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All you have to do is look at history to see what dogs have always eaten.
Before the commercial pet food industry came on the scene, we fed our pets our leftovers,
scraps of food, even raw meat.
And even before that, dogs consumed whatever they could find in the wild.
And now there's a movement to take dogs back to their roots with a raw food diet.
Our guests, Lori Taylor and Anthony Santasiero of pet raw nutrition company TruPet, are all
for that idea.
Welcome to the show.
It's so great to have you here.
Thank you for having us.
We're excited.
Alright, right off the bat, Lori we've got to let our viewers know about you.
You are an entrepreneur.
You're a mom of five, and I think you have 13 animals, is that correct?
That's right.
(Laughter).
I like to tell everyone I have 18 children.
Some I like more than the others.
I have a varying age on my 2-legged children from age 18 to, I have twins -- identical
twins -- in 1st grade, and then we have a big family of three dogs and three cats and
a pig.
We have a pig that lives at home.
Oh my gosh!
And six horses.
So, it's a big range of craziness in our family.
We call it "The Litter."
The litter.
Absolutely.
Is that what inspired you?
I mean, when you were feeding this raw food and thinking back to dogs the way they used
to eat, is that what inspired you to start this company?
Yes, my Great Dane I mentioned, his name's TJ, which is named after Truman Junior, which
I lost my big blue Great Dane to cancer when he was only 5-years-old.
He was very young.
Yeah.
And so I started to really investigate the effects of nutrition on dogs because I believe
that we could do better, just like with humans.
And so I developed this line so everyone could be able to benefit from a better diet for
their dogs.
Fantastic.
And I know there are varied opinions on dog varieties, dog food, and what we should do
with our pets, but you're really taking us back to the way dogs used to eat and emulating
that.
That's right.
It's kind of funny.
People act like a raw diet is new or something like that.
And it's like, look basically it's just feed your dog real food.
I mean, that's what it is right there.
Let's get down to it.
Real food.
And so that's what happens a lot of times if you look at the commercial diets that are
out there right now, it's a cooked kibble, very processed, high heats, lots of carbohydrates.
I mean, when you think about what we have in our bag…
Absolutely.
And dogs are 99.9% wolf by DNA.
Yes they are.
So ancestrally, dogs crave raw meat, vital organs, ground bone, blood, and that's what
we're providing in our food and all of our treats that you see here.
That's fantastic, and I know it kind of becomes an issue in this society.
We're like, "Oh, we don't really eat that."
But dogs crave it, right?
Exactly.
I think one of our biggest strengths and weakness as a society right now is the fact that we
start to see animals healing veterans and doing all these therapy dog things, and we've
humanized them.
Right.
So we think we want to feed them what sounds good to us.
But the reality is what smells good to them is the natural scent of real meat.
I mean, that is really what they smell and it's a natural smell.
There's no artificial anything.
We don't add any smells or anything spray on there.
We just say, "Here it is" and the dogs eat it.
Well, what should we look for in a raw dog food?
So when you're looking for a raw dog food, meat is the going to be the most important
ingredient you're looking for.
And we always use the analogy, in a normal kibble like you see over here.
Okay, this is our producer's dog food.
We love him.
But it looks different than your dog food.
It does.
And you'll find that traditionally your kibbles that are over the counter, they're going to
be cooked.
So just like us, we cook broccoli, it's not as healthy as it was if you had eaten it raw.
Exactly.
Oh, gotcha.
So, with a raw meat, we're looking for meat as the number one ingredient sourced in the
USA.
But we don't go to the grocery store, put a steak up on the scale, go grab our carrots
and put them on there as well and say, "Charge me the same for all of the them", right?
No, no no.
Yeah.
But that's what we're doing with our dogs.
You need to look for that when you look at a raw diet food because what I like to say
is, "Beets are not the new meat", right?
Right.
This is really interesting.
Now this is something.
This is you.
But this is our producer's dog food.
But if we really want to sprinkle that on, what happens when a dog comes up to that?
When a dog comes up to this, if you don't mix it in, they will lick it off the top.
(Laughter).
And, you know, it's funny how we created this.
The reason we created this is because when people first were getting excited about this,
a lot of people have multiple dogs.
So they were trying to a way to balance between the two worlds.
So they would mix them together.
Yeah.
Well, the dogs got smart pretty quick, and people were calling in saying, "My dog's just
eating your food."
Like it was a bad thing, right?
Picking that out.
And so we kind of created this booster form of it so that you could take your regular
dog food and sprinkle two scoops of this per every cup, and you will have a better bowl.
It's called boosting the bowl.
Okay.
This is revolutionary.
Where do our viewers go to find you.
How do I?
I mean, I'm taking these all home to Hero, just so you know.
There you go.
(Laughter).
Well, the best part.
When you get home and they're gone, you can logon to our website.
It's TruDog.
So it's T-R-U D-O-G After Truman?
That's right.
His legacy.
I hope it lives on for other animals, the lessons that we've learned from him.
We want to pass on to other dogs, so we can help dogs live longer because that's what
we're trying to do.
Improve the nutrition and help your dog live longer.
They'll have less poop, they'll have less shedding.
Their teeth will be better.
Their breath will stink less.
There's nothing bad about a raw food diet.
That's what I can tell you.
Alright.
Remember, everybody at home, that's TruDog.com.
You can also visit our website at TheBalancingAct.com.
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