a dog is a man’s best friend actually
dogs are humanity’s best friends but how
did this unique relationship come about
and is it mutually beneficial modern
dogs rely on us they’re humans for
almost everything we dictate what they
eat how much they eat when they go
outside how much exercise they get we’re
in control of almost every aspect of
their well-being but it wasn’t always
this way thousands of years ago ancient
dogs had a lot of freedom they could
choose what prey they wanted to pursue
and what garbage dump they would
scavenge from they could pursue what
mates they wanted to reproduce with of
course with freedom came risk and
disease starvation inclement weather all
negatively affected dog populations but
dogs are very resilient and incredibly
adaptable and they did a fantastic job
of tracking humans over time as ancient
civilizations multiplied and flourished
and spread across the continents
ancestral dogs trotted right along
behind now the exact evolutionary path
of dogs is actually quite debatable most
scientists would agree that about 33,000
years ago dogs branched off from Canis
lupus gray wolves to become their own
subspecies Canis lupus familiaris the
familiar wolf and over many many
millennia dogs have become more and more
familiar to us in fact scientists go so
far as to say that humans and dogs howl
evolved as we share 84% of our DNA
living life close to humans afforded
dogs consistent food water and shelter
which greatly extended their lifespan in
fact Aristotle’s ancient text the
history of animals contends that dogs
lived up to 20 years after they assumed
domestication and as they were becoming
domesticated they ended up not only
bonding with people but they ended up
having a deeper relationship with people
natural selection of mates was replaced
by humans intentionally breeding dogs
for jobs that would help reduce our
workload we created dogs for hunting
purposes and we created dogs for working
lines and we created dogs for brand new
purposes including companionship now no
one really knows
at what point along this co-evolutionary
journey humans turn to dogs and
recognized that they’re unbelievable
companions that they’re truly best
friends but I suspect this happened very
early on and the deeper our relationship
grows with dogs the more intertwined our
lives have become now fast-forward
several thousand years during which time
barn cats left the barn migrated to the
porch and then reached their final
destination our couches and working dogs
worked their way right up onto our beds
where they have happily stayed in fact
research shows that 42% of us sleep with
our pets at night and the vast majority
of us that have well loved pets we view
them as members of our family but what’s
so i opening to me as a proactive
veterinarian is how much humans have
impacted animal health in just the last
hundred years so much has happened in
such a short period of time that we have
geneticists epidemiologists and
veterinarians
all wondering exactly what went down and
most importantly how do we fix it
through intensive breeding humans have
created over 200 different breeds of
dogs and DNA testing is a relatively
recent gift to the world of canine
genetics prior to screening for breed
flaws trial-and-error breeding created a
huge population of dogs that were both
physically and genetically unwell
let’s look at one example the precious
very popular pug pugs in the late 1800s
had enough space on their heads to
helpfully accommodate all of their
facial structures modern-day pugs do not
we’ve literally bred the noses off of
pugs and they have recurrent problems
with their ears eyes nose and throat in
fact many pugs have problems breathing
and research shows one out of three pugs
have problems even walking this is a
list of diseases that we can test for
with genetic testing and pugs just look
at the length of the list don’t read the
words and the other list is the list of
diseases that we can’t test for with
pubs just look at the length of the list
I could have easily given my example to
be really any popular breed the golden
retriever the German Shepherd the
English bulldog the premise is this if
we’re going to spend money on a purebred
puppy it’s critical that we would think
about doing all of the DNA testing we
possibly could on that breed on both
parents but what do we do about that
other list what do we do about the
diseases that we can’t screen for it’s
critically important that we begin
practicing reparative confirmation which
means we’re partnering with breeders
that are intentionally seeking to reduce
that list of predispositions for the
next generation but what about those of
us that don’t buy dogs what about those
of us that
excu those of us that pull dogs off the
streets those of us that visit City
pounds and Humane Societies were
adopting dogs from there because they’re
homeless not because they’re healthy
those of you that have saved a life this
way know that when you’re in that
environment looking at those eyes the
last thing you’re thinking about is how
resilient their DNA is or maybe before
you knew any better you bought a puppy
from a pet store which is a facade for a
puppy mill and what you know now is that
you will never have a lifelong
relationship with your dog’s breeder and
those facilities will never do DNA
testing nor will they ever breed for
improves conformation but we all can
have hope from the emerging field of
epigenetics and nutrigenomics
epigenetics is the study of how the
environment impacts gene expression and
we’ve learned a lot in the last 20 years
for instance we know that a dog’s
chemical load in her environment
dramatically and negatively affects her
DNA and that’s good to know because we
can change the environment nutrigenomics
specifically looks at the relationship
of how food affects gene expressions and
food can up or down regulate good and
bad DNA and that’s also critically
