My Dog Is Better Than Your Dog

Dr. Lily Chen
  • 5.0 (11)
  • Pets & Animals
  • Weekly

Welcome to My Dog Is Better Than Your Dog — where science meets soul as we explore what's possible when we reimagine pet care. I'm Dr. Lily Chen, integrative veterinarian and believer that our animals deserve extraordinary medicine. Each week, I talk with leading experts, pioneering vets, and devoted pet parents pushing the boundaries of animal health. Microbiome restoration, energy medicine, cancer hope, nutrition, and the mind-body-pet connection. Real science. Deep stories. A little magic. ✨ Follow IG: @dr.lilychen | @integrativepet | @the.unicorn.vet 📧 mydog@integrativepet.com

  1. 7h ago

    What No One Tells You About Using Essential Oils Safely on Pets w/ Dr. Janet Roark

    Dr. Janet Roark is back for part two, and this is the episode pet parents have been waiting for. The practical one. The one where you actually learn what to do. Dr. Janet has been practicing veterinary medicine for nearly two decades with essential oils as a cornerstone of her work. In this episode, she gets specific. Which oils to avoid and why, how to dilute properly, how to let your pet tell you which oils they actually want, and how to find oils you can actually trust. She also talks about something that stuck with me: the study people always bring up where a cat died from essential oils. Turns out the dose was wildly excessive, and in some cases, the oil was not even toxic to cats, just to cat fleas. That detail never made it into the warning. This conversation is a starting point, not a complete guide. But if you have ever stood in a pet store feeling overwhelmed by essential oils, or wondered if they are even safe to try, this episode gives you a real foundation. KEY INSIGHTS:✨ Tea tree, wintergreen, and birch are the three oils Dr. Janet does not use on dogs or cats. Many pet shampoos still contain tea tree, which concerns her deeply. Safer alternatives like cedarwood and lavender do similar things without the risk.✨ The studies people cite about essential oils harming cats often involve extreme doses or were misread. One widely shared warning about orange oil being toxic to cats was based on a study about cat fleas, not cats.✨ Dilution is the single most important safety step. Two to three drops of essential oil per 100 drops of carrier oil is a good starting point. With cats and small dogs, consider starting at one drop per 100.✨ When you apply oil to a pet's skin, they will lick it, which means they are ingesting it. Factor that in always and dilute accordingly.✨ Self-selection is how you let your pet vote. Let them smell the capped bottle first. If they lean in, lick it, or rub their face on it, that is a yes. If they back away or gag, that is a no. Animals have preferences, and they will tell you.✨ Dr. Janet's everyday favorites: frankincense, copaiba, and turmeric for daily wellness; lavender and cedarwood for calming; vetiver for anxious dogs; spikenard and rose for cats; helichrysum for wounds and emotional trauma; geranium for bleeding; coriander for focus and digestion.✨ Diffusion safety comes down to these basics: open room, three to four drops maximum, and observe your pet for the first five to ten minutes with a new oil. If they try to leave, stop.✨ A GC-MS report is the minimum standard for quality. Look for companies that publish current reports with lot numbers, source their oils directly from farmers, and are transparent about testing. Old reports on a website are a red flag.✨ Never buy essential oils from Amazon, even if you recognize the brand. Third-party sellers cannot guarantee handling or authenticity. Buy directly from the company.✨ Essential oils are not a replacement for conventional care. They work alongside herbs, acupuncture, chiropractic, homeopathy, and even chemotherapy, helping pets recover faster and reducing side effects.✨ Dr. Janet offers a free 17-page safety guide, a membership community of over 2,000 people, monthly webinars, and her Animal Aromatherapy Specialist Certification, the course Dr. Lily completed that changed how she uses essential oils in practice. RESOURCES:Dr. Janet Roark, The Essential Oil VetWebsite: www.essentialoilvet.comInstagram: @essentialoilvetFacebook: facebook.com/eodvmFree 17-Page Safety Guide: available at essentialoilvet.com Linktree: Essential Oil Vet FOLLOW:Integrative Pet Wellness Center: https://integrativepet.comInstagram: @integrativepet Dr. Lily Chen: @dr.lilychen @the.unicorn.vet Sign up to our newsletter to get more holistic pet care tips 🐶🐈‍⬛

