Formulating Pet Food For Racing Dogs | SOP Ep. 122 – Dr. Tim Hunt

Dogs that participate in sled racing are built differently. Therefore, they also need a different kind of dog food if they are to perform at their best. Janet King and Dr Alice Jeromin are joined by Dr Tim Hunt, who has launched his own pet food company to bridge the nutrition gap being faced by dogs competing in the annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. He explains why fat is the most critical energy source for sled dogs and why stool quality is the most reliable metric for determining if a dog is properly fueled. Dr. Hunt also stresses the powerful bond between humans and sled dogs, as well as why lead dogs are born and not trained.

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Formulating Pet Food For Racing Dogs With Dr. Tim Hunt

Starting His Own Pet Food Company 

Everyone, welcome to the show. Janet, we have not only a fabulous guest, but someone so interesting, and I know we’re going to learn a lot about two things, probably more than two. One, how in the world could you start your own pet food company? That’s number one. Not that that’s not enough, but what is the Iditarod? What is that about? I looked that up, and I’m already confused. We have Dr. Tim Hunt. Even though he’s a Michiganner and we’re Buckeyes, we still love you, Dr. Hunt.

Just this once.

Dr. Tim is the creator of Dr. Tim’s Pet Food Company. I’m just fascinated by how you can make your own pet food and how you got started and what inspired you. Welcome, Dr. Tim. It’s such a pleasure to meet you and have you on the show.

Thanks, Alice. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. It’s good to have a sunny day.

Welcome to the show. I’m Dr. Alice Novotny Jeromin, a board-certified veterinary allergist and dermatologist.

That is correct. People that are trying to figure out a way to get everything to fit in 24 hours a day and be able to get it mixed up right. The food business was not anything I envisioned getting into, as I did not enjoy nutrition coming out of vet school. Nobody does. Vets in the rural areas are terrible about nutrition. They’re not taught anything about it. I was no different. In school, you have to memorize all the vitamins, past tests, and stuff. You do not really understand the whole concept. It took me getting into racing sled dogs to start to find an interest and passion for nutrition and how we can better serve dogs by feeding them what I think is proper.

Can you give us a timeline? You became a vet then started racing dogs. How did all that come together?

I graduated in ‘89, and I started my own. You too?

Yes, but I’m older than you. I had another career for ten years.

That’s true. I was a person.

You admit to it.

I do. No, I’ve always been in school throughout. I never had an off time like with another career. Once I got into vet school in ‘85, I finished in ‘89. When I got out, I found over time I really did not enjoy working for other people. I decided to open my own practice up here in the Upper Peninsula. I called up a classmate of mine who was from up here and suggested the idea. She went for it. We both had about ten grand and opened a storefront. When we opened a storefront up here, we had no clients except my sister and her brother and their friends. We had to drum up as many people as we could.

I did tons of school programs and all sorts of things. Needless to say, in the area were some sled dog kennels of 80 or 90 dogs. I thought, “What better clients to have than people with a lot of dogs like that?” Instead of 80 clients, I could do one client with 80 dogs. Little did I know mushers, as a rule, are the people who have sled dogs that are broke. I ended up bartering a lot. Working for them and then taking care of things. I would trade it for winter camping trips or dogs or whatever might be rides. I found that I really enjoyed working with these sled dogs.

After the first year of doing that, I ended up with four dogs and then eight. Soon I was racing around 95. Again, short races. It slowly branched into more and more over time. As I got into sled dog racing, I thought being young and fit and everything, I would kick all these old guys’ asses. It did not work that way. I smoked. Despite being able to run up a hill or a mountain or something, these guys would just trounce you because of the genetics they had in their bloodlines, the nutrition they had that they supplied to the dogs, and the training that they had. Of those three parts, I started looking at, “What can I do differently?”

Genetics, you have to buy dogs. I was broke. Training means more time, which I could put in because it did not cost me anything but time. I started to look at why these guys were feeding what they’re feeding, and they weren’t necessarily nutritionists. They were people that fed a lot of raw meat with kibble and other things to get this high-end performance out of a dog. Honestly, dogs to me are the second-best athlete short of a dolphin. They really can do amazing things. As I started to break apart what others were feeding, I mean, these are folks. Again, do not take me the wrong with high school education is feeding dogs ways that have been doing it forever. With dogs that just looked amazing.

As I went along the Mary trail, I thought, “I’ll add this, I’ll add that, I’ll add this to the mix.” Pretty soon I had a base kibble with twelve ingredients going into it. Plus raw meat. I would go through a thousand pounds of raw meat a month. Plus everything else, because we had a total of about 40 dogs at that point. One day my wife walked in, and she said, “What are you doing with all this stuff? Why do not you just put it all together and make kibble?” I never really thought of it that way, and I thought, “Why not?” I started looking into it. Hired a nutritionist to work with me.

We came out with our first Formula. The next trick was to actually have it made successfully. What I mean by that is you can have anything made, but to keep it consistently made and to fine-tune it took some time. That was an old four. We came out with a first recipe, which was the momentum. We moved on from there. That’s in a nutshell how I got into this. Over time, as we saw how the food performed, we took it down to different lifestyles. I’m not a big life stage guy. A lifestyle is what a dog does for a living. To me is what’s important.

