Dr. Marty Goldstein Interview

Raw Made Easy

Neal: Hi this is Neal from Growlies and we're here with Dr. Marty Goldstein, world-famous veterinarian and all-around great guy actually one of my personal heroes. I've been following Dr. Marty as long as we've been doing this like 15 or almost 20 years but you've been around doing good work for a lot longer than that. I'm a huge fan, Dr.Marty, thank you for joining us.

 Dr. Marty Goldstein: Pleasure and it's been 47 years, Neil. [laughs]

Neal: Yes, you graduated from Cornell University in the '70s as a doctor of veterinary medicine. What got you started, what made you want to go to become a vet?

Dr. Marty: There was no other choice, I loved dinosaurs so I was thinking about that. My mother wanted me to be a nuclear physicist but I couldn't pronounce it so scratch that. Then just my love for animals, my brother who was five years ahead of me became a veterinarian and then it just became a no brainer because of my love for animals.

Neal: That's awesome. There's two Goldsteins in the business?

Dr. Marty: Yes, man.

Neal: That's awesome. Then you were one of the founding fathers of The American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association?

Dr. Marty: Yes. Actually, the [inaudible].

Neal: Oh, we just lost your sound. No, sorry we can restart.

Dr. Marty: How about now?

Neal: No I don't know what's going on, sorry. Do you have any other microphone? I don't think you need the earphones.

Dr. Marty: Oh, really?

Neal: Yes now it's dead.

[silence]

There you go. That's it.

Dr. Marty: Can you hear me?

Neal: Awesome.

Dr. Marty: I can't hear you though. How about now?

Neal: How about now? Can you hear me now?

Dr. Marty: Yes I can.

Neal: Okay, I can hear you.

Dr. Marty: I got a brand-new Mac computer.

Neal: It looks like it's working great, I don't see any problems.

Dr. Marty: Okay good.

Neal: I'm just going to leave that in if you're cool with that or would you rather restart?

Dr. Marty: Oh no leave it in.

Neal: Ultimately, we were just saying that your brother had started in [unintelligible] had gone through as a veterinarian five years ahead of you and you didn't have a choice, you just followed in the family footsteps essentially.

Dr. Marty: Yes, as I said it just became a no-brainer for me to want to do that because of my love for animals and that was it.

Neal: Was it in the '80s you created The HVMA that you were one of the founders?

Dr. Marty: Yes the actual veterinarian had created that Dr. Carvel Tiekert. He came up to visit my brother and me way back in the early days when we were selling alternative foods in those days to find out about what is this health movement in our profession. Just joking around to him I said, "You know what we need? We need a holistic organization but we're too busy, Carvel. Why don't you to create it." I was just kidding and he did. I had the original idea but he was the one that spearheaded the entire American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association.

Neal: That's awesome. I wish we had something similar here in Canada, we don't, we all our provincial veterinary boards.

Dr. Marty: Yes, I think it's just a matter of time. I've been going against the grain since the mid'70s and it's such a pleasure to my life after all these decades of opposition, threats, ridicule, and criticism to actually see the grain is going in this direction. It's about time, Neal.

Neal: They're fighting it.

Dr. Marty: Yes, but the grain is getting way too strong in the direction of health.

Neal: Agreed completely. The fact that we can do this today says that the people who believe in more appropriate or natural approaches to health have a voice today. We didn't twenty years ago.

Dr. Marty: Oh no, we didn't. We had a voice but it was being stamped upon.

Neal: Yes, it really was. You started work in television and please was it, Oprah, that you had started in television with?

Dr. Marty: No, I started because my goodwill was spreading all over the country, I was on local TVs I was a regular on Good Day New York which is more popular in New York City than the other big shows like Good Morning America. I got onto Good Morning America because ABC Eyewitness News ran a piece on me and it got so much response that they then challenged me to make a hopeless case better and film me every two weeks for eight weeks.

The dog did get better so they had me on with the dog and that led to Good Morning America have me on and then I became friendly with Martha Stewart, I was taking care of her dogs and she gave me, besides me being on her TV show several times, she gave me my own show on Sirius Satellite Radio for six years.

