Chris Onthank:
Hi, this is Chris Onthank, Canine Master, and welcome to today's show. Today, I am pleased to have both Dr. Marty Goldstein and Cindy Meehl on the show to discuss their recent documentary, The Dog Doc, which goes behind the scenes at Marty's practice in South Salem, it's called Smith Ridge Veterinary Center. In this documentary, it captures the full drama of Dr. Marty and his colleagues' life-changing commitment to wellness and the astonishing results they achieve. I'm excited to have Dr. Marty Goldstein and Cindy Meehl on the show today. Marty has been a practicing veterinarian of medicine since 1973 when he graduated from Cornell. He has been a pioneer in integrative medicine and attracts patients from around the world, providing holistic treatments for animals, where other vets have given up hope. He is considered a last hope for many.
Cindy has been one of my clients for several years and I've worked with her dogs and we've done some amazing things together, but I also know that Cindy has been a client of Dr. Goldstein's. Hey, Cindy, how's Wagner doing?
Cindy Meehl:
Wagner. You really saved Wagner because we were about to give up on him for chasing my cat. And you gave me a few tools, it was miraculous.
Chris Onthank:
Oh, that's great.
Cindy Meehl:
Right. And we love him. He's the best dog in the world.
Chris Onthank:
Oh, that's great. He's such a great dog. And Cindy adopted Wagner, which is even better, which we really love. Cindy, she's the director of Dog Doc. And she also directed the award winning movie Buck. Buck is an unconventional horse whisperer that works with horses around the country and has amazing results with these animals. It seems, Cindy, you have an amazing affinity for making movies about people who work with animals in an alternative way. Like people that are thinking outside of the box.
Cindy Meehl:
That's very true. That's very true because I'm such an animal lover and when I find something that's really working and I feel like it's not mainstream, but other people would love it as much as I would then I'm very compelled to get it out as a message that would help other people and mainly to help other animals too.
Chris Onthank:
Well. That's awesome. That's awesome. What inspired you to make this documentary? Was there an event or something?
Cindy Meehl:
I started 28 years ago with Marty when I had a dog, a Sharpei dog that was dying at six years old and all the conventional vets had given up on this dog. And I really didn't think there was hope until somebody said, "Go see Marty Goldstein." And thankfully she lived long enough to get her (inaudible) and much she was acting like a puppy. It was such a miracle. It was the most radical transformation of an animal I've ever seen. And it was all just what he did, which made so much sense. It was going back to mother nature and getting out of the way with all the meds we had her on. It was astounding. Just astounding.
Chris Onthank:
Yeah. That's what I see. You bring us emotionally into this movie and into Dr. Marty's practice and you give us a perspective that I found was really kind of cool because you're coming from the client and also the perspective from the practitioner themselves. I started to see and really feel what these people were feeling and it's you bring us into their lives. I thought the way it was filmed and the way it was done was really inspiring. You did a similar thing with Buck, I think, in that movie as well. And it really captures the lives and the way in which these people are dealing with their animals. It pulls at your heartstrings for sure.
Cindy Meehl:
Well, I think we spent so much time filming both films. They were filmed over almost three years and when you make documentaries, there's no script. You just immerse yourself in their world and it was really almost surprising to me to be in a vet clinic where you really do see behind the scenes. They let us into any room we wanted to walk into. So there was no acting, there was no, "We're going to set this up so you can film it." We were just filming as it happened. So I think it's a wonderful view behind the scenes of a veterinary clinic and it should make people really pay attention to everyone working at a clinic when you're taking your animal there. You should care.
Chris Onthank:
Yeah, it was truly, truly great. Of course. It must've been a lot in the editing too, of this just randomly going. If you're shooting, shooting, shooting, it must be a lot in the editing room to follow.
Cindy Meehl:
Yeah. We're trying to cut an educational series because there's so much great information that did not end up in it. When you're doing like an hour and a half movie and you have 300 hours of footage, it's quite the challenge.
Chris Onthank:
Yeah. And I bet you, a lot of the edited out versions, there must be so much valuable information in those as well because I was thinking about all the other things you didn't see in that film when you were filming. So that's great you're going to do an educational series because I think a lot of vets would learn a lot about it. Dr. Marty, tell me a little bit about your background. After vet school, how did you start out?
