Jen, Hello, I'm Dr Jen the vet. Dr, Jason's on vacation, and this is chats with the Chatfields.

00:25

This episode is brought to you by full bucket veterinary strength supplements, the leader in digestive health for dogs, cats and horses.

Jenifer Chatfield  00:34

All right, welcome into the chat room. Everyone joining us today is Dr Janice O'Brien. Dr O'Brien is currently finishing her PhD at Virginia Tech and is a veterinarian with a master's in public health, and she's also board certified in veterinary preventive meds. So you know, we already like her. And more importantly, maybe for today's discussion, she is a member of the research team on the dog aging project. Okay, welcome Dr O'Brien,

01:03

thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Yeah,

Jenifer Chatfield  01:06

I am too. Okay, so we may have some folks in the audience who are what we call uninitiated. They somehow skipped over our podcast episode where Dr Creevey came on and sort of announced to our world in the chat room about the dog aging project. But so for those folks, could you give us like a nutshell of what even is the dog aging project?

Dr. Janice O'Brien  01:35

So I'm probably not going to do as good a job as Kate Creevey had has done. So she gets to talk about it all the time. But basically, the dog aging project is this giant group of dogs across the United States whose owners basically enrolled them into the study. And they did that by starting answering a survey, and it's a very long survey, like I've I've taken it like my my dog is like a member of the dog aging project now. And yes, the survey is very long, and asks them all kinds of questions about, you know, all their environmental exposures. Like, do you take your dogs on walks? When you take your dogs on walks, what surfaces are they walking on? Are they walking on concrete? Are they walking on asphalt? Are they walking on dirt, like all these things, and ask them about their diet, like, what are you feeding your dog? All these things, and then also about their health conditions, like, what has your dog previously been diagnosed with, and everything. And then every single year, as long as the dogs continue to remain in the study, the owners will answer that same survey every single year. So you're getting that data going through time. And that's really, really cool. And it's like, I think it's like 50,000 dogs at this point that are in the study,

Jenifer Chatfield  02:52

holy moly, from across the entire US, right? Like everybody's represented all the staff. Okay? So even Alaska,

03:00

yes, yes, they are

Jenifer Chatfield  03:03

all right. So now I have to ask about Hawaii, because I asked specifically about Alaska, so I now have to ask about Hawaii as well. Yes, Hawaii is also in there. Okay, so everybody's in there. You're joking. Okay, so So you enroll your dog, and just regular people can just enroll their dog, right? Yep. Okay, so they've enrolled their dog, they've answered a million questions about their dog and their lifestyle and how they're living, etc, and then every year they answer the same questions in case there's changes, and who cares? Like, why? Because, I mean, not for nothing. But I feel like listeners right now are like, and I mean, that sounds great. What's the actual nitty gritty? What's coming out of this,

03:48

right? And I think there's kind of two folds to it. So this sort of information is going to be really important to make dogs lives better, okay? Because this sort of thing, really, I mean, so the golden retriever lifetime study, which was a study of golden retrievers, only kind of started doing this, but they only didn't Golden Retrievers, but the idea of, like, following dogs throughout their entire lifetimes and seeing what they're exposed to, and seeing what health conditions they develop, and trying to see if those exposures are related to the health conditions that they develop. We do the same sort of thing in human epidemiology, you know, going and looking back like, Oh, if you were a smoker, does that mean you have an increased risk of developing some other like diseases, like cancer, lung disease, those sorts of questions. And this type of study allows us to do that. But the dog aging project also is interested in the fact that dogs, that they're pet dogs, they live with us, like these things that the dogs are being exposed to, presumably, humans are. Also being exposed to the people that are living with them are being exposed to. And if we can find out some of these associations from dogs, we will find them out much quicker, because dogs lives are shorter, which is very sad.

Jenifer Chatfield  05:18

They never live long enough. None of them live long enough, right?

05:21

No, no, never. But from a research perspective, that's helpful, because you can find out these associations much quicker. You don't have to wait for like, you know, 3040, 50 years for somebody to develop cancer. You have kind of a 1015, year time frame in which you need to work in, right?

