankful that we didn't make it to the vet where they would have rushed him into surgery and he likely would have just died with a bunch of strangers around him. Yeah. So, yeah, it was a really, a really tough time to go through. I mean, that that'll happen between about April and December. And Skip was diagnosed in June, so, and he passed in July.

13:47 So he and Anne both pass within five months of each other. And I was thinking, yes, we, we had this four year age gap. And I thought for sure, OK, well, when Anne finally goes, we'll have Skip for a little while. We'll get another pot, then we'll just keep overlapping and everything will be OK. But it, it flipped our whole world's upside down to have Skip get unexpectedly diagnosed with cancer and leave us so quickly. Yeah. Yeah, I'm so sorry. I mean, I know you were going through the course with some of that and it was, it was tough. It was tough even trying to think of like things to recommend and like, I don't want to mess this up. But I mean, I think, I think you handled it beautifully I and, and with both of them. And I also want to acknowledge that, you know, like you said, it takes time when we have raised our pets conventionally for so long, like it just, it really takes time to to get back to a place of health, of vitality. And yes, we can see some amazing improvements in a very short period of time, but that doesn't mean that all of the systems in the body have caught up.

15:02 And detoxing is, is a very, to me, a very interesting thing because it's, there are different phases of detoxing and we don't have a whole lot of control over it. Like we can support our body and our dogs bodies and our cats bodies in various ways, but it's like we kind of have to almost hope for the best that the body is going to work the way it's supposed to work and just kind of know where to put the energy and the nutrients. And it really, one of the things I was actually just talking about this with another recording I was just doing before this is that it's really easy for somebody on the outside, somebody who isn't involved or even somebody who maybe just found natural medicine or holistic modalities to try it for a while.

15:55 And then something bad happens and they're like, oh, well, that didn't work. That's not the right way to go. So I really appreciate that that wasn't your mindset that that you realized that this takes time. They had a lifetime, a long lifetime of toxin buildup of the poor nutrition because of the commercial foods. There was so much to overcome that like your mind didn't immediately jump to, oh, this doesn't work. There's something to be said about that because I think not every, especially somebody on the outside who doesn't appreciate natural remedies and holistic modalities, for somebody like that to look and point and say, we'll see, you should have just done what the doctor said, yes.

16:44 Yeah, yeah, that was something. I just trusted it all so much. I understood that. But you're right. There's so many people that that don't get that. And it's there's, there's we have this allopathic way of thinking just by how we've been generationally conditioned to to care for dogs. So there's something hard to overcome. And I guess I don't give myself enough credit for for doing that. Yeah, I absolutely knew it was not any at any fault of not doing conventional treatment for them. And actually, I blame this, the surgery process for how short lived skips time was after or after we found out.

17:26 Something in me still thinks that if I would have just held back a little and wait, took a breath and got a second opinion, that he might have stuck around a little longer without, you know, without that intervention. But yeah. Yeah, I mean, nobody can blame. I certainly can't blame you for going. I'm sure I probably would have done the exact same thing because that's scary. And they are really, especially at like an emergency veterinary office, they are so good at scaring you. I don't know if they intend to like, maybe I don't know, maybe it's just because they're so calloused because they see so much constantly. Like they just have this constant onslaught of trauma that they really do, I think, get calloused. And like, if you don't listen to them, they're like, well, you're just the worst person in the world because you're not listening to me.

18:18 That's. What it feels like, yeah, I mean, all I kept thinking in the back of my head was, gosh, I need to get Doctor Judy Jasik on the phone. But nature of that, if she's not on call for me, I would have to have scheduled an appointment and hoped that she could maybe see me that next day. And meanwhile, it's late at night, we're in the middle of nowhere and this emergency surgeon is telling me that if we don't let him stay tonight and book him for surgery in the morning, that they can't guarantee they would get him in. So it was very much that I was, I felt like I, my hands were tied and I was back into a corner. But still, it may have been the right choice. And regardless, we did get 6 great weeks with him. I know with Hemangios sarcoma, a lot of people don't get that. A lot of people find out when it's too late and that's usually the case.

