Episode 196: Purina Pro Plan Veterinary Supplements: Achieving Optimal Health

RuthAnn Lobos DVM, CCRT, CVAT addresses the common claims made around supplements, explaining the quality, safety, and efficacy of Purina Pro Plan Veterinary Supplements.

Watch the video version of this presentation here.

Transcript

Nicole Engelman  00:04

Welcome to the Good Dog Pod. Join us every other Wednesday when we discuss all things dogs, from health and veterinary care to training and behavior science, as well as the ins and outs of Good Dog and how our platform can help you successfully run your breeding program. Follow us and join Good Dog’s mission to build a better world for our dogs and the people who love them. 

Thank you, everyone, so much for joining. I'm Nicole. I'm Good Dog’s community lead. Today, we have a really exciting presentation for everyone on veterinary supplements and achieving optimal health with our guest, Dr. RuthAnn Lobos, who we are so excited to have back with us. So just a quick overview of what we're going to be focusing on today. I know this is a topic that so many breeders are interested in and are always asking questions about. So of course, with all of the claims around supplements, it can just be really challenging to figure out which ones to use and if it's actually going to work. So this webinar is going to sort through all of those claims and help you understand the quality, safety and efficacy of Purina Pro Plan Veterinary Supplements. So of course, it's implied in the name, but we're really excited to partner with Purina again to bring you this webinar. Please keep requesting topics, especially as we round out the rest of the year, which is crazy to think. Even though we're already in September, we have so many webinars planned to bring us probably until the end of the year. We're already looking ahead to 2026, so please keep submitting ideas for future webinars at breederteam@gooddog.com. And because we are kind of in the back end of 2025 (shockingly enough), we have hosted a ton of webinars this year already. So I just want to remind everyone as always, where you can find all of those recordings in case you've missed them/in case this is the first time you're ever joining a Good Breeder webinar. As always, we're going to prioritize the previously submitted questions during this presentation. I just want to share a little more about Good Dog for anyone who is new here and joining us for the first time: Good Dog is on a mission to build a better world for our dogs and the people who love them by advocating for dog breeders like yourselves, educating the public and promoting canine health and responsible dog ownership. We are a secure online community that is created just for responsible dog breeders to connect with Good Dog buyers from across the country and find forever homes for your puppies. We help breeders run all aspects of their breeding programs from start to finish, everything from getting your litter of puppies listed, connecting with great applicants, accepting payments securely for those puppies, messaging with buyers and all those smaller things that happen in between puppies being born and going off to their new homes. Good Dog is here to help you every step of the way through that. We also offer a number of educational resources—completely for free—and health related discounts to help your programs thrive in other ways as well, beyond just placements. So if you're not yet a member of our community, we would love to invite you to learn more about our mission and apply to join at GoodDog.com/join. 

And before I pass things over to Dr. Lobos, I wanted to share a little bit more about her and her amazing background in canine health. Dr. Lobos received a veterinary degree from Louisiana State University of Veterinary Medicine, and also became certified in canine physical rehabilitation and as a veterinary acupuncture therapist. Dr. Lobos, who joined Purina in 2005 has managed veterinary communications for Purina Pro Plan Veterinary Diets and Global Scientific Programs, including the Signature Companion Animal Nutrition Summit for the Purina Institute. Dr. Lobos is frequently interviewed about nutrition and health for hard working sporting dogs. She's also an avid marathoner and triathlete who enjoys upland game hunting and hiking and camping with her husband and son. Her canine companions are a hard charging yellow Labrador Retriever named Finn (also the name of my family dog) and her first bird dog, a wired haired pointing Griffon named Journey, whom she's excited to train. And she can be found on Instagram at @PetVetRuthAnn, so everyone can give her a follow over there. So with that, I will pass things over to you, Dr. Lobos.

