Episode 20: What happened to Ladybug – Part 2!

00:00:33 Glenn:        Welcome back to Natural Health for People and Pets. I'm co-host of the show, Glen Cooke, and I'm gonna introduce the host of the show, Narelle Cooke.

00:00:40 Narelle:      Hello everyone. 

00:04:38 Narelle:    So the reason I thought we would talk about what happened to Ladybug Part 2, and if you haven't listened to Part 1, go back to the very beginning. I think it was Episode 2 that we spoke about Ladybug's back injury and her spinal surgery, and the ordeal that followed on from that over the months, and now over a year it's been,  

00:04:56 Glenn:       And a reasonable success story around it as well, from something that was at the time very emotionally compounding for both you and I. It was a very touch and go moment with Ladybug when she originally caused herself a mischief and had to be rushed into the animal emergency centre during the very first Covid outbreak. But you can, as Narelle said, hear all about this on the first episode. So if you go back and listen to what happened to Ladybug, you'll know the entire story and the sequence of events that happened around that. Long story short and good news is that she has recovered far beyond what the expectation was, primarily because of the very good work that Narelle did. She went into hyper research mode and started to research, looking into ways to rejuvenate nerves and cells and so forth that were damaged during the operation and during the injury itself. Also, thank you to a massive thank you to Neil Barnsley, who's just amazing at animal physio and chiropractic  

00:05:55 Narelle:        And acupuncture.  

00:05:56 Glenn:        Yeah. Just you know, a great wealth of knowledge, three generations in and just an amazing guy. And also to our vet as well, Dr. Jane Rickards from…  

00:06:05 Narelle:        Hills District Vet  

00:06:06 Glenn:        Hills District Vet.  

00:06:07 Narelle:       So from all of that, Ladybug's survived to live another day where she can do some more damage to herself.  

00:06:12 Glenn:        And she did.  

00:06:12 Narelle:        So the reason I wanted to talk about this today is because I'm often asked, what do I do with my own animals in terms of diet and supplements, and treatments when things go wrong? So I thought I'd just share this as a bit of a case study if your dog goes through something similar, things that you can think about doing to help heal their recovery from that. Like all dog emergencies, this started on a Sunday morning. It's always the way, it's always when the vets aren't open and your only option is an emergency animal hospital. So we woke up one Sunday morning, it's a month ago now. And Ladybug was just vomiting and vomiting. She just vomited from  6:00am and pretty much didn't stop till almost midday, the poor little thing. Didn't wanna eat her food, which is the primary red flag for us.  

00:06:59 Glenn:        It's a massive red flag for Ladybug. If she doesn't wanna touch food, like she'll go through a brick wall to get to food,  

00:07:04 Narelle:        You'll soon learn just how driven she is to eat, anything. I didn't know what to do because she was in a pretty bad way. She didn't wanna eat, she didn't wanna drink. And the vomiting was just consistent. So I actually came across, it's called Green Cross Vets and they offer 24-7 online vet consult. So anyone in Australia, if you didn't know that, I didn't know that until I rang the animal emergency hospital, and they said, “Hey, maybe you should speak to these people first and save yourself some money”. Which was really lovely of them. So given Ladybug didn't have a temperature, she didn't have diarrhoea, she'd poo’ed normally, there was no blood in her poo. So the vet pretty much said to monitor her, because if we took her to the emergency hospital, that's all they would do for the first 24 hours. Just give her fluids potentially and just keep an eye on her.  

00:07:48 Glenn:        And charge her triple the price.  

00:07:49 Narelle:       Yes. So we did that. We just kept her home and we just monitored her and you know, she was just miserable, the poor little thing. So I took her to my own vet, Monday, and she had a full checkover. Bloods were done. They all came back normal, you know, her pancreatic enzymes came back normal. Her temperature was normal. The vet couldn't feel anything on palpation, which is just surprising. So we took her home and she still wasn't eating, she was just looking more and more miserable. And you know, when dogs, the pain kicks in and they sort of curl up and shiver. Ladybug was just wanting to hide away in a crate.  