Dr. Marty Goldstein:
Well, I graduated Cornell in 1973. I was really gung ho from the first couple of years, I was actually number two in my class in conventional medicine. So, I've never lost track of conventional medicine just to become alternative or holistic. And then as I was graduating Cornell, I just had my own health issues that were genetically based and as I searched for ways to regain my own health, especially going into European and Oriental studies and it worked, it was like a no brainer to try it on our family pets and lo and behold it worked and it became an eyeopening experience to start to apply common sense to the field of medicine. And not that I'm opposed to science, but my definition of science in the field of medicine is man trying to learn what nature already established.
So when nature creates a disease, there was actually a reason for it. So with Cindy's dog, having these very high fevers. Fevers are not an aspirin deficiency or a drug deficiency, They're trying to establish something or accomplish something in the body. And unfortunately, we've learned how to suppress what nature is doing with drugs. And I've witnessed the incidents of cancer alone in dogs, at least triple or quadruple since I graduated Cornell. One of the major purposes of this documentary is just a wake up call. Just an eyeopening event is saying, "Oh wow, there is another way that we can add into conventional medicine.
Chris Onthank:
Yeah. It seems to me that you use traditional medicine, don't you Marty?
Dr. Marty Goldstein:
Every day, every day.
Chris Onthank:
But you combine that with a holistic approach and I see that what you're doing is you're more working with the body and treating the cause rather than treating the symptoms and medicating on that. Is that correct?
Dr. Marty Goldstein:
Well, you're actually not treating the cause, but you are supporting the patient, so the patient itself becomes the cause and that's called the immune system.
Chris Onthank:
So you're supporting the immune system.
Dr. Marty Goldstein:
Right. There's no doctor I consider a healer. They're just guides. Hippocrates said it all, "Physician heal thyself." So we're supporting each patient so their immune system and that mechanism can actually start and carry through the healing process instead of suppressing it with a chemical, which is an immunosuppressive event. And that's in my opinion, why full chronic, major chronic degenerative illnesses in our companion animals has risen tremendously, especially cancer. There's something wrong.
Chris Onthank:
Do you think it's coming from the food? How important is what you feed your dogs? I know that you and I talked about this years ago, where you came to my canine center and lectured to some of my clients about the importance of food. How do you find that food is either causing or contributing to cancer?
Dr. Marty Goldstein:
Well, the old adage is it all starts with food. You are what you eat. And like I've always said, if the pet food industry was created by scientists that studied the way dogs and cats ate in nature, we would have never come to create commercial pet food the way it is, a cereal based baked destroyed food that could sit in a bag for three months and be considered good. Or when I graduated Cornell, we had the whole age of the semi- moist food. So you take a red burger and put it in a bowl and six days later it's still moist and red. That's not food. It's not.
Chris Onthank:
Yeah, it's amazing. I think that people don't realize how important feeding your dog is. What do you think of the BARF diet or the raw diet? Is that what we should be feeding our dogs? Is it a combination of meat and bones or is there more things that we should be really looking at when we feed our dogs?
Dr. Marty Goldstein:
Well, if we go back into ideal nature, yes. That's what they would have been eating in nature. We've strayed so much through the domestication process that we just have to watch out. We can't take all dogs and cats and throw them on a raw diet because we're so far from that, it could cause a lot of illness itself. So what I always teach people is, instead of trying to find the ideal gold coin diet, you should just aim in the direction of health. Like I know for myself through, what I've done for my own health, the ideal diet. I don't live it. I'll go out on a Friday night and have a great time and eat a bunch of junk and have a beer or a two or a glass of wine.
But I'll always know where to go in a direction of health, same thing with my animals. They basically eat a very healthy meal, that's mostly raw, but if we're having a pizza, we'll throw them crust, we'll give them some of the leftovers because they enjoy it but we always know what the come back to. If your dog or cat has cancer, it's a different story. Then you must get strict.
Chris Onthank:
Yes. How about grains? Do you stay away from grains?
Dr. Marty Goldstein:
Well, grains are not so much evil, there's just no real requirement for it. One of God's gifts to our profession, Dr. Greg Ogilvie, who was the Head of Internal Medicine and Oncology at Colorado State University for over a decade, demonstrated that the byproducts of cereal or grain metabolism in a dog's body, which is glucose and lactate, supply the growth to cancer cells. And so many of the biggest selling foods in the history of our country have been 50 to 64% processed cereal byproducts.