Neal: Yes, you did that a long time and you did up until the demise of Sirius or until they amalgamated, right?

Dr. Marty: No, until the demise of Martha on Sirius.

Neal: Okay so it's Martha who left Serius? It was her channel that went away.

Dr. Marty: Then Oprah contacted me while I had my radio show with Martha because her dog was in critical shape and then she flew her dog in to see me and we made the dog better and then she had me on her show. It's been day by day for 40-something years. It's all I got to say.

Neal: I had it backward and I thought you had done Oprah before you did Martha but it was the other way around.

Dr. Marty: No, it is the other way round.

Neal: Yes, okay. Then you wrote a great book in I want to see the late '90s in '99, is that correct?

Dr. Marty: Yes.

Neal: I have a few copies of it signed, thank you very much. We give them away occasionally at the store to very happy customers as a signed giveaway. We use them as contest things in the store. If you tell me about that, how was that received when you brought it up, this natural approach?

Dr. Marty: One of the problems is that [crosstalk] having with it is that it was being received too well because we know controversy sells. What's great about that book is 20 years later, Amazon ranks over nine million books and 20 years later, that book is still in the top 10,000 on Amazon. [unintelligible] to be timeless. The good news is I'm more than halfway done with book two.

Neal: That's awesome, I can't wait for it.

Dr. Marty: [unintelligible] be a trip. The first book was called The Nature of Animal Healing. Nature has two meanings; the nature in which the body heals but also nature is the healer, not the doctor. The second book is called The Spirit of Animal Healing and we're going to take it to a much broader level. Spirit also has two meanings; the spirit in which the body heals but also the spiritual aspect of our favorite kingdom, the animal kingdom.

[unintelligible] take it more to a global level and it's just coming out so well, I have this incredible co-writer from San Diego who is an animal lover and we're just combining our efforts so well. I'm getting very excited about it. The manuscript has to be presented on January 15th and then takes almost up to a year to get it on the shelf which I don't understand, but it does.

Neal: There's a lot of logistics to work out I expect and then marketing plans and all those things, right?

Dr. Marty: Oh, absolutely.

Neal: You're hoping to be done by the end of the year, you got to get on it. You'd only have like a month and a half.

Dr. Marty: You got that right.

[laughter]

Neal: Thank you for giving us some of your time. You recently had The Dog Doc come out. I have to admit I have not yet seen it because it is still in limited showings and it has not come to Victoria and if there's a way that I can help it come to Victoria, I want to do that. How can people see it and when can people see it and all those good things?

Dr. Marty: It's at film festivals right now and it's actually winning best in film with some of these festivals. So far as we've seen it, it's had 100% positive reviews and it was Rotten Tomatoes which ranks movies. It had 100% score. It was a very dear friend and client of mine of almost 30 years that put her efforts into it one of her last documentaries about The Horse Whisperer Buck Brennaman, actually made the shortlist for the academy awards, very professionally done.

They filmed over 300 hours or about 300 hours over three years and a genius editor put an hour and 41-minute-film together and it is truly a work of art, it's a tearjerker. When you do go make sure you bring tissues because you'll be crying within the first five minutes and that'll go off and on for the entire film. It really drives a point home about the need for alternative therapies and how we have to rethink the box, so to speak.

Neal: You have a particular set of tools that you use regularly in your practice like cryotherapy and other things that are uncommon. Can you tell me about some of those modalities that you use in your practice?

Dr. Marty: Cryosurgery is a conventional form of surgery, it's just like you said not well known. It's being done maybe by 10, 15, 20% of the profession but for minor little skin tags and little tumors and you'll see very very well in the documentary. We've taken it to a much higher level where dogs with tumors encompassing their entire jaw-- it's another level that we've taken it to.

Other therapy is intravenous vitamin C. I started to do that way back in the '70s with my brother and we're now known as the IV vitamin C Therapy Hospital but it has tons of medical verification in the conventional field right now, so acupuncture. It's really funny, I became certified in acupuncture in the mid '70s and that's where the condemnation started, Goldstein lost his mind in sticking needles in dogs. Now, it's being accepted and taught in the curriculum of over 50% of the vet schools. So many veterinarians are coming to me and saying, "Oh you're so far ahead of your time", and my answer is, "Acupuncture has been around for 3,000 years. I wasn't ahead of time. I was just 30 years less behind than you are."