    What No One Tells You About Using Essential Oils Safely on Pets w/ Dr. Janet Roark

  2. Oct 18

    From Skeptic to Believer: The Science of Essential Oils for Pets w/ Dr. Janet Roark

    Everything You've Been Told About Essential Oils and Pets Is Wrong. If you've ever Googled essential oils and pets, you've been told to stay away. Don't diffuse. Don't apply. And especially not around cats. Dr. Lily was skeptical too, until she took Dr. Janet's course and understood the science. Dr. Janet Roark is known worldwide as the Essential Oil Vet. She is the author of The Essential Oils for Pets guidebook, creator of the Animal Aromatherapy Specialist Certification Program, and has built a global community of pet owners and veterinarians learning to use essential oils safely and effectively. Her own practice has moved from fully conventional to fully integrative to now fully holistic — acupuncture, chiropractic, and essential oils. Her story started with migraines so severe she thought she had a brain tumor. As a veterinarian, she was on multiple medications with side effects that were destroying her gut. A friend handed her an essential oil blend at dinner one night. Her headache disappeared in 15 minutes and stayed gone. That was the moment everything changed. In this episode, Dr. Janet explains why the answer to "are essential oils safe for pets?" is both yes and no, and why quality and purity are the distinction most people miss. She walks through the science of how essential oils actually work in the body, and she shares the story of Louie the Horse — three years of recurring sinusitis, round after round of antibiotics, resolved after one essential oil session. KEY INSIGHTS: ✨ The essential oil industry is largely unregulated and dominated by a perfume industry that adds synthetics to make oils smell consistent. This is not what we are talking about when we talk about therapeutic essential oils. ✨ Perfume grade oils and therapeutic grade oils are not the same. Brand and purity matter the same way they do with food, herbs, and medicine. ✨ Essential oils are lipid soluble, which means they absorb through the skin directly into the bloodstream. They do not need to be digested or processed the way water-soluble herbs do. ✨ Because of their molecule size, certain essential oils can cross the blood-brain barrier. This makes them uniquely effective for neurological conditions that are difficult to treat with traditional medicine. ✨ Dogs and cats have two olfactory systems — direct and indirect — far more advanced than humans. Aromatherapy works directly on the part of the brain that governs emotion and memory. ✨ Essential oils can stop fear cycles and anxiety spirals by activating the vagus nerve and shifting the nervous system toward parasympathetic mode without sedating the brain. ✨ Louie the Horse had recurring sinusitis for three years on antibiotics. After two essential oil sessions 12 years ago, it has never returned. ✨ Stress leads to inflammation, and inflammation leads to disease. Essential oils address the stress-inflammation connection that drives so much of chronic disease in pets today. ✨ Essential oils are an and, not an or. They do not replace surgery or antibiotics when those are necessary. They reduce how often we need to reach for those tools. ✨ AI is now generating the same misinformation about essential oil safety that Google produced a decade ago. Educating yourself from veterinary sources matters more than ever. RESOURCES: Dr. Janet Roark: www.essentialoilvet.com Instagram: @essentialoilvet Facebook: Essential Oil Vet - Janet Roark, DVM Linktr.ee: @Essential Oil Vet FOLLOW: Integrative Pet Wellness Center: https://integrativepet.com Instagram: @integrativepet Dr. Lily Chen: @dr.lilychen @the.unicorn.vetSign up to our newsletter to get more holistic pet care tips 🐶🐈‍⬛

    From Skeptic to Believer: The Science of Essential Oils for Pets w/ Dr. Janet Roark