00:08:21 Glenn:        Well, for me that’s the telltale sign with Ladybug that she's in a heap of pain, because she doesn't express it vocally. Like some dogs will whimper and whine and carry on. She's stoic, but she just goes and hides, like she'll try and hide under the bed, or she'll hide in her crate. Like she won't sleep on her main bed, which she does all the time, every other day of the year, that's where she's on her bed in front of a little heater. However, she would go and hide under the desk, or she'd be in a little corner tucked away, and that's always an indication that she's trying to outrun the pain.  

00:08:52 Narelle:        Yeah, poor thing. So we could see that she was obviously getting worse. We took her back to the vet on Tuesday, this time the bloods did show a mild pancreatitis. So the vet thought, well that's probably it. That's probably all that’s upsetting her. But the challenge with pancreatitis is that there's not one specific test that's conclusive for it. So it can make diagnosis really hard because sometimes the blood tests do come back as normal. But luckily our vet's really thorough and she didn't wanna assume that that was all it was. So…  

00:09:20 Glenn:       With a little insistence from me.  

00:09:22 Narelle:        Yeah, and because we know Bug so well and we know her behaviour, we insisted that our vet do some x-rays. So the x-rays came back with something random showing, but none of us, and the vet showed me the images.  

00:09:36 Glenn:        Images yeah.  

00:09:37 Narelle:       And you know, we are racking our brains. I'm thinking what random household item or what could it be? And we just couldn't figure out, based on the shape of what we were seeing on the x-rays, what she could have eaten.  

00:09:46 Glenn:       I thought it was a guitar pick at one stage.  

00:09:48 Narelle:        It just had this really sort of triangular, and the density of it. The vet couldn't, she's like, it's not bone, but it's still dense. And we just couldn't figure it out.  

00:09:55 Glenn:        Then we thought it was a bit of a Nylabone that she could have chewed off. So the vet took the Nylabone and put it on the X-ray slides just to see what that looked like under an X-ray.  

00:10:05 Narelle:       Just to compare the  image. So that wasn't it. So the vet said we can either send her off somewhere else and get an endoscopy or further testing done to see what's down there. But at the end of the day, whatever, she's gonna have to be opened up because it's not moving. Like it's not shifting. She did X-rays the following Wednesday as well? I think. So she did the first X-rays Tuesday and then she did follow up X-rays Wednesday to see if it hadn't shifted, and it hadn't. So we're just like, okay, Bug has a habit of eating things, just open her up and let's see what's in there, and oh my goodness.  

00:10:38 Glenn:       Unbelievable. What actually came out of such a small dog, like if it came out of a large dog, you'd be concerned. Like let's say for example, it was in the stomach of a Rottweiler or a German Shepherd sized dog, you would think, wow, that's a lot of material to be in that dog. But to pull it out of a tiny little French Bulldog,  

00:10:55 Narelle:        You will see photos I'll post. You're gonna see a photo of what came out of Ladybug.  

00:11:00 Glenn:       To reduce the mystery. What came out of her was, I had some open toed sandals. Sandals, sort of flip flop sort of thing. So they're a hybrid of both. And Ladybug had eaten the plastic sheath that was on the top of them. That was probably like six months ago she ate that, because I knew that she tore it up and I found bits and pieces of them in the study. She actually got into a little alcove where we go outside and I had them there and she'd ripped them up and I thought, oh! I didn't think anything of it. I just put 'em in the bin, 'cause I thought, oh, you're a little turd,  riving up my shoes. So I put them away. So that was one component of what she ate. And then we found a part of another part of the indestructible bed  

00:11:40 Narelle:        Purina, I think.  

00:11:41 Glenn:        A Purina bed.  

00:11:43 Narelle:        Yeah, non destructible bed. So she'd eaten the whole handle off. And it was so funny because when the vet rang us, they're like, oh, does Purina mean anything to you? The label was still crisp. Like you could still clearly read the brand. So it was the handle of the bed. The vet gave us an outline of what she'd pulled out and she actually saved it, which was great 'cause literally we wouldn't have believed it. The actual size of the objects, and with the sandals, even though the material was sort of a flexible rubber plastic when they were actually on the sandals, I think because they'd been in her gut for so long and been exposed to, you know, all the acids in that environment that when the vet removed them it was like rock hard plastic with like razor sharp edges. 

