Grain-free dog food has spent years in the DCM hot seat, but what is the research actually saying?In this month’s Zoomies, September Zoomies, Jordan Tyler and Dr. Stephanie Clark revisit the controversy surrounding dilated cardiomyopathy and unpack the recent Dog Aging Project findings. Together, they trace how an investigation became a source of widespread fear and discuss the research gaps that still exist between diet and canine heart health.

From mistaken diet histories to the limits of taurine testing, their conversation explores why finding answers is more complicated than pointing to an ingredient list. Jordan and Dr. Steph also share helpful advice for pet parents, including questions to ask pet food brands, a breakdown of why a dog’s individual health needs belong in diet discussions, and heart health warning signs to bring to your vet’s attention.

Helpful Links

🦴Here are some of our previous episodes about DCM and pet research:

diets-and-dcm-in-dogs-are-the-answers-found-in-poop

behind-the-research-revealing-the-truth-about-diet-and-dcm-in-dogs

fellowship-of-iron-and-earth-from-farm-to-bowl-with-tim-mcgreevy

think-twice-even-bad-science-can-get-published

🐕 The most recent Dog Aging Project study:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/vms3.71213

🩺 And Dr. Steph’s take on it: decoding-the-dog-aging-project-data-grain-free-diets-cardiac-diagnoses-and-what-the-latest-research-really-means

🐾 Read BSM Partners’ research on DCM in dogs here: dcm

Chapters:

00:00 — Grain-Free Dog Food & Heart Health: The DCM Debate Explained

02:05 — DCM in Dogs Explained: What Is Dilated Cardiomyopathy?

07:23 — Grain-Free Dog Food & DCM: What Started the Investigation?

10:34 — Can Blood Tests Detect DCM in Dogs? Understanding the Limitations

21:30 — Dog Aging Project: What the Study Found About Dog Food & DCM

25:38 — Dog Food & DCM: Why Pet Owner Reports Can Be Misleading

29:41 — How to Choose the Right Dog Food: Questions to Ask

36:15 — DCM in Dogs: Early Warning Signs & Symptoms

INTRO VO

You're listening to the Barking Mad podcast.

Stephanie Clark

Are we okay with that? Do we really know what we were asking for?

Jordan Tyler

Can't look at an ingredient label and just assume.

Stephanie Clark

I'm going to ask you. Show me the data. I took a shower this month. I'm extra fresh. Like, why doesn't mean America.

Jordan Tyler

There's actually a lot to unpack here.

Stephanie Clark

I mean, insert Mean Girls clip. Let this be a.

Jordan Tyler

Lesson, you know.

INTRO VO

Welcome in to the Barking Mad Podcast, a podcast for the pet obsessed with the real experts.

Jordan Tyler

Jordan Tyler

There is a lot to unpack here, and we're going to unpack it, rest assured, but this is a huge deal. It's probably one of the most disruptive events in the pet industry, in the modern pet industry and the pet industry. Period. It caused a $5 billion shift in the industry. Family farms went bankrupt. You can go back and listen to our episode with Tim McGreevy, who is with the Pulse Association.

Jordan Tyler

He tells really harrowing stories of how this impacted the pulse community. But as well as independent pet retailers, brands and pet owners who are really impacted by this as well. So that's what we're going to get into today. We're getting into actually, because the Dog Aging Project just released a new study, so things are still coming out about this.

Jordan Tyler

We still have stuff to learn about DCM, but the contents of the study are juicy. So that's what we're going to get into. Before we do that, I'd love to get a lay of the land and have stuff take us through. What even is dilated cardiomyopathy. Like, what does this look like? What happens to dogs to get this disease?

Stephanie Clark

Yeah. Dilated cardiomyopathy. Big scary word. Right? So short DCM. It basically means the enlargement of your heart muscle. And it causes the heart to become weak and less efficient at pumping blood. We obviously need the heart to pump blood to the body. And so when it's not working at its finest, lots of other things can happen. So you may notice, like your dog has exercise intolerance or shortness of breath, or is, you know, if guilty breathing even.

Stephanie Clark

And this disease can cause arrhythmias and even sudden cardiac death. So it not only just affects, you know, the lovely walks that we take our pets on daily, but it can actually be fatal. However, like all heart diseases, like most diseases that we encounter, our pets encounter, it's way more complex than just saying A causes B, and we know that this is a multifactorial disease, meaning that there is a lot of factors that can weigh in.