Neal: [unintelligible] bulldog who had hemivertebrae and spondylosis so we could never do chiropractic on her but she responded very well to acupuncture. It's the only thing she would--.

Dr. Marty: Yes acupuncture is the gateway for conventional veterinarians to enter the field of alternatives. It's the starting point. So many veterinarians are actually interested in acupuncture.

Neal: Do you use Chinese herbal medicine in your practice?

Dr. Marty: Big time. Western herbal medicine, Chinese herbal medicine, phenomenal now but also a little scary. When I started to do all of this, there was one supplement in the United States, it was a multivitamin-mineral for dogs and cats still available. Do you have any supplements there for dogs and cats right now? A zillion and we have the number one doctor on the planet, Dr. Google that is powerful of a tool that it is. It is also leading to a tremendous amount of confusion.

People are confused, veterinarians are confused what do I do? Should I choose this supplement? What about that supplement? I have people coming to our practice with a box of 25 supplements and their dog is dying, they don't know what they're doing. The world has changed.

Neal: We get it especially with this cardiomyopathy fear that's been put out even though we have a pet food store that doesn't sell kibble, we're a kibble free store and we mostly focused on raw so we have some freeze-dried and dehydrated, canned and cooked but primarily we sell raw. People come in and they're all worried about cardiomyopathy and no raw was included in that and they're automatically going, "Where's the taurine supplement, where is the L-carnitine supplement?" I'm like, "These are meats." [laughs]

Dr. Marty: I just don't understand the acceptance of that entire movement that started through the FDA because there was nothing in grains that supports carnivore heart health, nothing. Another reason why this is statistically verified it's just an insanity, you have to look at the other garbage that's in these grain-based foods or look at the garbage in the grain-free diets that are causing the cardiomyopathy. It's not the absence of grains that leads to cardiomyopathy, it's like give me a break, would you?

Neal: Yes, it's true. One of our interviews was with Dr. Ian Billinghurst, and I think he came up around the same time as you maybe even a few years the head of you. His perspective was out of Australia, he, I think, came upon raw earlier because they hadn't had the pet food movement that North America had had in regards to the industrialization of pet foods. At what point did you come on fresh foods?

Dr. Marty: First of all, I love that man. I had the honor and the great fortune to lecture with him when I ran into you up in Saskatoon. I actually feared him because we got interviewed after that and his comment about me, my only regret is I didn't know Marty decades before this. When they asked me my opinion, I said I actually feared him because I've always questioned authority and he was the authority.

My life was so crazy I never really had time to look into his works way back then. I stumbled upon healthy diet through my own health failing going on to a more healthy raw diet and then trying it on animals because it just made sense. I just winged it myself, he, to me is and was the authority. I have just invited him to contribute to my next book and he did and he wrote one incredible vignette that's going in the food chapter and it's just great. Then I also invited him to do another little 500-word vignette into my cancer chapter.

Neal: Awesome. [unintelligible] and his new book on cancer is exceptional.

Dr. Marty: Beyond exceptional, it's mind-blowing.

Neal: It really is. It has to do with not just dogs or cats, it has to do with all mammals, it's exceptionally well done.

Dr. Marty: Yes and it only goes back to a billion years ago on this planet Earth. [laughs] It's a trip, I was blown away. He got a standing ovation for me when he lectured in Canada.

Neal: Yes, I was there. [crosstalk] Was that in the '90s or the '80s?

Dr. Marty: '70s.

Neal: In the '70s, wow.

Dr. Marty: Way back when I was losing my own health coming out of vet school.

Neal: Right, too stressed and working too hard and all those good things.

Dr. Marty: [unintelligible] crap but also genetically-based, all the males on my mother's side of the family I took care of, most of them are gone from this planet. Those that are still here, the few, had all the same illnesses that I also genetically inherited that I happened to turn around through nutrition. I'm healthy now in my '70s than I was in my '20s.