  3. Oct 4

    The Part of Pet Parenthood Nobody Prepares You For w/ Dr. Jenn Roedig

    There is a moment almost every pet parent will face and almost nobody is prepared for it. You are sitting with your dog and it hits you. We are getting closer to the end. And then comes the flood. The emotions. The questions you did not know how to ask. The guilt you did not see coming. The decisions that feel impossible because you are making them for someone who cannot tell you what they want. Dr. Jenn Roedig is a licensed veterinarian and the founder of Sage Paws, a virtual practice built entirely around supporting pet parents through their animal's aging, illness, and end of life. She has guided over 500 families through this space. And two months before we recorded this conversation, she lost her own dog Luke unexpectedly the night before Easter to a ruptured splenic mass. She shares that story in this episode. It is raw and it is real. We talk about guilt, probably the most common emotion pet parents carry, and what is actually underneath it. We talk about anticipatory grief, the kind that starts weeks or months before the loss when nobody around you understands why you are already mourning. And we talk about how to know when it is time, and why you will know is not always a good enough answer. Dr. Lily also shares something personal in this one. She lost her heart dog in 2020 and still carries pieces of that ending with her. KEY INSIGHTS: ✨ Guilt is probably the most common emotion pet parents experience around end of life and it is almost never talked about openly because pet loss is grief that society does not fully recognize. Guilt loves isolation. It feeds on silence. ✨ Naming it is the first step to moving through it. Dr. Jenn calls it naming it to tame it. Once you can see what is underneath the guilt, you start to take your power back. ✨ Saying you will know when it is time is not always helpful. It depends on the disease, the pet, the family's values, and what too soon or too late means to each person. ✨ Look at good hours, not just good days. A day can be called good but if it only had four good hours and twenty bad ones, that matters. Quality of life is nuanced and individual to every pet and every family. ✨ Notice what they stop disliking, not just what they stop liking. Dr. Jenn's dog Luke used to bark at delivery drivers. She knew that if that ever stopped, something was really wrong. ✨ Anticipatory grief is real and it is disenfranchised. Nobody around you may understand why you are already grieving a pet that is still alive. You are not alone in that and you do not have to carry it alone. ✨ Journaling or voice noting your thoughts for ten minutes a day can help break the spiral. Getting it out of your head and onto paper gives it somewhere to live so it stops consuming you at 3am. ✨ The best time to have these conversations is before you need them. Families who plan ahead, even loosely, are more prepared to make meaningful decisions under pressure. ✨ Dr. Jenn's sessions are 90 minutes and completely virtual. She works with pet parents anywhere in the world. ✨ Vets are not trained for these conversations in vet school. A resource like Sage Paws does not replace the veterinarian. It fills the gap the vet does not have time to fill. RESOURCES: Sage Paws: https://www.sagepaws.com/ Instagram: @_sage_paws Sessions: 90 minutes, virtual, available worldwide Linktr.ee: @sagepaws FOLLOW:Integrative Pet Wellness Center: https://integrativepet.com/ Instagram: @integrativepet Threads: @integrativepet Sign up to our newsletter to get more holistic pet care tips 🐶🐈‍⬛ Dr. Lily Chen: Instagram: @dr.lilychen @the.unicorn.vet Threads: @the.unicorn.vet LinkedIn: Lily Chen, DVM, CVA

