Welcome to The Senior Pet Podcast, a show dedicated to giving our senior four legged family members. They’re happiest and healthiest lives. Now join our senior pet experts. Veterinarian Dr Stacy Bone, an animal health insider, Ron de Vries as they discuss why old age is not a disease.
Stacey
Welcome everybody to the senior pet podcast. I am veterinarian and senior pet expert Dr Stacy Bone. And with me, as always, is my co host, Ron DeVries. Ron, how are you?
Ron
I am great. How about yourself?
Stacey
No complaints today.
Today’s episode is entitled Who are your hosts? So bear with us as we’re gonna be super narcissistic and give you guys a better idea of who we are, where we came from, both personally professionally and kind of how we got into senior pet health.
Ron
I’m excited to learn a lot more about myself. This is going to save me a ton of money in therapy.
Stacey
Good. So one of the first questions I think that I, as a veterinarian, often get asking Ron, I’m sure you do, too, because it’s just a conversation starter in any social setting is tell me about your pets, you know, maybe past president future.
Ron
That’s become part of my vernacular is I’ve been in the pet industry. Whenever I meet people, regardless of the social setting, I’ll always ask him about their pets. It tends to get people engaged.
Stacey
Absolutely. It’s like the cattle across the board. Dog cats, lizards. I don’t care about your kid, Right? So, Ron, tell me a little bit about your life with pets.
Ron
Just don’t ask me about my kids, Boy, that’s a good one. Stacy, you know, it takes me back Thio when I was a little guy because there’s a long period of time when I didn’t have any pets in my family, which I can tell you it wasn’t as great as it is. And when I have pets in my family and in my life. Gosh, when I grew up, we had a dog. He was some sort of a Terrier mix is a little black and white guy named Spotter Spotty, and he was part terrier, so that meant, you know, he was always getting into things.
But my mom was, uh, she ran the household with an iron fist so spotty was very good at not going in areas where he wasn’t supposed to go. Unlike my dog’s eyes, I’ve never ruled with an iron fist. Apparently, but, uh, what I remember most about him is is what a great dog he was to me because he was there before I was there, right? They had spotty. And the family, Uh, least a few years before I came along. So I didn’t know what it was like to not have a dog until, unfortunately, you know, spotty, spotty got old, which is kind of why we’re here right on the senior pet podcast.
But I gotta watch Spotty, get old and, uh, go through some of the things that that you go through with the senior pet, including, you know, the euthanasia at the end. So, uh, you know, great experiences. Unfortunately, great experiences for Children t learn about life in general from their pets, and that includes nutrition. And we’ll get into that a little bit more later also. But I remember some of the things that spotty Adan Spotty eight, Rather. And this goes back quite a ways. So some of these semi moist I won’t name the names that they’re still out there. I think some of these semi moist they look a little bit like a burger, and I couldn’t really imagine feed those to my pet any more. But I remember coming like the little single open, very familiar, and I think that they’re still out there. I think I’ve seen them as recently as last couple of years.
So again, that was my first experience as a pet owner and watching spotty get old and then, like a said, there was. There was quite a gap until I got my own dog immediately after I got married, probably within two months. And it was one of those things where we had already picked out the name and all that before. We got the dog and, you know, cards on the table. I got him from a breeder, and I don’t feel bad that I got him from a breeder. But in retrospect, I know how many great ways there are to get a pet now cat or dog or any other animal from a rescue. What type of breed? Pug? Oh, nature’s most majestic creatures. So, Rudy, uh, if you’re familiar with the movie, so that’s who Rudy was named after, then came along Sasha, also a pug, and she came to us a za rescue, a senior rescue. And then currently we have Fay, also a pug and also came from a rescue man.
Stacey
You guys love those pugs. Don’t you?
Ron
Nobody likes to sleep peacefully in our right.