19:06 Manchester coma. So very lucky. But yeah, so I I chunked along after that after losing both of them. I had you know, I I have a social media following and a very different world is centered around my dogs that mostly in the fishing and outdoor world. And I started working with a raw dog food brand. I don't think I'll say it here for a little while because I did become quickly passionate about about feeding our dogs fresh food and caring for our dogs naturally. I decided, you know, I have two large dogs to feed. Let me work with this brand so I can afford to feed both of them a really good diet. So I worked with them for a while and I was sharing a lot of the information I was learning with that following that I had been building over the last 5-10 years to a very different audience.

19:55 I had a lot of dog parents that were following me, but I learned quickly that this can be off putting. Some people aren't really ready to to hear this information, to hear that they have to spend more money on feeding their dogs, to hear that they should maybe question over vaccinating or their flea in sick for that It is So I learned really quick that it's not for everyone and I should have continued to just push it on everybody in retrospect. But I did wanted to start a whole community just dedicated to the dog health, the holistic dog health, so. In order to do that, I knew that I would get a lot of backlash for not being a veterinarian, for not having DDM. So that is where I I didn't really know what direction to go with that. I obviously wasn't going to go back to. I didn't want to go to vet school. I didn't want to become indoctrinated. That's something I'm thankful for every day. I didn't want to be a vet when I was younger, and I had a lot of regret throughout my whole life that I didn't go to veterinary school.

20:52 But I'm very thankful it didn't work out that way because it's come full circle and I'm right where I needed to be. But so I didn't know what steps to take next or how I could. I can get knowledge to feel comfortable starting a whole account centered around holistic dog health, and that's where I'm listening to your podcast. I came across an episode, actually, I'll take that back. It was Angelina Ardolino's podcast and you were being interviewed and she was talking to you after program. And I was like, Oh my gosh, this is exactly what I've been looking for. I just the opportunity to to learn from someone with as much experience as Doctor Ruth and as much experience as yourself. Yeah, I, I figured out it's expensive as it was.

21:35 And as much as I didn't have the time for it, I'm like, I have to do this. This will make me have a good leg to stand on when sharing this information. It would just make me feel better. And I thought it would help relieve me of some of the the backlash. Like it does not it actually, you know, people will find a way to discredit you, and they definitely have. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. It's, it's interesting because I, I feel the same way. Like when I was a little girl, I wanted to be a veterinarian. So I always felt badly that that's not the route that I took. Even though I went to college, I did the, I did all the things and I always kind of was like, man, I should have like that was my dream. But now looking back, and I have talked to a few veterinarians about this on the podcast, and I also talked to Doctor Judy's daughter Gwen about it because there was, I remember it was during COVID, I think there was talk about the federal government subsidizing people to go into veterinary school programs because of the shortage of people going through, because of the veterinarian shortage.

22:43 And I actually talked to Gwen about it and I was like, I heard this and I was like, you were the first person I thought of. I was like, are would you do it? And she's like hell. No, I know. Yeah. I couldn't either. It's just that you're right, the indoctrination, after having talked to so many veterinarians who look back and say, like, I specifically Doctor Josie Bug, I was like, she spent her whole life in nature very holistically minded. And I was like, how did you make it through veterinary school? And she was like, it was hard. That was the hardest part. The resisting indoctrination for her was the hardest part. And I feel, I feel for veterinarians, but I also have this like resistance that I'm like, but you still have the ability to think for yourself.

23:32 You should, you should still have the ability to think for yourself. Unfortunately, some of them do. And then we get to know them. Exactly. Yeah, I was talking to someone recently who I think was a vet tech in the vet world for a long time. And her husband finally convinced her to leave because of this, the toxicity of the work environment and because he knew she could tell her integrity was being challenged every day. She she saw it. She saw what was happening. And I think that's the problem with a lot of our vets, I feel, I feel badly for them because there are some where and they're just stuck, you know, whether it be financially or just the indoctrination. It's, it's terrible. It's a really terrible thing to be so mad at them but also have so much compassion for them at the same time. Yeah, Yeah.

24:21 That's where I'm at for sure moving forward. You now haven't and I, I wanted to say earlier and I, I completely forgot like not for nothing because goldens are kind of known for cancer. So this isn't like you did all the right things and still like goldens are known for this. This is this isn't like, you know, you probably did get, like you said a lot more time with them then you otherwise would have because of the things that you did. And I want to acknowledge that as well, just in case people were like still hung up on the maybe you should go conventionally. No, no, I don't think you should. No, I mean, they're predisposed for sure to getting cancer, but as you know, I think there's a lot we can control to prevent it from happening or at least delay it from happening to them much. A golden person.