Jenifer Chatfield  05:43

Which actually, but, I guess, but that's kind of the the beauty of it, right? Because there's no other animal really, that lives like with as as much with us as dogs do, right, with a short lifespan, right? So there,

06:00

there are some arguments for cats, like indoor cats and indoor exposures, and them being good, good animals to study for that. But I agree, in terms of, like many more people tend to bring their dogs with them everywhere they go 

Jenifer Chatfield  06:16

and also they couldn't get the cats to sign the waiver Right. Like, I mean, cats are never gonna agree to something like that, right? Whereas most dogs, most dogs are like, sure, sure, sure. What do you want to do? What do you want to do? Okay, so that makes perfect sense to me. Okay, so this is a longitudinal study, right, looking at the lifetime of 10s of 1000s of dogs to see if there's any correlation to what they're exposed to, to what happens with their owner and what happens with them, etc, right? So this is a huge net right to gather data, I guess you would say, yes, okay, and because it's just anybody and their brother could enroll their dog, you're getting a good representation of people, because, like Cosette, everyone knows Cosette lives a very special lifestyle, right? She's very special, right? She's not having the same life as like my once in a lifetime dog Daisy, the Border Collie, you know, who, who worked weekends and herded sheep and goats. It's a very different lifestyle. Yeah. Okay, so there's ways for y'all to control for all those variables, right? Because I know we have some science nerds in the chat room listening, and they're thinking, you there's no way you can control for all those variables, right? Is there? Like, how does that work?

07:35

Well, you can only control for variables that you even measure in the first place. And the dog aging project has thought of a lot of variables they can. They are collecting a lot of those variables. But also, as an epidemiologist, this has gotta, gotta get into the whole like you don't always have to control for everything. What you have to do is you have to draw a DAG or a directed acyclic graph, and say, okay, because not everything, like a confounder, is a very specific type of relationship, and you do have to control for confounders, but some variables are not confounders, some are colliders, some are mediators. So you know you have to draw your DAG and make sure that your exposures are all in the proper relationship before you do your analysis.

Jenifer Chatfield  08:23

Okay, did you guys hear that on your bingo card? Who had directed a cyclic graph? Anyone? Nobody had that? Dr O'Brien, but I love it, because it makes perfect sense, because we all know, right, because everyone learned the science, the very basic scientific method, which actually carries through for your entire life almost no matter how advanced you get, right, the scientific method still holds. And so if I can't make everything equal, I can at least determine which things are likely to impact my result, or just are interesting but unlikely to impact, right? Yeah. And then interpret in that context. So we don't have to actually control everything. We just have to be aware of it, right?

09:09

Yeah. And, and there are some, you know, there's some ways to, well, it's always the argument in epidemiology, you the measured, measured confounding and unmeasured confounding, right?

Jenifer Chatfield  09:21

Okay, right. And then we get into, like, Inception level stuff, right, like that. Now we just crossed over into Leonardo DiCaprio, like dream state abstract, and it's like with hard science, okay, all right, I think that's enough down the super nerd path. Thank you, Dr O'Brien, for that. But we're going to take a quick break, because, listen, folks, this is this dog aging project has been collecting data for about how many years. How long has it been going on?

09:52

It has been going on since 2019

Jenifer Chatfield  09:55

Since 2019 so a number of years. So they already have actually. I crunched some numbers, looked at some data, and that's what I want to know about, because it's interesting. So we're taking a quick break. On the other side, we're going to talk about, what do we already know? What have we discovered about you and your dog?

10:13

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Jenifer Chatfield  10:49

All right, so we're back and now that we know what the dog aging project is, and could be it maybe isn't, and we've also got the DAG right on our bingo card marked Holy moly. Now, like I want to know, and this is what excited me so much, and why I wanted you to come on the show, because I know that you have been speaking at different veterinary conferences talking about some of the data that and the sort of conclusions you guys have been able to tease out, or at least the data points that are interesting from this already, and so I want to hear a little about that, like, what's in it for us? What do we already know?

