My Dog Is Better Than Your Dog

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1. What No One Tells You About Using Essential Oils Safely on Pets w/ Dr. Janet Roark

   1 november 2026 · 31 min

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   Dr. Janet Roark is back for part two, and this is the episode pet parents have been waiting for. The practical one. The one where you actually learn what to do. Lees meer

   Dr. Janet has been practicing veterinary medicine for nearly two decades with essential oils as a cornerstone of her work. In this episode, she gets specific. Which oils to avoid and why, how to dilute properly, how to let your pet tell you which oils they actually want, and how to find oils you can actually trust.

   She also talks about something that stuck with me: the study people always bring up where a cat died from essential oils. Turns out the dose was wildly excessive, and in some cases, the oil was not even toxic to cats, just to cat fleas. That detail never made it into the warning.

   This conversation is a starting point, not a complete guide. But if you have ever stood in a pet store feeling overwhelmed by essential oils, or wondered if they are even safe to try, this episode gives you a real foundation.

   KEY INSIGHTS:
   ✨ Tea tree, wintergreen, and birch are the three oils Dr. Janet does not use on dogs or cats. Many pet shampoos still contain tea tree, which concerns her deeply. Safer alternatives like cedarwood and lavender do similar things without the risk.
   ✨ The studies people cite about essential oils harming cats often involve extreme doses or were misread. One widely shared warning about orange oil being toxic to cats was based on a study about cat fleas, not cats.
   ✨ Dilution is the single most important safety step. Two to three drops of essential oil per 100 drops of carrier oil is a good starting point. With cats and small dogs, consider starting at one drop per 100.
   ✨ When you apply oil to a pet's skin, they will lick it, which means they are ingesting it. Factor that in always and dilute accordingly.
   ✨ Self-selection is how you let your pet vote. Let them smell the capped bottle first. If they lean in, lick it, or rub their face on it, that is a yes. If they back away or gag, that is …

2. From Skeptic to Believer: The Science of Essential Oils for Pets w/ Dr. Janet Roark

   18 oktober 2026 · 44 min

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   Everything You've Been Told About Essential Oils and Pets Is Wrong. Lees meer

   If you've ever Googled essential oils and pets, you've been told to stay away. Don't diffuse. Don't apply. And especially not around cats. Dr. Lily was skeptical too, until she took Dr. Janet's course and understood the science.

   Dr. Janet Roark is known worldwide as the Essential Oil Vet. She is the author of The Essential Oils for Pets guidebook, creator of the Animal Aromatherapy Specialist Certification Program, and has built a global community of pet owners and veterinarians learning to use essential oils safely and effectively. Her own practice has moved from fully conventional to fully integrative to now fully holistic — acupuncture, chiropractic, and essential oils.

   Her story started with migraines so severe she thought she had a brain tumor. As a veterinarian, she was on multiple medications with side effects that were destroying her gut. A friend handed her an essential oil blend at dinner one night. Her headache disappeared in 15 minutes and stayed gone. That was the moment everything changed.

   In this episode, Dr. Janet explains why the answer to "are essential oils safe for pets?" is both yes and no, and why quality and purity are the distinction most people miss. She walks through the science of how essential oils actually work in the body, and she shares the story of Louie the Horse — three years of recurring sinusitis, round after round of antibiotics, resolved after one essential oil session.

   KEY INSIGHTS:

   ✨ The essential oil industry is largely unregulated and dominated by a perfume industry that adds synthetics to make oils smell consistent. This is not what we are talking about when we talk about therapeutic essential oils.

   ✨ Perfume grade oils and therapeutic grade oils are not the same. Brand and purity matter the same way they do with food, herbs, and medicine.

   ✨ Essential oils are lipid soluble, which means they absorb through the skin directly into the bloodstream. Th…

3. The Part of Pet Parenthood Nobody Prepares You For w/ Dr. Jenn Roedig

   4 oktober 2026 · 1 uur

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   There is a moment almost every pet parent will face and almost nobody is prepared for it. You are sitting with your dog and it hits you. We are getting closer to the end. And then comes the flood. The emotions. The questions you did not know how to ask. The guilt you did not see coming. The decisions that feel impossible because you are making them for someone who cannot tell you what they want. Lees meer

   Dr. Jenn Roedig is a licensed veterinarian and the founder of Sage Paws, a virtual practice built entirely around supporting pet parents through their animal's aging, illness, and end of life. She has guided over 500 families through this space. And two months before we recorded this conversation, she lost her own dog Luke unexpectedly the night before Easter to a ruptured splenic mass.

   She shares that story in this episode. It is raw and it is real.