00:12:22 Glenn:        Oh, it was terrible. It was, it was unimaginable how hard it had become and how sharp and just nasty. Yeah, it was, that's the best way to describe it,just nasty.  

00:12:32 Narelle:        The vet couldn't believe that she hadn't shredded her internals. And it was lucky that the vet made the call to do the surgery when she did, or you know, that we insisted, because when she did open her up the corner of that sharp plastic had just pierced the intestine. So there was like a couple of millimetres,  

00:12:49 Glenn:        I think it was the bowel, wasn't it? 

00:12:51 Narelle:         It was just, just about to puncture the bowels. So the vet said, you know, if it hadn't been left till the next day to do the surgery, she would've just gone septic and she would've died. She wouldn't have made it. That was really fortunate. So Bug was in the vet for most of the week. We didn't pick her up till Friday. So she pretty much hadn't eaten from Saturday until Friday, which just highlights the resilience of dogs and how long they can go without eating. Because she didn't, she obviously lost condition, but nothing to the extent that I thought she would for a small dog not eating for a week. So that was really surprising. But what was funny, the vets kept her in there to monitor her for a couple of days after the surgery and they were trying to encourage her to eat, and they were using one of the vet prescription low fat tin foods and Bug just wasn't having a bar of it.  

00:13:36 Narelle:       She just didn't wanna touch it. So they actually rang us up and said, “Hey, do you happen to have anything that you can bring in that bug might wanna eat?”. Now luckily I have a chest freezer full of all the different varieties of patties and the kangaroo patty is only 4% fat. So remember, you know, it's not just the surgery that we're trying to deal with. It's also that mild pancreatitis that is complicating matters. So she needed to be on a low fat diet. So the kangaroo patties were perfect. So Glen and I ended up taking our own feeding there for Bug and she actually did eat it, which was really good.  

00:14:13 Glenn:       So there's another insert that has to be mentioned here too. This was when Round 2 of Covid just started to break out as well. Even though we were allowed to go into the vets at this stage, we had to wear masks and we had to make appointments. And the very first time she ever went in, we weren't actually even allowed in the building. This time we were allowed in the building, but it was round 2 of the Delta variant just coming into Australia and turning it into the wonderful experience that we're all going through at the moment.  

00:14:39 Narelle:       What are we up to? Just over 2 months in strict lockdown. So that was Bug's vet stay in surgery and that was the ordeal that she went through. So I guess I wanted to talk about now if you have a dog that goes through a trauma, or a surgery, or has pancreatitis, what are some of the things that you can do. With Bug, she had a big surgery.

00:15:00 Glenn:        Two and a half hours.  

00:15:01 Narelle:       Yeah, long for a little dog to be under for that long. But the amount that she needed to be opened up, like dissected, to remove all of the material was quite extensive according to what the vet was telling us. It was so important that she be on just multiple small meals every day, just to reduce the burden on her gut and her intestines, and her pancreas as well. Just so it would give them the time that they needed to heal without compromising the tissue and minimizing scarring. So I had Bug on four meals a day of kangaroo patty. And the other reason, if you are feeding low fat foods for pancreatitis, for example, most low fat foods are also very, very low in calories. So that's another reason that you need to feed more often to make sure that they're meeting their calorie requirements.  

00:15:47 Narelle:        Because when dogs go through a trauma, all of their bodily biochemical processes are upregulated, so their need for nutrition just skyrockets. And particularly for high quality highly bioavailable protein sources. So that's where raw food really has an advantage. But yet lots of small meals. So I guess I had her on the kangaroo patties for a week, which were 4% fat and then I shifted her on to the wellbeing patties, which is 6% fat. And then I started adding in the goat, which is 9% fat. And I kept it with those three for the first month. But because her pancreatitis was mild, I'm quite confident that within the next month I'll start putting her back on her normal diet. But that's really individual, depending on the severity of the pancreatitis, if you've got a dog that's going through that. But when we're talking about diet following surgery or trauma, it just makes me so grateful that I've had all of our Fenchies, and I guess even the Shepherds now from when we've got them on a raw food diet because, the body, like it's such a trauma and it's such a burden and the body needs so much just good nutrition to heal and recover fully.  