Stacey
You know, it’s funny, though, because I feel like once you get hooked on a breed, it’s really hard to change. And I’m that same way. I mean, I’ve had terriers. I mean, honestly, from day one of life we’ve been through probably every terrier that you could imagine. We started with my mom’s Scottish terrier, Mac, and then we had a Yorkie, and then we had a care interior. My own personal dog, I would argue and argue to say, is the best dog ever was a Jack Russell terrier named Bailey, And we actually just recently rescued a new dog who’s a Jack Russell terrier mix. So there’s not too many terriers. I think out there that exists that we we haven’t seen. My wife has ah, dog named Bella, who’s a senior beagle as well in kind of an interesting creatures the beagle. I think beagles and punks are very similar in the fact that if you ever want to see the happiest animal on the planet, give a pug or a beagle a bowl of food just go absolutely crazy. And if any of you out there have a beagle or pug, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Ron
You know, it’s funny that they say that owners will sometimes take on the characteristics and looks of their pets. Which would mean that I don’t have much of a nose, which isn’t close to the truth. And maybe your wife has longer years and normal.
Stacey
I’m gonna argue that you are some semi pug like.
Ron
So Stacey. One of my other questions I wanted to ask you is as a veterinarian on guy, I’ve met quite a few in my life. I’m always interested to hear How did they become interested in becoming a veterinarian? What was your path to become an event?
Stacey
Yeah, we’re a unique breed. I think every one of us is just a little bit different on how we got where we are today and I’m no different. I take a little bit of a circuitous path, and I guess it is to get here. And so if you ask my parents, they would always tell you that I was that kid who was running around and picking up frogs and putting him in the pocket. Or, you know, I remember I used to collect fence lizards and I would feed him. And I think at one point in time I have, like, 15 or 20 of the suckers in an aquarium. And, you know, again, we always had pets in the house. So that was, you know, that was a big thing as well. But I’ll be honest with you. I went into college with an idea of doing biology, and the big lie that they tell you in college is is that you could do anything with the biology degree. So tip number one for all you parents out there or or kids teenagers if you’re listening, don’t believe that one bits biology degrees, our wonderful degrees. But you needed advanced degree to go on, so I looked at two options. Actually, the first was Entomology. I was just enthralled by the subject of insects. The excitement I know. The thing of it was isn’t about. Halfway through, I realized that I’m semi terrified of spiders in the patent that didn’t fly out too well. So the other thing was veterinary medicine. And I guess you could say it was a calling or I found my way kind of back home because very quickly I realized that it was the absolute correct decision. As part of getting into veterinary school. You do a lot of what we call shadowing on shadowing is essentially where you go to a practice and you hang out with the veterinarian. And if you’re lucky enough, you get to draw vaccines or you get thio, maybe draw blood if you if you know what you’re doing or the people trust you. So I kind of started to do a lot of shadowing to catch up with ours. And things like that is what you need for a vet Med and quickly realized that I absolutely loved the industry. So I guess the rest you can say is his history. So this is where I am today. Four years of veterinary school, later and many years of practice. So what about you, Ron? I know you said you’re ah, you’re an animal health insider and our first episode or leasing our teaser episode. So why don’t you tell everybody kind of what that means and how you got involved into pet and that health?
Ron
Well, it kind of goes back to a little further than our relationship goes back. I I was looking for a new career, and they always say, If you do something that you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. I don’t know exactly how sure that is, especially when you’re getting on an airplane at 5 30 in the morning. But I was fortunate enough to find a position with one of the one of the really reputable nutrition companies in veterinary medicine. Veterinary health. And the great part about starting in nutrition for me was the amount of education I was able to get and working hand in hand with people like you, Stacey and some of the great veterinarians that that don’t practice but work in either academia or on the business side of it. Because there’s some really talented ones out there, and for anybody that gets an opportunity to meet some of the people that work for some of the you know Cos whether it’s manufacturing or what have you nutrition Michel’s Nutraceuticals Pharmaceuticals. They’re just, ah, wealth of information and a lot to be learned. So I had the opportunity to sometimes on the sales side of things sit in my car for an entire day or days at a time with one of these Scientific service’s veterinarians, and not only get an education well to to to go further than the education that you received when you started to work for them, because that in itself is quite an education. But to be able to pick their brains for literally hours at a time, for them to what I like to refer to his dummy things down. For a guy like me, so it’s really understandable, Meant the world to me and really opened my eyes in my mind to Veterinary health and what I didn’t know.