    The Part of Pet Parenthood Nobody Prepares You For w/ Dr. Jenn Roedig

  4. Sep 20

    Your Dog's Tongue Is Trying to Tell You Something w/ Carol Bramson

    Your Dog's Tongue Is Trying to Tell You Something w/ Carol Bramson The next time your dog is lying next to you totally relaxed, look at their tongue. Is it pale pink or a deep angry red? Dry or moist? Purple around the edges? To most of us that is just a tongue. But in a tradition practiced for thousands of years it is your dog communicating with you about what is happening inside their body. Carol Bramson is the founder of Side by Side Pet, a whole food pet nutrition company built on Eastern food therapy. She grew up in a household where food was health, spent years visiting over 3,000 food ingredient suppliers across the US and Europe, and then got her first dog, Wrigley, was handed a bag of kibble, and thought this does not look like food. Wrigley is 11 now and everyone who meets him thinks he is about two. We get into the energetics of food, warming cooling and neutral, why gut health has to come first before food can even do its job, why seizures and hot spots so often trace back to what is in the bowl, and why the answer to changing pet health is collaboration not competition. KEY INSIGHTS:✨ Food has energetic properties understood for thousands of years in Eastern medicine. Warming foods support a body running cold. Cooling foods calm a body running hot. Matching the food to the dog can change everything.✨ The tongue tells you what is happening inside. Side by Side built an AI balance indicator that analyzes a photo of your dog's tongue and recommends which food type their body needs right now.✨ Gut health has to come first. A dog on kibble for years may not have the microorganisms needed to absorb nutrients from whole food. Rebuilding the microbiome before or alongside the transition matters.✨ Dr. Lily tested kibble-fed dogs and found high levels of glyphosate and mycotoxins. A major pet food company told her the levels were within acceptable range for humans. Pets are not small people.✨ Seizures in dogs correlate strongly with toxic load. Dr. Lily has seen seizure frequency decrease significantly when toxins are cleared and diet changes. We reach for drugs before we ask what is driving the problem.✨ Whole food nutrients cannot be replicated by synthetic supplements. The structural combination of fiber, vitamins, and minerals in a whole food is what the body is designed to absorb. Your doctor tells you to eat broccoli, not broccoli powder.✨ Feeding the same food every single day for years is not variety. Rotating proteins and adding fresh toppers even in small amounts builds microbial diversity and signals to the body that it is safe to adapt.✨ The pet food industry changes when consumers change where they spend their money. Even the largest kibble companies are launching fresh food lines because that is where demand is going.✨ Side by Side's Giving Fund provides whole food nutrition to dogs in need with a special focus on service, therapy, and care dogs.✨ There are not enough pets eating well. Every brand, vet, and pet parent working toward that goal is on the same side. RESOURCES:Side by Side Pet: https://www.sidebysidepet.comInstagram: @sidebysidepetFacebook: @sidebysidepetTiktok: @sidebysidepet Available on: sidebysidepet.com, Amazon, Chewy and independent boutique pet stores FOLLOW:Integrative Pet Wellness Center: https://integrativepet.comInstagram: @integrativepetThreads: @integrativepetSign up to our newsletter to get more holistic pet care tips 🐶🐈‍⬛ Dr. Lily Chen: Instagram: @dr.lilychen @the.unicorn.vet Threads: @the.unicorn.vetLinkedIn: Lily Chen, DVM, CVA & The Unicorn Vet

    Your Dog's Tongue Is Trying to Tell You Something w/ Carol Bramson

  5. Sep 6

    The Vet Episode Nobody Taught You in Vet School w/ Dr. Judy Jasek

    This one is for every veterinarian who has ever felt like an island. But it is also for every pet parent who has ever wondered what it actually takes for a vet to practice medicine on their own terms, and why so many of the best ones end up building something from scratch. Dr. Judy Jasek never wanted to own a business. She became an entrepreneur because it was the only way she could practice the medicine she believed in. She bought a conventional practice, stopped doing as many vaccines because she believed they were harming her patients, and watched her revenue plummet. Then she built a full integrative hospital, burned out under the weight of it, sold it, sat through a three year non-compete, and rebuilt from the front room of her house. No debt. No bank loan. Just a mat on the floor and a willingness to see what happened. It thrived. Dr. Lily started the same way. House calls, then 500 square feet, a mat and a desk, no X-ray machine, no surgery suite. The only piece of equipment she needs to plug in today is her ozone machine. This conversation also goes into the loss of empathy in the veterinary profession since COVID, what drove it, and why both Dr. Judy and Dr. Lily believe that healing is an art that is at risk of being lost. KEY INSIGHTS: ✨ Most holistic vets become entrepreneurs by necessity, not choice. The only way to practice authentically is often to build something yourself. ✨ You do not need a big loan, a big space, or all the equipment. Dr. Judy rebuilt from her front room. Dr. Lily started with house calls and 500 square feet. Both practices thrived. ✨ Avoiding debt is one of the most important decisions you can make when starting a practice. When you own debt, you feel trapped. When you own nothing, you are free to practice the way you want. ✨ Find the modality that is uniquely yours and go all in on that. You do not have to do everything. Every other clinic is already doing everything. Your niche eliminates your competition. ✨ The curbside drop-off era during COVID did profound damage to the veterinarian-client bond. The loss of empathy in the profession since that time is something both Dr. Judy and Dr. Lily are seeing firsthand. ✨ Corporate practice appointments run every 10 to 15 minutes. There is not enough time to sit on the floor, listen to the family, explore options, or practice medicine that feels like medicine. ✨ Informed consent is how veterinarians are supposed to practice. Explaining the risks, the whys, the regulations, and letting the family make the choice. Not badgering, not enforcing, not checking boxes. ✨ Clients follow doctors, not clinics. When you practice from the heart, people are drawn to that energy. The right clients will find you. ✨ Healing is an art. Every veterinarian has unique gifts. The world needs those gifts, not another clinic that does the same things as the 10 clinics around it. ✨ If you feel like an island in this profession, you are not alone. There are more of us than you think. RESOURCES: Animal Healing Arts: https://ahavet.com Instagram: @judyjasek Facebook: @Animal Healing Arts Substack: https://judyjasekdvm.substack.com Membership (free to join): https://ahavet.com/membership FOLLOW: Integrative Pet Wellness Center: https://integrativepet.com Instagram: @integrativepet Threads: @integrativepet Sign up to our newsletter to get more holistic pet care tips 🐶🐈‍⬛ Dr. Lily Chen: Instagram: @dr.lilychen @the.unicorn.vet Threads: @the.unicorn.vet LinkedIn: Lily Chen, DVM, CVA & The Unicorn Vet