00:16:52 Narelle:        And the thought of a dog being on kibble its whole life, and then having to undergo that trauma and needing good nutrition. Because if you haven't listened to my episode on the dangers of kibble, just by the way that kibble is manufactured, there's just no avoiding the fact that it's very inflammatory. So it creates a lot of inflammation in the body. It creates what's called the Maillard Reaction. And downstream from that you get advanced glycation in products and acrylamide formation. So these are really toxic compounds. So for a dog whose body is already under such a burden of trying to heal, and then it's also got the burden of this inflammatory diet, it just makes me cringe. So I guess that's something people need to think about when their dog's in that situation, you've really got to give them the best nutrition possible.  

00:17:41 Glenn:       Absolutely. The other thing we had to mention too is that when we got her home, one of the recovery messages that the vet was waiting for was when she would poo. And it took her about three days, which we're really concerned about 'cause Bug poos like clockwork two times a day. She has got super bowels. She'll eat, she'll process for a couple of hours and then she's making little brown nuggets everywhere.  

00:18:04 Narelle:        And let me just give you a heads up. When you start feeding a dog four meals a day, expect a lot of poo. Like, she's just a poo making machine at the moment. It just never ends. But I am moving her back to three meals a day because she's put her condition back on and she doesn't need it.  

00:18:20 Glenn:        And all the little treats she's getting on the side as well.  

00:18:23 Narelle:        So in terms of supplements, now I'm sort of in a unique position that I've got a whole clinic full of supplements for humans and dogs. So I've got, you know, everything on hand that I need, when I need it. But the main thing that I put Bug on, you know, as soon as she got home, was the VetActiv8 Joint Care. So that's the liquid turmeric product, or I should say it's actually seven different curcuminoids, which are the active constituents in turmeric. And we did a whole episode on that too. So the difference between turmeric and curcumin. So definitely go back and listen to that if you haven't already. So she was on that twice a day. And the reason I went for the liquid is because you pop it in the mouth like between the cheek and the teeth, it actually avoids the whole digestive process because turmeric and curcumin by nature is poorly absorbed. So it just helped maximise getting as much of that goodness into her bloodstream as possible to help reduce inflammation and support healing. I had her on my Pure Milk Thistle herbal to just to help her body recover from all the drugs that she was on, and the anaesthetic that she needed with the surgery. And like Glen said, her surgery was two and a half hours, which for a 13 kilo dog. 

00:19:27 Glenn:        It's massive  

00:19:28 Narelle:       She was probably less than that at the time. And even with humans, I've read that anaesthesia, the drug, stays in the system for, one paper said a week, another paper said months and months. So you know, I dunno what the situation is with dogs, but anything you can do to sort of support the liver to process all of that is gonna be beneficial. I had her on Antinol Rapid, because I was feeding her four times a day. I had her on four capsules of Antinol Rapid, so one with each meal. It might seem counterintuitive to some people to add a source of fat to a dog that's got pancreatitis and needs to avoid fat, and have low fat. But you know, the addition of omega three fats has been shown to be hugely beneficial to dogs with pancreatitis.  

00:20:10 Narelle:        And even though Bug doesn't need to be on like that higher dose long term, some dogs with chronic pancreatitis, they need to be on a low fat diet for years and years and that can put them at a high risk of deficiencies of the fat soluble vitamins. So vitamin A, D, E and K, which are all really important for immune function, for skin and coat health and things like that. So Omega 3 fat is really important for pancreatitis and just again for the body to heal. I had her on a digestive enzyme to help ease the workload of her pancreas and I just used the human one, the Eagle Vegie Digestaid, which is really good. I had her on a B vitamin complex because again, all the biochemical processes are upregulated and the B vitamins are critical for so much that happens in the body.  