Neal: You're one of the healthiest man I've ever met.

Dr. Marty: I still I'm still not there yet because I'm having a good time in life but my oldest daughter is 18, I'm 58 years older than my youngest daughter so I have to stay healthy.

Neal: You better, yes exactly you better, that's great. What's next with the The Dog Doc, you're going to do some more festivals? Is it going to go into more general release or how long is that going to last? Do you have even any insight into that?

Dr. Marty: Yes. If you go on dogdocthefilm.com, you can see the trailer and you'll cry during the one-minute trailer, and you'll see the listing of the remaining festivals. I know, they're talking about one being done in Vermont in early February, one in Canada

Neil: Then I'm going to have our write our local film commission and then write you guys and see if I can get it come here.

Dr. Marty: You contact Cedar Creek Productions. I don't have much to do with that, I was just the talent. Then, it's most likely going to come out in distribution end of February and early March, either DVD, hopefully movie houses across North America.

Neil: That would be awesome.

Dr. Marty: Just like her last movie, Bakrid.

Neil: I'm looking forward to seeing it. I'm excited for it. I'm excited that you got the opportunity to make it.

Dr. Marty: It was funny, but it was filmed during maybe one of the most stressful times of my career and my life. It doesn't show in the movie, but it was just [laughs] amazing how it panned out. You have no control because the documentary of what you're going to film. She didn't take any past stories to film. We would start with a pet coming in fresh, you don't know the outcome, we have no prediction on it. It did come out extremely well. I've seen it ten times already and each time I get as much cheer go on, Hollywood Reporter and read their review.

The Hollywood Reporter that's the biggie that everyone waited for, read it. Actually if you read their review, you don't have to watch the film. That's how concise and comprehensive the Hollywood Reporter's review of this movie was.

Neil: Fantastic. Now back to food, because that's what we're here to talk about. For me, we see a lot of strange things coming to store. Right now in the fresh food community there's a meme is what I call it. It's an idea that has grasped the community. We get a lot of people asking about 80/10/10. 80% muscle, 10% bones, 10% organs. For me in my head I imagine what would a rabbit look like if it was 80% muscle, 10% bone, 10%-- it would be a strange looking rabbit. What do you think of 80/10/10?

Dr. Marty: My definition of the science in the field of medicine is man trying to figure out what natural already laid down. As technologically advanced as we've become, with the biochemical pathways and all these MRIs, showing the blood vessel circulation and tumors, where they're growing this and that, nature already laid all of that stuff down. Nature laid down the metabolic pathways. It's astounding that we're able to figure it out, but it's already there. When you start to do configuration, 80/10/10, when I went to Cornell, I had a three-week course on nutrition, and it was all mathematics and arithmetics. It was all percentages of digestible protein, fats, and this and that. It had nothing with quality.

Neil: Statistics.

Dr. Marty: The other thing too is even though I'm helping bring this out there, I'm not a big fan of the totally balanced meal. Because they didn't eat. Nature will figure it out. One of the ways I really saved my life when I started to do all of this is I ate nothing but brown rice for about two to three weeks. That's not a balanced meal. My arthritis went away. I was always fat and I lost 20 pounds. I tried dieting for years and then I did a seven-nine and 11 day fest on even juice or distilled water. I got so unbelievably healthy, but distilled water is not balanced meal. I would've gone further than 11 or 13 days. It's just that I got so thin my mother was having a heart attack.

I've had friends do a 30 and 40 day fast on distilled water, and they became so healthy. We have to watch out about this concept of the complete, nutritionally balanced meal. 80/10/10, 78-12, who cares? [laughs] You get an approximate? They're going to do fine, nature's going to figure it out. When to give this supplement, it has to be 40 minutes before the [unintelligible] who cares? Get it into the body, nature will figure it out.

I've always said, if the pet food industry was created by scientists who studied the way dogs and cats would eat in nature, we would've never created pet food to become what it had become. If the pet food industry was created by common sense instead of science, we'd be a heck of a lot better right now. I've witnessed the incidence of cancer at least quadruple in dogs since I graduated Cornell. Take this science and get rid off it because something is wrong with that statistic, period.