Stacey
And I think that’s the amazing thing is that as we’ve kind of gotten to know each other and we’ve learned more about senior health, you know, it’s kind of one of these things where the more you know, the more you learn, you don’t know, and I think the unfortunate side of that men is and you’ll hear it’s probably mentioned this more than once. Vet Med kind of lags behind human medicine by about a decade or so, I guess I would say. And so you know, there was a boom in human medicine about 10 years ago, and we’re catching up with that right now. I mean, honestly, when I was in general practice, it would make your head spin the numbers of journals and articles and research and things that came out and any time that you would travel with a veterinarian who is from another part of the company or or somebody in academia, it’s absolutely amazing, the stuff that’s being done and that we’re learning and how that’s adapting and changing medicine all the time. And that’s one of my favorite things. And I’ll say it again is that medicine has a best buy dates. All medicine has the best by date, so you know we don’t tree find for spirits out of people’s heads anymore. But 100 years ago, that was considered standard of care for headaches, and so those treatments and things adapt all the time, and one of the reasons why I personally love veterinary medicine as much as I d’oh. So, Ron, I think that some will take a break here real quick when we come back. I know we’ve got a couple more questions when I ask each other and then later in the episode will get to our very first hot spots. So we’ll be right back.
Ron
I’m excited about it back. I was just covering a little bit about how I got started in the animal health industry. And Stacey, I’m a little bit more interested in how you got started after coming out of that school. You know? Did you have a lot of options And what did you choose? And how did you get there?
Stacey
Yeah, and that, you know, to be quite honest with you, that’s a difficult decision, I think, for any graduating veterinarian. So I was blessed with one thing, which is that I knew I absolutely did not want to work on anything that could kill me easily. And so I write, I went into small animal medicine, which is not exactly that, because if anybody has ever been bit by a cat, they understand that that could be one of the most dangerous things that exists out there. But it was a good choice, so I actually started in Lost Vegas. I took a job at a small animal hospital out there. It’s what we consider to be a high volume hospital and learned a ton did a lot of that short period of time. Probably in the two years that I was there, I learned the equivalent of what somebody would learn in five years, and that’s all completely, thinks Teoh, the owner of the practice in the mentors.
The veterinarians that I worked with their They were absolutely phenomenal. Act time actually was wind we got into or I started to develop that driver Senior Health, And I’ll tell that story here real quick, and I’m sure will touch on it later. But you know, it started to deal with a lot of owners that would tell me, You know, my dog slips and slides on tile floors. Tile floors are really serious problem in Las Vegas and started to kind of turn in my mind of why is there nothing there that can address this problem in senior pet to have issues getting getting around which is as well talk about probably here in a couple of minutes is how we develop pa friction, which is where Ron and I came t become kind of, I guess, in working partners with each other. And so from Las Vegas actually moved to ST Louis, which is, if nobody realized that that’s actually where we are filming the podcast from and joined another practice, which was a little bit different. It was what we consider to be a high quality practice. Not to say that the medicine we practice in Vegas wasn’t but the practice that came with here is where I learned to do things like ultrasound, and we had an in clinic C T skin, and we did a lot more advanced surgery.
So I was able to grow my personal medicine quite a bit more. But unfortunately with the Vet Med, where we’re at in the industry right now is that there’s a lot of I guess the term we would use for that is compassion, fatigue, and I hit that wall It about 10 years outside, was a 2008 graduate and decided that I needed to do something else. A little bit for my own personal mental health. And so, I decided, actually joined veterinary industry, which is where I’m in now, which has been a phenomenal change and kind of as Ron was saying when he joined the health industry. I’ve learned so much Maur since I’ve joined industry. Then I think what I’ve learned on may be the last five years. So it’s been really challenging for me and then side project wise. And I guess this is where we probably need to tag team in here. Ron is we’ve developed a business or a company that’s devoted to developing in recognizing problems with senior pets, right?
Ron
Yeah, absolutely. Paul friction being the being the product and senior pets being the focus for the product.
Stacey
Yeah, and so that was you know, I mentioned it just a little bit ago. That was where Ron and I reconnected. So Ron and I actually met in Los Vegas, right? Yes. Over a decade ago, over a decade ago, when I was looking at making the choice, I was actually attending a conference and walked up to the Booth that Ron was working out and saw that he was from ST Charles and said Ron, I’m interested. Actually, I’m moving to ST Louis. Why don’t you tell me a little bit about some clinics that were there? And the rest, I guess, is history.