Dr. RuthAnn Lobos DVM, CCRT, CVAT  04:21

Thank you all so much for taking the time, joining us today, and thanks for the intro, Nicole. This is probably one of my favorite topics to talk about, because it is kind of like the wild wild west out there in the world of supplements. And I'll go through some of the numbers, just to kind of put it into perspective here coming up, but I'm based out of Boulder, Colorado, but I'm here at Purina’s headquarters today. We've got some planning meetings that are happening this week, and I've actually spent about two hours this morning talking about supplements. So it's not only in my work world here at Purina I still practice so I'm in a clinic a couple of days a month, and I think it comes up in, if not all of the conversations, at least probably 80% of the conversations that I'm having with pet parents out there. It's about supplements. And I was just again asked to do a podcast about supplements yesterday. So it is definitely in the professional world. It's also in the pet parent world. It's in the human space. I took my supplements this morning before getting started. So my last presentation that I did with y'all, if you weren't able to attend, as Nicole mentioned, it's in the library. But one of my goals, really, with the role that I have, is to empower you, empower pet parents, really, to have a great resource to be able to go to to help to sort through all of the noise—whether it's pet food related, whether it is pet health related, whether it's supplements related, to really have at least some, you know, foundational facts to be able to go back to when you're making those decisions for your own pets or for those puppies that you are making and their future lives, and how you can help to educate those that bring the dogs from your breeding program into their homes. This slide, I'm not going to go through it all, but I did present it on the last one that I did for y'all. But if you weren't in there, I'll give you a little background about myself, my personal world. Huge LSU Tiger fan. Grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I like to say I bleed purple and gold—all their sports. We're in football season right now, but I won't go down that rabbit hole. We're here to talk about dogs. As Nicole mentioned, I am a distance runner. I like to say that it is my sanity piece every day that I bring to the world that brings me to the world. Up there in the right hand corner are my two, I would say, daily inspirations for why I do what I do and really do fuel my life. And Finn is my Labrador that has unlocked the whole outdoor space, got me much more involved in conservation and understanding, really, the importance of the outdoors and preserving that for our next generation through the world of upland game hunting and then Journey—yeah, it's a little dated picture of her. We're now about to dive into her first real season of upland game hunting, and so I'm super excited about that. My family's over there on the left hand side, which is why in the bottom right hand corner, there's an adult beverage hosted. Those two are necessary to balance each other out. I do love them very much, but sometimes my family can be a lot, probably not too dissimilar to a lot of y'all’s out there. There in the middle is my world of my husband and my son, who's now 10 and very involved in baseball. So that's literally looking through the cyclone fencing, is probably how I recognize him the most, because we do spend a lot of time in and around the baseball diamonds. So that's his passion. And I'm super excited that he's found that, and he does, like a lot of kids, want to be a professional baseball player when he grows up, so we'll see in about 10 or 15 years where he's gotten with that. 

So diving into our supplements agenda for today, I want to give you a little bit of background about where this space is going and growing. And one of the big areas that it is growing in is certainly GI and so we'll spend a fair amount of time talking about that. Another space that is also highly developing is really that anxiety area and how we help to support our pets’ mental health. And spoiler alert, there's ways that we can do that, using supplements, and that also relates to the microbiome. So little teaser there for y'all. But we certainly have seen that kind of increase in the world. I think a fair amount could be because of the lag of Covid, where we were all at home with our pets, spending a whole lot of time together, and that has almost created this anxious generation of dogs and cats. I know this is a dog focused webinar, but we don't want to forget about those guys, and so there's ways that we can help to support them, through some really great research in the supplement world. Certainly arthritis, it's probably one of the most common conditions, not only for our dogs, but also for our cats as well. And how we support there. And then certainly skin offers some opportunities and solutions for supplements in the space of dermatologic support. So this is where the wild wild west comes in. Here is kind of the crazy space of the supplement world. So in this category, in 2023, it was a $2.4 billion category that's growing at 14%. It is something that, you know, I gave the snapshot of kind of what's been happening in my world—probably not too dissimilar in your world as well, where, you know, there are new supplements coming out. They're making these claims, these like “My dog is going to live forever. He's going to have the shiniest goat. She's going to produce the most puppies that are the healthiest that we've ever seen if you give XYZ supplement.” You know, and in 2016 so this stat is almost 10 years old, but it was about a third of dogs and cats were fed a supplement. I can tell you, in my household, Finn and Journey are on one supplement apiece. Finn is actually on another supplement because he's a 10 year old and still active, so we're doing some things to help to support his muscle health, and then they occasionally get supplements when they make bad dietary choices. So I'm in that 33%. I would bet there's a fair amount of y'all on this webinar that are also in that 33%, and I think we're doing a lot of research in this area to really better understand and I would bet that that number is probably doubled, if not more than that, in the last 10 years in the pet space. So when we look again at supplements, there's so many options that are out there. And how do we know what's on the outside matches what's on the inside? And so this was a study that was done a while ago. It's in the year 2000 so this was 25 years ago. This study was done when the supplement space was much smaller, and 84% of the products that were pulled were inappropriately labeled. And you know, the joint supplement space is, by far and away, the largest of the categories. Joint and GI are probably the two places where supplements are the biggest right now. And 25 years ago, it was probably just joint supplements that we were talking about. But still, 84% of these guys are mislabeled. It was a whole range. Either they had too little or they had too much, and in some spaces and places that is okay, like there is no safe upper limit of chondroitin, there is no safe upper limit of glucosamine. So if we give more, that's okay. But that's not the case in all supplements. There is a safe upper limit of Omega-3 fatty acids; those, if you give them too many, that can cause problems. So in some cases it's like, “Oh, that might be not a big deal.” But in other cases, it really may be. And that's where, again, like, when people are like, “What supplement should I use?” I'm like, “You should have a conversation with your veterinarian, first and foremost.” Because we are legally liable. So it is our license that is on the line if we recommend a supplement and things go wrong. So that is enough of a motivator for most veterinarians to do their due diligence. Research the company. Research the research that has been published to say if there is something that could go, you know, a toxic element, or things of that nature. So one of the big ones right now, it's kind of a “controversial area” in the world of veterinary medicine, is CBD. So there's some really great research that has been published. A lot of it has come out of Colorado State University, some out of Cornell, about the benefits of CBD in specific uses, particularly epilepsy and joint health. And depending on how that hemp is grown, there can be toxic levels of heavy metals. There could be THC that is in there. So really those are kind of the big flashing signs that, as a veterinarian, I'm going to do some research into the company that is selling that CBD supplement to understand: What are their safety checks? What are their quality assurance checks? Is there a third party that goes and verifies that what's on the label matches what's in the product, and there is no differentiation between those two things? So I do really strongly recommend whatever supplement company that you decide to buy products from, that you do your due diligence as well and research what their claims, their safety process is, their verification, things of that nature, so you don't inadvertently do something that could cause harm to your dog or your future litters that you may be trying to have. 