Stephanie Clark

I like to call it a perfect storm. Right? So we've got genetics, we've got age, we've got the breed, we have the sex, even neuter status now with the Dog Aging project. And then we have even toxins. So exposures to toxins or environmental exposures to tick borne diseases, hypothyroidism, mitral valve disease, Hackett cardia. So fast heart rate. If you haven't caught on, there's a lot of things that can affect the heart.

Stephanie Clark

This can be primary and this can even be secondary. And I have had DCM in my pet firsthand. So my beagle, she actually had mitral valve disease and it developed into DCM. So even taking care of and loving your pet in the best way possible. It's just sometimes it's a perfect storm.

Jordan Tyler

Yeah, yeah. And this really comes back to the idea of epigenetics. And this is something that we've talked about on a previous episode for sure. We probably need to talk about it again in a future episode, but it's really the idea that we are born with the genes that we're born with. You know, we're kind of stuck with them like family, but we get to choose our epigenetics.

Jordan Tyler

They're like our friends. I don't know if this analogy is actually going to make any sense at the end of this, but that's I'm just going to stick with it. You know, we get to choose where we live, what we do for exercise, what we put into our bodies. All of that impacts the way that our genes are expressed.

Jordan Tyler

Right. And things when you get genetic mutations, it's it's because you're either genetically predisposed to have that mutation or something in your environment caused you to have a genetic mutation. That's kind of the in a nutshell, idea of epigenetics. And so when you have a disease like this where some dogs, particularly large breed dogs. So actually I have specific breeds like Doberman Pinscher and Great Danes, boxers are genetically predisposed to developing DCM.

Jordan Tyler

It doesn't mean that they will that all of them will, but they are at a greater risk of developing it. New studies are coming out all the time with new breeds that are developing this disease. But it comes back to the multifactorial aspect of it. We can't just say this one thing caused this really, really complex disease. That really depends on a lot of different variables and inputs and environmental factors and genetic factors alike.

Jordan Tyler

It's just too complicated to try to paint black and white. That was a huge tangent. But no.

Stephanie Clark

No, it really is. And I think you mentioned it. Even with the new studies that are coming out, we're constantly we're just on the tip of genetics and fully understanding genetics for us, let alone for our pets. And so while it may seem, oh, this dog doesn't have a genetic predisposition, does it not have a genetic predisposition, or have we just not identified a mutation in that breed?

Stephanie Clark

That could be a genetic mutation?

Jordan Tyler

Yeah, sometimes we just don't know what we don't know. And that's why science exists right.

Stephanie Clark

Above it.

Jordan Tyler

Let's go through the timeline really quick. And then I want to talk more about this new study. And I think we can we can get a little deeper into some of the things that we found in BSM partners own research, things that other people have found in the years since. This whole thing really shook out and then went quiet and then.

Jordan Tyler

Yeah, kind of open it up for questions. Would love to hear everybody out there listening. What you guys think about this, right. Because there is so much misinformation about DXM out there and it's still really confusing. So let us know what questions you have. If we can help you answer anything. We're more than happy to talk about DCM.

Jordan Tyler

Jordan Tyler

But really grain free became kind of like a scapegoat for a category of brands that was identified by a group of veterinarians that raised this concern in the first place. They basically say they create a category of pet foods and they call it beg or beg diets. And it basically includes boutique brands. So like smaller brands, exotic ingredients or proteins.

Jordan Tyler

So maybe not chicken or bees and exactly. And are grain free or pulse rich, I guess is kind of the verbiage that we've transitioned more toward. Right. If if there's no grains in the diet, we're going to add pulses because we still have to have certain things to make that diet work for the body through the process. So we got to have something in there.

Jordan Tyler

The problem is, nobody had really done the research into whether grains or pulses or legumes or what kind of car you're putting in. The diet is really optimal for the health of the animal. So like we raised this concern without really understanding the way that grain free played into this conversation, into the conversation of pet health and wellness, especially when it comes to dogs.