   We talk about guilt, probably the most common emotion pet parents carry, and what is actually underneath it. We talk about anticipatory grief, the kind that starts weeks or months before the loss when nobody around you understands why you are already mourning. And we talk about how to know when it is time, and why you will know is not always a good enough answer.

   Dr. Lily also shares something personal in this one. She lost her heart dog in 2020 and still carries pieces of that ending with her.

   KEY INSIGHTS:

   ✨ Guilt is probably the most common emotion pet parents experience around end of life and it is almost never talked about openly because pet loss is grief that society does not fully recognize. Guilt loves isolation. It feeds on silence.
   ✨ Naming it is the first step to moving through it. Dr. Jenn calls it naming it to tame it. Once you can see what is underneath the guilt, you start to take your power back.
   ✨ Saying you will know when it is time is not always helpful. It depends on the disease, the pet, the family's values, and what too soon or too late means to each person.
   ✨ Look at good hours, not just good days. …

4. Your Dog's Tongue Is Trying to Tell You Something w/ Carol Bramson

   20 september 2026 · 1 uur 14 min

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   Your Dog's Tongue Is Trying to Tell You Something w/ Carol Bramson Lees meer

   The next time your dog is lying next to you totally relaxed, look at their tongue. Is it pale pink or a deep angry red? Dry or moist? Purple around the edges? To most of us that is just a tongue. But in a tradition practiced for thousands of years it is your dog communicating with you about what is happening inside their body.

   Carol Bramson is the founder of Side by Side Pet, a whole food pet nutrition company built on Eastern food therapy. She grew up in a household where food was health, spent years visiting over 3,000 food ingredient suppliers across the US and Europe, and then got her first dog, Wrigley, was handed a bag of kibble, and thought this does not look like food.

   Wrigley is 11 now and everyone who meets him thinks he is about two.

   We get into the energetics of food, warming cooling and neutral, why gut health has to come first before food can even do its job, why seizures and hot spots so often trace back to what is in the bowl, and why the answer to changing pet health is collaboration not competition.

   KEY INSIGHTS:
   ✨ Food has energetic properties understood for thousands of years in Eastern medicine. Warming foods support a body running cold. Cooling foods calm a body running hot. Matching the food to the dog can change everything.
   ✨ The tongue tells you what is happening inside. Side by Side built an AI balance indicator that analyzes a photo of your dog's tongue and recommends which food type their body needs right now.
   ✨ Gut health has to come first. A dog on kibble for years may not have the microorganisms needed to absorb nutrients from whole food. Rebuilding the microbiome before or alongside the transition matters.
   ✨ Dr. Lily tested kibble-fed dogs and found high levels of glyphosate and mycotoxins. A major pet food company told her the levels were within acceptable range for humans. Pets are not small people.
   ✨ Seizures in dogs correlate strongly with toxic load. Dr. Lil…

5. The Vet Episode Nobody Taught You in Vet School w/ Dr. Judy Jasek

   6 september 2026 · 43 min

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   This one is for every veterinarian who has ever felt like an island. Lees meer

   But it is also for every pet parent who has ever wondered what it actually takes for a vet to practice medicine on their own terms, and why so many of the best ones end up building something from scratch.

   Dr. Judy Jasek never wanted to own a business. She became an entrepreneur because it was the only way she could practice the medicine she believed in. She bought a conventional practice, stopped doing as many vaccines because she believed they were harming her patients, and watched her revenue plummet. Then she built a full integrative hospital, burned out under the weight of it, sold it, sat through a three year non-compete, and rebuilt from the front room of her house. No debt. No bank loan. Just a mat on the floor and a willingness to see what happened.

   It thrived.

   Dr. Lily started the same way. House calls, then 500 square feet, a mat and a desk, no X-ray machine, no surgery suite. The only piece of equipment she needs to plug in today is her ozone machine.

   This conversation also goes into the loss of empathy in the veterinary profession since COVID, what drove it, and why both Dr. Judy and Dr. Lily believe that healing is an art that is at risk of being lost.

   KEY INSIGHTS:

   ✨ Most holistic vets become entrepreneurs by necessity, not choice. The only way to practice authentically is often to build something yourself.

   ✨ You do not need a big loan, a big space, or all the equipment. Dr. Judy rebuilt from her front room. Dr. Lily started with house calls and 500 square feet. Both practices thrived.

   ✨ Avoiding debt is one of the most important decisions you can make when starting a practice. When you own debt, you feel trapped. When you own nothing, you are free to practice the way you want.

   ✨ Find the modality that is uniquely yours and go all in on that. You do not have to do everything. Every other clinic is already doing everything. Your niche eliminates your competition.