important to know and super empowering
for me to know as a proactive
veterinarian because we have control
over what we put in that food bowl
it’s interesting because the University
of Helsinki vet school has done great
recent studies looking at how
nutrigenomics plays into a tepee a tepee
is the genetic predisposition for dogs
to be terribly itchy to have allergies
they pooled information from over 8,000
dogs and some of the information simply
validates what many veterinarians know
to be true that many breeds are
predisposed to having a tepee
Westies Bulldogs boxers but it’s the
results of the food trial that were most
interesting to me 46 Staffordshire
Terriers were divided into two groups
one group was fed fresh food or
unprocessed food and the other group was
fed processed food or kibble skin
biopsies showed that skin gene
expression was been officially altered
in the raw fed group their skin immune
system defenses were better if food has
the ability to up or down regulate some
aspects of disease expression it would
be wise for all of us to think about
what we’re putting in our own mouths and
what we’re feeding to everything we love
over the last hundred years modernised
countries have seen a dramatic increase
in the consumption of processed foods
for both pets and people the difference
between kids and dogs is that kids
usually still have some access to some
fresh food on a daily basis and pets do
not in fact in this last century we have
created a 75 billion dollar-a-year pet
food industry selling fast food to pet
owners I mean really fast food open the
pantry door dump the food in the bowl
Don and while human medical doctors and
human nutritionists are telling all of
us eat less junk food eat five servings
of fresh food a day eat more real
unprocessed Whole Foods veterinarians
remain the last group of health and
wellness professionals recommending just
the opposite we were taught in
veterinary school to only recommend
highly processed foods for animals their
entire life to never recommend fresher
Whole Foods but animals have never eaten
that way in the history of ever ever
until now 96% of people do exactly what
they’re told and speed
an entirely processed diet to their pets
from the time that they weaned till the
time that they died but what about that
other 4% that tiny sliver actually
represents one of the fastest growing
segments of the pet food industry people
buying commercially available frozen
fresh food to feed to their pets this
fast-growing group of individuals
recognizes that their animals need more
than highly processed food to survive
and they’re very well aware of the
disease epidemics that are plaguing both
pets and people the incidence of
diabetes obesity and cancer in dogs
mirrors that of humans and this well
research group of pet parents is looking
to use food as medicine to address the
myriad of chronic diseases plaguing
animals and every day more and more pet
lovers are choosing to add a little bit
of fresh food into that bowl to either
help restore health or help prevent
disease from occurring those same
finished veterinary researchers recently
completed a study on the benefits of
fresh food and what they found was
fascinating dogs did ate processed food
or kibble for their whole lives were
then weaned on to raw food for three
months and there was an 81 percent
decrease in disease markers in their
bloodstream
likewise dogs that ate fresh food for
their whole lives were weaned on to
processed food or kibble for three
months and there was a 350 percent
increase in disease markers that same
group of researchers discovered that as
little as 20% fresh food added into a
bowl of kibble and 20 percent processed
food removed conferred measurable health
benefits which is very exciting for me
because most of us can achieve that by
just replacing the highly processed
treats we bite the grocery store for our
pets for fresh food that we can find in
our refrigerator now the difference
between unprocessed and processed foods
can usually be determined by where
it’s found in your kitchen and by how
long the ingredient label is unprocessed
foods come from the butcher or the
garden and live in the refrigerator or
freezer if they have an ingredient panel
it’s incredibly short and you can
understand everything on it process
foods usually live in the pantry but
most importantly they have a much longer
ingredient panel that may contain words
that we can’t pronounce or that we don’t
understand so the key is read ingredient
labels if you think about it our pets
and our young kids are little protegees
they are reflections of our own
lifestyle and as Guardians it’s our
responsibility to choose for them
because they can’t choose for themselves
and when it comes to a lifetime of
nutrition we really need to be thinking
about making excellent wise decisions
for everything that we’re nourishing
what’s really exciting for me about that
fast-growing 4% is that it contains a
growing number of fresh feeding
veterinarians from around the world and
there are fresh pet food companies
popping up around the globe selling
nutritionally balanced
species-appropriate foods when we know
better
we can do better we have the opportunity
to shift health in an amazing direction
by asking better questions about
genetics and making better lifestyle
decisions including what we put in that
bowl on a daily basis over the last
hundred years we have manipulated so
many aspects of a dog’s well-being that
many dogs are no longer well and from
their perspective the relationship
probably isn’t mutually beneficial and
yet they remain our faithful companions
as more and more Guardians commit to
intentionally create vibrant health
through wise lifestyle choices I believe
that we can look for
to the next 33,000 years of a more
healthful coevolution with dogs who
truly are humanity’s very best friends
thank you [Applause]