Jordan Tyler

So another important piece of this equation is this report was based on owner reported diet histories. And I don't know if you guys can keep track of what your pet eats. And I'm not talking about dinner, you know, breakfast and dinner or lunch or whatever. If you do that, I'm talking about literally everything that pet has consumed in the last 12 months.

Jordan Tyler

I'm talking to treat. I'm talking a scrap that fell off of the kitchen table as I was plating dinner and talking something that they ate in the backyard that you don't even know about. It's just really hard to get an accurate diet history for dogs. And so basically, a lot of this data that was put in front of the FDA was partial or was missing really important information.

Jordan Tyler

And this new study by the Dog Aging Project highlights a even deeper concern in in the validity of that data that we'll get into later. Steph, do you want to talk a little bit about taurine? Because I might butcher it. And I think it's important to understand why taurine was was involved in the conversation. And then what we kind of found out about the taurine and the amino acid part of the DCM assumption, I guess.

Stephanie Clark

Yeah.

Stephanie Clark

Yeah, absolutely. And then just like wave your hands, if I start going down a rabbit hole and just like, pull me back out to like, stop, just just stop already. So taurine is an amino acid. It is non-essential, meaning it does not need to be provided in the diet for dogs. It does need to be provided in the diet for cats.

Stephanie Clark

So cats and dogs completely different. Cats are not small dogs. Dogs are not large cats. And this is one of those. So most of the pet food prior to this announcement didn't really contain additional auditory, and that was because it wasn't required. Dogs can synthesize taurine with other sulfur containing amino acids in the body. Taurine is not inherently natural or found in carbohydrates.

Stephanie Clark

So this is going to be from like the meat in the diet, maybe the meals, the dried meat, fresh meat. It's coming from an animal source, right. It's an amino acid protein. So taurine is heart healthy. We know that it can help with the heart, helps the heart function. It's really important for heart health. And so it was starting to bubble up to the top of maybe this heart healthy amino acid that has not been required in diets.

Stephanie Clark

Maybe a should be required in diets. B maybe some breeds have a sensitivity to taurine, and they may not have the best synthesis for making taurine. And maybe it needs to be supplemented. And C is it being bound up. And so this is where a lot of the studies kind of snowballed from. And unfortunately or fortunately what we have in veterinary medicine is blood samples.

Stephanie Clark

So there's plasma taurine and there's whole blood taurine. And those don't equal each other. However, no one actually looked and said, hey, do these even match? So a lot of studies, we're using them interchangeably. And that's like saying, I'm going to eat a fruit. You eat an apple, I eat an orange. They're both fruits, but we're not consuming the same thing.

Stephanie Clark

They don't equal the same. And so maybe bad analogy, but that's essentially what it was. And then BSM partners took it a step further and looked at the Turing in the heart and the touring in the skeletal muscle. Does that even correlate to whole blood taurine or plasma taurine? And it doesn't. So even saying my dog was on diet X and then the plasma taurine came out deficient or subpar normal reference range.

Stephanie Clark

That doesn't mean that the heart is deficient in touring. And so this really starts to unravel all of these research projects that have been going on. And again, research is supposed to evolve. And it was doing that. But it's really hard to base a lot of blanket statements on amino acids floating around in the blood can be variant depending if the dog was fasted or fed.

Stephanie Clark

Right. So like if the dog was fed, we can assume that more amino acids are going to be floating around in the blood as opposed to a fasted state. It's just like us when we like have to go get blood work and they're like, you have to be fast for 6 to 8 hours or however long or no, that's fine.

Stephanie Clark

You can go ahead and eat. You know, our our glucose is going to change. Amino acids are going to change similar to that. And then people started questioning like was the fiber in the diet. So these pulses, they're more or supposedly more rich in fibers, maybe the fibers binding the taurine, and it's going out and excreting out into the feces.

Stephanie Clark

BSM partners looked at the digestive. We looked at the nutrient profile when we looked at diets. I think it was something crazy, like 65% of the diet being from pulse ingredients, which is not on like the commercial market for like a normal food, maybe in like a vegan diet where you're relying on pulses to bring in protein. We didn't see any effect on digestibility.

Stephanie Clark

We didn't see any decrease in taurine, we didn't see any excretion of touring, but we also didn't see a huge difference in the fiber content than that of a different diet using different carbohydrates. So lots to unpack. I probably went on a huge tangent that you Jacob's going to have to cut out, but at the end of the day, taurine is a biomarker for that we can use for DCM.