Ron
And the first thing I probably tried to do is talk you out of it. Because I would think you would want to leave Las Vegas until you spend more than a weekend, right?
Stacey
So right, Yeah, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, but it was It was a really amazing experience. And so we kind of lost track of each other. I think after that point, and, you know, I I kind of met my business partner and we developed pa friction. And pathology is the parent company and, you know, have been brainstorming ideas ever since. And then one day, Ron happened to walk into the lobby of the clinic we were at.
Ron
Yeah, no accident. I was I was with my senior pet it at my veterinarian’s practice, and we were just talking about as he got older, and Rudy at this point was probably in the neighborhood of 12. And, uh, he had We have hardwood in our house. We have tile. We have laminate. We run the gambit of all things that are that go against the dog with senior Paul pads and do. Rudy was really struggling to stand and get around on those floors. So, uh, I had asked my veterinarian about that, and the first thing she said is, Do you know Dr Stacy Bone? And I said, Yes, I do know Dr Stacy Bone and she said He’s got a great product. Um, you might be interested in learning more about it. And he’s down at you know, this animal hospital so immediately, I made a bee line from their practice down to see you and we’ve reconnected then
Stacey
It’s been it’s been kind of an amazing thing. And you know, what was cool is that, you know, Ron and I have kind of been able t build a little bit more of the company that we have on the side, which is not what we’re here today to promote, but it’s it’s really helped us understand that we both have a passion for senior pet health, and I think that’s our kind of our final topic that we’re going to cover right now. Ron, which is you know why, Senior pet health, Why are we so focused in on this topic?
Ron
And it’s easy for me to talk about because having lived up until recently, really with a senior pet. And when you have a senior pet, it seems like you forget that they were ever young because you continue to deal with a lot of the same issues for if we’re lucky years at a time. And that was That was where I spent with what I mentioned earlier, spotty when I was a kid and I watched him get older and then is my my own pug. Rudy got older and the another one, Sasha, also got old, and unfortunately she got old a little bit faster because she was a senior when we rescued her. But they’re all such great learning experiences, and that’s Ah, not only in the head but in the heart as well. And Rudy, most recently, because I was able to do a lot of different things and try a lot of different things to include, like I said, helping him with his with his movement with Paul friction and learning how to take better care of a senior pet also to include again, you know, pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, nutrition in general, right?
Stacey
Yeah, And I think that that’s a That’s a phenomenal point is is that, you know, there’s an emotional aspect that comes atoning. SP Sr Patton, Mine is is Bailey. And you know, I’m gonna mention Bailey probably multiple times throughout this podcast. She’s ah, she was a Jack Russell terrier who made it toe 15 and 1/2 years of age, and she kind of declined at the end. And I think the biggest thing was is that she developed cognitive disease, and I I didn’t realize what it was. Even me As a veterinarian, I didn’t realize what it was. I didn’t catch the early signs and symptoms of it until, unfortunately, it was so late that there wasn’t a whole lot that we can do about it. And that killed me. You know, when I realized that there’s probably a population of animals out there that the same thing happens to that if we has pet owners or even Weah’s veterinarians don’t recognize the signs and symptoms that come with diseases and things that happen as we age, you know, Unfortunately, we can’t treat them. And I really think that the theme of this podcast is gonna be one. That old age is not a disease, but to that proactive medicine is way better when it comes to senior help elf than reactive medicine. And Ron, you mentioned nutrition is one of those medications I think is another one. The sooner you get on an anti inflammatory, the better you’re gonna feel the better. You’re gonna move, the better you’re gonna keep that muscle mass up, right?
Ron
I think that’s how I got here today up those stairs, outside.