I feed accordingly. A beagle might be doing one thing, hunting rabbits, and they put a lot of time in. The rest of the time they’re sitting on the couch versus a sled dog or whatever it might be. According to the lifestyle, I like to formulate a food based on that. We have a round peg going into a square hole. That does not work. I’d rather have a square peg going into a square hole. Does that make sense?

That is, what I love most about that is you are entertainment that you see results with. Because you’re seeing it, it’s one-on-one. It’s not some obscure big corporate pet food company that doesn’t really know how the dogs are doing. Do you see what I’m saying? It’s more personal, my impression.

It is. Early on, it was not a lucrative thing. It cost a lot of time, effort, and sweat equity of why we did that. Once we got the formulas clicking, we were able to have five teams win the Iditarod in ten years on the food, and they bought the food. Again, these are top-notch mushers, but they chose to feed the food. We went from there. To see the proof in the pudding was really wonderful. From there, we brought in different types of variables with the diets to further improve it and so on, which is always fun to tinker. I get bored easily.

I love that when you, it sounds like an old boy network and here’s this young guy coming out of vet school that really is the “highly educated” one. That’s a tough barrier to break. I bet you learned a lot.

I did. I learned more from going up to Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, on how to feed a dog as I did from vet school. I learned more from some small village in Alaska than I ever did in vet school. To me, how it’s done and then seeing the results right in front of you as you’re traveling and then finishing a race or whatever it might be really puts it directly in line with what you’re hoping to achieve, knowing that there’s not just one variable, not just nutrition, there’s other parts to it. What you put in should come out looking good at the back end of the dog.

The food is working properly for that dog in that lifestyle, it’s all about the poop. It’s got to be good. In the Iditarod go through 12,000, 13,000, 14,000 calories a day. That’s like nineteen Big Macs or something. A crazy amount of calories. You cannot supply that all in Kimball. It just does not work to get that volume to your dog. The base of the diet is the Kimball and then we can replicate that in the normal world with sporting dogs with the kibble only.

What’s the most common injury you see? Is it ACLs? I’m just talking from a veterinarian point of view in the Iditarod.

I rarely see ACLs. Actually, in all the years of being a vet, 37, I think I’ve seen four ACLs and a sled dog. They just do not tear their ACLs. Usually some crazy accident happens. They’re just built well. They’re made to do it over many years, they’ve been selected. These things do not happen. There are procedures these days where you can fix the knee and they can go back into racing. I’ve seen that happen too.

What breed are sled dogs?

I’m thinking of the Huskies. Am I wrong?

Sled dogs are a conglomerate of many breeds put together. Siberian Huskies. You get Greyhounds way in the distance. You have village dogs. Other speedy dogs that were put in. It really is a mix of many things, but the baselines typically come out of Northern Canada or Alaska. They have other things or Scandinavia, for that matter, too. Norway has a lot of good dogs. Generics wise, they’ve been chosen over many years to have the best-performing dogs that have the most endurance and the best eaters. It’s all about eating to finish and I did a rod race for the dogs and the person. Good feet and so on.

They know their job, right?

They know what they’re supposed to do and what they like to do. They enjoy running. Have you ever seen a start of a dog race or even leaving a checkpoint and that’s in between the start and the finish, the dogs usually get really revved up and off they go. That’s what they’ve been bred to do. You do not use force to make these dogs do what they do.

It’s serious business. Is it the same route every year?

It alters, out an even north or south route, from typically outside of Anchorage to know there’s a north route, that was this year. Next year will be the south route. In years where there is no snow outside of Anchorage, then they start in Fairbanks.

Where the human is on the sled, is there a weight limit?

No weight limit. There’s so much gear that gets sent out ahead of you. They position all your resupplies at roughly 25 different checkpoints. Where you stop and rest is up to you. There are only three mandatories, and the rest is chosen by the musher as to their strategy or what happens. The strategy for taking longer rest may denote that you place more supply there or if you have long camping trips in between checkpoints for that matter, more supply might be sent there.

The market comes through, picks up what they need, and then continues on or stops and stays at the checkpoint. It all depends on the person’s strategy. As to weight, many of the winners tend to be small people that do not weigh a lot. They’re not really big. There’s one guy. Rick Swenson, who was a big guy, is over six feet. He won five times. That’s the rarity. Usually they’re smaller, light people because obviously it’s the weight the dogs are pulling, all the gear, the sled, person. The part that slows down the whole rigmarole is the person.

There have been people that are super athletic when the race and others that weren’t but there tends to be more of a difference towards athletic people these days. As you get along the trail of the race over so many years, different things can make a big difference. Change in boot style. That’s the thing they put on their feet, like the material types of sleds, types of runners for the sleds, nutrition made a big change in the nineties, and so on. It’s always going to be cold. There’s no bad weather. There’s only bad gear.

Major Nutritional Changes Since The 90’s 

You mentioned nutrition changes in the ‘90s, like more fat, more protein. What was the big change there?

It’s the fat and the kibble basis. I made huge differences with the race early on and with actually catching up to what the needs of these dogs were. Specifically, I was working with different racers that were in the race, and they actually watched and learned from the dogs what was happening. They implemented it by trying to find a diet that would work well in these situations, knowing there’s so much meat being fed. That was the rarity. Many foods were out there, and people would use them. They would have a good name, but they would not perform well in that instance because the carbohydrate load was much too high. They could not process that.