Yeah. It's not good. And this whole debacle about grain-free diets causing heart disease, it just doesn't hold water because there is nothing in a grain, there is nothing in corn or rice that supports heart health of a dog or a cat. It's the poor quality meats in these grain-free diets and what they're using to make up or substitute for the grains that these peas and potatoes and tapiocas that contain substances that block the utilization of taurine across the intestine, but it's not... So all of a sudden people saying, "Oh, I'm going to start adding rice into my dog's diet, so their heart stays healthy." That is not true.
Chris Onthank:
Oh my gosh. In vet school, I've always heard that in vet school, you don't really learn that much about nutrition. I don't know that still holds true, but I know in the olden days, 10 years ago, nutrition wasn't a big thing that you study. You seem to have a tremendous and give a tremendous insight in this documentary about nutrition. And just as you're telling us now, and it's so refreshing to hear a veterinarian who knows so much about this and can educate people. It's really a great thing.
Dr. Marty Goldstein:
Well, my four years at Cornell, I had a three week course on nutrition for animals and it was about arithmetrics, mathematics, it had nothing to do with quality. It was how to balance proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and total digestible nutrients, but it had nothing to do with the quality of food. We had to put together the right amount of protein and fats to reach government standards. It was a farce.
Chris Onthank:
Oh gosh. It's just amazing. The other thing I want to ask you is your opinion, and I got it through the food documentary, but your philosophy on vaccinations and when they should be used, in what situations should they be used, and should you even vaccinate at all and continue or just do titers, which is where we look at the natural immunity of the animal.
Dr. Marty Goldstein:
Yeah. It's a huge controversial issue. I am not opposed to vaccination like it's so well expressed in the documentary. It's just the way we've accepted standardized vaccination embedded in every medicine, which actually was a decision made by one man at Cornell in the 1950s. And until just recently, we were standardly vaccinating all dogs and all cats every single year with all the kitten hood and puppy hood vaccines. And the dose for the Chihuahua was the same as the dose for the Great Dane. And that those could be up to 10 times what the Great Dane needs. All proven scientifically and like when people raise their eyebrows, when I discuss, when their dog comes in or cat comes in with cancer, they're 11 years old and we discuss vaccines, "Oh yeah, he's all up to date on his vaccines. We're really good about that."
And I just look at them and I said, "When was your last polio shot?" And all of a sudden the light goes off. We get over vaccinated, over vaccinated unfortunately as children, and then we're more or less done for life. Why isn't it the same for dogs and cats when there is full scientific documentation? And you mentioned the word titer. We now have the ability by applying good science to veterinary medicine to take blood tests on dogs and cats, to determine the level of immunity in their immune system against the diseases they were vaccinated for and guess what? If they have an acceptable immunity against, let's say distemper or parvo, or even rabies, then they don't need a vaccine because a calendar says so.
Chris Onthank:
Yeah. So the rabies vaccine used to be given annually. Now, I think it was always a three year vaccine, but unfortunately many states still require you to get that rabies vaccination.
Dr. Marty Goldstein:
Yes. And the Rabies Challenge Fund, the listeners go online and look at that. They replicated a study done in France which showed that dogs vaccinated standardly up to one year of age when challenged with live rabies virus and had positive titers that they all had positive titers for protection, that they were immune eight years later, even when you count the live rabies vaccine. The study unfortunately ran out of proper rabies to administer in the study, but they still proved. And it's all published now that the minimum duration of protection from standardized rabies vaccines in dogs is five years while we've vaccinated every three years. And do you know how many hospitals still vaccinate every year or every two years? It is because we see those animals that come in from all over the United States and Canada with these chronic severe non-responsive diseases. We look at their vaccine history and they're vaccinated up the hill even when they're sick. So this is the point of the documentary.
Chris Onthank:
Do you think that it's veterinarians - Now I'm going to sort of jump in here on something that maybe you're not going to want to talk about because I don't know what repercussions you might have with a veterinary community, but do you think that it's a financial thing that the veterinarians are vaccinating the way they are and as often as they are, or is it just the way that, is it financial or is it they're really believing they're doing the right thing?
Dr. Marty Goldstein:
It's a combination of both. It is assumed and considered that 50% of a veterinarian's income comes from vaccinations and the excuse they use, it's a way to get the people in for an annual exam. I agree with that, but there are other ways. We see animals once a year that are healthy to take blood samples and put them on proper diet, nutritional programs based on their blood samples, not by pummeling them with vaccines that are almost definitely not needed based on science. Right, Cindy?
Cindy Meehl:
Right.