00:20:55 Narelle:      She was on a collagen powder twice a day, and this might all sound like a lot, but remember this is a little dog that went through a massive trauma and everything I gave her really compliments and there's nothing really overlapping or excessive. So the collagen powder. And then I also had her on my herbal tonic tissue healing and repair twice a day as well. So that's got things like Gotu kola, grape seed extract, rose hips and the maritime pine bark. And they're all awesome for supporting collagen formation, for reducing scar formation, and promoting cellular regeneration. So they're all good. Had her on the probiotic, because she was on a lot of antibiotics, again supporting gut health, really important. That's sort of everything I gave her supplement wise for the first month. And now that we've hit that four weeks, I'll start to pull back on the amount of those and the frequency.  

00:21:44 Narelle:        So rather than three or four times a day, she might get them, you know, once or twice a day. But what I have introduced now, now that I've pulled back on those other things, is my Relax terpene blend. If you're not familiar with that. So terpenes, they're just natural plant compounds and the best known one would probably be curcumin. So terpenes have a wellness effect by acting on the body's own endocannabinoid system. So that's what CBD is acting on. When people use that, they work differently to CBD obviously, but they're still working on that same system in the body. So the Relax product contains a formulated blend of three key terpene in combination with hemp seed oil to deliver the desired results. So the three terpenes are Mercene, the D-limonene and Linalool. So not easy to say, but each of those have been scientifically shown to reduce stress and anxiety, to relieve pain, to act as a mild sedative.  

00:22:41 Narelle:       They act as a muscle relaxant, they stabilise mood. And you know, there's actually lots of other actions and benefits that people can read about on my website with those. But the reason I'm starting to give that to Ladybug now is, we need to just bring her down a notch. Ladybug is so high drive, and so manic when she gets worked up. So that's sort of what triggers her to eat random household items. Like when she gets really overexcited, she will just tear into anything and just swallow anything. She actually had a major bowel surgery four years ago when she ate a massive chunk of that plastic hessian dog bed material. So that was another week in the emergency hospital and that was huge as well. I don't know how she swallows all this stuff. I'm hoping that with the Relax blend, and we've already noticed a difference. Remember you didn't know I had her on it and you're like, “Oh Bugs…”, you made a comment that she wasn't, I can't remember what you said now..  

00:23:34 Glenn:        Just that she wasn't as hyperactive and didn't have that level of anxious energy when she kicked in the drive. And the other one that we noticed it on too, was Pixel, that she wasn't picking on Opie as much.  

00:23:45 Narelle:       Pixel's one of our other female French Bulldogs. 

00:23:48 Glenn:       Which is Ladybug's daughter.  

00:23:50 Narelle:       And she's definitely her mother's daughter. She can be a bit of a bully to Opie, our male. Also known as Egg.

00:23:56 Glenn:       Anybody who sees my little silly videos of him headbutting the cat, that's Eggy.

00:24:00 Narelle:        So I've had Pixel on a combination of the Relax terpene blend and my Stress and Anxiety herbal tonic. And that's been really lovely for taking the edge off her. And I've had great feedback from clients with that combination of the Relax and the Stress and Anxiety for their dogs as well.  

00:24:17 Glenn:       Lauren and Buster.  

00:24:18 Narelle:       Yeah,that sort of helps to ease that separation anxiety in that instance, which is really good. And we probably should say, when I was talking about the Vet Activ8 Joint Care, which is the liquid version of their curcumin products. Really fascinating. Like Glen and I both noticed something separately.  

00:24:37 Glenn:       I was waiting for this to get brought up because it's very interesting.  

00:24:40 Narelle:       So maybe tell what you noticed first  

00:24:42 Glenn:        And then you tell what you noticed. Okay, so when Ladybug, after her surgery, and after we were told that she'd never walk and there were a lot of complications that were going on there. We did understand one thing, that she probably would never regain proper sensation in her back legs. So because of the trauma that happened during her original operation, we came to accept that she would have, well we learned that she would be able to walk, but we also learned that she probably would never be able to feel and never have true function in her back legs again. However, something interesting happened the other night, which was, I've never seen it before, is that, when she dreams or whenever anybody watches their dogs dreaming, they can see that their dogs will get muscle twitches and spasms. Like the ears will flicker the dog generally looks like it's running on the spot or twitching.  