So here's a little bit of why the supplement world is kind of the Wild Wild West is that anything that is categorized as a drug is intended for use to diagnose, cure, mitigate, or treat disease. The FDA has to approve this. It has to look at the safety and efficacy trials before a company can go and launch that drug. Our dietary supplements are just that. They are taken by mouth. They are there to support or “supplement,” so boost, whatever it is that they are claiming to boost. There is no FDA approval that is necessary. Same goes for the pet food space. So pet food is a highly regulated industry. We have to comply with the FDA, the USDA. You know, there are lots of regulations that we have to follow in the pet food space; dietary supplements, no FDA approval is necessary. They just have to be notified. So that company, you know, writes a letter, sends an email, say, “I'm launching this product. I'm saying it's going to do XYZ. Thanks, letting you know! See ya. Bye!” And then their product can go on the shelf. So there's, there's a lot of loosey goosiness when it comes to the supplements world. 

So we're going to dive into some of the supplements in our Pro Plan Veterinary Line here, and starting off with the microbiome, because this is a huge area of research, not only just on the pet side, but certainly on the human side as well. The microbiome is this beautiful mix of different microorganisms. You know, most people think, oh, there's bacteria in the GI tract, and there's good bacteria and bad bacteria and all of that. But it's actually, there's a whole host of different kinds of organisms that live in the GI tract and that also live, you know, outside of the GI tract, on our skin and various places as well, and really we are just scratching the surface on understanding how these different organisms interact all the benefits that they provide to the host that they live inside, whether it's two legged or four legged. This is a big area of focus because we are unlocking a lot of really better understanding of how these different organisms provide benefits to us, and it is a pretty exciting space. 

So talking about the microbiome this one, I'm not going to make you respond to this, but this is to level-set, about the number of bacteria per gram of feces that live in our GI tract. It's over 1 billion per gram of feces. So this is why, again, like, well, there have been decades and decades and like, Nestle on the human side, has been researching the microbiome, literally, for like, 70 years, our understanding of it is still very, very surface level. Because you can imagine, if that's just in one gram of feces, the volume that exists in the large intestine is much greater than that. So there is a whole diverse population that we are trying to understand. And then here's another one: Approximately what percentage of fecal weight is microflora? Zero to 100—what are we thinking? Is it a lot? Is it a little? About half of the fecal weight is microflora. So this is also my public service announcement to make sure that you doubly wash your hands after cleaning up after your dog or your litters of puppies. So I would hope that the takeaway from here, that there's a large amount of bacteria and different organisms in the GI tract that all are going to play a specific role, and we are still greatly understanding how we can support that to make sure our dogs thrive in the best of ways. And, you know, to kind of simplify things, I would say there's this natural balance of this “beneficial bacteria” and this potentially harmful bacteria, and there are things that can start to cause shifts, and shifts in a negative way where that beneficial bacteria gets altered for some reason, and our potentially harmful bacteria starts to get out of balance and too high in population, and then what we can see, I would say—the ultimate result of that—is what we see in the clinic, or what you may see, is diarrhea. There can be shifts where that beneficial bacteria starts to die down, but maybe it's just loose stool. It's not totally diarrhea yet, but that's still some signs that, hey, that microflora in the GI tract isn't where it needs to be. And how can we support that? 