As you ask about fat, these dogs run on fat. It’s amazing how they can turn their whole metabolism over to fat, almost 70% by the time they’re a third of the way into the race. When we’re pumping all this fat through the dog, that furnace is just running on those calories, and you need to be able to bring calories in that are usable. If you look at fat, protein, and carbohydrates, which are the three nutrients in food, fat is your most calorically dense and most utilizable. Also takes up the same space as one gram of protein, which has half as many calories. You need protein, but you do not want to fuel your house with protein. That’s like burning the shingles on the house.

You want to burn fuel oil in the house to keep it heated. You want to burn the wood that makes the fray. That’s the carbohydrates. As you try to look at how to comprise, I should say, a diet, then you start to look at how this animal is fueled, how you bring in the different lines of nutrients. Are there different nutrients in that subheading that work better? Let’s say, does beef fat work better than pork fat or chicken fat in certain situations? They do. With different types of situations we run into, temperature-wise, we might encourage one over the other. Again, the base kibble brings in all the nutrients to balance it out. It’s an intricate play. It really is to see what people do.

It amazes me to learn all that. The differences in beef fat versus pork fat. Would you say that dogs that do agility need performance diets similar to those two? Is mushing totally different because it’s more of a longevity thing than agility?

You look at your type of muscles. You have fast-twitch and slow-twitch. When you look at agility, you’re looking more fast-twitch, in that the type of diet you want to bring into the mix might not be as heavily laden as the sled dogs with the fat. You need it because you can really increase what’s called their VO two max. That’s their oxygen metabolic rate. Let’s just say, and you can actually improve on that with the level of fat in the diet.

You can improve your VO2 max in dogs by just feeding a higher-fat food to begin with, let alone exercise. When I finally figured that out and the light turned on after listening to someone much smarter than myself and actually implementing it, I was able to shave a month off my training curve with my dogs by staying on the same food year-round and already having them ready with their attributes due to the higher fat.

Are there veterinary nutritionists that specialize in mushing and performance?

There are a few out there that have worked, and I’ve worked with them. Non Arlie Reynolds is one we worked with Karina. These are probably the pinnacle of all the knowledge and sled dogs. Greg Reiner.

I know Greg.

Joe Wakshlag Cornell. There’s another one. There are some out there that definitely have worked with it and put a lot of effort into it. From that, they’ve led some very successful careers and opened the doors to a lot of knowledge on these dogs.

Janet, this is like a whole different area of veterinary medicine. Seriously.

Not the Olympics.

What?

The Olympics for dogs. Do you know what I mean? It’s like, “Wow.”

What I was thinking the other night, my guilty pleasure is watching the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders making the squad.

Raising Your Team’s Lead Dancer

She’s doing this. Thanks for sharing.

Having said that, if you get to be the lead dancer, is it a big competition with the dogs to be the lead dogs?

Lead dogs. Are they born or are they created? They’re born. They have a certain drive that others do not, and they’re just unstoppable with their heart. They have to be able to understand stuff and learn things. I tell you, you can have a lead dog that can teach another lead dog in training how to finish a race. You have a lead dog that can teach the one next to him how to smoke a cigarette.

Like humans.

Yeah, just like humans. Having a good lead dog was the first order of business when I started. That’s the best advice I ever got. Somebody gave me an older lead dog to start with, and that helped forge the frontiers from then on out for many years. Lead dogs are something. They’re special, and they really make themselves apparent. They do not want us to be looking at a lot of dog butts. I want to be up in the front.

I want to be like playing the Iditarod. You have sixteen dogs you start with. You may have half the team that are leaders, and you may rotate them. You may rely on some more heavily than others. Injuries happen, and you have to drop a dog out. If you have one key leader, that’s not going to get you to the finish line. You need some depth to me. It’s like baseball with major leagues and the minors.

Huge Lessons From The Bond Between Humans And Animals 

What has racing taught you about the human and dark bond?

Who taught me that?

No, what have you learned from racing about humans?

To me, when I really started to get into it, I used to fish and hunt a lot. What I found was that by getting into the woods with the dogs, I could do what I really liked to do, which was to be in nature, but not have to kill anything. I saw enough of that at work with animals and end of life and so on and so forth. The more I spent time in the woods with the dogs, the bond was pretty amazing. It’s hard to put into words the connection you get, but they can read your attitude when you walk into the dog yard with where your day is at. They’re just always happy to see you.

You can have the worst day in the world and go out there, and it always makes you feel good. The dogs love to howl, so they would howl at different times of the day. That would always make you feel good. The human-animal bond deal was special, and it’s hard to explain. These dogs did sleep outside. They did not sleep inside like a house dog. Again, I slept outside with them an awful lot too.

A week ago we had Dr. Cindy Otto on, who’s with the Penn vet working dog group. She’s training dogs for various things. She’s training dogs to sniff out her man, Joe Sarcoma, and other dogs. She also was in charge of the 9/11 rescue dogs. She said the same thing. She said, “When we’re training these dogs, as they raise them there, she said, genetically, when you get them in there, six-week-old puppies, you can see who wants to work and who does not want to work.” Her big thing, and I think you’re just saying it without realizing you’re saying it is to listen to them. She said, “When I listened to the dogs, that’s when I learned everything.” You being in the woods with them, that’s what that reminded me of.

It’s a pretty neat thing that’s really hard to explain unless you’re out there and you experience it yourself. Not everybody needs to run sled dogs by any means. There’s plenty of opportunity with your dog, one-on-one in a city or in the woods for that matter, to have that moment of connection that we all look forward to and hopefully cherish. With a lot of sled dogs, there are a lot of moments over the years.