Neil: I like to say, one of the things that cause us to want to do these capturing information for our small audience in these interviews was the fact that I learned that dogs die of cancer more than any other mammal on the planet.

Dr. Marty: Yes, great study that was done in 2015. I presented that chart, that graph in my lecture. It had mammalian cancer and everything below 50% was these blue dots of all the other species, then all of a sudden, the red dots were all the different types of dogs. This and that, and they were all way above the other mammals. Why? Bad luck? God is striking the canine population? No, God wouldn't that because spell God backwards and what do you get? Dog.

Neil: Chances are that's not what it is. It's not divine intervention.

Dr. Marty: Science applied to the field of health.

Neil: I think, Dr. Billinghurst, his thing was that complete imbalance is the razor's edge of nutrition, rather than a natural road of nutrition where you have room to change lanes and move around and get variety and change things up rather than this razor's edge of nutrition where you better eat the same thing everyday because we're making sure that only this fine edge is being met, and you have to ride that razor.

Dr. Marty: He phrases very well when it comes to that. [laughs]

Neil: Nutrition was his gig for many years. He was really good at it. Now with this [inaudible]. With your new book and getting in front of this spiritual or ultimately the way that dogs and cats or pets affect us in a greater sense as well as the way we affect them in a greater sense. Because our energy really affects our pets.

Dr. Marty: And vice versa. Here's the problem, the human race has a whole bunch of activities it does everyday. These activities go into this called different dynamics. You work on yourself try to keep yourself looking good and healthy, then you have the family unit. Then you have the unit of groups that function together, then you got mankind. Notice where the animal and vegetable kingdom exist.

The animal kingdom represents to the human race that energy flow of unconditional love. Happiness, they're always wagging their tail, they always bring you joy. Unfortunately, we've turned that dynamic into cancer we're crashing spiritually the human race. Do you know how many people I've dealt with that stopped work, stopped doing their movies, stopped their shows, stopped doing the this and that because their dog or their cat was terminally ill, or the mood that you go into when your pet is diagnosed with terminal cancer let alone your child.

Spiritually, I care so much more about the animal race than the human race but we are also destroying the human race by our ignorance on health care in this profession.

Neal: It's strange. You see this quite predominantly in pets but I see it in humans as well where we have a healthcare system that doesn't care about nutrition and we have a nutrition system that doesn't really care about health.

Dr. Marty: Hello, science and hello, pharmaceutical companies.

Neal: On top of that.

Dr. Marty: Yes, they run the show, unfortunately, and I'm not averse to conventional medicine because I still have to use it every single day. I don't go in that direction but you look at how much our industry is subsidized by the pharmaceutical industry it gets a bit scary. You look at these commercials on primetime TV and the absurdity of the 15 seconds on the benefit of the drugs and then the 35 seconds on what the drug will do to you. You will be really happy if you don't commit suicide. You listen to these commercials and how would anyone buy that drug of this bizarre name but they sell billions every day.

Neal: They do.

Dr. Marty: Time for change.

Neal: We see it in our store where people come in and they say how they have allergies and we talk about what that means and then they say this is what's going on and it's itchiness and it's this and it's the skin and then almost always sadly, it's not allergies it's the flea treatment. That stuff is being oversold because it was created to create --If you know when you had an infestation of fleas not all flea or never even seeing a flea and just putting it on or putting it in their mouth every three months. What the heck is going on there?

Dr. Marty: The profession of veterinary medicine is a disease-oriented establishment. We learn as veterinarians to diagnose disease and then drug it the three days. Unfortunately, we have learned to try to prevent disease with elements that cause disease. Vaccines do not make dogs and cats or people healthy, they protect against disease but they now have a huge list of adverse reactions.

[unintelligible] worm preventative that does not make a dog healthy, it prevents against a disease but look at the label on the adverse reactions and it's like watching these TV shows we just talked about. Flea control products don't make dogs and cats healthy. They protect against flea infestation but they themselves have a list of adverse reactions. We become disease-oriented. We are doing things to protect against disease so we have created disease. We don't learn as veterinary students much about healthcare.