But first we got to think about what causes those shifts. And we say right in the middle there, that poor little Border Collie and that Calico cat look terrified, which is accurate. So stress can cause a shift in that. Life stage can: so our puppies are born with a sterile GI tract, and it gets populated both from drinking the milk of the mother as well as any environmental things that happen. And so how that population process happens can affect their microflora. Our older dogs, they have a less resilient, less diverse microflora population, so we can see shifts there, where we see diarrhea more commonly in our senior dogs. If anybody has taken their dog on a road trip, certainly travel. Antibiotic administration: when we're killing off the infectious bacteria. Maybe they've got an upper respiratory infection, or they have a skin infection, when it's taking care of that infection, it can also alter the balance in the GI tract. So when that happens, what we want to do is look to probiotics. So the probiotics are those live bacteria that help to boost those beneficial bacteria numbers back up. Get the balance right. They are on the scales of good and potentially harmful bacteria, and get that gut to be healthy again. And they basically are probiotic. So again, this is the live bacteria. They act like our normal good bacteria, our normal natural microflora should act. So they create that border. They really legitimately, like, starve out the bad bacteria that's there. So they're like, I'm going to eat up all this good food first. You guys are just going to have to, you know, have my leftovers, which aren't going to be very many. The good bacteria and the probiotics produce short chain fatty acids. So those fatty acids not only serve as an energy source for the intestines, but they also, like the name implies, create an acidic environment, and that acidic environment is not very friendly to a lot of more pathogenic or bad bacteria, so they create an environment that's not great for those bad bacteria to thrive. So again, helps that those probiotics that live bacteria restores the balance in the GI tract. 

So what do we think about our probiotics and how accurate their labels are, right? We saw how inaccurate the labels for chondroitin and glucosamine were back in 2000. This is 2011: Scott Wiese, who's a nutritionist out of Canada, pulled some products off the shelf, 25 different ones. Looked to see: does the label match what's on the inside? So spoiler alert, most of the products actually contained fewer organisms than they claimed that they did on the outside of the pack, and inaccurate labels. There were, like, misspellings. They were making up species of bacteria that didn't even exist in the actual world of GI bacteria. So that was all over the place. There were only two that actually had labels that were accurate. So they had accurate labels, and they either met or exceeded those label claims. I will preempt the question that usually I get when I present this slide. So one of those was FortiFlora, which I am extremely happy and excited about. The other one was Prostora. So this was a probiotic that was made by IAMs. It's no longer on the market. So those were the two out of the 25 that Dr. Weiss had pulled that were accurate labels. All right, so we talked about the accuracy of the label. Now, how do we know that it actually works? So this was up in our research facility up in Alaska, and using sled dogs, which are a great model for natural stress that occurs, because exercise is a natural stressor for us and for our dogs. So these were sled dogs that were in training, and we know that through all of this, they can develop that acute stress diarrhea, which also may happen when you're transporting puppies and things of that nature. So they were divided into two different groups. And one group got a placebo, one group got the fortiflora species. And what we found is that the guys that had the placebo, you know, there were over half of them that developed soft or watery stools, versus almost 65% of the guys that were on FortiFlora maintained solid stool. So we know how important that is for absorption of their nutrients for their overall health. You know, 70% of the immune system is attached to the GI tract. So we know we need healthy, normal digestion for overall health, and especially for these guys that are doing these massive events like sled dog racing and things of that nature. So this was a good model for us to prove the effectiveness of FortiFlora in that space.

Metronidazole. So this is my public service announcement, also for the fact that Metronidazole should not be your first go-to when a dog develops stress/diarrhea, if they are otherwise happy, healthy, bouncing around. If they are sick and laid out, that's a different story. So this study was published back in 2017, which was not that long ago, but we have since really better understood how routine administration of Metronidazole can permanently alter the natural microflora of a dog, and it is now no longer accepted as the first line of treatment for dogs with acute stress diarrhea. Really it should be diet change, plus or minus a probiotic. So going to a highly digestible formula (a chicken and rice for a few days, something of that nature) and a probiotic to support that. But back when Dr. Fenimore did this study, Metronidazole was the gold standard of acute stress diarrhea, like we needed Metronidazole. So we partnered with Colorado State, and they did this study with shelter dogs, which, again, they're taking them in and who knows what their history is. And what we found was that there was actually a kind of a synergistic effect. So we had a group with Metronidazole alone, a group with Metronidazole in FortiFlora, and we wanted to see the difference. And again, we had to follow animal care standards at that point, which was: if a dog has diarrhea, they need metronidazole. That's the standard of care. Now, as I mentioned, fast forward, you know, eight years, we know better, and we could have done a group with just FortiFlora. So, you know, this study probably could be repeated. But I do just want to call out that there does appear to be a synergistic effect between Metronidazole and FortiFlora, where it helps to restore the healthy stool quality faster than just Metronidazole alone. But I would hold Metronidazole in my back pocket and not dole it out like it's candy for dogs that have acute stress diarrhea, again, because we are playing the long game for them and making sure we can maintain their healthy microflora balance. 