Did the dogs ever keep you from making a bad decision?

Yes. If I chose to listen to them, like what you were saying, Alice, let’s say we’re on a trail and it’s snowing and you cannot tell the trail to take very well. They can see it much better than you can and smell amazing. There’ve been instances where the trail has been completely covered over, and they found their way through on a trail out versus me directing them, where it got us lost. They have a memory of trails. That’s really amazing. Obviously, dogs smell so much better than us. They can tell previous teams have come through. I definitely had dogs pull me out of a lot of dicey situations where I just let them be and do their thing.

That’s so cool.

We had guide dogs for the blind, and in the training, they think about it. The dog knows more than you, and you’re trying to tell them something, but they’re saying, “No, you cannot do this because I do not care how smart you are, Mr. Human. You cannot.” That’s got to be hard for them.

It is what I find, honestly, and what I was taught and saw in motion are women are much better dog trainers than guys. No kidding. Guys think dogs do things on purpose, and women think dogs do not do things properly because they just do not know. Again, men always see it that way. Honestly, when I’ve had this discussion over a few beers with mushers or whomever it might be, it really does pervade through. The people that are really good dog trainers in the gender of myself tend to be very low-key.

They’re not all wound tight. I’ve seen it tight on both sides of the coin. I’ve learned a lot more from ladies training dogs and guys, and I think it’s that way of looking at it as to how to take what the dog is giving you. Amplify it or promote it. If you have a killer whale that’s swimming around a big tank, like they used to have before they let him go, I think. Somehow you train them to jump through a hoop. It’s not that you can communicate with them, but you have to work on their level. What’s that level?

Killer whales like fish. They like to eat. With sled dogs, there are three things that motivate a sled dog, food, praise, touch, and sex. That’s actually four, but only the first three are what I can offer these dogs. When I try to use something to promote a certain type of behavior, it’s a matter of cause and effect, timing, and all that good stuff. It’s easy to say it’s hard to continue to replicate. Training is tough. I do not know how anyone is a parent and survives it, let alone the kids. To me, having a dog team is much like that, especially when you go through generations of dogs.

Do most people breed, most mushers breed their own, or do they buy stuff?

Many do. Some will buy absolutely. They’ll go out and buy key dogs to bring into their team from other established people. Dogs might cost $3,000, $5,000, $10,000 to bring in. They’re not inexpensive, and many of these high-end kennels will have more dogs than they need. They’re just selecting the ones they really want to keep, and then they sell the rest or place them.

How many do you have right now?

I haven’t raced personally since 2015. I have one husband, and I raced for twenty years. The last time I raced was in 2015 in the Iditarod, and since then I haven’t. I was able to race all over the world, from Europe to Alaska and Canada and the West and the Midwest. We had a great time, but there came a point where it’s truly a lifestyle, and it would take up. You would train at night and go back to work because I worked full time and then trained full time. There weren’t a lot of hours in the day to get it all done.

Looking back, I’m not sure how I pulled it off, but had I been able to devote myself to one or the other, I’m sure I would have been more successful than trying to split duty, but that’s just the way I click. It did bring forth a lot of ideas with nutrition. As a veterinarian making pet food, someone can send a picture of a dog from Arizona showing a before and after. It’s very rewarding to see that versus, I love fixing broken bones and all that stuff and getting that satisfaction right afterwards. To see this on animals you do not actually interact with on a wider stage is really great to see as a vet. Alice, what it’s like to be a vet and what we’re trying to do and why we got into this.

Recommended Diet For Dog Racing Coaches And Physical Training

I’ve always said, what Hippocrates said, “Let your medicine be thy food.” I’ve seen, and we get all the marketing about hypoallergenic diets and hydrolyzed, Dr. Tim. We get all that, but to me you’ve got to think logically too, and my example is I saw a lot of police dogs because I got to get them well so they do not stop and scratch in the middle of a pursuit or something. I had one that was really greasy, a German Shepherd.

Of course, buy the book, ‘Dr. Tim, what are you going to do?” “Put it on fatty acid.” I’m thinking, “Wait a minute, this dog’s already so greasy. I’m not going to add more oil to this dog.” I did a really high-fiber diet to soak up some of that. I’m going to tell you in a month that dog was a totally different dog. There’s so much logic that goes into seeing the performance, whether it’s Athletics like you’re talking about or skin like I’m talking about. The performance and to see what logically you thought for that dog makes a big difference.

It does. Digestion really all starts at the colon. It’s backwards in what we’re taught, to me. The colon’s got to be able to work. It’s magic. That’s making a good poop that you can hit with a golf club. It’s not splattering in your face. With the colon functioning right, then that means everything upstairs is probably functioning well too. What’s reaching the colon is digested, and it’s not undigested food, which then incurs more water absorption or pulling, osmotically. You get to soft stool stuff. To me, when I do talks, I try to explain it that way.

People gain much. They understand it much better that way. I feel, and it makes sense to me logically, to do it backwards. You’ve got to have good poop, means good digestion. What does that mean in times of different stresses, activity, or otherwise? Does it maintain? If it does not, then something’s not right. It’s one thing to have a golden retriever sitting on the couch. It’s another thing to have a golden retriever that’s actually hunting or jogging with the owner. That is a stress to the dog or to me. I should see it as a stress. What I mean by that is stress is something that might accelerate the transit time of the food through the digestive tract.