00:25:30 Glenn:       But Ladybug does a lot of that. Like every night her ears will flicker, she'll twitch, she'll make little grumble noises, and most people who have got a dog have seen their dog do it before. The one thing that I've noticed about her since last year, since she had the surgery for her spine, was that her back legs didn't twitch. Probably from about her loins up, she could still move and her skin would twitch and flicker and move around the place. But I would notice that she wouldn't get muscle fire in her back legs. That is until the other night I heard her making noises and I always turn around to check on her, just to make sure she's okay. And I was in my office working, I turned around and she was on the bed and for the first time ever I saw muscle flare and twitches in her back legs.  

00:26:11 Glenn:       Something that I haven't seen before. Like even her toes were curling a little bit, but this wasn't happening together. I could see each muscle in each leg, from her knee up to her thigh clenching and twitching. And I hadn't seen that before. And I just happened to mention it to Narelle the next morning. I said, “You'll never guess what, I've just seen this phenomenon happen with Ladybug that I haven't seen before”. And Narelle kind of looked at me with a sceptical look and said, yeah, but you know, like that might be this, that and the other. But when I explained it to her, she said, oh yeah, that does sound unique. Like that's different. And I said, it is, it's entirely different to anything that I've seen her do before. So then I think it was the day after, Narelle took her out onto the oval in our backyard to go and have a little walk around, and just have a stretch of her legs and so forth. And then she came back in and told me this story.  

00:26:59 Narelle:        Whenever Ladybug’s outside to toilet, or just to get out and about, I mean she can walk, but before her spinal surgery, whenever she would wee, she's one of those dogs that would really violently kick the grass in the soil up behind her. And she hasn't obviously been able to do that since her surgery. So she was walking along and an insect, I dunno if it was a bee, but it was something flying around, hit her in the side of the head. and she went on to like, she didn't fall over, but she sort of lent over onto one hip and she actually lifted her other leg partway up towards her head. And I knew she was trying to, she wanted to scratch her head with her back foot. She's never been able to control that back foot to do anything like that since her surgery.  

00:27:35 Glenn:        She tried to do that before when she had a bit of an ear thing a couple of months ago. She just couldn't get a leg up to her head. So she was just shaking her head a lot. But yeah, when you came in and told me that, I thought, wow, that's just incredible. 

00:27:47 Narelle:       For her to will her back leg even halfway towards her head was just phenomenal. We have not seen anything like that since her surgery. So when I was thinking about, you know, well what's changed. The only thing that I've really done differently, because since her spinal surgery, I mean she was on a lot of supplements, but everything that I've mentioned today, she was on for most of last year except for the Vet Activ8 Joint Care and I've really upped that dose. So she was getting that two to three times a day initially. She's still on it twice a day. I don't know for sure and no one will ever know for sure, but that is really the only supplement that's new to Ladybug. And all I can think of is it's doing something in the body.  

00:28:27 Glenn:        Something's happening. And I mean, as we've suggested before, neither one of us is into the real woo. We're not real woo woo people. So we kind of look at it from the scientific aspect of it. And when you break down things and you go through an analysis of, well, removing everything that it possibly couldn't be, then you're left with what it possibly could be. And as Narelle said, 'cause we were going through what could have brought this on, why is this suddenly changed? Why are we seeing this emergence of a different type of movement in her legs, to muscles that are now twitching, and even lifting her leg to try and scratch her ear and so forth. Like where did this come from? And that's where Narelle said, well the only thing I've been adding differently to her diet lately is this liquid. Absolutely amazing. Like from my perspective, just we’re well and truly, probably about a year and a half past her original surgery, where she lost the use of her legs, and then she's gone through this miraculous journey. It's been a long journey, but a miraculous one nonetheless, into seeing new bodily functions actually arise suddenly as well. Could be that all this stuff in her stomach has come out and there's been, you know, like she’s…   

00:29:36 Narelle:       Well, that might have been impinging on some nerve that was inhibiting her from further progress and now that that's gone, maybe that's helping her.  