As I mentioned, the immune system—about 70% of it is in the GI tract. So this was looking at: Can FortiFlora and supplementing with FotiFlora for our puppies help to boost their immune system? I know y'all are acutely aware of what happens with our antibody levels when we vaccinate our puppies, and that whole, you know, goes up, and then it dips down and it comes back up, and that's why we go through these routine boosters with our puppies. And so what we found was the guys that were supplemented with fortiflora, they didn't have as big of a dip. It was a very small dip, post-vaccination. So it, again, lets us know that fortiflora does interact with the immune system. It does boost that immune system for them, helps them to maintain those levels and don't drop off later throughout the course of their first year there. So something to think about as you're raising your puppies, as you're sending them to their new families. I, for Journey, when she came into my home, she was on FortiFlora for her first year of life, just knowing it would be a great benefit to her overall immune system.

Then lastly, this one is kind of fun for flatulence. If we have any Bulldog breeders on the call, I have had three French Bulldogs in my life that have been family members, so I am very well aware of the amazingness that can come out of their backsides. And we did want to see, like, you know, is there support that we can provide through probiotics for flatulence? So we at Purina developed the FART Suit, which is the Flatulence Aroma Recovery Technology, so you can see these little Shih Tzus—which I also think are hilarious that we use those guys in this study—they are donning the FART Suits, and they look like they are totally unaffected by the fact that they're wearing these. But what you can't see is over the little tail head back here, that's where the little receptor is that measures the number of emissions and the sulfur gas concentrations of said emissions, which is what is offensive to human noses. And you can see they got to, like, run around and play just like they normally would. But all that to say, when they were supplemented with FortiFlora, it actually reduced the number of emissions, and it also reduced the offensive smell of said emissions. So something to think about if your dog or people are questioning about flatulence, this is just another place that FortiFlora can play a role. You know, it does have a long history of safe use. It has been studied on the human side since 1968; that's why it has that SF 68 strain that is there. And then we at Purina, we actually launched this. It was about 20 years ago now. Next year will be our 20-year anniversary. It is the number one researched probiotic that's on the market. It's also the number one veterinary recommended probiotic on the market. So it does come both in the little sachet, that sprinkle powder. It also comes in a tablet form. To me, that's also a nice benefit. If you have multiple dogs in the house, you can just kind of take a tablet, put it in there. It's the same concentration in the tablet as it is in the packet. There's no real difference there. And it does come in a cat formula as well, if you got cats at home. The powder can be used as a palatability enhancer. So that brown powder is basically like a palatability spray that we put as a top dress on the kibble. Instead, we dehydrated it and turned it into a powder. So that's another place where, sometimes, like, if you have the bitches that don't want to eat, and things of that nature, you can sprinkle that on the food and just kind of help, from a palatability enhancer standpoint, to help them to enjoy their food better. 

Okay, so I did want to call this out. This is a question I get a lot of like, “What's the difference between a prebiotic and a probiotic?” Because they sound very similar, but they actually do two very different things. So our prebiotic which you may see listed somewhere . . . Purina, was actually the very first company to ever put prebiotics in a food; that was actually back in 1989, so that's how long we've been looking at GI health. So the prebiotics that could be listed as like aleurone, chicory, inulin—those sorts of things—are the food for the natural microflora. The probiotics are the actual live bacteria that you would add to their diet. So there's our little prebiotics getting added in there. They feed beneficial bacteria so that they can grow in number. Our probiotics are the actual bacteria themselves. They help to restore the balance, get those more beneficial bacteria in the GI tract. I call that out to say, because now this is only available through your veterinarian, but there is a FortiFlora Pro that has that prebiotic, oftentimes, kind of “fiber” that's added there with the FortiFlora probiotic. So it's the dual action, almost. It's got the pre- and the probiotics mixed together. I get this question like, “When do you use what?” I use FortiFlora Pro as, kind of like my second line, or if it's a dog that has chronic GI upset, chronic intermittent, loose stool, and we can't quite wrap our brains around what's causing it, that's when I'll reach for FortiFlora Pro. I start usually, especially if it's in a case of acute stress diarrhea or travel or antibiotic use, I'm using the regular over the counter FortiFlora. And again, it's still the same bug that's in there, still the same bacteria and the same concentration. It's just the FortiFlora Pro has a little bit added prebiotics to it. 