Neal: It's disease care.

Dr. Marty: Yes. That's it.

Neal: This is strange to me that if I went to the vet or the doctor and I said my kid doesn't like mosquitoes and he said here let me put this pesticide on his head don't touch him for a couple of days.

Dr. Marty: We do do that. We go to the [unintelligible] toxic stuff and then you have the new revolution which could be more influential than anything else. Glyphosates. I think that's destroying the earth, the human race and the animal kingdom.

Neal: It's brought to you by the same company that brought you, Agent Orange.

Dr. Marty: Yes and this wonderful substance when I started doing all this work that preserved the fat in pet food that was the Monsanto rubber stabilizer to stabilize driven in tires called ethoxyquin.

Neal: Ethoxyquin. I used [unintelligible].

Dr. Marty: [unintelligible] it liquefied their liver. Horrible.

Neal: It was mandated to be used in fish meal.

Dr. Marty: Probably still is.

Neal: Probably still is depending on the [unintelligible].

Dr. Marty: Doesn't make it on the label because it sneaks in the back door.

Neal: Because they didn't put it in the fish meal they got the fish meal as a product that already had other ingredients that I don't need to list.

Dr. Marty: That's right.

Neal: It's a crazy system. Do you know anything about what's going on with AAFCO right now and some of the craziness that's happening there?

Dr. Marty: No I've always-- even though we've abided by AAFCO in trying to create high-grade foods because they're not really the regulatory board, they're the ones that lay down the principles so the FDA can regulate which they don't do it but I stayed away from that.

Neal: [unintelligible].

Dr. Marty: The thing I've always advised when people ask me after I speak and after they read my book and this and that is how do you fight this stuff and my answer to that is you don't fight it. If you walk into a room that's pitch black and dark, don't try to fight the dark turn on a light. Anytime some of this blackness I don't focus on the blackness I keep on working.

It's the old thing. If you're on a fire truck and you're driving to put out the fire, don't stop the truck to kick the barking dogs off the truck that are attacking it because and there were a lot of barking dogs out there in the field of disease and health care. Personally, I just keep on working on the truth, the light, and health.

Neal: I love that. You got such a great message, Marty.

Dr. Marty: Thank you.

Neal: You really do. Every time I've spoken with you-- we've met a couple of times once in Saskatoon most recently and then once it's SuperZoo.

Dr. Marty: SupperZoo. Oh, boy [Laughs]

Neal: I was hoping to see you there didn't see you but I was hoping to see you.

Dr. Marty: Very appropriate name for that.

Neal: It really is. I go every couple of years and every time I see you, every time I speak with you you always have such a positive message and I love this message of you don't focus on what's wrong focus on being right.

Dr. Marty: That's it. It's so simple you just walk the path talk the talk that you've learned to talk.

Neal: Yes, stick with your values.

Dr. Marty: [unintelligible] becoming rewarding finally after-- We talk about four decades of going against a huge grain, huge and now I'm just really happy and it's not about me. It's hard to make me happier in life it's about the animals that we love so much and so well.

Neal: You have food out now it's a freeze-dried food we even get it up here in Canada called Dr. Martys.

Dr. Marty: I'm very, very happy with that. If I had to go ideal I probably wouldn't have created a freeze-dried food but the process of freeze-drying really doesn't degradate anything it just removes the moisture, preserves everything and it was my way of being able to reach the masses because you start to ship raw diet and you're dealing with refrigeration and the weight of the moisture, you put yourself out of business and the freeze-dried-

Neal: That's what I do, Marty, what are you talking about?

Dr. Marty: The freeze-dried process and the joy about that food right now and its associated supplements is the testimonials I'm getting through the company forwarded to me and the videos of families with their pets thanking me for saving their dog's life and it's just like that's what it's about for me. I'm actually getting contacted by conventional veterinarians who've had cases, non-responsive and the people bought my food and within two weeks their dog is normal. The veterinarians are contacting me so there is the win-win for me in my life.

Neal: It’s amazing the difference food can make.