dogs are humanity’s best friends but how
did this unique relationship come about
and is it mutually beneficial modern
dogs rely on us they’re humans for
almost everything we dictate what they
eat how much they eat when they go
outside how much exercise they get we’re
in control of almost every aspect of
their well-being but it wasn’t always
this way thousands of years ago ancient
dogs had a lot of freedom they could
choose what prey they wanted to pursue
and what garbage dump they would
scavenge from they could pursue what
mates they wanted to reproduce with of
course with freedom came risk and
disease starvation inclement weather all
negatively affected dog populations but
dogs are very resilient and incredibly
adaptable and they did a fantastic job
of tracking humans over time as ancient
civilizations multiplied and flourished
and spread across the continents
ancestral dogs trotted right along
behind now the exact evolutionary path
of dogs is actually quite debatable most
scientists would agree that about 33,000
years ago dogs branched off from Canis
lupus gray wolves to become their own
subspecies Canis lupus familiaris the
familiar wolf and over many many
millennia dogs have become more and more
familiar to us in fact scientists go so
far as to say that humans and dogs howl
evolved as we share 84% of our DNA
living life close to humans afforded
dogs consistent food water and shelter
which greatly extended their lifespan in
fact Aristotle’s ancient text the
history of animals contends that dogs
lived up to 20 years after they assumed
domestication and as they were becoming
domesticated they ended up not only
bonding with people but they ended up
having a deeper relationship with people
natural selection of mates was replaced
by humans intentionally breeding dogs
for jobs that would help reduce our
workload we created dogs for hunting
purposes and we created dogs for working
lines and we created dogs for brand new
purposes including companionship now no
one really knows
at what point along this co-evolutionary
journey humans turn to dogs and
recognized that they’re unbelievable
companions that they’re truly best
friends but I suspect this happened very
early on and the deeper our relationship
grows with dogs the more intertwined our
lives have become now fast-forward
several thousand years during which time
barn cats left the barn migrated to the
porch and then reached their final
destination our couches and working dogs
worked their way right up onto our beds
where they have happily stayed in fact
research shows that 42% of us sleep with
our pets at night and the vast majority
of us that have well loved pets we view
them as members of our family but what’s
so i opening to me as a proactive
veterinarian is how much humans have
impacted animal health in just the last
hundred years so much has happened in
such a short period of time that we have
geneticists epidemiologists and
veterinarians
all wondering exactly what went down and
most importantly how do we fix it
through intensive breeding humans have
created over 200 different breeds of
dogs and DNA testing is a relatively
recent gift to the world of canine
genetics prior to screening for breed
flaws trial-and-error breeding created a
huge population of dogs that were both
physically and genetically unwell
let’s look at one example the precious
very popular pug pugs in the late 1800s
had enough space on their heads to
helpfully accommodate all of their
facial structures modern-day pugs do not
we’ve literally bred the noses off of
pugs and they have recurrent problems
with their ears eyes nose and throat in
fact many pugs have problems breathing
and research shows one out of three pugs
have problems even walking this is a
list of diseases that we can test for
with genetic testing and pugs just look
at the length of the list don’t read the
words and the other list is the list of
diseases that we can’t test for with
pubs just look at the length of the list
I could have easily given my example to
be really any popular breed the golden
retriever the German Shepherd the
English bulldog the premise is this if
we’re going to spend money on a purebred
puppy it’s critical that we would think
about doing all of the DNA testing we
possibly could on that breed on both
parents but what do we do about that
other list what do we do about the
diseases that we can’t screen for it’s
critically important that we begin
practicing reparative confirmation which
means we’re partnering with breeders
that are intentionally seeking to reduce
that list of predispositions for the
next generation but what about those of
us that don’t buy dogs what about those
of us that
excu those of us that pull dogs off the
streets those of us that visit City
pounds and Humane Societies were
adopting dogs from there because they’re
homeless not because they’re healthy
those of you that have saved a life this
way know that when you’re in that
environment looking at those eyes the
last thing you’re thinking about is how
resilient their DNA is or maybe before
you knew any better you bought a puppy
from a pet store which is a facade for a
puppy mill and what you know now is that
you will never have a lifelong
relationship with your dog’s breeder and
those facilities will never do DNA
testing nor will they ever breed for
improves conformation but we all can
have hope from the emerging field of
epigenetics and nutrigenomics
epigenetics is the study of how the
environment impacts gene expression and
we’ve learned a lot in the last 20 years
for instance we know that a dog’s
chemical load in her environment
dramatically and negatively affects her
DNA and that’s good to know because we
can change the environment nutrigenomics
specifically looks at the relationship
of how food affects gene expressions and
food can up or down regulate good and
bad DNA and that’s also critically
important to know and super empowering