All right, we're going to shift gears a little. We're going to talk anxiety, because it is in a lot of our pets out there. Now, this study was from 2013 so I would say post-Covid. We probably need to do an updated. We need our behaviorists, our veterinary behaviorists out there, to do some more research, because I bet this number is a lot higher now in 2025 than it was in 2013 but still. We're looking at almost one in three dogs that suffer from some sort of anxiety. So almost 23 million dogs in the United States alone. I talk to owners so much about this, and it is a big concern. It's reasons why dogs get returned to shelters because they have anxiety, and either they're tearing apart the house or—I had my last Frenchie. He was a hot mess. Lot of mistakes were made early in his puppyhood before I got him. That's the reason I got him, and it was one of those where, like, because he had such high anxiety towards any other dogs, except for Finn, who lived in our house, I would have to walk him at like, 4:30 in the morning, when I would be guaranteed to probably not see another dog. Sometimes your whole life has to start to shift, because you have this dog that has anxiety that's there, and it really erodes at our core belief at Purina that people and pets are Better Together, and when they bond, life is richer. So for us, we felt like a very company/personal responsibility to look into, how can we better that relationship? How can we better the lives of the dogs that have anxiety? And so there are solutions out there right now. If you've had an anxious dog in your life, you're probably familiar with a good number of these, and some of them work well. A lot of them, you have to combine together. And so we were looking, again, at just more opportunities. Can we work through a nutritional solution for these dogs that have anxiety, and I do want to call out at the bottom down here, this is at indoorpet.osu.edu. It's a website that's run—it was by Tony Buffington, he has since retired—but Ohio State University's Veterinary School, and it is great at enrichment ideas and opportunities for our indoor pets. And I know sometimes our dogs go out, but it's still a really great resource to keep in the back of your mind. 

Can probiotics help with anxiety? We know what FortiFlora can do from a GI and immune health standpoint, but there's some research on the mouse side of things, looking at this bacteria called B longum that actually helped to reduce anxious behaviors in mice. You know, we know that there's some on the human side that's been investigated, but again, we want to make sure that what happens in people/in mice, is the same in our dogs. We don't just want to apply what we think is a blanket cure all, but there really is that gut brain connection. So if you've ever been like, “Oh, I just had this gut feeling about something,” it is. It's the microbiome in your GI tract talking to your brain through your vagus nerve. So they send out these little neurotransmitters that are like little Twitter messages going up your vagus nerve to your brain. Your brain sends some messages back down to your gut. So there is really this strong connection that has been established. And what we have seen is that in those anxious dogs, the microbiome is a little bit different, and those neurotransmitters are a little bit different. So are there ways we can use probiotics, like they have in mice, some in people? Can we do that for our dogs as well? So we did this study out at our Pet Care Center in St. Joseph, Missouri, and it was 12 anxious Labradors, or 24 anxious Labradors. You know, they were fed a balanced diet, then they had a washout period, and then they had the diet that was enriched with the probiotic B longum. And then we flipped them around as well to see, making sure that our findings were valid, depending on the order of the administration, and those sorts of things. And so then we looked at three different buckets, if you will: so our day to day behavior. So when they're not like getting tested, the actual tests, which you can see here, it's not anything invasive. It's like turning on the music, actually turning off the music, and they have to sit in silence, which sometimes is hard for me. So I can relate to the Labradors. The startling, right? So think about like the FedEx man ringing the doorbell, something new they haven't seen before, a stranger. And then leaving them by themselves. And then we also looked at some physiologic things. So we looked at what's happening with their heart rate? What's happening with their salivary cortisol? So cortisol is a great marker for what's happening when people and dogs or cats are stressed. So here are the things, and there's also ways, through thermal imaging, that we could see if they were getting hot, an increase in temperature can also indicate that they're getting stressed. And then here's what we saw when they were supplemented with the B longum. They had a decrease in their everyday problem behaviors of barking, spinning, pacing. They had a better stress response, so lower cortisol levels in their saliva and greater heart rate variability. And what that means is their heart rate goes up and then it comes down. So they get excited and they calm down. They get excited and they calm down. And that's really what shows, kind of a resilience, if you will. So it shows that their body has the powers to adapt and like, “Oh, I'm going to get excited because somebody knocked on the door, but I'm not going to go crazy and stay at an 11. I'll get excited and then I'm going to calm down.” And so we saw all of these changes in these three buckets in a positive way for these dogs when they were supplemented with that B longum, so enter Calming Care.

It is a different bacteria than what is in FortiFlora, so they act, again, in very different ways, but still comes with that same confidence level in the research to support it in the safety, quality, and efficacy that is there. It does come in a dog and a cat formula. Got the cat research, but I didn't belabor that today. So here are some of those claims. I do want to make sure we call out that this is not a situational anxiety helper. So if your dog is afraid of fireworks, it's not like you can take Calming Care and put it on their food on the third of July, and on the Fourth of July, it's going to take effect. This is something you want to give every day, and it takes about six weeks for the changes in their GI tract to carry over into their behavior changes as well. That's one thing I do. Just want to make sure it's not going to be like a Trazodone or other pharmaceuticals that act in the moment there. It really is something that should be given chronically for these dogs. 