Dr. Marty: Absolutely.

Neal: People come into our store and I'm like, "It's just food, it's not drugs. Let's not expect it's going to happen tomorrow." Then they come in a week later. It's like, "It's a new dog." I'm like-

Dr. Marty: It's that easy. I wrote 17 fundamentals in my first book the Fundamentals of Health and Disease. One of the fundamentals is health is simplistic. Disease brings in complexity. The medical establishment may be the most complex profession on this planet where health, "How do you heal a cut?" [inaudible]. You cut yourself. How do you heal it? You look it up in an encyclopedia?

Neal: No.

Dr. Marty: No, if your immune system is healthy, it will heal. Disease is this amassment of complexity where health is simple. Food. It all starts with food.

Neal: It's a lot of get out of the way.

Dr. Marty: Yes, that's it.

Neal: Let the body do what it needs to do, but then you need to give the right fuel.

Marty: Yes, you need to know what. Besides just feeling that you have to be right in the field of arithmetics and science, it's okay for everyone listening out there to use common sense. Think about it. That's what woke me up.

Neal: It's not so common anymore, though, is it?

Marty: No. It'll tell you one thing is not on the curriculum in medical school. [laughs]

Neal: That's the truth. We see a huge explosion, especially here in Canada and expect the Pacific Northwest in CBD products for pets.

Marty: Globally.

Neal: Have you seen the same in your own practice?

Marty: No, I see it on the internet. Three to five a day, we do use it in our practice. We had the fortunate experience talking about when I lectured with Ian, in Canada-

Neal: You met Dr. Silver?

Marty: -having Bob Silver lecture on the science behind CBD.

Neal: He's great.

Marty: Yes, he's contributing to my book too. There is so much science behind the efficacy of using a natural product called CBD and all its constituents. It's just another step in the right direction. When I lectured at the Cornell Veterinary College, that got filmed for the documentary, and I went through the timeline of when I graduated, and how my license was verbally threatened in 1978 for treating arthritic dogs with glucosamine sulfate because I wasn't using acceptable medical therapy. I threw that timeline on, and then I put up a study done on the pain and inflammation relief of arthritic dogs. That was done two months before I lectured at Cornell. Guess who didn't publish that study?

Neal: Dr. Silver.

Marty: Cornell University Vet School.

Neal: Awesome.

Marty: I just then looked at the audience and said, "Don't you think it's time to wake up?" and the students they just loved it. You'll see part of that in the documentary.

Neal: That's awesome. That must have been a great experience to be able to go back to your Alma Mater and give a talk and inspire those youths.

Marty: Not only that, but it really looks like the documentary will be showing in the future at the Cornell Vet School.

Neal: How exciting.

Marty: Very.

Neal: You must be very proud. That's awesome.

Marty: It's not pride. It's a feeling of not so much even accomplishment. It's just enhanced well-being for our favorite kingdom. How would it feel to be a rock star? What? How does it feel to have this work? This is the work of nature, not me. Get accepted, so we could better our favorite companion animal kingdom. That's what it's about. It's not about being a rock star [laughs]. I haven't changed. It's just about finally having the acceptance of what needs to be done get done. Period.

Neal: I know. Awesome. I think that you're building a great legacy, Marty. I think you're doing great work, and we need more vets like you.

Marty: We're going to get them. Mark my words, because first of all, when I went to Cornell, it was 60 students, a maximum of two females in a class of 60.

Neal: How's that? That's crazy.

Marty: That's how it was. Now, do you realize that across the board in the veterinary colleges of the United States, it's probably at least 70% female in all the classes? We do have that heart entering the profession, and you know what? They want this. As the resistance eventually retires end or dies off this is going to happen in our profession.

Neal: Well, what do they say? There's a saying that scientific advancement happens one death at a time.

Marty: There it is. Right [laughs]. We do need that, unfortunately.

Neal: Generations move forward with a better perspective.

Marty: Correct. Absolutely.

Neal: What's next? You do so much. What's next?

Marty: Music.

Neal: Oh, yes? I love it.

