All My Children Wear Fur Coats with Peggy Hoyt

In this podcast episode our host, Peggy Hoyt, interviewed Austin Collins, CEO and co-founder of Five Strands, a wellness company that provides intolerance testing for both people and pets.  Through their testing, they can help to identify dietary and envrionmental stressors. Austin explained how Five Strands has tested 500,000 people and pets over nearly 10 years, offering four main categories of testing: food intolerances, environmental sensitivities, nutritional imbalances, and heavy metal sensitivity, with results provided through a CLIA-certified lab using hair sample collection. The company recently released an updated mobile app and continues to focus on personalized testing rather than generalized DNA panels, with Austin emphasizing the importance of early dietary rotation and environmental awareness for pet health.Support the show

In this episode of All My Children Wear Fur Coats, Peggy interviewed Garrett Bukas, CEO and founder of Pet HSA, a financial wellness platform designed to help pet owners prepare for and manage rising veterinary costs.  Garrett discussed the significant financial and emotional costs of pet ownership, highlighting how veterinary expenses have been increasing substantially.    Garrett shared his personal experience with his dog Mia, who accumulated over $100,000 in vet expenses throughout her life, which inspired him to create Pet HSA after earning his MBA. The platform features a pet calculator that helps owners estimate lifetime costs based on breed, location, and care choices, along with educational resources and community support to help families plan for both routine and emergency veterinary expenses. Garrett discussed the challenges of pet ownership costs increasing up to 300% over recent years and the emotional burden on pet owners, emphasizing the importance of routine care and not skipping veterinary visits despite current financial pressures.Support the show

This was an interview with Matt Terrell, founder and CEO of InnoVet Pet Products, discussing his latest innovation called ChefPaw, the world's first pet food maker designed to help pet parents create fresh, customized meals at home. Matt explained how ChefPaw addresses the challenges of fresh pet food preparation, including proper cooking temperatures, ingredient balancing, and cost efficiency, with machines capable of making 3 to 30 pound batches in under an hour at temperatures below 100°C to preserve nutrition. The conversation also covered Matt's other innovative products, including Purotic ear cleaner and Tracers scent markers for blind dogs, and his personal story of how his dog Maximus inspired the creation of his first product after struggling to treat ear infections. Matt emphasized that ChefPaw provides significant cost savings compared to fresh food subscription services, with economy recipes costing around $1.90 per pound including supplements, and noted that the product recently won a Purina Innovation Award and Best Overall Product at SuperZoo.  For more information visit https://www.innovetpet.com/Support the show

This was an interview episode of "All My Children Wear Fur Coats" with host Peggy Hoyt and guest Jackie Ducci, an animal advocate, philanthropist, and equestrian. Jackie shared her lifelong connection with animals, particularly horses which she started riding at age seven, and how animals taught her self-worth beyond traditional measures during challenging childhood experiences. She discussed her documentary film "Unspoken Bond" which premiered in March and explores how animals support healing and well-being, with plans for future screenings and a podcast series launching in September. Jackie also explained her nonprofit Human Animal Alliance, which operates as a private foundation granting funds to other organizations that prioritize the human-animal bond, including recent support for PAWS for People's prison program. The conversation covered Jackie's current animal family consisting of two bulldogs and two horses, and how horses serve as teachers while dogs function as best friends, with both providing different but equally valuable roles in her life.Support the show

Peggy Hoyt interviewed Dr. Kevin Toman, known as the "longevity vet," about helping pets live longer on her podcast "All My Children Wear Fur Coats." Dr. Toman discussed how veterinary medicine lags behind human longevity science by about 20 years, explaining that while human drugs like rapamycin and acarbose show promise for extending pet lifespans, the biggest impact comes from dietary changes, lifestyle modifications, and supplements rather than prescription drugs alone. He emphasized that calorie restriction, improving dietary quality, and avoiding high-impact activities like jumping can significantly extend pet lifespans, while warning against overuse of certain supplements like glucosamine and chondroitin that have been disproven by recent research. The conversation also touched on vaccine practices, with Dr. Toman advocating for more judicious use of pet vaccines based on individual risk factors rather than universal recommendations.Support the show