11:32

Well, I mean, do you want to talk about me? To talk about my research, or there's also, like, other researchers within the dog aging project that have come out with some really cool stuff. I

Jenifer Chatfield  11:40

mean, all of it that's cool and interesting, absolutely. Let's start with you. Okay,

11:44

let's start with you.

11:45

Okay, so I am working specifically in the nutrition arena, because that was what I found most interesting, what I wanted to devote my time to. And I got to I basically started with just an initial look at all of those different demographic factors. So those things like owner, owner income, Owner, education level, where, where the dog and the owner live, like, what state, whether, within that state, their urban, rural, suburban, dog, demographic factors, like their neuter status, their whether they were a purebred or a mixed breed dog, all those kinds of things. And just looked at the diet type that the dog was being fed, just to see, are there differences?

Jenifer Chatfield  12:36

Okay, all right. And, and, did you find out some differences. Because I honestly, I think there is, you could ask five different dog owners, what do you feed your dog, and just on the what question, let alone the, when do you feed them? How do you feed it to them, all of that. And I think, you know, naturally, those of us in practice, we're like, we're pretty sure we could tag these things, we could probably guess pretty good, but we don't have data. Okay, all right, so I'm acutely interested in what you've discovered, so lay it on us.

13:07

Okay, well, so there are definitely differences in across across the different levels of certain demographics. Some of the ones actually like I expected. And this might sound funny, half the people I tell this to are like, oh yeah. I totally am not surprised at all by that. And half the people are like, what? I thought that there was going to be no difference in owner, income, level and diet choice. Wait, no. Excuse me, I thought that there was going to be a difference. Is that what I said, Sorry,

Jenifer Chatfield  13:45

nope. Okay, so, so you're you like your hypothesis at the beginning was there will be a difference. Yes,

13:51

right? The hypothesis, my hypothesis was, there will be a difference in owner, income and diet choice. Because just even within my own life, like I know that, like, when I was a vet student, didn't have a lot of funds, I was feeding my dogs kibble, yeah. And then when I got into practice and was making a little bit more money, I was like, I kind of want to spoil my dog, and I want to, I want to feed them one of those, like, fresh, refrigerated. Like, okay,

Jenifer Chatfield  14:19

yep, yep. The refrigerated, the messy ones, yep,

14:23

yes, yeah. So just from within my life, I was like, I I have done this. So this is what I expect other people to do, absolutely.

Jenifer Chatfield  14:34

Okay. But what did data tell us? Did they tell us you guessed correctly? No,

14:39

I was wrong. Okay, real project within the dog aging project across all of the different owner income levels, there was really no difference in diet choice, except for one. There was one that was different, and it was very specifically the owners that made. Make over $180,000 a year feed their dogs commercial raw foods more more often compared to the

Jenifer Chatfield  15:07

other. So they're more likely. So if you make over $180,000 a year and you have a dog, you're more likely to feed your dog a commercial raw diet than someone,

15:18

compared to, yeah, compared to somebody who's making $100,000 a year or or etc, going down the line. Like,

Jenifer Chatfield  15:27

okay, so that's interesting, right? Like, because you're going to something that should be easier to produce and cheaper, even it should be cheaper, I'm sure that it's not, but it should be cheaper because it's raw. They don't even process it. It's not cooked, right? And so, so you could buy that raw stuff.

15:45

Well, there are some commercial facilities that they might not be cooking it, but I know there's, like, the whole high pressure pasteurization thing. So they're, they're still, there's, there's still processing happening. It's just not cooking. That's true.

Jenifer Chatfield  15:59

Okay, all right, okay, so, so that that is interesting, because I would have guessed it. I would have guessed it wouldn't be that way, but, but for but that was the only difference you found, was that was

16:11

the only difference all the rest of them. There was no, there was no difference across income levels, yeah. Like, Well,

Jenifer Chatfield  16:17

I kind of think that's wonderful, isn't that? Yeah? I mean, I feel like the dogs are eating okay, no matter what. Yeah, exactly. It doesn't surprise us, because, you know, people love their dog,

16:30

yeah? And it's really funny to me, like any of the nutritionists I talk to are, like, not at all surprised by this. I'll, like, tell them like I was totally expecting that owner income would make a difference, and all of the nutritionists are like, no.