Stacey
Well, and I think, you know, for me, is a veterinarian. That’s the other side of things. Is that the emotional attachment that we feel to our senior pets? I mean, I had Bailey for 15 and 1/2 years. I got her if, like, almost five weeks of age, I mean, she was super young, and you said you had ready for what, 16 in a bit. Yeah, And I mean, we get these these puppies, you know, when they’re with us and they’re through trials and tribulations and every point in our life. And it’s like, man, that emotional attachment with a senior is just so much stronger than wind up with a puppy. We all love puppies, but we really love our older dogs. And for me, I think that anything I can do to help continue to strengthen that bond and to really give your senior pet the absolute best and longest quality of life possible
Ron
is why I’m here. And that goes hand in hand with exercise and the other topics will hit on because old age isn’t a disease. And, uh, the only thing that may look like a disease is when your neighbors start seeing you walking your dog a lot slower.
Stacey
I remember Rod was telling me that he would take Rudy for a walk and you’d make it like, 3000 in two hours. You know something of these?
Ron
There was no need it anymore. I know that goes against good veterinary care, but believe me, he wasn’t gonna get away from me.
Stacey
And so I think ultimately, our goal for this was to just really kind of show you that we’re not here to preach. We’re not here to just give you a lot of facts and figures. Just know that Ron and I were coming from a place where we do have a fair amount of experience in the world of pet and vet health. We also have ah lot of emotion tied up in This is well, and I don’t think Ron would disagree with me now at the time if you do. But I don’t think you would disagree with me that, you know, we really hope that everybody who listen to this podcast learn something and that the animals secondarily benefit from it, right?
Ron
Yeah, absolutely. We’re gonna grow one way or another from the experience of having a pet become a senior.
Stacey
Absolutely. And so with that being said that we’re gonna take a quick break. And when we come back, Ron’s very first hot spot Welcome back. So going forward, what we’re gonna talk about now is what we call Ah, hot spots. And a hot spot is something that Ron has found either on the Internet or in the news or articles. Magazines? What have you that he’s found particularly interesting that that warrants a little bit of discussions around? I’m gonna hand it over to you.
Ron
Thinks they see yet this is ah, one that, as senior pet experts, is particularly close to the heart as well, in that one of the things that that we have always gone by our Lisa’s long as I’ve been around, is what is the age comparison for a dog to a human, and and and I’m leaving out cats and hopefully states to be able to catch us up a little bit in a minute. But the the previous information was always it’s about seven years, uh, humans to dogs, right? So if your dog was 10 you’d be about 70 something some somewhere in there. The thing that I’ve learned and should have known sooner than that in human or in veterinary medicine was simply that. Ah, lot of things are factors in that number. You’re rarely going to see a 16 year old great Dane, right on dhe. When I look at human, sometimes I think I’m never gonna see a 70 year old seven footer either. So you know I’m not trying Thio throw stones at Wilt Chamberlain er or shack, for that matter. But you know, the heart has to certainly work a little bit harder. Thanet does for somebody more my size So one of the articles that I read recently goes into a new formula that they’ve come up with her that they’re working on. Actually, that took into account primarily in this was Labrador retrievers, which is a dog we see use quite frequently in veterinary medicine. But they had scanned the D N a myth elation in a I think it was 104 4 dogs, genomes and that they ranged from I think it was four weeks old to 16 years old, which again, for a lab that’s getting up there, you’re not going to run into a lot of 16 year old labs.
Stacey
I think I’ve seen one whole time.
Ron
I guess they’re not very common. So So the study that they have and this is getting carried on a little bit further with another project called the Dog Aging Project. And that’s open toe all breeds. And I think we’re really going to take some more information out of that and be able to apply it a little bit more specifically. But on the one that I was looking at, which didn’t really blow my mind because it included a calculator online where I could put in my dog’s age, and it spit out a number. But quite frankly, the number was very similar to what I had expected it to be. And again it was very similar to 7 to 1. So I think that even in this even in this study, not not a lot was learned. But they’re continuing to develop it. They know that, you know, in certain genomic regions with higher mutation rate. So as we get older, andare genes begin to mutate a little bit and we start to develop disease in certain disease states. And that’s no different than our than our pets on. Then there’s similar molecular changes that just typically go on with aging, so those those were the things that that caught my eye like, he said. When you plug into the calculator your dog’s age, it’s gonna come out with the number pretty similar to what we’ve been using on that 7 to 1 ratio. But I’m extremely excited to see where this dog aging project takes us when they start taking into account a lot of different breeds,
Stacey
I think that that’s you know, there’s a lot to digest in that a lot and and obviously we don’t have a ton of time to do so. But there’s a few big things. I think that Ron said. They’re the first run, and I believe you said something along the lines of environmental right, and that’s that is a big thing right now in human medicine. And I think we’ve all learned that she want to avoid living in a house that’s near power lines, right, because there’s a higher incidence of cancer with people who live near power lines. I’m sorry if I just scared anybody. Please do not go sell your house immediately because of that. But there certainly are some instances where certain types of cancers are associated with living near power lines.