I hear you.

It’s a pretty neat thing that’s really hard to explain unless you’re out there and you experience it yourself. Not everybody needs to run sled dogs by any means. There’s plenty of opportunity with your dog, one-on-one in a city or in the woods for that matter, to have that moment of connection that we all look forward to and hopefully cherish. With a lot of sled dogs, there are a lot of moments over the years. I can see how it works in my head, vet school-wise.

In practicality, that’s the first place I would start, especially with the German shepherd and all their intrinsic nuances that they have that rarely lead to a good stool, especially in a working German shepherd line, which is fascinating that you pulled it off. What you talked about, Cindy Otto, one day I’d love to meet her. She does some great work. One thing with the dogs you described. There was a study that showed if you fed too high a fat meal consistently to these dogs that sniff for a living, bomb dogs, whatever, you can actually impede their ability to smell.

You diminish their returns on how often they can pick stuff up. When I looked at this years ago, trying to get the food in different places, I looked at bomb dogs, army dogs, and contacted people and everything. I ran across those studies. It’s like, “This food for the sled dogs is not going to work for these detection dogs because it’ll interfere with it.” It led me down a different path for some other things instead. It really is interesting to see how dogs are not little people and things like that can affect them. Again, in the sled dog field, we do not have to have detection dogs per se. In the bomb department, missing one out of ten is cataclysmic.

You’ve heard me say this before. Dr. Tim, I’m sure you would agree. I walk into an exam room, and there’s a boxer pacing around the room full of flatulence, not the humans but the dog. People think it’s really funny, and I will get the straight face and say, “How would you like to be passing gas all day?” Something is wrong with this dog. This dog is not absorbing what he’s eating.

Also, when I walk in the park, and I see people do not pick up poop and it’s like horrible poop, and I’m thinking, “That’s acceptable to you. There’s something wrong going on there. Whether it’s an inflammatory bowel, but let’s start with the food.” It’s a simple thing. We all know that there are foods we cannot eat, especially as we get older, and that’s the other thing I wanted to ask you about, Dr. Tim. Do you notice as these dogs get older, whether they’re sled dogs or dogs in your practice? Their diet has to be tweaked.

I think so.

What I see, you mentioned diarrhea or the blobby stools or whatever it is, in the United States, nobody measures food. They go by volume. I was just in Europe, and they’re talking to people, and I’ve been there before and stuff. People usually use weight over their grams. They weigh things, and then they go from there to feed their dogs. You do not see many overweight dogs in Europe. You just do not. There are two reasons for that. One, they do not stay neutered as much as we do here because they control their dogs from breeding and the like. I won’t get into that.

Two, they actually control the amount of food going into them. When we look at the US and the dogs, do the dogs look like they’re owners? Some do, some do not. I will not say there’s anything bad about people loving to eat, but with dogs, the number one problem I see is obesity. Dogs are very overweight in the US because of overfeeding. We love our dog. To the high rate of spay/neuters, which I’m not against, but when you spay or neuter a dog, you need to understand their metabolism is dropping by at least twenty percent.

They can still finish that dirt out in a winning team or whatever. That does not affect their performance at all. They still perform great. You can actually feed them less. Getting back to the States versus Europe and seeing what you see out in the field the icky stuff in the parts, it’s because either one, they’re feeding too much. When people call me or talk to me about their food, saying, “My dog is on this food. I think it’s crap.” I ask them why, because the crap looks terrible.

I say, “Understand where we’re at right now. Most of the time it’s an overfeeding issue. If you’re willing to do this experiment, let’s try it.” “What’s that doc?” “Reduce the amount you’re feeding by half for three days and see if the stools get better. If they do not, we have an intolerance, like what you’re speaking about. If it does get better, then you’re just plain and simple overfeeding in food.” It’s a real simple thing. It also gives people the empowerment to figure things out on their own, which they can do.

Again, I find that vets as a rule aren’t the best with nutrition because of the way we’re taught and the hills and everything else. Trying to get to some basics. There are more and more vets. I’m looking to try to understand nutrition better. It’s a big road to hope. Getting back to it, so much common sense comes into play. Rocket scientists are nice, and I know a couple, but I tell you what, they’re not making dog food.

I hear neither actresses nor actors.

They’re wine and tequila. The actors and actresses.

Humans drink that. I do not care about that. Dogs cannot control what humans give to them.

You are right.

That’s the top thing that bothers me. A lot of what happens to dogs badly is due to humans. It’s a horrible thing to say, but it is. I help out in rescue, senior rescue. These little dogs. We get them, we rehab them. They’re like new dogs because of the owner they had. The little Yorkie with the peeing blood for years has a bladder stone the size of green grapes. That could have totally been prevented. “I was giving her a cranberry.”

Do not even get me started on that. My point is you’re right, Dr. Tim. We did not get much about nutrition. I’ll tell you, we graduated the same year. Sadly, the gals and guys that were going into nutrition, of which there weren’t many, all I remember were carrying buckets from large animals through the halls. I do not even know where they were carrying them, but the focus was on large animals. It wasn’t all on small animals.

No, it was all large animal stuff. It was all dairy, feeding dairy cows and maybe horses. That was it.

Human doctors are the same way. Unless there are nutritionists and dietitians, but a human GP, they probably take one course in nutrition. They’re the same.