for me to know as a proactive
veterinarian because we have control
over what we put in that food bowl
it’s interesting because the University
of Helsinki vet school has done great
recent studies looking at how
nutrigenomics plays into a tepee a tepee
is the genetic predisposition for dogs
to be terribly itchy to have allergies
they pooled information from over 8,000
dogs and some of the information simply
validates what many veterinarians know
to be true that many breeds are
predisposed to having a tepee
Westies Bulldogs boxers but it’s the
results of the food trial that were most
interesting to me 46 Staffordshire
Terriers were divided into two groups
one group was fed fresh food or
unprocessed food and the other group was
fed processed food or kibble skin
biopsies showed that skin gene
expression was been officially altered
in the raw fed group their skin immune
system defenses were better if food has
the ability to up or down regulate some
aspects of disease expression it would
be wise for all of us to think about
what we’re putting in our own mouths and
what we’re feeding to everything we love
over the last hundred years modernised
countries have seen a dramatic increase
in the consumption of processed foods
for both pets and people the difference
between kids and dogs is that kids
usually still have some access to some
fresh food on a daily basis and pets do
not in fact in this last century we have
created a 75 billion dollar-a-year pet
food industry selling fast food to pet
owners I mean really fast food open the
pantry door dump the food in the bowl
Don and while human medical doctors and
human nutritionists are telling all of
us eat less junk food eat five servings
of fresh food a day eat more real
unprocessed Whole Foods veterinarians
remain the last group of health and
wellness professionals recommending just
the opposite we were taught in
veterinary school to only recommend
highly processed foods for animals their
entire life to never recommend fresher
Whole Foods but animals have never eaten
that way in the history of ever ever
until now 96% of people do exactly what
they’re told and speed
an entirely processed diet to their pets
from the time that they weaned till the
time that they died but what about that
other 4% that tiny sliver actually
represents one of the fastest growing
segments of the pet food industry people
buying commercially available frozen
fresh food to feed to their pets this
fast-growing group of individuals
recognizes that their animals need more
than highly processed food to survive
and they’re very well aware of the
disease epidemics that are plaguing both
pets and people the incidence of
diabetes obesity and cancer in dogs
mirrors that of humans and this well
research group of pet parents is looking
to use food as medicine to address the
myriad of chronic diseases plaguing
animals and every day more and more pet
lovers are choosing to add a little bit
of fresh food into that bowl to either
help restore health or help prevent
disease from occurring those same
finished veterinary researchers recently
completed a study on the benefits of
fresh food and what they found was
fascinating dogs did ate processed food
or kibble for their whole lives were
then weaned on to raw food for three
months and there was an 81 percent
decrease in disease markers in their
bloodstream
likewise dogs that ate fresh food for
their whole lives were weaned on to
processed food or kibble for three
months and there was a 350 percent
increase in disease markers that same
group of researchers discovered that as
little as 20% fresh food added into a
bowl of kibble and 20 percent processed
food removed conferred measurable health
benefits which is very exciting for me
because most of us can achieve that by
just replacing the highly processed
treats we bite the grocery store for our
pets for fresh food that we can find in
our refrigerator now the difference
between unprocessed and processed foods
can usually be determined by where
it’s found in your kitchen and by how
long the ingredient label is unprocessed
foods come from the butcher or the
garden and live in the refrigerator or
freezer if they have an ingredient panel
it’s incredibly short and you can
understand everything on it process
foods usually live in the pantry but
most importantly they have a much longer
ingredient panel that may contain words
that we can’t pronounce or that we don’t
understand so the key is read ingredient
labels if you think about it our pets
and our young kids are little protegees
they are reflections of our own
lifestyle and as Guardians it’s our
responsibility to choose for them
because they can’t choose for themselves
and when it comes to a lifetime of
nutrition we really need to be thinking
about making excellent wise decisions
for everything that we’re nourishing
what’s really exciting for me about that
fast-growing 4% is that it contains a
growing number of fresh feeding
veterinarians from around the world and
there are fresh pet food companies
popping up around the globe selling
nutritionally balanced
species-appropriate foods when we know
better
we can do better we have the opportunity
to shift health in an amazing direction
by asking better questions about
genetics and making better lifestyle
decisions including what we put in that
bowl on a daily basis over the last
hundred years we have manipulated so
many aspects of a dog’s well-being that
many dogs are no longer well and from
their perspective the relationship
probably isn’t mutually beneficial and
yet they remain our faithful companions
as more and more Guardians commit to
intentionally create vibrant health
through wise lifestyle choices I believe
that we can look for
to the next 33,000 years of a more
healthful coevolution with dogs who
truly are humanity’s very best friends
thank you [Applause]
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