Stephanie Clark

But at the end of the day, it doesn't predict what is happening in the heart. And it can't really tell us is the diet deficient or not? And the non-essential amino acid.

Jordan Tyler

Jordan Tyler

Jordan Tyler

That's a conversation for another day. But it is important because the FDA really put it back on the industry to do the research. And not a whole there wasn't an overwhelming, you know, people raising their hands. All do it, all do it. So what ended up happening is BSM partners stepped in and invested a lot of money in a lot of time into doing the foundational research, the literature review, the digestibility study, the amino acid analysis, you name it, to really highlight the fact that there is no cause causal link.

Jordan Tyler

Jordan Tyler

How many dogs was it, do you remember?

Stephanie Clark

I mean, at the end of the day, when we looked at the reported numbers, it was like 500, less than a thousand dogs.

Jordan Tyler

Yeah.

Stephanie Clark

That were reported that when we at least for the.

Stephanie Clark

Photo documents.

Stephanie Clark

That we received.

Jordan Tyler

Jordan Tyler

I'm feeling a little snarky today, so maybe that's just me.

Stephanie Clark

No, I mean, they've never done it before, right? And they didn't finish their investigation.

Stephanie Clark

So.

Stephanie Clark

And once. And the sad thing is, once you put those names out into the public, it doesn't matter if the intention was there or not. Good intention, bad intention, just intention to educate. We can't unsee those brands. We can't unsee the quote unquote grain free bag, nontraditional, pulse rich, whatever you want to call it. I mean, it's evolved over the past ten years.

Stephanie Clark

You can't unsee it. And social media has made it very, very easy to make sure that we don't unsee it. Yeah. And I think that's what my personal opinion, I don't think social media helped the situation of investigating in an unbiased manner, because all of these Facebook groups started popping up. You have people who are very, very, very passionate about what they feed their pet, loving their pet, rightfully so.

Stephanie Clark

But now that you have anything goes on social media and we don't have the answers yet, you have all of these blanket statements and tangents that are just running wild and freakin people out.

Jordan Tyler

Truly, people are freaking out. Yes. And continue to. I mean, there's a Facebook group with like, what is it like half a million members? Still, there's posts every single day in it, and it's full of diet recommendations from veterinarians who actively direct what's the word that I need there. They, they, they recommend against. That's two words, but that works way better.

Jordan Tyler

They recommend against actively recommending against grain free diets because of this scandal, not because of the evidence, not because of any research that was done after the fact to actually disprove some of the timeline of what happened. But because this came from the FDA and, you know, they're kind of through the boss around here. So there's a lot of trust.

Jordan Tyler

And it was really tested. I think it kind of brings us to the media circus of this all. You know, it just got picked up and headlines equated grain free with bad and grain free with disease. And, you know, this brand killed my dog is what the narrative became. And we've talked about this plenty on this podcast, but I'll say it again, everybody's pet has died eating somebody's food.

Jordan Tyler

You know, it's not a cause and effect. It's just not.

Jordan Tyler

Okay. So enough context. Let's get into today. What do we know today? Stephanie, tell us about the Dog Aging project again because I'm going to butcher it. And you wrote this fabulous article that we'll put in the show notes for this episode, really taking everybody through the findings. But give us like, the high level.

Stephanie Clark

Yeah. Hang on. Let me find my poncho before tomatoes get thrown at me real fast now. Totally kidding. I kind of teased it out on on my social media of like, hey, this is, you know, I.

Stephanie Clark

I already got haters. So what I'm saying. And what I told my haters is I will only speak on the science. Keep your opinions, keep your anecdotal synopsis until science says otherwise. I will continue telling the science story. So based on the latest data that we saw and again, it is like hot, fresh off the press, the ink is still kind of smudge worthy.

Stephanie Clark

The Dog Aging Project looked at over 47,000 dogs, and they did this over two years and they really asked some great questions. Is diet a cause? Right? So like our is diet causing DCM? Again we talked a lot about correlation causation huge difference. But what everything is saying was link link cause link link cause. But there was no real studies proving that or they're supporting it.