00:29:43 Glenn:       Right. We can't disclude any of that. But what we have noticed is that something that wasn't, absolutely wasn't happening. So when you know a true indication of what she was feeling in her back legs is indicated through, it's one thing when you're awake and conscious of it, but it's another thing when you're asleep and unconscious of it. So even unconscious and asleep, we would notice that her back legs weren't fiery and weren't twitching, weren't squeezing. Suddenly that's changed. It's not enormous, but it's enough to notice it. Like you can look at her and see there's change. There's something that's happening that never used to happen before. It's quite miraculous.  

00:30:16 Narelle:        And it's great, because once we sort of hit that 12 month mark post-surgery for a spinal surgery. And I started to run out of some of the support supplements that I had her on to help her regain those neural connections, and things like that along her spine. I let a lot of them drop off because I thought, well it's 12 months, chances are nothing's really gonna change from here on. We just have to accept that this is as good as it gets for Ladybug. But yeah, starting to prove me wrong.  

00:30:42 Glenn:       Yeah, it's been quite amazing. So if you wanna know more about a lot of these supplements that Narelle has been using on Ladybug, you can go onto her website. She's making this stuff up not just for dogs but for clients as well. I've been taking her Relax formula that she's making specifically for me with Astragalus, and licorice root and everything in it really. 

00:31:57 Narelle:   And the mushrooms. 

00:31:58 Glenn:    The mushrooms as well. Like I've got, I think there's about six different mushroom types that she puts in it.  

00:31:05 Narelle:       Seven different mushrooms

00:31:06 Glenn:      Seven. Okay. Seven's a lucky number. That's having a profound effect on me. Like, I mean my mood's been incredibly low since all this lockdown and I noticed that sometimes I'll get up in the morning. I've got some negative thoughts already 'cause I checked the news and that already puts me in a bit of a downward spiral. So I actually do make a habit of making sure I go out and take these formulas and funnily enough I can feel lifting my spirits from midday onwards. It is actually having a much better effect on me. My diet's been crap. It's been terrible.  

00:31:34 Narelle:        Well that's the thing with lockdown and people are inside a lot. But you know, their diets are deteriorating, people are drinking more alcohol. Like this is absolutely the time you need to be looking after your immune system, with Covid everywhere. So I mean that's where the mushrooms just shine in terms of immune support. But yeah, people do really, I mean we're sort of going a little bit off track, but people do need to really do the best with their diet because that is the basis of health. Sleep well, eat well and look after your immune system. I meant to mention with Ladybug, one of the other challenges we've had for the last month with her diet is her go-to treat has always been ZiwiPeak. She just is manic for Ziwipeak. But becauseZiwipeak is so high in fat, it's about 30 to 33% fat, depending on which variety.  

00:32:16 Glenn:       Good fat still.  

00:32:17 Narelle:      Oh yeah. Good fat, awesome fat. I mean it's what dogs need. But we had to find a replacement for the Ziwipeak and the great thing is Bell and Bone, she couldn't have all of their varieties, but they have a kangaroo mint and turmeric dental stick, which was 1.8% fat. So that was perfect for Ladybug and they have a freeze dried treat, which is kangaroo with spinach and kelp. Now it was a little bit higher, around 9% fat. But you know, when you're only giving little bits here and there, that was still absolutely great for Ladybug. And honestly, if you didn't know they were for dogs and you just read the ingredients, for example the freeze dried kangaroo treats that I'm using, like they're literally just 83% kangaroo, coconut, sardine, spinach and kelp. That is it, like that is human food.  