    The Vet Episode Nobody Taught You in Vet School w/ Dr. Judy Jasek

  6. Aug 23

    Your Pet Is Living in the Moment. Are You? w/ Dr. Judy Jasek

    Your Pet Is Not Worried About Dying. You Are. What if the tumor is not the disease? What if it is the body's way of telling us something went wrong a long time ago, and the real work is figuring out what that was? Dr. Judy Jasek graduated from Colorado State University in 1988 and spent years in conventional practice before something shifted. Her own horse developed a behavioral problem that no conventional approach could touch. An energetic chiropractor turned the animal around completely, and once Dr. Judy started looking at medicine differently, she could not stop. Nearly 40 years later, she runs Animal Healing Arts, a telemedicine practice rooted in what she calls the Terrain Paradigm: the idea that health is the body's natural state, and our job is to figure out what knocked the body off balance and help it return. We talk about mistletoe therapy, ozone, Chinese herbal medicine, why she almost never recommends surgery as a first step, and why your pet is not worried about dying from cancer. They just want to live a happy life. And the energy you bring into the room, fear or gratitude, directly affects their healing. KEY INSIGHTS: ✨ The tumor is the tip of the iceberg. It is a warning sign that the body's toxic load has exceeded what it can handle. Removing the tumor without addressing what caused it is incomplete. ✨ Cancer rates are rising in young dogs. Lymphoma in two-year-olds, aggressive tumors in four-year-olds. This was not something seen 20 or 30 years ago and it is a wake-up call. ✨ Dr. Judy's first question for every cancer patient is not about the diagnosis. It is how is the pet doing. A pet that is still eating, vigorous, and enjoying life has a lot to work with. ✨ Mistletoe therapy has been used in human oncology in Europe for over 100 years. In Germany, roughly 70% of human cancer patients receive it. It is immunomodulating, has direct anti-cancer effects, and can be administered at home. ✨ Fever after mistletoe treatment can be a sign the immune system is waking up, not a sign something is wrong. Warming the body activates enzymatic pathways that support healing. ✨ Ozone therapy oxygenates the body at a cellular level. When pets are tired after ozone treatment, it is often because the body has been given a healing tool and needs to rest to use it. ✨ Dr. Judy almost never recommends surgery as a first step. Unless there is a life-threatening blockage or bleed, she focuses on supporting the body first and correcting what led to the cancer. ✨ Success does not have to mean the tumor is gone. Can the pet live with this comfortably with good quality of life? That is a more realistic and more achievable goal than elimination. ✨ Your pet does not know they have cancer. They want to eat, play, and curl up next to you. The fear and grief you carry around them affects their healing. Gratitude and presence are medicine. ✨ Prevention is the most powerful tool. Testing the gut microbiome, vitamin D levels, and toxic burden early, before anything shows up on bloodwork, gives the body the best chance to come back into balance before disease develops. ✨ Diarrhea is not a metronidazole deficiency. Any symptom the body produces naturally has a reason. The question is not how do we stop this, it is what is the body trying to tell us. RESOURCES: Animal Healing Arts: https://ahavet.com Instagram: @animal.healing.arts Facebook: @animalhealingarts Substack: judyjasekdvm.substack.com 👉 Membership (free to join): https://ahavet.com/membership-agreement/ FOLLOW: Integrative Pet Wellness Center: https://integrativepet.com Instagram: @integrativepet Threads: @integrativepet TikTok: @integrativepet Sign up to our newsletter to get more holistic pet care tips 🐶🐈‍⬛ Dr. Lily Chen: Instagram: @dr.lilychen @the.unicorn.vet Threads: @the.unicorn.vet LinkedIn: Lily Chen, DVM, CVA