All right, real quickly, because I know I got so excited talking about GI tract and all of the cool things that we can do with the microbiome in the GI tract. But I do, of course, want to talk about osteoarthritis in our dogs, because it is a huge problem. Again, this is not super new research. This is almost 30 years old, and the research says 20% of dogs over the age of one have some sort of osteoarthritis, and I would argue that that number has probably increased, especially with the increase in obesity in our pets. But I won't go down that rabbit hole today, because we're talking about supplements. You know, osteoarthritis is a super common condition. It has a whole host of factors that go in there. There's certainly breeds that are predisposed to it. There is age, as that age and body weight increase, our rate of osteoarthritis and severity increases. And certainly one of the main contributors, I would say, is cruciate disease in our dogs. And again, this research is 20 years old, but it is an expensive proposition in the cruciate ligament space. That number is probably three times as much as it was in 2003, and so when there is that insult to the joint, we know there is going to be arthritis that ensues from that injury. 

This is my friendly reminder of the Purina Lifespan Study. If you haven't seen it yet, this is, by far and away, I think, one of the landmark studies in the entire veterinary industry. But also what has endeared me to this company even before I worked for them. So this was our lifespan study: 48 Labrador Retriever puppies that were followed throughout their lifespan. One group got as much as they wanted, three times a day to eat. The other group was restricted by 25% calories of what their paired littermate ate the day before. And what I do want to call out is like there was an extension of their health span. So it was three years later in life that they needed to be treated for arthritis. And then certainly the kicker in their overall lifespan, you know, these guys that were lean-fed on average lived almost two years longer than their paired littermate. So when we think about, from a supplement standpoint, you know, if we can help to increase their health span and their lifespan just by keeping them lean, perhaps we don't need all of the joint supplementation, because we will help to reduce that risk of osteoarthritis significantly for them. There's how we look at ideal body condition. 

Purina Institute is a great website, a great resource to find all of the published studies that I've talked about today as well. So when we are supplementing for joint health and managing that arthritis, obviously we want to help to increase their mobility, or at least stabilize their decrease in their mobility, depending on where we're able to get in on that joint supplement timeline for them. We want to support their cartilage. We do want to help to dampen that flame of inflammation, that fire of inflammation that is in their joint, so enter Purina Joint Care. It's got glucosamine, it's got collagen and chondroitin. It also has hyaluronic acid and Omega-3 fatty acids in there. So it's coming at it from all of those three different angles of “We want to support the cartilage. We want to help increase their mobility.” The Omega-3s help to, again, dampen down that fire of osteoarthritis in their joints. So this kind of gives you an overall. I do want to call out, you know, it's not terribly high in calories, but again, something to think about if you have an overweight pet; this is going to add to their bottom line, if they are a medium to large breed dog, by about 20 calories. So this is what our feeding recommendations there. I will say, you know, this is something, if there is a puppy that you know is already predisposed, has had some injury, broke a leg, something of that nature, I would highly recommend starting them on this supplement, because we know arthritis is in their future, even if we can't see it currently on X-ray. And so this will give them the building blocks to have that healthier cartilage and lower fire in their joints later in life. 

All right, real quickly, to close this out, I don't want to forget about skin, because it is our largest organ. It's probably one of the things I get asked about the most is: “I've got an itchy dog. My dog is itchy here, blah, blah, blah. Is it the diet? Is it the environment, all of that?” So supporting the skin, because it is the largest organ and also can get really irritating, which can interfere, again, with that human/animal bond, if they are up scratching all night, we want to offer some support through supplements for those dogs who need just a little extra boost. This is a very simplified version of what the needs of the skin are, but it is mostly made of protein. So sometimes I do start looking in that conversation of looking at diet, and if they are having good digestion and good absorption of those nutrients, because the skin is a high demand organ of protein for their hair coat as well. But these are, you know, some other important factors, Omega-6s, Omega-3s, vitamin E, zinc, that all are part of the building blocks of a healthy skin and coat. So our essential fatty acids. So these, oftentimes, we do know both, I think, Omega-3s people automatically relate to anti-inflammatory, and they think those are the ways to go when you're trying to support skin but Omega-6s do play a very important role as well, because if we don't have enough, it makes those skin cells brittle, so they don't have a nice wave and a resilience factor to them. So we do need to have a balance of both omega threes and Omega sixes to help to create that really strong skin barrier to the rest of the world. Zinc is important not only in wound healing, but it also helps to signal immune response in the skin. It's important in collagen formation, as well as what I like to call—it's kind of like the glue. It makes little cofactors that help the skin cells to stick together better, almost like that brick wall. So it's like the mortar of the brick wall is what zinc helps to support. So again, very critical to healthy skin and hair coat. So enter skin care. We just did recently launch this, and it's got all those great building blocks that I mentioned earlier. It's got Omega-6s and Omegs-3s. It's got an additional boost of zinc that's there, some vitamin E and antioxidants to help to kind of mitigate that inflammation that can happen. And then certainly collagen, as well, as we know that is critical to our skin. It does come in those little chews. They're supposed to be given once a day, and can be oftentimes used as a treat as well. So with that, I think I've got like three minutes left, but that is our rodeo of supplements in the Wild Wild West of supplement world, and so I guess I've got some time for questions if folks have them.