Jenifer Chatfield  16:43

So here's my question, though, did you did you look at, uh, owner education level? Yes. And did that make

16:52

a difference? Yes, it did. Okay.

Jenifer Chatfield  16:55

So what difference did it make?

16:57

So owner education level had a weird relationship with with things. So there was almost like, so example for for kibble,

Jenifer Chatfield  17:08

we're just talking about just dry food,

17:11

yeah, dry, dry, yeah, okay, dry, dry extruded diet, yes, the technical term, right? So if you kind of it's coming, I don't want to call it a bell curve, because that's a rather extreme, but basically, if you were had a high school equivalent, or some college or something, you were more likely to feed your dog kibble. And then as you kind of went up in education level, up to, like a bachelor's degree. Then then you kind of became less likely to feed your dog kibble, and then going up again. Then they were then more likely to feed their dog kibble. And then you saw, like almost that inverse in some of the in, like the raw diets, like people who or, yeah, the commercial raw and the home cooked, if you were making or if you were high school equivalent some college, you were kind of less likely to feed a commercial raw diet or home cooked. And then you kind of got, like a peak, kind of happening somewhere around associates degree, bachelor's degree, and then it kind of went back down again. So that was an interesting, interesting relationship there.

Jenifer Chatfield  18:27

That is interesting. It's like folks that got a little a little bit more education, to me that, like, they seem to feed more of the fad diet then, like they had, like, so the bachelor's degree type of thing they were feeding the not kibble, more of the Yeah, yeah, whereas a few foods too, yeah. And if you had minimal secondary education, or you had sort of really advanced secondary education, he just fed regular food, yeah, yeah. I mean, what I would call regular like, I think most people call like, traditional regular food, the kibble,

19:08

yeah, like kibble and canned diets. And like canned diets had that same sort of trend as the kibble diets. So

Jenifer Chatfield  19:15

I think that's interesting. It is interesting. Very interesting. Okay, all right, well, what else you got? What else is interesting? And I love this because also, we're everyone. We're basically talking about human behavior here. That's what we're talking about. I think that's why I find it interesting, because this is all really a human behavior, because the dog pick it out.

19:38

It really is. Even the dog demographic variables, you know, I'm calling them dog demographic variables, but a lot of them are owner choice related, like, the owner picks out whether or not they want to have a purebred dog, you know, the owner picks out whether or not they're going to spay or neutered their dog. The owner decides those things. So a lot of those are you. Technically more like owner decision based also,

Jenifer Chatfield  20:03

right? And you know, what else is interesting. So I And was there any difference in the type of food fed based on, like, the size of the dog?

20:15

Yes, okay, that was the most striking difference in all of this.

Jenifer Chatfield  20:20

Oh, look at me. Winner, winner.

20:23

Yes, I know this is the one I think that didn't like when I presented it, like, AVMA. Like, nobody was surprised. They're like, yeah, we know small dogs eat different.

Jenifer Chatfield  20:32

Okay, okay, yeah, great, yeah.

20:35

So, like, so small dogs, especially you're really small dogs, like, you're less than 10 pound. Dogs are way more likely to eat basically anything except kibble. Like

Jenifer Chatfield  20:46

terrible food, raw food, fresh refrigerated, yeah?

20:51

Like home, cooked food, yeah? Except for home raw diets. That was the one weirdo in here, like home, raw diets actually increased in popularity with increasing dog size, but everything else, it was most popular, like with, like canned, canned, freeze dried, commercial, raw, home cooked diets. Those were all most popular amongst the tiny, tiny dogs, and then kind of went off, like it was like this, like asymptotic, like a curve. Yes,

Jenifer Chatfield  21:26

we call that going off a cliff. Dr O'Brien, like asymptotic curve going off a cliff. Okay, right? That's our translation. Beautiful, wonderful. Okay, so, you know, I think that's, I wonder if people, because those are more expensive foods, typically, and so and little dogs don't eat as much as, you know, like a 50 pound Border Collie, and so it's easier to feed that food to a small dog. I would guess, a little bit that might be one of the factors impacting that.