25:18 I have a golden pup now that I'm trying to do everything right with as much as I possibly can. But yeah, we still can't control, but ultimately happens. Yeah, and that's where I want to go because adorable little not so little anymore has been growing up on social media. Yeah. And I love watching him grow up. I am such a happy fiend. I will admit I have never in my life. I just have. I've always done rescue work before getting into this. And so I always wind up adopting older animals because I know, like, I just know that they don't get the same attention, have the same adoption rates.

26:06 And so I have never in my life had a puppy. So I watch puppies grow up on social media and I'm so jealous because I'm like, maybe next time. But then there's like this little heart string that's like, no, you're going to go and adopt the oldest dog as a shelf. Like, I just know that's what I'm going to do. That's it really is, but. Yeah. So Pine has been growing up on social media and you have putting been putting out some really amazing content. And I would love to know like what you, what you've been doing differently with Pine from the very beginning. Yeah, and that was kind of another goal of starting a separate community as I wanted it to really be focused around following someone. You know, I always wanted someone like me to show what they were doing with their pup from the very beginning and, you know, empowering me and giving confidence. So, so that was my goal with with Pine and this community is to kind of walk people through what we're doing differently. So the scariest thing that I took on was the natural immunity approach.

27:13 We didn't do any of the puppy vaccines and that was something I was very careful with because I don't it is a delicate path to take. It's not for everyone and it shouldn't be taken lightly. So we did do that and I did keep it pretty quiet for the first several months at least until I got him titer tested and was able to prove that he could achieve immunity naturally. I trusted all the science and all the research and trusted people I had talked to that had done it as well. But it was still a daunting thing to take on because parvo is very real and is fatal. It's very scary and could very easily have still happened. So we did that together. That was something I did differently. And again, I don't really talk about it publicly too much. When I talk one-on-one with people, if it's something they're interested in, we'll talk through that together just so I can make sure that they're doing it correctly and that they have a good holistic or homeopathic vet on call should anything go awry.

28:13 So we've done that and he's been raw fed since the beginning. I actually got him from a natural ring breeder. The, the cancer diagnosis and losing skip and, and to cancer traumatized me. So I made sure to get him from a breeder that started feeding raw from the start, left vaccine decisions up to me. So we're doing the raw feeding. No flea, tick, heartworm preventatives. Yeah. So we're doing all those things, and I wanted to showcase too, that while we were going through natural immunity that we weren't living in a bubble either. He roams in the woods and eats deer poop, eats raccoon poop, blankies. It's just so wild. Happy little puppy. A lot of my clients that I talked to you about natural immunity are so, so worried and, and deprive their dogs of socialization opportunities because they're so scared. So I, I try to give people more confidence that like it's going to be OK and this is actually helping to build their immune systems along the way.

29:06 As long as you're layering in protective measures like nosodes and some kind of immune support. Yeah, it's, it's so funny because my dog Kim, so she's she's 11 1/2 now and she, I have had a couple of instances over the years where she would go in the cat splitter box. She hasn't done it. It has been very rare. I will say in her life that it has been very rare. And the all the trap in my life has put me in a very different living situation at the moment to where my dog and cats are living together in a way that they haven't lived together before.

29:49 And so the litter boxes are much more accessible for her and she has not touched them. So like that has made me pretty happy. I really didn't think a whole lot about it until I just took her over to see my grandparents last weekend. And we spent a lot of time outdoors because they live up in the Smoky Mountains on top of a mountain. And like, it's just beautiful. And like I wanted her to be out in nature and not like city nature, which is where we typically live in the suburbs. Like, I wanted her to actually be out in nature and she picked up some poop that I have no idea what animal it was from. And like, at first I'm like, I have to get that away from her. Like that was my gut instinct was like, I need to get this away from you. And then she was just like insistent. So I'm like, OK, like, what's the worst that can happen? So yeah, I think it's it's it is a very natural thing. It was interesting because my grandfather was talking about it and he was like, that was when I saw a dog do it. Like my grandparents have never had pets. And he was like, and I saw a dog do this one time where they ate poop off of the ground.