Stephanie Clark

And so interestingly enough, what this study reported was that there are other factors that we should be looking at. And these may sound familiar to the beginning of this episode, but sex. So we know that males are at a higher risk neuter status depending on if your dog is neutered or not, price is right. Please pay and neuter your cats and dogs.

Stephanie Clark

So let's not jump off that bandwagon just yet. But that can also cause a predisposition or a higher risk. Purebreds more than mixed breed. You'll we always kind of joke around that like mixed breed are a little bit more hardier. They're not so prone. And that's just because a lot of genetics are playing into it, where sometimes in your world, the genetic pool is a little bit more shallow.

Stephanie Clark

The chances of these recessive traits or these mutations can pop up a little bit more. So we're seeing more purebreds, and we kind of saw that in the research with cocker spaniels and golden retrievers. We started seeing these breeds kind of pop up more frequently, whether or not that was based on geographical location or owners who are more frequent to report.

Stephanie Clark

I don't know, but these were the breach that kept popping up a little bit more frequently. And so again, hello, multifactorial. This is a perfect storm. This is a lot of things that are playing in a role. And it's not a direct line from A to Z or A to B, whatever we want to say. And but then when they looked at actual grain free diets, they did an analysis on all the diets that were actually being fed, and the adjusted risk was 1.05.

Stephanie Clark

And you're like, what in the world does that mean? So take one as a baseline, meaning zero risk, no risk. It's 1.05 meaning there really isn't any direct causation. So not saying that your dog eating a green free diet, who maybe is older and a male and maybe has some genetic predisposition might develop DCM, they also might develop diabetes.

Stephanie Clark

They also might develop some other diseases. Right. Like we just don't know. But to say that eating this one particular thing causes this, it just isn't supported right now by science.

Jordan Tyler

Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the craziest things about this study, coming back to the owner reported diet histories that we were talking about earlier, is they found that people who claim to purchase a grain free diet and feed it to their dog were wrong 50% of the time.

Stephanie Clark

More than 50%. Right.

Stephanie Clark

Like.

Jordan Tyler

And then if you ask the same question to people that are feeding a grain inclusive diet or a non grain free diet, most of them are correct. So think about that for a second. If I think I'm buying a grain free diet for my dog and then he develops a disease, but the diets not really grain free, we just threw that question out the window.

Jordan Tyler

And it's confusing.

Stephanie Clark

It's confusing right. For owners we understand you maybe purchased a beef and potato or a lamb and sweet potato diet. You're thinking it's green free because it didn't call out a grain. But if you actually turn the bag over and read the ingredient list, are there grains? And so that's where it really was tripping a lot of people up, but also at the same time, like, how often do people go in, myself included, into the vet office?

Stephanie Clark

And you know, exactly the brand, the diet, the name, the ingredient deck of what you're feeding your pet?

Jordan Tyler

Yeah.

Stephanie Clark

Not very little.

Jordan Tyler

Yeah. Yeah, really not a lot. Even people that are, you know, like you and I don't even really do that. You know, I would have to go home and refresh my memory. Not because I don't care, but because I generally trust that what's in the bag is going to be okay for my pet unless I hear otherwise about it.

Jordan Tyler

And I understand that these things are multifactorial, that there's genetics at play, there's epigenetics at play, there's diet, there's lifestyle, there's age, there's neuter status, gender, everything playing into this. And so I think it really comes down to, you know, you can't you can't just make assumptions a but be you can't even really trust the ingredient list to tell you like the quality and safety of a diet.

Jordan Tyler

You can it can help you figure out what's in there. But you have to look deeper. You have to ask deeper questions. And honestly, a lot of the times you have to reach out to brands to really understand. Or do they have the right safety and quality measures in place? Are they testing the food before they're sending it out to consumers?

Jordan Tyler

There's kind of to much information for all of us to be able to fully understand. The ins and outs like this is a really complex like nutritional and logistic equation, but it doesn't mean that we have to oversimplify it into grain free equals bad, because that's not true scientifically is not true. And we owe it to our pets and also pet owners to do better and do the right research to get to the right conclusion.