21:57

Another factor impacting that, that I wonder about is the, you know, also small dogs also tend to be predisposed to dental conditions, and a lot of these other foods are wetter foods, like canned Yes, yeah. Isn't that one

Jenifer Chatfield  22:15

of kind of the classic debates like that the veterinary dentists have is like, what came first? Was it periodontal disease, or was it the soft food, right? That you know, kind of enhances the bacteria. And listen, if you're worried about dental disease in your dog, go listen to our episode with Dr peak, where we talk about pet dentistry. We're not going to go into that here, because we're not pet dentists, but, but it's out there for you folks. So that, yeah, that's, that's interesting. Okay, well, yeah, what? What other interesting facts? Because I feel like I'm already seeing myself a little bit with some of these data points, and so I'm sure some of our audience members are seeing themselves in their dog in there. So, yeah, anyway. So, yeah, so that's that is interesting. Okay, so education level of the owner impacted kind of what they picked,

23:08

owner age, owner age, also okay with its older, older owners. So, like, they're kind of grouped according to, like, 10 year groupings, except for 18 to 24 and 75 and above, but all of the rest of them are like decade intervals. But basically, your youngest owners are most likely to feed kibble, and your older owners kind of change what they're feeding, uh, to like canned food and home cooked, home cooked diets.

Jenifer Chatfield  23:45

And I wonder, did you? Were you able to, uh, stratify that by income?

23:52

I didn't do that now

Jenifer Chatfield  23:53

because, you know, like most people in their 20s, 30s, etc, don't have as much capital, as much money or income as they do when they hit their 40s or 50s. And so I wonder if that impacts their choice, because those all cost different amounts, also

24:13

the time cost to some of these too, like home cooked diets,

Jenifer Chatfield  24:17

home cooked holy moly, don't say it too loudly. I don't want Cosette to hear it. I don't want her to know that's a possibility, because it's not happening. I'm not doing home cooked diet for Cosette. So, so, yeah, okay, all right, good. So all those things seem to seem to actually have a direct impact, huh?

24:34

Yeah. Okay, yeah. And then let's see, oh, number of people in the household also interesting, like, the more people that you had in your household, the more likely you were to feed kibble, and the fewer people you had in your household, the more likely you were to basically feed some other diet, like home cooked food, a raw food, a canned food.

Jenifer Chatfield  25:00

Good. Oh, interesting. Again, I wonder if it's that time constraint, that time factor for preparation. Because,

25:06

yeah, I totally wonder that too. Like, if you have like, three kids, you're probably just dumping kibble in the bowl. You're like, I can't like,

Jenifer Chatfield  25:13

that dog is lucky that day that they got regular food of any kind, right, not just the treats dropped by the smallest child in them, in the family. So, yeah, interesting. Okay, now listen, we should, we should probably, like, have a caveat here and say, if you're wondering what to feed your dog, you should ask your veterinarian, right? Like, folks, if you're wondering, or if there's something you should be feeding that could be better for your dog, or if there's a supplement you should have for your dog based on their breed and you know what diseases they might have or maybe be predisposed to, or what have you, you should talk to your veterinarian. How about that? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Okay, so, like that was our PSA announcement for talk to your veterinarian about what to feed your dog. So, all right, so, so that's, and that's from your more from your part of the dog aging project. That's what you're focused on, is the nutritional components. Okay, so now, what like, what other fun facts are floating around with the dog aging project?

26:19

So I'll talk about two of my favorite, other studies that were conducted by researchers that are not on our team. One of them was a study of just like looking at cancer for kind of those initial couple of years of enrollment, and just seeing kind of where cancers are most, most commonly reported by dog owners, and also whether they were benign or malignant, and whether those rates were different between purebred and mixed breed dogs. Because that's always a huge discussion is, oh

Jenifer Chatfield  26:57

yeah. Everyone thinks they know the answer to that. Yeah. It's true. Like, super true. Yeah. So what did they come What did they find out? And I guess, when you say where the cancer was, do you mean where on the dog, or Where's you? Yes, basically. Okay,