30:56 And I was just like, I will never have a dog. And I'm like in the back of my head going, actually, most animals are cup, cup prophagic or we're just really grossed out by it as humans. Yeah, it is a really gross thing to think about. And then? Yeah, I always think about self selection and I used to never think about that until I started learning about this stuff and like, you know what, he's going to be OK as long as it's not a toxic plant or I'm just hey, they know what they need. Like they have strong noses, strong instincts. I try to just let it ride as much as possible, but I'll intervene now and then. There's some line up, but. Yeah. And that remind and I actually have not seen this, but somebody told me about this.

31:38 I don't know if you've seen it. Obviously FMT therapy, fecal microbiota transfer, like I've talked about that on on this podcast before. But it's a thing and it has been around for a very, very long time. And it can be very, very effective. I think maybe a little less effective than it used to be because of the environment that we're raising our pets. And but humans have, you know, we get in these like fat, like, I guess it's just the way we've been programmed for so long with with media and advertising. We get in these fads. And apparently it has been a fad on TikTok where people are kind of making fun of FMT therapy and they're like literally smearing poop on their face as like a TikTok challenge.

32:18 And I'm like, no, that's definitely not how this works. I don't know if you have seen that. Oh my gosh, I have not. I haven't been on TikTok in since I think 2020. Thank goodness. OK, for a while, but I can only imagine what it's like right now. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's like, you know, between the Tide Pod challenge and I don't know what they're calling this challenge, but like, I just don't know where people's minds are. I think sometimes I think it's so intentional to kind of like other the people who are legitimately doing things the right way and like trying to spread awareness about how amazing these natural remedies and, you know, food therapy and all these things are. I think sometimes I do wonder if it's kind of like opposition. Media, it probably is probably everything is a. Conspiracy nowadays.

33:14 That is the 100%. I was on a one of the office hours calls with other students just this morning and I'm like, if y'all want me to stop telling you about my conspiracy theories, you need to, you need to tell me to stop me. Yeah. I just couldn't get it out of hand. I recently just saw. Sorry, we're just going to go on this tangent. I recently saw another TikTok where this guy was on stage talking to people. And you know how it's so misguided because regenerative agriculture will literally save the world. It just like it will save the world. We need more cattle, not less cattle. We just need to be raising our animals regeneratively. The like climate change people are all up in arms about less cattle, less, you know, cows and how how bad they are. And so they don't want us, especially as Americans to be eating red meat.

34:15 They don't want us to be eating beef. So there is, excuse me, there's a tick in the Northern Virginia area. I don't it may be other places, but it's pretty regional. I think right now that if it bites you, it will the disease you get very similar to like, you know, people are very familiar with Lyme and Ehrlichia and other things like that. It's called Super Gal. And I actually heard about this because Joni Kamlit with real mushrooms has this from being bitten by a tick because she was living in Northern Virginia at the time and she was moved because of this. And so she has had a very long battle trying to figure out what this was.

34:58 She cannot it what it does is it it creates some sort of antigen or in your body where you literally become allergic to eating red meat. And so I saw this TikTok of this man on stage talking to people about how they are trying to like biohack and bioengineer tics to transmit this disease to humans so that we stop. Eating red meat. I'd heard of alcohol before and I know, I know people that have it as well. I'm like, that's one of my biggest fears is not being able to eat red meat anymore. Damn, how? Say. One that's a deep one, that's scary.

35:40 I mean, I'm already terrified enough of ticks, but that adds another level, yeah? Yeah, I mean, I got to say, like, I'm not terrified of ticks. I understand that there are risks, but I'm not like they're they're creepy to me more than anything. I'm not like I don't have this kind of scared where I'm like, I'm scared of what they're going to do to me. I'm scared that they're crawling on me. Like that's the kind of scared I have for ticks. But yeah, I always saw that the other day and I was like, how much more can they do to us? It's crazy and it's just that's that's been something that has been a struggle. I don't talk about much with this too, is when you, when you start waking up to these things, it can create tension in your personal life and relationships like grow and change and it really kind of changes your circles and people really don't know how to accept you or tolerate you when you start waking up to these things. So.