Marty: As much as I love the animals, and I love the work I've been doing, and not to be sacrilegious, but I have to say that music is a little bit more important to me. I'd given it up. I can sing well, and play the guitar. I have 1700 LPs, 1300 CDs. At one time I had 44, 145s. I am a music fanatic. I haven't really done any of it, so as I finally do get out of clinical practice so I could educate the masses, the book is done and I know the food and the products are out there, I will finally have time to spend with my family, my daughters, and really get into music because I love music. That's one of the things that's next.

Neal: I love it, man. I think that's what I said. When I get close to retirement, I want to take a course on audio engineering because I have a lot of friends who are musicians, and they need a good engineer. There's a free MIT course on audio engineering I've wanted to [inaudible].

Marty: It's just another aesthetic, artistic vibration, which is the vibration that the animals function on, not the human race. It's the part of us that gets into a higher vibrational energy. Also, I want to see the world. I've been a slave to work for 45, 47 years. I have to go to Europe, Egypt. There's a lot of worlds I want to see so travel. Also when I travel, learn more about the medical practices in these more down to earth countries, the European countries, South American countries. That's on the horizon.

Neal: That's awesome. That's exciting.

Marty: Very.

Neal: I think that if you were to talk to somebody today who had never considered a fresh food diet for their pet, they'd only done the conventional Nestle therapy, as I like to call it where they're just feeding the same bag for the lifetime of that animal, and riding as a Billinghurst says, "The razor's edge of nutrition," and they're considering they come into my store, we don't sell Kibble. What would you say to them?

Marty: Once again, the line I always use if the pet food that you're feeding your dog or cat was created by scientists that studied the way a dog or cat would eat, they wouldn't have created that or what Martha allowed me to say, the first or second time she had me on her TV show. She allowed me to put up the formula of maybe the most popular selling food in the United States and the first ingredient was corn. She allowed me obviously, the name of the company was not there.

She allowed me to look at her and say, "Martha, have you ever seen a dog stalk and ear of corn." Here it is. It's just really my advice to these people, use common sense, become educated and read labels, and think about the ingredients you're seeing on that label and if that is conducive, common sensically for your dog or your cat to eat. The cat is the obligate carnivore. I used to just say is, "Show me one tooth in a dog or a cat's mouth that is flat for grinding or chewing cereal or grain".

Neal: With cats, I was on the board for an organization called felinenutrition.org. All the vets on that board said they legally shouldn't be allowed to sell dry food anymore for cats. The science shows clearly that that's harmful, there's no health in that, they shouldn't be allowed to do it. What do you think? How many cats have you seen with kidney disease?

Dr. Marty: It's not the kidney disease, it's the creation of cardiomyopathy which the pet food industry has publically taken responsibility for. In destroying all the taurine. There's no meat in there and whatever. It may have a little bit of taurine but it gets destroyed in the heating process. Now it's illegal to put out a cat food without it. It's more the heart disease than the kidney disease but then it's cancer, diabetes, obesity, allergies, all of it, and it's 100%, yes, the cat is the obligate carnivore. It's the meat-eater. Feed them meat.

Neal: Yes. Why don't we wrap it up on that note?

Dr. Marty: Feed them meat.

Neal: Right.

Dr. Marty: You know what? It's funny, but Oprah, when she had me on, she squeezed me into another show because we had, the what I titled "The day the music died", the pet food recall.

Neal: Yes, that's what started my store.

Dr. Marty: Recall in 2007.

Neal: That's what started my store.

Dr. Marty: That was it, 2007, and she squeezed me in to an already existing show and I was only on for four and a half minutes, and she chanted as she was making food for her dogs and Sophie, meat. Dr. Marty says, "Let them eat meat" and then that was it. Thank you, Oprah.

Neal: That was awesome, I love it. It's a perfect note to end on. Thank you very much for giving us your time today.

Dr. Marty: It's a pleasure, and you're doing great work. Just open some stores down in this country.

Neal: Yes, I have to take over Canada first.

Dr. Marty: All right. You've got a mission. We'll allow you another year.

Neal: Thank you so much, Marty.

Dr. Marty: A pleasure. Bye.

parallax