    Your Pet Is Living in the Moment. Are You? w/ Dr. Judy Jasek

  7. Aug 9

    The Bonus Conversation: Genetics, Gut Health and Getting It Right w/ Heather Gibson

    This one started as a continuation after the main episode wrapped up. Heather Gibson and Dr. Lily just kept talking, and what came next was more honest and more direct than anything in the main episode. They got into the coefficient of inbreeding, a term becoming a bigger deal in the breeding world that Dr. Lily had never heard before, and why Heather made the controversial decision to move from purebred to mixed breeding for the sake of dog health. Then Heather asked Dr. Lily about microbiome testing, fecal transplants, and why vets are still using metronidazole as a first line dewormer for puppies. That part got Dr. Lily fired up. Shorter, a little more raw, and very much a conversation between two people from different corners of pet care who both care deeply about getting this right. KEY INSIGHTS:  ✨ The coefficient of inbreeding measures how genetically similar a puppy's parents are. Lower numbers mean more genetic diversity, which generally means better health, stronger immunity, and fewer inherited diseases.  ✨ Pedigrees alone cannot tell the full story. Two dogs from completely different lines, even different continents, can still be genetically too similar. Companies like Embark now calculate this before a breeding ever happens.  ✨ Many purebred dogs are already mixed breeds, just from centuries ago. Golden Retrievers were originally Irish Setters, Bloodhounds, a Tweed Spaniel, and reportedly a dog from the side of the road.  ✨ Heather moved from purebred to mixed breeding because she saw health issues she did not believe could be resolved without more genetic diversity. It is not anti-purebred. It is pro-health.  ✨ Asking a breeder whether they test for coefficient of inbreeding is one of the most important questions a pet parent can ask and most never think to.  ✨ Metronidazole is wildly overused as a first line dewormer for puppies. Some puppies arrive at eight weeks already having had three or four rounds, leaving their gut microbiome already depleted before they ever come home.  ✨ Giardia can be cleared naturally without antibiotics. Dr. Lily has done it and trained vets to do it successfully with microbiome testing before and after to prove it. It takes more work but builds a far more resilient gut.  ✨ Not every dog needs a fecal transplant. Some improve with diet changes and the right supplements. But choosing supplements without microbiome data first can sometimes make things worse.  ✨ Fecal microbiome restoration does not require sedation or invasive prep. At Dr. Lily's clinic it is a gentle one to two minute procedure. Animals go home exactly as they came in.  ✨ Research takes an average of 20 years to move from a journal into standard clinical practice. Our pets do not have 20 years to wait.  ✨ Testing the mother's microbiome before breeding could be one of the most impactful things we do for puppy health since her microbiome becomes the puppy's starting point for life. RESOURCES: Big Hearted Breeders: https://www.bigheartedbreeders.com Instagram: @bigheartedbreeders Facebook: @bigheartedbreeders YouTube:@Bigheartedbreeders AnimalBiome: https://www.animalbiome.com AHVMA Vet Directory: https://www.ahvma.org Magic of Microbiome Course for Vets: https://theunicorn.academy FOLLOW: Integrative Pet Wellness Center: https://integrativepet.com Instagram: @integrativepet Threads: @integrativepet TikTok: @integrativepet Youtube: @integrativepet Sign up to our newsletter to get more holistic pet care tips 🐶🐈‍⬛ Dr. Lily Chen: Instagram: @dr.lilychen @the.unicorn.vet Threads: @the.unicorn.vet LinkedIn: Lily Chen, DVM, CVA