36:35 Yeah. But yeah, I mean, it's it's all things that we really should be aware of. But awareness can turn some people off, I'm sure. It can. And I I try very hard not to be at all political because I think, I don't think these issues are political in my opinion. No, I don't. Believe they're political. I believe they're just human issues. And so like, I will start talking about something and then I'm like, I may be turning like half of the population off right now. I have no idea. Absolutely. So how is Pine doing? He's doing great. He's actually being such a good boy right now. He's laying right underneath me and I was worried he was going to be a little rambunctious that he settled in. He's doing really well.

37:23 Love him. Fortunately everything worked out, so we're after we put Ann down, we'd we've been planning to pick him up just a few days later. We were hoping they'd get a chance to meet, but they didn't. So he's just been a joy for me, helping me get through the last year of my life with so many big changes. Yeah. And so, OK, he is just, he's completely naturally reared then like that's amazing. But that is so amazing to me. I love it because, you know, I, I feel like often times I have to kind of temper what I say, especially as you mentioned, I'm not a veterinarian. And so people there is a lot of backlash about that.

38:05 I don't think. And I know I like there, there certainly are people that I, I want to quote who will cause a riot in the comments, but like, you don't have, you don't have to go to school. You don't have to have like this academic, you know, degree and education to to learn things like knowledge is available out in the world. Yes, there are some like I absolutely appreciate our veterinarians for what they are good for. They learn so much in vet school about like the actual biology and like Physiology of an animal's body and so many different animals, right? Like that's it's an amazing thing that they do that they all all that they learn.

38:49 But like the things that we educate about are not things that you need degree for. These are to me, these are like common sense, like working with the earth, getting back to how we used to do things as humans, as animals, how we used to interact. Like these are yes, we can take advancements in technology with like hem therapy and red light and you all like they're they're mimicking what we can get in in the world. Like, you know, a sound bath going into the forest instead of paying somebody to give that experience to you inside of four wall.

39:30 We are mimicking a lot of what we can actually find in the world if we actually just connected to nature. But it's, it's just incredible to me that there is so much knowledge out there and that we've just, in my opinion, been brainwashed to kind of like. We've been bringing, this hasn't been offered up to us and our vets. We're never taught any of this either. And that's that's something that frustrates me on a daily basis. Like why can't they focus on what they're good at and admit where they don't have a lot of knowledge, admit their shortcomings and outsource it? I mean, I just don't know why that is something that's so hard to separate.

40:12 We're going to diagnostics, we're good at surgery, you know, we're going to administering vaccines. But if you want to talk to nutrition, let's talk to a canine nutritionist or a holistic vet. And that's one of my main goals too, is helping people to see that that that can be normal to have to rely on a holistic or homeopathic veterinarian as your primary vet and then just seek out conventional traditional veterinarian medicine when needed. So that's something, I mean, every client I talked to, that's just foreign to them. They, that's a foreign concept. It was a foreign concept to me until early last year when I reached out to Doctor Judy Jasik. I didn't realize that was a thing. Because they are highly skilled and they, there are times when we will likely need, need conventional or traditional treatment.

40:55 But for the most part, we should just be relying on ourselves. I think first and foremost educating ourselves. So we're not relying on on vets and overworking them. But so I'm just my goal is to say educate people as best I can on an individual basis or through through my social media so that they have more confidence in taking their dogs health into their own hands. Because I've seen it first hand to where really the most hands off people that have, you know, farm dogs and don't intervene at all in their lives. Those are the healthiest, most long lived dogs and for a reason. I think we just, we overdo it.

41:37 We were too good of dog parents sometimes that it comes back to haunt you. Yeah. It's not. Good. What's skipping in? Yeah, it's that I think it, I think germ theory was one of the worst things to happen to medicine. And it it, I actually just read this this morning. I'm going to share it here real quick. Let me pull it up. It says it's actually on a sub stack that I follow or I try to follow. He writes so much I can't keep up with it. But he's talking about how raw honey can save your microbiome. But he says let me find it, let me find it. We humans, and I believe this to be true of dogs and possibly cats as well.

42:22 We are meta Organism, a hybrid being composed of 10 times more microbial cells, meaning bacteria, fungi and viruses than human cells. Even more astonishing, 99% of the genetic material in our bodies is microbial in origin, so 10. We have 10 times more bacteria, fungi and viruses in our body than we actually do human cells. I think that's incredible. I think that is amazing. I think that says so much to first of all, discredit germ theory, yes, which I mean, I hope we have discredited.