   ✨ The curb…

6. Your Pet Is Living in the Moment. Are You? w/ Dr. Judy Jasek

   23 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 6 min

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   Your Pet Is Not Worried About Dying. You Are. Lees meer

   What if the tumor is not the disease? What if it is the body's way of telling us something went wrong a long time ago, and the real work is figuring out what that was?

   Dr. Judy Jasek graduated from Colorado State University in 1988 and spent years in conventional practice before something shifted. Her own horse developed a behavioral problem that no conventional approach could touch. An energetic chiropractor turned the animal around completely, and once Dr. Judy started looking at medicine differently, she could not stop.

   Nearly 40 years later, she runs Animal Healing Arts, a telemedicine practice rooted in what she calls the Terrain Paradigm: the idea that health is the body's natural state, and our job is to figure out what knocked the body off balance and help it return.

   We talk about mistletoe therapy, ozone, Chinese herbal medicine, why she almost never recommends surgery as a first step, and why your pet is not worried about dying from cancer. They just want to live a happy life. And the energy you bring into the room, fear or gratitude, directly affects their healing.

   KEY INSIGHTS:

   ✨ The tumor is the tip of the iceberg. It is a warning sign that the body's toxic load has exceeded what it can handle. Removing the tumor without addressing what caused it is incomplete.

   ✨ Cancer rates are rising in young dogs. Lymphoma in two-year-olds, aggressive tumors in four-year-olds. This was not something seen 20 or 30 years ago and it is a wake-up call.

   ✨ Dr. Judy's first question for every cancer patient is not about the diagnosis. It is how is the pet doing. A pet that is still eating, vigorous, and enjoying life has a lot to work with.

   ✨ Mistletoe therapy has been used in human oncology in Europe for over 100 years. In Germany, roughly 70% of human cancer patients receive it. It is immunomodulating, has direct anti-cancer effects, and can be administered at home.

   ✨ Fever after mistletoe treatment can be a sign t…

7. The Bonus Conversation: Genetics, Gut Health and Getting It Right w/ Heather Gibson

   9 augustus 2026 · 37 min

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   This one started as a continuation after the main episode wrapped up. Lees meer

   Heather Gibson and Dr. Lily just kept talking, and what came next was more honest and more direct than anything in the main episode. They got into the coefficient of inbreeding, a term becoming a bigger deal in the breeding world that Dr. Lily had never heard before, and why Heather made the controversial decision to move from purebred to mixed breeding for the sake of dog health.

   Then Heather asked Dr. Lily about microbiome testing, fecal transplants, and why vets are still using metronidazole as a first line dewormer for puppies. That part got Dr. Lily fired up.

   Shorter, a little more raw, and very much a conversation between two people from different corners of pet care who both care deeply about getting this right.

   KEY INSIGHTS:

   ✨ The coefficient of inbreeding measures how genetically similar a puppy's parents are. Lower numbers mean more genetic diversity, which generally means better health, stronger immunity, and fewer inherited diseases.

   ✨ Pedigrees alone cannot tell the full story. Two dogs from completely different lines, even different continents, can still be genetically too similar. Companies like Embark now calculate this before a breeding ever happens.

   ✨ Many purebred dogs are already mixed breeds, just from centuries ago. Golden Retrievers were originally Irish Setters, Bloodhounds, a Tweed Spaniel, and reportedly a dog from the side of the road.

   ✨ Heather moved from purebred to mixed breeding because she saw health issues she did not believe could be resolved without more genetic diversity. It is not anti-purebred. It is pro-health.

   ✨ Asking a breeder whether they test for coefficient of inbreeding is one of the most important questions a pet parent can ask and most never think to.

   ✨ Metronidazole is wildly overused as a first line dewormer for puppies. Some puppies arrive at eight weeks already having had three or four rounds, leaving their gut microbiome already deple…

8. What Happens Before Your Puppy Comes Home and Why It Changes Everything w/ Heather Gibson

   2 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 1 min

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   Before that puppy ever comes home to you, before the first walk, the first vet visit, the first time they fall asleep in your lap, there are six to eight weeks happening behind the scenes that will shape their health, their temperament, and their resilience for the rest of their life. Lees meer

   Most pet parents have zero control over what happens during that window. And most never think to ask.

   Heather Gibson is the founder of Big Hearted Breeders, a certified pet nutrition coach who has spent over 12 years raising dogs and cats with a holistic wellness first approach. Before she was a breeder, she was a foster parent for over a decade, caring for children with severe trauma. It was watching her foster children heal through their bond with animals that set her on this path.