00:33:07 Narelle:       If you didn't know it was for dogs, you would assume it was a treat for humans. I mean, maybe the sardines might put you off a bit, but that's how pure they are. And that's, you know, why I am so supportive of Bell and Bone because they produce products that I am happy for my dogs to eat. Particularly like I said, following a major surgery and a trauma, you just want to give the best nutrition you can. So, you know, as Glen said, if you wanna learn more about any of my products, jump into my website, naturalhealthandnutrition.com au. I'm gonna post a photo of what came out of Ladybug on my Facebook page, Natural Health for People and Pets.  

00:33:49 Narelle:       So absolutely check that out and leave your comments there. If you've got any questions, you know, just jump onto the Facebook page, or you can email me, narelle@naturalhealthandnutrition.com.au. And as Glenn said, with the herbal blends, I've got some sort of standard herbal blends that are really popular on my website, but I also do custom herbal blends. So if there's something that you're interested in that's not there, I've had, just to give you an example, I've had two people actually ask for epilepsy blends for their dogs. I've had someone who wanted to cover heart health and joint health in the same product. So I was able to combine that. So just shoot me an email, let me know what your needs are and I'll let you know what I can do.  

00:34:26    Glenn:     One thing, my wife, there's many things my wife is brilliant at, which is research, development, studying. I mean, all those things because she's a true scientist at heart, so she really gets right into the weeds of finding out all the factual data and then putting it together into things that actually work. One thing she's absolutely terrible at is marketing. She's just terrible at marketing. Like her and I have always got, you know, creased brows looking at each other, when I keep telling her that she needs to market more. Her products are brilliant.  

00:34:57 Narelle:       I'm terrible at Social Media.  

00:34:58 Glenn:        You're not really good at Social Media. if you do believe in her products and you are using them and you wouldn't mind helping us out, tell a friend, tell a couple of friends because it is good stuff. Narelle and I are critics of each other in our work and so forth. Not in a bad way, but we're just honest with each other about constructive things. Constructive about things that are good and bad. And I mean, I do know that she spends a lot of time digging up the facts about what works and what doesn't. And if it doesn't work, it doesn't go into any of the products. 

00:35:33 Narelle:        Just quality, integrity, transparency, all of it. 

00:35:35 Glenn:       Yep. It has to matter because it's people's health and it's very, very important as I found out myself with my own problematic journey through health throughout the years. And Narelle and other people that she's worked with have been very beneficial, in not only my healing, but friends of ours, clients of Narelle's and their dogs as well. And it's even more so now than ever, where we are all collectively going through this trauma. You've gotta remember to look after your own health and wellbeing. It's very, very important.  

00:36:02 Narelle:       Yeah, absolutely. So I guess our challenge now going forward with Ladybug, I mean, I don't know how many lives she's got left. So she's had bowel surgery at one year of age. She had her spinal surgery last year and now she turns five this week. It's her fifth birthday. I can't believe she made it. And she's had her third major surgery in five short years.  

00:36:21 Glenn:       Well we actually thought this one, the most recent one was actually gonna finish her off because even when she came outta surgery, it'd been a really traumatic surgery for two and a half hours. Jane did a great job, you know. Jane and the girls down at Hills District Vet Clinic are great. Her and her staff, brilliant people. They're very, very, upfront and clear about what's going on. But you know, even when Ladybug came home, she was just not in a good way. She was very unhappy she wasn't eating and we were both very distressed about it. But Jane assured us that things would be fine. We just had to keep an eye on her and be very vigilant and, and just make sure we're getting her fluids into her and waiting for her to poo and everything like that.  

00:36:57 Narelle:       And we were doing the nightly checks. And all those worried parent, pet parent things that we do for our dogs that we love. So our challenge now with Bug going forward is to keep her calmer.  

00:37:09 Glenn:       So that's happening  

00:37:10 Narelle:       Yay for the Relax, and the Stress and Anxiety. But yeah, when you've got a high drive dog, we're lucky she's only 13 kilos high drive. It's still a challenge.  

00:37:18 Glenn:        Alright, I think we'll leave it there. So as we've said, if you're looking for Narelle’s products, you can go to our website, naturalhealthandnutrition.com.au. 

00:37:40 Glenn:       All right, thank you everyone. Have a great one.  

00:37:46 Narelle:        Thanks everyone. Bye.