43:02 I don't think we have like based on our medical system, I don't think we have but but it definitely has like translated into how we care for our pets and it is so detrimental. I know I still have a hard time sometimes. Like I have to be so intentional about taking my shoes off outside. Yeah, it's funny things like that where you think it's, you know, I grew up thinking taking your shoes off was just being like, I don't know, just about cleanliness and cosmetic reasons. No, it's not necessarily the natural bacteria, natural stuff from outside. It's the toxins from outside that you're bringing into your home. That's that's where I'm concerned now since we built our new house and very much where shoes off in here and as low tox as possible and everything. My poor husband like the furniture I was getting us to buy cuz I'm like it has to be organic and it has to have all these certification.

43:53 Like we had this chance to start fresh. Let's do it. I know it's way more expensive, but it'll be worth it because we're going to be spending our time in here. That was. That hit me when I read the Forever Dog book, when I learned about, you know, how many taxes are bringing in on our shoes and how much chemicals are in our furniture, in our cleaners. And that was very overwhelming for me. So I definitely tried to to do that one step at a time. And now with this new house and like, all right, we're going to, we're going to do this, right? Yeah. I love that so and obviously these are all things that you do teach one-on-one to people. Is that accurate to say? Can you do consultations? I do the consultation after having taken that course with Doctor Ruth and I've kind of evolved where I I like to do more of 30 minute one on ones with people just covering the more general topics and helping people get their feet wet in this whole holistic way of caring for our dogs. Focusing on the big ones like spaying and neutering and vaccines and phasing out of or getting rid of conventional fleet tick and heartworm medications completely helping them with those because people just, they just need to talk to people that have done it.

45:07 So I try to make my consultations very casual and very much just like ask me questions, ask me what I'm doing. Let me tell you, it can be done. There's just there's a lot of fear. There's so much fear in this, you know, in our current world. And if you just focus, if I can just help dog parents to think a little bit differently and how they approach making decisions for their dogs, like it can really impact their health. So, so yeah, I do for those one-on-one consultations and they've been pretty steady. I actually had one just before we talked and that one was on natural immunity specifically. A lot of people are curious about that. I love that. That's amazing, and it actually seems so much less pressure than what I do.

45:47 Yeah, I know. And that's where I recently dialed that back because, you know, that course is building you up to offer those consultations where you're helping dogs that are chronically ill and have really serious things going on, mostly leaky gut issues or cancer. So I, I would love to do that, but right now I'm just really spreading myself so thin, still doing my graphic design work while I try to migrate towards doing this more full time. So I just don't, and you know, it takes so much time, even those 30 minute calls, I'm still doing so much research and putting so much work into giving clients a, a document with links and protocols. So it's a lot.

46:31 I, I don't think, I think to price it at what it's really worth. Like no one would ever actually pay for it, unfortunately. So yeah, I scaled back recently where I'm not offering those full length consultations where I dig into that records and history because I just don't have the time time for it right now. I decided to shift my focus more towards preventative. Type, yeah, guidance, that's awesome. I mean, so necessary and I'm glad that your community has been accepting of that because it is like that's my goal too. Like I wish that's that's how I went down this path to begin with was, you know, being in rescue.

47:12 I started a YouTube channel and somebody commented that like, wouldn't it be great if you could just keep dogs out of shelters and rescues? And I'm like, yeah, like that's so, you know, keeping dogs healthy from the get go. That's that is the ultimate goal. Yeah, it's kind of selfish because that that's definitely the easier approach. I love, I want to help the ones who really need it. But those are your really hard clients. So you got to have the right client who's going to buy into this is going to take three to six months or longer to fix. So it's really hard to find the right client because you can easily turn people off when they're not seeing results in a couple of days or a couple of weeks. But yeah.

47:55 I know my my. So many jobs are so screwed up right now. They are. I know my leaking gut package is 12 months. I mean, I tell that to them upfront and they're like, what? It's. 12 months, Yeah, If we can get it done sooner, wonderful. Yeah, that's 12 months. And if they don't already know a fair amount about how holistic medicine and holistic support works, then it's a battle to get them to understand that it could take that long. If they do know, they'll be like, OK, I'm ready for this. I know it's going to help my dog long term. But I think most people are just like, no way. I'd rather take the easier option. Yeah.