Stephanie Clark

Right? Absolutely. So I think for me at least, being in the thicket of the research, seeing studies, prospective studies, unable to cause DCM or dogs develop DCM throughout the study, but dogs who had DCM not being able to reverse their disease and a controlled environment and then having this come out, it just adds to the evidence that we may have hit the panic button a little too soon.

Stephanie Clark

And I appreciate the reporting. Absolutely. See something, say something. But maybe we should have done our due diligence before releasing brand names, before bankrupting family farms and demonizing ingredients like so much happened as a ripple effect. By just saying this type of diet, this diet, or these diets that contain these types of ingredients are just bad. So.

Stephanie Clark

Like put the panic button away. Let's do our research first.

Jordan Tyler

So for pet parents, for pet owners out there, let's let's share some practical takeaways. Aside from we'll link plenty of things in the show notes. We've done a ton of episodes around DCM and like we're going to do more. We're just going to do more. It just somebody has to do it. So stay tuned. But also check out the show notes if you want to dig a little bit deeper.

Jordan Tyler

We have some interesting episodes that are like encouraging people to think more like a scientist, right? What kind of questions you need to ask? Who do you need to ask? What do you need to look for in a piece of research or in a report to say, oh, I don't know if we have the full picture yet, or to say, oh, I really trust this.

Jordan Tyler

I think my top one is comes back to don't panic, just don't panic. Don't do anything impulsively. Right? We still to this day, don't have the full picture of DCM. It's going to take time, but we know more today than we knew eight years ago and that's a lot more. So it's just a matter of being open minded, seeking answers to your questions, not not making decisions based on sorry, rash decisions based on something that you see, some headline that you saw or something that you saw on Facebook.

Jordan Tyler

There is so much more to a lot of stories. Most stories than appears at face value. So just don't panic. But what else would you share?

Stephanie Clark

So my thing I would also share is don't put your entire trust into the ingredient statement. I call it the ingredient back ingredient statement. Same thing so many times. And I literally was just talking to someone on social media this morning about, well, you can totally tell if a diet is good or bad by the first five ingredients.

Stephanie Clark

And this is something that is really, really dangerous. It's easy to do because we know the ingredients. We can read them, we either understand them or we don't understand them, but it just simply tells us what is in the diet. It doesn't tell us the quality, the safety, the nutritional, the digestibility of the diet. And so you may have seen, like people say, avoid pulses or legumes.

Stephanie Clark

And the top ten, the top seven, the top five. Why can't we get a straight answer? Because the ingredient deck is not a reliable source of the richness or the amount of that ingredient in there. We can see that yes, peas may be above barley and I'm picking on it and my dog snoring. That's why I said barley, she said.

Stephanie Clark

But I can't tell you that it's pulse rich because it's number eight or 3 or 4 in the ingredient deck. It depends on how long the ingredient deck is. It depends on that formulation, that specific formulation. So I may go to my grave preaching this. Do not put your faith in the ingredient deck. It will it will lead you astray every time.

Jordan Tyler

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's much better to look for something that is first and foremost Afca approved, complete and balanced. Something that is regulated right against standards that are based in science. For the most part, that's a conversation for another day as well. You know, life stage specific diets. If you have a puppy, you know, feed it a developmental diet, a puppy food, a maintenance diet for an adult you know, you're trying to maintain, and then a senior formulation, maybe it's your pet's getting a little bit older.

Jordan Tyler

And then also, you know, it's not a one size fits all. Pet food is not like that at all. Find something that works well for your pet format. You know, ingredients, claims, things like that. The market is so saturated because we all have different preferences and we have standards so that all these things are baseline safe. So really it's just what works for you and your pet.

Jordan Tyler

And it's always helpful to talk to your veterinarian. You know, they know they understand more about your pet's total health and wellness. But do understand that veterinarians don't always have as much training and nutrition as somebody like a food scientist or a board certified companion, animal nutritionist, or veterinary board certified veterinary nutritionist. They have way more nutrition training than your, you know, run of the mill veterinary professional or veterinary tech or.

Jordan Tyler

Yeah, GP exactly. So just keep that in mind. You know, there are a lot of other out there that have recommended against grain free diets just because we don't have the full picture and they probably just are afraid and they don't want to give their clients the wrong recommendation. But there is evidence out there now, and we should really change the way that we approach this conversation based on the evidence.