27:12

so where on the dog? Okay,

Jenifer Chatfield  27:13

yes, well, yeah, just making sure it's a

27:18

fair, fair question, fair question. So I think the the cancers on the on the legs were the most prominent or the most commonly reported ones. And to all of this, I also have to say like, these are, this is all owner reported data. So I feel like also sometimes, you know, the lumps and bumps that we can more easily see might be more likely to be reported,

Jenifer Chatfield  27:43

but, and that would be on the legs, yeah,

27:47

yeah, because I feel like it's really easy to see them on the legs, versus like, I don't know if they're hiding, hiding somewhere in the fur, like, elsewhere on the body, it

Jenifer Chatfield  27:55

can be harder, Yeah, or like, if they have liver cancer,

27:58

oh yeah, and yes, brain cancer,

Jenifer Chatfield  28:00

Folks, those are not ones that we're good at diagnosing early in dogs. I don't want to, you know, burst your bubble. We're not. But if they've got a lump that grows on their leg, we can usually find that. Yes, yeah, okay, all right. So, so let's see. So depending on my age, my income and my education level, you can probably guess what food I'm feeding my dog. And if my dog's gonna have cancer, you can probably guess where it's gonna be,

28:31

right? Well, I don't know about that, that this is, like, giant, giant level, like, giant population level data, but yeah, there's, yeah, try to say like it's you're most likely to notice it. It seems like when it's on the legs.

Jenifer Chatfield  28:46

And did they, did they look at purebred versus mixed breed versus not? What'd they find?

28:52

So they found basically no difference between the rates of cancer in that were reported in the purebred and the mixed breed dogs. So interestingly, you get this, you get the same rates of cancer now, whether the types of those cancers were just slightly different, but yeah, over the overall rate was was like the same between the two groups. Okay,

Jenifer Chatfield  29:16

so I guess that debunks the argument, right?

29:19

Yeah, well, and this is across all breeds and all mixed breeds. So because I know there was one that there's, like the nationwide white paper that that was put out that made a lot of people angry about the about the doodles that basically they did. They did using their insurance data, comparing like, you know, the Labradors, the purebred Labradors and the purebred poodles to the Labradoodles and then same thing on the golden side. And they said that there was a much lower rate of cancer amongst the doodles compared to their purebred sources. Breeds, but so I don't know that's that was one that I I just found out about that, and I was like, oh, but that conflicts with what we found.

Jenifer Chatfield  30:10

But your sample population is our is different, right? Because the nationwide study is skewed already by an owner preference for insurance. Well, right, I

30:21

would argue that our population is also skewed by a group of owners that have the willingness to answer a really long survey about their dog every single year, correct,

Jenifer Chatfield  30:32

right? But so, so I think it is apples to apples. I mean apples to oranges, excuse me, right? It's

30:40

apples, oranges, right? But, and if it is, the population, that's the source of the difference, I want to know. Like, why? Like, why would it be more likely to find that difference in an insured dog population versus in a, you know, right? Dog, aging project type of population? Like, why?

Jenifer Chatfield  30:58

Right? And, like, I didn't look at their data points either, because I don't know how well representative their samples were for those because I don't know if people who have a mixed breed dog like a doodle also, newsflash, folks, those are not purebred dogs, but a mixed breed dog Like a doodle versus a golden I don't know if that can be correlated to how likely or unlikely they are to get pet insurance. I you know, because that probably plays into it. And I don't know if that, if that plays into how more likely or less likely, they are to actually get a confirmed diagnosis of cancer or not, because then that there's that right? There's a whole lot of things that I would want to sift through their data set looking for to see if they were controlled for. And I don't, I don't, I don't know if they were. I don't even know if that data is available,

32:02

but yeah, I mean, it's a, it's, it's an insurance company, so I don't think so, right, right?