48:41 Yeah. And that's it all boils down to really is I think we blame our veterinarians and we blame, blame the vet schools for how poorly they're trained. But I think a lot of the issues how we demand convenience, most dog parents just demand something that's quick and easy. And and I see it all the time in in my comment section on my Instagram, like, you know, where people bash, you know, naturally in tick prevention, for example, because we'll still see Flick still safely in ticks now and then. It's like you got to you got to be willing to put forth the extra effort for your dogs. And that may mean having an inconvenience of seeing fleece and ticks once in a while or having to manually check them every night.

49:22 It's just a whole whole different mindset. You know, convenience. Convenience is really what I think might be one of the main killers of our dogs. It's just in US convenience culture, convenience culture is just awful. The convenience and having to be busy all the time and being so stressed. Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree. Thank you, Amazon. No, really. I mean, thank you pharmaceutical companies. That's really where it started. OK, So, you know, people are interested in the preventive, especially this, you know, natural rearing. I think that is so incredible. It's definitely like, that was, in my opinion, a hole in the space that you're filling, which may one of the reasons why you've blown up so quickly because it's not something most people do. It's not something most people talk about. I love that.

50:11 How can it? What's the best way for people to find you? Is it on your Instagram? Yeah, I probably think my Instagram and I do have a website, tailswell.com too. And you know, I, you can book consultations through that. And then I do offer a few. I'm working on more of more digital products because as the pages grow, as you know, I mean, I have hundreds of unread direct messages and then people were contacting me via e-mail through my website as well. So I'm then trying to figure out ways that I can get information out to more people because I am still just one person. So it does get overwhelming because I really do enjoy helping and I will dive into the direct messages sometimes and spend way too much time helping people. And I will dive into the comments sometimes. But you know, I have to remind myself that my time is probably better spent elsewhere.

50:59 So I do prefer talking people one-on-one if I can and then creating these digital products to help people with some of the things I get a lot of questions about like detoxing after vaccines and heartworm is a big one. So yeah, I'm working on more, but maybe I'll do one on natural immunity. But for natural immunity, I think that the guru on that is Doctor William Falconer and his website. I learned so much from his podcast and his website and his courses. So he's he's a great one for people to to dive into. I can recommend him a lot to my clients because I recommend a lot of resources to my clients because unlike conventional, traditional veterinarians, I want to only see my clients once or twice. Like I I want to empower them and give them the tools they need to to get to the level that you and I are at, or somewhat close to.

51:52 At least close enough that they're comfortable taking their dog's health into their own hands so that they won't need to rely on us anymore. Yeah, absolutely. Oh my gosh, I can't. Yeah. I don't know if a day goes by that I don't talk about Doctor Falconer. Make their Oh my gosh, she's so great. And I think unfortunately not everyone's like you and I like I think we're breed where we can't get enough of this stuff and we really enjoy reading and listening to my husband thinks I'm crazy for how much I can just take courses and, you know, read research papers and he's just like, I just I love to learn and I don't necessarily have as much time as I would like for it, but any spare second I get, I'm doing it. So not everyone's wired like us either. So that's why it's also important that we're here to kind of help make information bite sized for for those that don't have the time.

52:44 Awesome. Well for you, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for sharing your story and for what you do and for filling that hole in education that I think obviously people are just dying to consume because they do want we, I mean, we all want our pets to live so much longer than they than they do and healthy, like not just live, but like live healthy and have a. Vital Life, So many of these people I talked to are just just looking to be proactive, which I'm so jealous of because unfortunately for me, it took having something really bad happen to to finally get myself in gear.

53:25 So it's, it's been really refreshing to see how many pet parents out there are wanting to be proactive because because they know they, they have enough, you know, they can look out and see in long term what may happen if they don't make changes. And I feel guilty because for me, I just, I went along with it until it was too late, almost so. We all have our own path. That's totally understandable. Yes guys, check the show notes for links to Bree's Instagram and her website. Very excited for any downloadables that you did come out with and thank you so very much for being here to talk to my. Listener, yeah. Thank you so much. Good to see you. You too.