Stephanie Clark

Yeah. And one last thing on that before we get to our closing points and stuff is wasabi. Wasabi does not approve or brand or promote. So I keep saying West Ava compliant with Ava approved wasabi supported. Wasabi doesn't do that. They have simply put together a list of questions. The question list is a decade old, so take it with a grain of salt, because there are questions now that we now know that we should probably be asking again.

Stephanie Clark

We've been saying for a later date. That's for a later date as well. But if you're looking for a wasabi approved or wasabi compliant diet, you're not going to find one because they don't approve any diets. There's no wasabi stamp, so just keep that in mind. I see that being thrown around a lot. And just because a brand doesn't tout that it's following wasabi doesn't mean it's not.

Stephanie Clark

So there's a lot of nuance into this, but the best way is to call a brand, ask them the questions, ask them digestibility, ask them for their nutritional profile. How often do you test your finished product and then make the decision that's right for your pet.

Stephanie Clark

So.

Stephanie Clark

Promise I'm off that soapbox.

Jordan Tyler

I know I took us to Spicy Town, I apologize, but I know.

Stephanie Clark

I'm here for it.

Jordan Tyler

It's an important part of the conversation. And nobody, nobody really wants to say it out loud. And it's the fact that nobody wants to say it out loud is doing a disservice to pet owners, and I have a lot of conviction around that. So, honest. I'll come in and say it, you know? But anyway, the last thing that you really ought to do, especially if you have a male, large breed, neutered dog, as we talked about, some of the factors that that really do impact heart health risk or the development of these diseases.

Jordan Tyler

Look for the warning signs, right. Just be vigilant. Touch your dog, pay attention to your dog, things that you already do. You know, just maybe do them a little bit more mindfully. Watch for things like a reduced tolerance for exercise. You know they can't make it through their walk as easily as they as they could, coughing, just general slowness, lethargic, rapid or labored breathing.

Jordan Tyler

And I miss anything. Stuff.

Stephanie Clark

Nope. I mean, and when in doubt, you can always do genetic testing. Those little at home kits make it super easy now to detect any recessive traits or any mutations.

Jordan Tyler

I know those are getting more popular too. I think just cancer is everywhere, disease is everywhere, and there are so many people that are like, I just want to know, you know.

Stephanie Clark

I just wanted to know the breed. And then we got all the genetic and the predisposition, and it kind of freaked me out at first because I was like, it's like going on, Wendy. And like, you know, I have a lump and it's like, I'm dying in two hours. But if you see this stuff, if you do a genetic testing, take it to your veterinarian, because what they can do is they can listen to the heart, they can scan the heart, they can monitor the heart.

Stephanie Clark

So there's a lot of things that we can start doing to make sure that we're identifying any early onset heart disease.

Jordan Tyler

Absolutely, absolutely. I think those are great tips. We'll provide some more just general resources about DCM, about this debacle, as I like to call it, as it has unfolded and kind of what comes next as well. We'll put this new dog aging project research in there as well. You can go see for yourselves. But I just want to end with kind of like a, a, a shout out to the Dog Aging Project and other scientists out there that are doing good faith research into this question.

Jordan Tyler

Right. We still don't know all the answers. I keep saying that. But, you know, the proverbial more research is still needed. So shouts out to them, shout out to everybody who continues to research this, particularly those who are doing it with trusted data sets, with longitudinal data, with controlled variables. All of these things are really integral to making sure that we come to an evidence based conclusion, not just a conclusion that's convenient to us.

Jordan Tyler

Anything you want to end on, doctor? No, love.

Stephanie Clark

Take care of your heart.

Jordan Tyler

Yes, take care of your heart and maybe have a change of heart about DCM.

Stephanie Clark

Thank you for tuning in to the Barking.

Stephanie Clark

Mad Podcast.

Stephanie Clark

If you'd like to learn more about BSM, please visit us at.

Stephanie Clark

Net.

Jordan Tyler

Don't forget to follow us on your favorite leading podcast platform. And if you found today's episode useful, sure, with a friend. And we'd like to thank the very loyal good boys and girls on our podcast team Jacob Parker, Katie Wolfe, Millie Boden Lewis, Anna Guilfoyle and to me at Thomas. A special shout out to David Perez for the original music.

Jordan Tyler

See you next time.