Dr. Nate Ritter  46:01

We did have some. Thank you so much, Dr. Lobos. that was a great presentation. A lot of the questions we had relating to dietary supplements. So we'll try to stay on focus here with the different supplements that you spoke about. Question relating to nursing and pregnant dogs. Have you known these to be used with those animals? Is their research relating to, you know, safety with the pregnant or nursing animals? I would love if you could speak to that.

Dr. RuthAnn Lobos DVM, CCRT, CVAT  46:27

Sure. It's funny; that comes up frequently because on the back of the label—so the NASC quality seal you may see, and I would highly recommend looking for that no matter what supplement brand you use. This is one of the councils that helps to kind of set the standards and compliance level for supplements. So if they've got this, that's one tick of the box of being a good supplement company. If they've got this. There, you know, certainly are other things you should look for as well: a phone number and third party guarantees and things of that nature. But the NASC—I laugh because they call pregnant and lactating bitches “a health condition.” I mean, having reproduced, myself, I guess that it was a health condition. But it sounds kind of funny to me to say that, because I think of, like, diabetes or things of that nature. So technically, if they have the NASC seal, it will probably also likely have a statement on there that says “Has not been tested in lactating and pregnant bitches.” That is because they have a standard that theirs are supplements to be used in healthy pets, and they qualify being pregnant as a health condition. So all of that to say, these have been used. Our products have been used safely in pregnant and lactating bitches, but we—because we also comply with the NASC—we have to put that label, that statement, on the bottom of the bag. But that does not mean it's unsafe. So kind of a confusing answer, but hopefully that helps a little bit to sort through the noise of NASC and also being pregnant as a health condition.

Dr. Nate Ritter  48:06

No, I think that clarification is really helpful. Maybe time for one more here. Like I said, the vast majority were nutritional supplements. But we did have a question: Can supplements be given lifelong or for the vast majority of them, are they given kind of acutely relating to whether it be a diarrhea or joints or what have you? I thought that was a—I know different, obviously, for all the different products—but an interesting question.

Dr. RuthAnn Lobos DVM, CCRT, CVAT  48:29

Yeah. Great question. I would say, you know, some dogs may need supplements their whole life, and so it may be, especially in the joint space. We've studied those for long-term. And Journey (my puppy), she's gonna get joint care her whole life, because she is a crazy puppy, and you know, we've done a lot of very athletic things, even in her first year and a half. So things like that, where, if they're going to be active their whole lives, having them to have that additional support, or if they tend to be dogs who are a little itchy or more sensitive to changes in seasonality or the environment—you know, they may need a skin supplement their whole lives. But it's also like, in the case of GI, it may be more situational that, “oh, there are times where they're more stressed,” or “we're going to shows,” or “we're doing these events together, and that is, you know, stressful for them.” So I'm going to give them FortiFlora, make sure their digestive tract is nice and healthy, so they're absorbing the nutrients. And then in the off season, or when we're not doing those things, maybe I pull that back. Again, I'll use my guys as an example. I also do a lot of trail running. So on the days that I'm doing trail running, they are off leash running within eyesight, but still off leash, doing fun things. And oftentimes we come across wildlife feces. So on those days I know I'm like, “Okay, they're probably going to make interesting dietary choices. I'm giving them FortiFlora the day before and the day of, and maybe the day after, depending on what I have seen them come across.” Yes, and then in other times, you know, they don't get FortiFlora on a regular basis.

Dr. Nate Ritter  50:03

Amazing. Thank you. Yeah, I think you know, obviously, discuss with your veterinarian what products will work for your lifestyle, like you said, with what you're going to be getting into with your pups. So thank you. Dr. Lobos. That was fantastic. Nicole, I will turn it over to you.

Nicole Engelman  50:16

Amazing. Thank you so much, Dr. Lobos. Thank you so much again for doing this for us. We are so thrilled to have you back. Thank you to our audience for joining us, for asking such amazing questions. We love having you here, and usually I leave everyone with a preview of what webinar we have coming up next. But I'm not going to do that this time, because we actually have a very exciting announcement coming out on Friday. If you've been part of our community for a long time, and you know it comes up in October at Good Dog, you might have a feeling of what this is. So lots of canine health related things coming soon, but I won't spoil anything else. So keep an eye out for our Friday newsletter and on Facebook, because we will be announcing everything then. And so until then! Thank you again, Dr. Lobos. Thank you all for joining and I hope everyone has a great rest of the day. Bye, everyone. 

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