I like to give the difference in the human side of an MD versus a DO. My stepson’s an MD. He’s brilliant. He’s great. Get into nutrition. They’re just not exposed to that as much as DOs that look more wide expansive why things happen versus a very narrow realm of disease causes and effects versus what’s around you that can cause things to happen? The air you breathe, the food you eat, everything like that.

When I bring up the idea versus MD, and the people are familiar with it, they get it because I find in the vet world very MD thinking, very cut and dried as to how to do this thing happens through this, and maybe this, but not too much further outside of that. You do not really look long-term unless you have a diabetic animal. Prevention isn’t happening. It’s always a disease or a condition, and then you solve it. Prevention isn’t measurable. One thing I’ll say with the idea that dogs cannot do it themselves on each bag of food is a quote I’ve got on there that says, “Choose wisely for your dog’s sake as they do not have thumbs and cannot open the cupboard to make it themselves.”

Open the fridge.

What did dogs do 80 years ago? They lived on the farm. It wasn’t a farmer’s dog. They ate a lot of scraps, but they also did not live a long time. I’ve seen generations of people go through now with dogs and stuff through my practice. They’ll talk about foods and how foods have changed and everything. Honestly, the biggest reason why dogs live longer is food. Nutrition’s been right in the vaccines. All those things.

I totally agree. Sadly, you get people, clients, that fight you on it.

I learned to pick my battles and let them talk it through. It is interesting to always look at all the different ways of considering the relevancy of an argument. I guess you can say, and sometimes I’ll hear things in my exam room that really get me thinking, and I’ll start looking it up, and they’re spot on. A lot of times it’s a conspiracy.

As you said, first of all, you’ve got to be a good listener, and when sadly you can ask the same question five different ways and still not get an answer like, “How long has your dog been itching?” “We bought the house in 85, and it just goes on and on and on. I got divorced.” “How long has the dog been itching?” That kind of thing. I’m a good listener, and I did learn a lot from my patients, but there are certain things you cannot change. There are myths and misconceptions, and sadly the dog suffers. The pet, whether it’s a dog or cat or what have you, suffers because of it. That, to me, was the most frustrating.

I agree with you there. Once you can gain the confidence of the people, then you can advocate for different things I find more effectively, which makes me feel I never want to start another veterinary practice at all. I have an established clientele, and from that, it percolates out. What I’m getting by is that it’s not that I have a bunch of people that will believe anything you say, but they give you the time of day to try, versus it’s obvious you do not have a clue about what you’re talking about.

I was lucky enough to have a terrific dermatology professor in college that taught me stuff that sticks with me to this day because the method by which it was taught was relatable. I always go back to that when I’m talking about different things to people. How can I make it analogous to something else and not use these big words that have my rule? My rule is no more than three syllables in a word when I’m talking to a client. Sometimes that can be hard. Demodex is about as far as I can get in genitology.

My job on the show is to keep you guys from using those multi-syllable words.

Why Racing Dogs Need The Right Kind Of Supplements 

Dr. Tim and I have a lot in common. First, we both graduated the same year. Second, we both have our offices in century Homes. His is adorable. Mine was in 1843. I think yours is 1857. I just forgot the third one. Is it Ed Rosser, the veterinary dermatologist you referred to?

Yes.

See, back in ‘89, there were maybe five veterinary dermatologists. We did not have a board-certified one at OSU. You did. Ed was board-certified because my mentor was in Cincinnati, Dr. Pat Breen. We did not have very many veterinary dermatologists back in our day, Janet. We did not.

Very few. Craig Griffin, and what others out there, Danny Scott, still practicing. It was always fun when they all got together, and you’d sit back and listen. I was 22 or something, and I was lucky enough to hang out with them at times. It was fun to hear their perspective on what they’re doing. I never thought about how hard it is to teach. It’s not easy.

No, it isn’t. Some people can explain things well, and I’m a little OCD, and I just want to make sure I tell everything so I do not forget that I left something out, and then I skip over stuff. Instead of going from step 1, 2, 3, go from step one to step six. That’s not what a good teacher does.

No, that’s not what a good diagnostician does either. That’s 4 or 5 syllables there.

I love derm because it’s very visual and it’s very olfactory.

Dr. Tim, she was also a picker and a digger.

Growing up.

You’ve got a pimple. I’m on it. Did you know about Bob Dunstan, pathology?

Yes.

Bob, when I was a resident, we all studied together. He had us up there for a weekend, which I have to tell you, the mosquitoes there are man-eating. To do a review for the pathology part of our Derm boards. I love Bob Dunstan. He’s in Florida now, by the way.

He was very good. He would be one I would follow with pathology, histopathology. There’s a big difference with getting histopaths done by someone who was in a dermatology field versus not with that. At least I’ll say there’s a good one at state now who’s very good and puts it out there. It really is fun when you find those people to really get an accurate diagnosis versus finding someone who’s vanilla.

Works for a big corporate lab.

I do not like big corporate labs. I never can get an answer. You get this vague stuff. They’re always CYA; I like someone who hangs it up.

Janet, I have a feeling he and I are the two rebels because this is why, to be honest with you, how can I say, I was a pharmacist before I did this. That’s why I’m ten years old. I had another career for ten years. That’s ten years older than you, and so I did not do everything. I wasn’t 22. I was 31. When someone would say, “You’ve got to do this.” I’d say, “Why are we doing this?” That did not go over well. My point in telling you that is okay.