Ron
I live near some. It’s here, right?
Stacey
Well, you go. I’m not sure of that. But that’s a really big thing. I mean, we know the environment causes damage and honestly, not just the environment but our food. What we eat, how we live our life styles, all that kind of stuff really do affect our genes and mutations. And bare minimum of a mutation is our cells are dividing all the time, right and whenever they divide, there’s a chance to make a mistake, and that mistake is deemed a mutation. And enough mutations can lead to not great things in the body. And so that’s actually the reason why as we get older and we’ll talk about this like what happens to us as we age, But that’s one of the reasons why old age is not a disease. But the processes that happen as we age are really, really, really important. And so the other factors on what else did you mention there? I think you mentioned maybe breed.
Ron
Yeah, breed. And obviously, when we talk about breeds, we’re talking about size, rights and activity level.
Stacey
It’s super interesting, and I had a client bring this up to me one time and I’ll be honest with you. I’m so lazy I didn’t go in and and figure out if it was true or not. But she said, to me, dogs are one of the only species on the planet that the larger they are, the shorter they live. And I know that that’s actually true with regards to dogs. But I didn’t know if that’s true with regards to other species and Actually, I was just reading an article yesterday that was talking about how they just discovered a like a 25 or 30 foot shark that they think it’s something like, you know, 100 years old or some crazy amount like that. So maybe that is truly true that the larger of another species live longer and be super interesting. So if anybody knows a whole lot more about that, please feel free to email us because I’m super interested in it. But yeah, I mean, I think that that with regards to aging, there’s a lot there, and I guess the question that we have for you, Ron, is Does it matter? Does it matter?
Ron
You know, it’s a great question because I think it does matter, and it really matters from the standpoint of why we’re sitting here right, because old age is in the disease and the sooner that were able to understand when our pets become seniors and again, I’ll throw it back in a second on cats. That’s when we need to pay particular attention to how we’re handling our pets and understanding some of the things that we’re seeing that they’re going through because that dogs no longer a puppy or in the middle of its life, it is hitting senior age and some of the changes that we may need to do to adapt to be in a scene.
Stacey
And I think that sounds like a great topic for a full episode. So maybe we’ll cover that next time and then rotted. Ask about cats, and I always tell people that there’s kind of a rough rule of thumb with cats as well. So really typically will tell you that a cat, um, will live one year for every four years as a person. So that means that a 10 year old cat is roughly the equivalent of a 40 year old person. And so, you know, again, it’s all rough. It’s, there’s there’s really no rhyme or reason to it. We just can’t understand this now. I think what’s really interesting is that and we won’t get into the science because it’s it gets super complicated. But with regards to a lot of the DNA test, that air coming out right now, there’s a couple of good ones that have started to look at d n a aging and they used tillage telomeres and all this kind of really, like I said, complicated stuff. But they can very accurately tell the AIDS of your pet. And so I think again, you know, the bottom line of this is stay tuned. We’re learning more and more and more with regards to gene sequencing and things like that that will help us understand the age and longevity of our pets. Overall. So, Ron, anything else?
Ron
Because I always say you’ll rarely run into a very old outdoor care for a variety of reasons. We will go into those reasons.
Stacey
Thank you, everyone, for joining us for our very first episode of the senior pet podcast. Next time we’re going to cover what it means to be a senior in a little bit on what Ron covered. We’ll talk about that as well. And if you have any questions or concerns, you can email us at any time at the senior pet podcast at gmail dot com, and we look forward to speaking with you all again soon.
Thank you for listening to the senior pet podcast. Be sure to subscribe to catch our next episode and follow us at the senior pet podcast on your social media of choice. The information in this podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional veterinary advice, diagnosis or treatment.
Please consult your veterinarian with many concerns about your individual pet.