    The Bonus Conversation: Genetics, Gut Health and Getting It Right w/ Heather Gibson

  8. Aug 2

    What Happens Before Your Puppy Comes Home and Why It Changes Everything w/ Heather Gibson

    Before that puppy ever comes home to you, before the first walk, the first vet visit, the first time they fall asleep in your lap, there are six to eight weeks happening behind the scenes that will shape their health, their temperament, and their resilience for the rest of their life. Most pet parents have zero control over what happens during that window. And most never think to ask. Heather Gibson is the founder of Big Hearted Breeders, a certified pet nutrition coach who has spent over 12 years raising dogs and cats with a holistic wellness first approach. Before she was a breeder, she was a foster parent for over a decade, caring for children with severe trauma. It was watching her foster children heal through their bond with animals that set her on this path. We get into what early neurological stimulation actually is and why it matters, what health testing should happen before breeding ever begins, how to tell the difference between a breeder who truly cares and one who is running a business, and why the relationship between breeders and vets is so strained and what we can do about it. KEY INSIGHTS: ✨ The first eight weeks of a puppy's life happen entirely without you. What a breeder does during that window shapes the immune system, nervous system, temperament, and resilience for life. ✨ Early neurological stimulation, developed by the military and sometimes called the Superdog program, is done from day six to day 17. Research shows it builds a more robust immune system and a nervous system better able to handle change. ✨ After those first two weeks, good breeders move into daily socialization, introducing new sounds, textures, smells, and obstacles so the puppy's brain builds the neural pathways that say new things are safe. ✨ Health testing on the parents is non-negotiable. Hips, elbows, patellas, heart, eyes, and a full genetic panel to screen for recessive genes that two healthy dogs can unknowingly both carry and pass on. ✨ Colostrum is a window that cannot be replicated. If a puppy misses those first hours of mother's milk, they start at an immune disadvantage that is very difficult to make up. Ask whether all puppies were latched and fed immediately after birth. ✨ Weaning straight from mother's milk to kibble is a harsh transition for a developing gut. Even partial introduction of fresh food during weaning sets up a stronger microbiome for life. ✨ Routine deworming with metronidazole every two weeks means some puppies have had three or four rounds of gut-clearing medication before they leave the breeder. Dr. Lily recommends testing before treating rather than automatic deworming protocols. ✨ Ask any breeder whether they offer lifetime support and whether they will take the dog back at any point if something happens to the family. That answer tells you who you are working with. ✨ A puppy at eight weeks can only be awake for about 30 minutes before needing a long rest. Overstimulation is one of the most common reasons new puppies seem out of control, and most families are never told this. ✨ The vet and breeder relationship does not have to be adversarial. They share the same goal. Building bridges between those two worlds is better for puppies and better for families. Resources: Big Hearted Breeders: https://www.bigheartedbreeders.com Instagram: @bigheartedbreeders Facebook: @bigheartedbreeders YouTube: @bigheartedbreeders TikTok: @bigheartedbreeders Pinterest: @bigheartedbreeders FOLLOW: Integrative Pet Wellness Center: https://integrativepet.com Instagram: @integrativepet Threads: @integrativepet TikTok: @integrativepet Sign up to our newsletter to get more holistic pet care tips 🐶🐈‍⬛ Dr. Lily Chen: Instagram: @dr.lilychen @the.unicorn.vet Threads: @the.unicorn.vet LinkedIn: Lily Chen, DVM, CVA

    What Happens Before Your Puppy Comes Home and Why It Changes Everything w/ Heather Gibson
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About

Welcome to My Dog Is Better Than Your Dog — where science meets soul as we explore what's possible when we reimagine pet care. I'm Dr. Lily Chen, integrative veterinarian and believer that our animals deserve extraordinary medicine. Each week, I talk with leading experts, pioneering vets, and devoted pet parents pushing the boundaries of animal health. Microbiome restoration, energy medicine, cancer hope, nutrition, and the mind-body-pet connection. Real science. Deep stories. A little magic. ✨ Follow IG: @dr.lilychen | @integrativepet | @the.unicorn.vet 📧 mydog@integrativepet.com

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