As you said in the textbook, everything’s textbook. Back when Atopica was the big drug for allergies. I’ve had golden retrievers controlled on 25 milligrams a day. Because, to me, I do not know, I do not think I need to do 5mg/kg every day and have them on 120 milligrams a day. They get all this gingival hyperplasia and all these infections and stuff. You’ve got to think out of the box.

Big words, gum overgrowth.

We’ve got to wrap it up, Alice. I was so excited to have you on the show.

She’s such a Debbie Downer.

I got to tell you something else.

I got to keep you all in wraps here. Go ahead.

We also make supplements. This is not a commercial, but Dr. Tim sent me this. It’s a CBD with PEA. This is a multi-syllable word. It’s an anti-inflammatory, and it’s been proven to help with allergies. Even though I have Annie on immunotherapy for what she’s allergic to, when she started to flare, and Dr. Tim had sent me some, I started her on the drops, and I’m going to tell you, it calms that itching down. I’m probably going to start Gidget. Gidget’s my China rescue golden, because they eat them there. The Yunin Meat Festival is going on right now. I think that I got her out. I wish I could have gotten them all out.

Gidget is more of a little nervous dog.

She’s a little more itchy right now, and the grass pollen is high because we’ve done it with trees. I’m going to actually start her on it right now too, because you sent me to. Thank you so much.

I do not know if you guys noticed, we had some action back here on this chair. The cat was there and my golden, Libby. They’re very friendly. The cat was so loud. I do not know if you could hear, like, “Let me out.”

I can hear that. I saw you exit stage right.

No one else is here to let her out.

I got to stop her.

We have to ask Dr. Hunt. What pets do you have now? You sound like you travel. I have like one, you said.

No, I do not travel as much as I’d like to. I’m starting to try to force it to happen more. I only have three dogs and a cat right now. This is the fewest animals I’ve had in so many years. Probably since vet school, to tell you the truth. Actually, it is. It’s the fewest I’ve had since I was in school. As it was a couple of years ago. I have no three-legged animals right now, which is very sad. Every good vet needs at least one. I’m going to cut a leg off this. One-eyed dog. No tail, something, some island of misfit toy pets you have to have.

That’s right.

As you speak about supplements, when I look at stuff, there’s a lot of brands out there. There’s a lot of the same stuff. When I started looking at CBD, I had no idea what it was about. I started digging into it, and then I realized it actually had some credence. I sought out the best vet formulator there was, and there was the guy that started a can of companion and that other big one I cannot think of right now. Anyway, I had him formulate for me and put some stuff together, and he said, “What do you want to do?”

I said, “What’s needed out there?” He goes, “There’s nothing for seizures.” We came up with something called CNS Serine, which is really nice as an edge-out for difficult seizure dogs. Plus it works really great for fireworks and thunderstorms. The next thing was, let’s move on to the next step. Do not need something everybody has. What else is missing out there? I said, “What about skin?” He said, “There are studies about the PA.” I looked into it. There it was. It was like, “Let’s bring that one into the mix.” Those are the first few we’ve got.

We’ve got some other broad-spectrum stuff, but there is some credence to CVD and how it works, which is not because of the THC. There’s none in there. It’s a whole different mechanism that neither one of us was exposed to when we were in school. They did not know it, hot, which we’re smoking to get high. It was not medicinal per se, even though people talked about it when you had cancer for vomiting and everything else. There was a lot there. If you go back to older medicine that actually has some Barry. Quite a bit. If you ask me, getting into that, the CBD has its place, but then you get into administration.

If you do not have compliance, you cannot really use it. You have to figure out what’s the best way to get it into a cat or a dog. Is it the tincture? Is it chewable? We’re coming out with chewables because people like to use that. You just have to use more of it because of the bioavailability. The other thing. There are two more things. I know we have to wrap this up. There are three things I saw out there in the marketplace in the world of animals that I thought were problems. Skin allergies, obesity, and dental health. Obesity is like, none of these RD diets ever work. They just do not. The dogs stay fat regardless of how much or how little you feed RD. Why does that happen?

I looked at it, and it was like because people give in to the begging. They are all because of a dog’s bed, and I always term it like this. If you eat Chinese food, you’re usually hungry in about two hours. You eat Italian, you’re not hungry for like twelve. Why is that? It’s the fat content. A lot of these diets are just so restricted in fat that dogs aren’t sated because of fullness. They try to get away with a lot of cellulose to bulk them up. It just does not work in the dog world. You have to go to a moderate fat, high protein, certain types of protein, so on and so forth.

That’s where we came out with the metabolite diet, which far exceeded my expectations as to working to get weight off a dog. It worked right out of the gate. The third thing was dental health. What I see is just terrible. Dental disease across the board, dogs and some cats, especially cats with that horrible stomatitis. When I started to look at what to use, there are a few products on the market that actually do work based on the idea of working against the bacteria in the mouth, causing them not to be able to grow properly and so on.

That leads to smell and tartar buildup and all that stuff. I looked at that ingredient, and then there was a milk protein derivative that has some really good claims for dental use. Lastly is that plankton from the North Atlantic. We put that together as what’s called dental dust. It’s something you sprinkle on the food, and it works.

I need that. The China rescue, she came to me at a year of age with already that upper fourth premolars are horrible. I’ve actually cracked some of the plaque off, but it’s still pretty bad. I’ll get it to you. I would love that, and I’ll report back to you.