Jenifer Chatfield  32:07

I'm going to say not because they're just looking at overall incidents. They don't, you know, and they may tease it out later, right? When the actuary is trying to say, what, how much they're going to charge for this or pay for it, but they're not going to do it for us friends. They're not doing it for us, yeah, but it's interesting and and I think that with for dog owners, I think that that's part of the problem, is that you see these two different data sets, and you see these two different conclusions. What are you supposed to do with that? You know, what do you like do you Would you have any recommendation for how dog owners should sort of view data from the dog aging project or, like, from this sort of white paper, or anything like that. What do you think? What would you tell people?

32:50

Oh, gosh, it's hard to tell people just a blanket statement, like about about that, because it really is. You kind of have to sit there and think about it like even me as an epidemiologist, like, I found out the differences between those two studies. And I was like, why? Like, I have to sit here and think about, yeah, like, the why, like, what, what, what are the potential forms of bias in both groups and everything, and yeah, so I don't know that there is a blanket statement other than other than. We have to think about it more and do more research. So, you know, just the like, don't, don't be making huge life choices based on one single

Jenifer Chatfield  33:29

paper and, and I think that's it like, frequently, when people are hunting around for what kind of dog they should get for their family, and they're wondering, should I get a purebred dog? Should I get, you know, a mixed breed dog type of thing. It's a crapshoot. I mean, you are taking a risk. You're getting a live animal. And so I think the only thing you come away with is we should just love our dogs while we can, while we have them, while they're with us, and and and try to provide them the best, the best life we can, because, you know, they're here for part of ours. But as you've said, the dog aging project is leveraging the fact that, you know, we're here for all of theirs, you know, and so taking advantage of that, okay, so give me, like, one more fast fact that that someone else found that you thought, huh, that's interesting.

34:21

So Bree McCoy did a really cool study looking at like social determinants of health in dogs, meaning things like, how many human how many other humans were around the dogs like and were they adult, or were they kids? And how many other dogs did the they have interactions with? And they basically found that the more social network a dog had, the better health outcomes they had, which was pretty cool. It's basically like, which is, I mean, there's creatures. Yeah, they're social creatures. Our dogs are the so our social creatures as well, like, we can't, yes, yeah, we can't just isolate them and not expect there to be negative consequences. So that was a really, really cool study that I saw. It is,

Jenifer Chatfield  35:13

and I'll tell you it that is sort of the encouragement that some folks might need to say. You know what? It is worth it for my dog to go to doggy daycare, you know, safely with all the risks controlled, it's worth it or or for them, even if they like, Cosette cannot play with other dogs well, like she's a bully, okay? And I know this about her. I love her the same, but I know this matter, but she does like stimulation and engagement with people you know, even when I'm not here. And so for her sort of playing independently with with another person you know, because she'll fetch instead of just, you know, snooze in the whole day makes for better health outcomes, which, of course, makes sense. Makes perfect sense, yes, yes. Get off your couch. Play with your dog. Play with your dog. Friends. Get off your couch. Play with your dog. Will you right and make sure you're feeding them something that as veterinary recommended based on your income and education level. No, I'm just

36:15

kidding. Oh my goodness. Okay, so Okay, well, I

Jenifer Chatfield  36:19

mean already the dog aging project is providing interesting data, if, if nothing else, and there's there will be more to come, because I know initially, the overall population, all it's done is increase over the last few years, as more people have entered their Dog into the study, filling out that massive questionnaire, and really, you know, trying to, trying to get engaged with science, which is wonderful. So we're going to put some stuff in the show notes, folks. We'll put links to the dog aging project. We'll put links to more information about Dr O'Brien, the lovely Dr Janice O'Brien, who joined us today. And yeah, so thank you so much for joining us and sharing with us the bits of information that are coming out already from this massive study.

37:12

There's so much to learn.

Jenifer Chatfield  37:15

There is, there is, and so again, if you want more kind of in depth about the who and why for about the dog aging project. We've got a previous episode. I'll tag that in the show notes as well. But yeah, you could sort of keep up with what they're coming out with at their website, I think, and, and, and, I think, you know, might be interesting on a Thursday night to sit around and have a look at that, but that's all I've got. I'm Dr Jen, the vet. Dr Jason, as I mentioned, is on vacation, and we'll see you guys on the next episode.

37:50

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Jenifer Chatfield  38:00

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