   We get into what early neurological stimulation actually is and why it matters, what health testing should happen before breeding ever begins, how to tell the difference between a breeder who truly cares and one who is running a business, and why the relationship between breeders and vets is so strained and what we can do about it.

   KEY INSIGHTS:

   ✨ The first eight weeks of a puppy's life happen entirely without you. What a breeder does during that window shapes the immune system, nervous system, temperament, and resilience for life.

   ✨ Early neurological stimulation, developed by the military and sometimes called the Superdog program, is done from day six to day 17. Research shows it builds a more robust immune system and a nervous system better able to handle change.

   ✨ After those first two weeks, good breeders move into daily socialization, introducing new sounds, textures, smells, and obstacles so the puppy's brain builds the neural pathways that say new things are safe.

   ✨ Health testing on the parents is non-negotiable. Hips, elbows, patellas, heart, eyes, and a full genetic panel to screen for recessive genes that two healthy dogs can unknowingly both carry and pass on.

   ✨ Colostrum is a window…

9. We Made It to 100 and I Have a Lot to Say w/ Dr. Lily Chen

   19 juli 2026 · 1 uur 32 min

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   Episode 100. Lees meer

   I almost cannot believe it. When this podcast started, I did not know if anyone would listen. I only knew there were options out there, real and powerful ones, that too many pet parents never get told about. So I made a place for those conversations.

   Tonight was different. No guest, no script. Just a live recording with a room full of pet parents who have been on this journey with me, asking the real questions, sharing what they have lived through, and reminding me exactly why this exists.

   We talked about fecal transplants for IBD and when to start tapering off antibiotics like tylosin. We talked about ozone therapy and what it actually does inside the gut. We talked about the Qest4 scan, stem cell therapy for heart disease, UVBI, reference ranges that shift over time, and why a dog's liver values being high for 15 years might just be that dog's normal.

   And somewhere in the middle of all of it, I said something I have been wanting to say for a long time. I am a little tired of the fighting between conventional and holistic. I do both. I sit squarely in the middle. And it was never for us doctors to decide. It is for the families to decide, and they cannot decide if they do not know the options exist.

   Here is to the next hundred.

   KEY INSIGHTS:

   ✨ Diarrhea and heart failure are not directly connected. Heart failure causes fluid in the lungs or belly, not the intestines. But pets in heart failure may be more prone to gut issues because the body is already working so hard.

   ✨ Seasonal flares and stress are real allergy triggers. A dog can have their food sensitivities fully managed and still flare because of pollen, environmental shifts, or the anxiety of their person being away.

   ✨ Quercetin with bromelain stabilizes mast cells, one of the biggest drivers of allergic reactions. It works best as longer term support rather than an in-the-moment rescue.

   ✨ Metronidazole has been overused for diarrhea for decades. Research shows it can damage the microb…

10. A New Study Could Save Parvo Puppies Faster and Cheaper w/ Dr. Lily Chen

    5 juli 2026 · 25 min

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    A study landed on my desk a few weeks ago and I have not been able to stop thinking about it. Lees meer

    If you have a puppy, a young dog, or you know someone who does, this minisode is for you. It is about parvovirus, one of the scariest and most deadly diseases in young dogs, and a new study showing exactly what can be added to the standard of care to give puppies a better shot at survival, and at a fraction of the cost.

    The study, a double blinded, placebo controlled trial out of Ohio State University, looked at fecal microbiota transplant, also called microbiome restoration therapy, added on top of standard hospitalization for parvo. Not instead of it. The results are hard to ignore, and so is the part of the story about cost, because for many families, cost is the difference between treating their dog and losing them.

    I am sharing this now, before you ever need it, in the hope that you never do. But if you do, I want you to already know this exists.

    KEY INSIGHTS:
    ✨ Parvovirus destroys the gut lining and wipes out the beneficial bacteria living there. That terrain, not just the virus itself, is largely why puppies crash so fast.
    ✨ Fecal microbiota transplant, FMT, works by reintroducing healthy, screened donor microbiome material into the sick puppy's gut to rebuild that destroyed terrain, rather than only fighting the virus directly.
    ✨ In the study, the treatment group received one rectal FMT infusion at admission plus two weeks of oral capsules, in addition to full standard hospital care. The placebo group received saline enemas and blended kibble capsules, also alongside full standard care.
    ✨ Puppies who received the real FMT recovered faster, had shorter hospital stays, and needed fewer medications. Shorter ICU stays alone can mean thousands of dollars in savings for a family.
    ✨ There were zero adverse events from the FMT treatment, even in puppies who were among the most immunocompromised patients a veterinarian will ever see.
    ✨ More than a third of the placebo g…

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