No, I’d gladly send it to you. The last ingredient in there is porcelain plasma, which is an immune stimulant, which will work locally. It does work at the level of the gums. I never thought of it like that. To me, immune drugs are meant to be put into the stomach, and then systemically, it affects things versus a local thing.

I realized, what if local IGA? You’re right.

Tacrolimus works on fistulas, anal gland fistulas, right? Yeah. Why cannot we do the same on the front with something else? I’m sitting there at night thinking about stuff as to whether or not it’s relevant. Is it all window dressing or does it actually work? The dental dust has been working really well. Long story short, it’s always fun to innovate and come up with things, working with my nutritionist that I think was on your show a few times back. She’s really good with keeping me in check. That was Marcy Campion.

We love Marcy. She is a friend of my friend, Karen Labarre, who worked with Iams for 40 years, then went to Blue Buffalo. Retired now. I’m happy I called her.

What’s fun about being a lone wolf, just like you, Alice, is you can turn the ship quickly. It’s not like an aircraft carrier, like some of the bigger companies, which honestly own 25% of the marketplaces shared by three or four companies. The rest of these little guys like me. To be able to move it quickly is good and bad. You have to be careful, but it does allow for innovation. Innovation comes from the small companies, not the big companies anymore. The big companies swallow up the small innovators is what I see. That’s not our intent. That’s what this stuff is, just fun.

My other thing, and I know Janet, we’ve got to wrap it up, but my other thing with that is I do not like to be brainwashed. I refuse to be brainwashed. You can give me the data and let me think about it and let me read up on it on my own. That’s why I have always been like the rebel of the derm world, proudly so, because I like to think on my own. I like to think about what’s best for the pet and also for the pet’s owner’s pocketbooks. If that treatment isn’t financially doable, that dog’s not going to get treated.

That’s right.

It’s nice to write it down and have your butt covered. They’re not going to get treated. I’m with you.

Dr. Tim’s Pet And Human Peeves 

I have to ask you our guest question.

Here we go.

What is your pet or human peeve?

My pet or what?

Human peeve.

What gets to what gets under your skin? It pisses about a dog?

Do they mean in the pet world or in life?

In life.

I have been able to calm down a lot the last few years, so things do not rile me up. When people pull in front of me, “I do not want to slam them anymore or chase them around the block.” The pet peeves are one when people say they need to worm their dog. We need to deworm the dog. I eat and select all of them, but I stop. Worming means we give them worms. Deworming means we get rid of them. There’s one example of a pet peeve.

That’s a good one. I never thought of it that way. This has been so fascinating. Thank you so much for being a part of our world.

I’ll meet you someday. We have to go for a cocktail because I’m telling you, just the two stories that we could tell and all the people we know in common. Seriously.

It’s a small world. It’s amazing how small it truly is once you get out there and who you come across and the lines they take. Ohio State had a terrific cardiologist when you were there. I cannot think of his name.

Wait. I just thought of him the other day.

Wasn’t Kittlespin, was it?

No, it was. It’s going to drive me nuts. He’d always look at me. I live in Hinckley, Ohio. He’d go, “Hinckley.” He was from the Northern Ohio area. I’ll think of it at 2:00 AM.

I heard him give a lecture once, talk about the heart, about things I’ve never even heard of and how it works and stuff. It was like this whole hidden world of things out there that we’re just touching a little bit of it as general practitioners.

Do you remember the people that interviewed you for that school? Those are three of my favorite people. They’re no longer with us, but they were older gentlemen. Janet and I, our parents were old when we had us. That’s why we talk so loud. All our parents really could not hear. That’s why I get along with elderly people, because our whole life we were around old people. I still remember those three who interviewed me, and I just cherish them. Do you remember the names of who interviewed you?

One was named Duke Tanaka. He was an anatomy professor who was the nicest guy in the world, but they did bad cop, good cop back then. He was the bad cop. The other one was George Eister, who was a cardiologist who was a dick. Just a complete asshole. I heard about him from the vet I worked for. He graduated in 76, I think. Anyway, I walked into the interview, and there’s Eister and this other guy, no clue.

I thought, “Oh my God.” They started to talk, and Eister was nice, but he’s notorious for just crucifying you. Anything he can because he’s a cardiologist. That’s what they do. He had me drawing how to spay a dog on a piece of paper and asking me who my person was, who was my biggest mentor, people I admired and stuff. This other guy, who cannot be mean if he tried to be, was trying to be tough.

The bad cop.

He was the bad cop. The next time, the next person, it would flip. I found that out in vet school because the guy after me I was talking to and he related the same story and said the next time he was after me that Icer was the bad cop. I’m so lucky that, to this day, I got in the correct order.

I love Bob Hamlin.

That’s it.

Thank you so much.

You’re welcome. Thanks for putting up with my long story.

I enjoyed every minute of it.

Fascinating stories. We can hardly wait to have you on the show. Thank you so much.

You’re welcome.

Until next time, thanks for tuning in. Do not forget to like, share, and love us. We love that. Alice, what do you want to say?

I’ve just had a wonderful time. I’m sorry that it has to end, but I guess it does. Thanks, everyone, for tuning in. Kiss your pets for us and give a listen, not only to the audio version, but check out our webpage, Soppodcast.com, where we have the show notes and a lot more info about Dr. Hunt and the Iditarod and all of the fabulous stuff that he makes. Of course, the one that I’ve got right now is for Annie, but the stuff he’s going to send me is for Gidget.

Thanks so much for listening. Bye.

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