Chris Onthank:
You so uncover that. And you even talk about in the documentary about, where even the site of where the vaccine is given, many times cancer develops right at that site.
Dr. Marty Goldstein:
And that's proven, especially in cats, it's called the vaccine Induced sarcoma. And now it's also in dogs. It's mostly associated with the rabies vaccine. So instead of not vaccinating that cat and taking a titer to see, especially if they're indoors, the recommendation now is to vaccinate with one vaccine in the lower left leg, the other one in the right leg with the tail so that when the tumor grows, you can resolve the situation by amputation. And then like it's so well done in this documentary, the chemical that they put into the vaccine called the adjuvant, that it enhances the absorption. And it's the adjuvant, it's proven scientifically, that is causing these tumors to grow. So veterinarians that are listening or people that are listening to tell their veterinarians, get adjuvant free vaccinations, they are available.
Chris Onthank:
That's great. And then the other thing that... And I just want to touch on this briefly is, varying the schedule of vaccination. So if you're going to go do the vaccines, especially I see this as important to small dogs, but probably in all dogs is to not do all your vaccinations on one day, but to stagger them. Is that something that you guys practice?
Dr. Marty Goldstein:
Absolutely. Where in nature is any individual be a two legged or four legged exposed to five or six different diseases at the same time and not through normal route of entry into the body, which has the skin to protect, the nose, the respiratory system, the mucus membranes, but by injection directly into the bloodstream? You talk about an assault to the immune system by taking these vaccines, adding coloring dyes, adding adjuvants, getting them up to concentrations that are way past what a Great Dane needs, and then injecting them directly into the bloodstream. It's insanity. And I'm not afraid to say that.
Chris Onthank:
Well, I'm glad. I think the one thing I say by watching this is how much you guys in this documentary really are educating the public about these alternative methods or integrated medicine, as we say. And you're really showing people that there's an alternative to what and a better alternative. And I think this is one of the best things about this movie besides the fact that it absolutely melted my heart to see Waffle. Just seeing Waffle throughout the movie and I was so impressed with the commitment and love and care, which you guys treat all the patients and the owners. It's really an amazing facility that you have and veterinary practice, but it also just shows you how involved your team gets with each one of their patients and that's really a great thing. It was really hard not to shed a tear in the movie. I'm sure a lot of people have, but I was holding it back there. It was actually a lot of joy. A lot of joy and sorrow as well, but joy. I know that The Dog Doc is recently launched, is that right Cindy? You guys recently launched it this past year or was it in 2019?
Cindy Meehl:
We premiered at Tribeca and then we had planned this big theatrical run that would go through the summer, this spring in March. And of course then COVID happened. So we just pretty much went directly to a VOD, which means video on demand. There's a lot of different platforms that where you can find it and we will continue to... And we are actually virtually in a lot of theaters too so you can even pick your favorite theater or try to support the local theaters. But of course they're also having a hard time right now and either watch it through with theater virtually, or you can watch it on other platforms like iTunes and Amazon and Apple, and maybe it'll get back into theaters at some point. We have the DVD, of course, is coming out in the fall and that's another great Christmas gift we might say. Yeah, it's wonderful. You're really exposing people to a different way of thinking about their animal's health and as their own health as well. It definitely filters through any mammal, I would say. So we highly hope that people will find it and watch it.
Chris Onthank:
Yeah. I found it on Amazon Prime actually. So I was looking at where you could find it, but I did find it there. How long did it take you guys to make this film?
Cindy Meehl:
3 years. Well, you've had to follow the stories and you really wanted to follow a dog through their journey. And sometimes you don't get healed in a week or, as we know, health takes time. So we had so many great stories and at the end of the day, just pick like three or four.
Chris Onthank:
I was really blown away by all the different alternative methods that you guys show in the movie. Cryosurgery, acupuncture, magnawave. But one of them that I wanted to ask you about, Marty, was the intravenous vitamin C. I see a doctor named George Zabrecky. Dr. George Zabrecky was a chiropractor, but he's actually my doctor. And during this COVID time, just on Friday, I got a vitamin C IV and it really is amazing on helping you. I guess it's inflammation. But tell me a little bit about how you guys are using it because I've been using with my own doctor and he's alternative and how you use the same thing.
Dr. Marty Goldstein:
Yeah, I started to use intravenous vitamin C in the late seventies because my dear, dear friend, Dr. George Zabreckyi told me about it.
Chris Onthank:
Isn't that funny? George is great.
Dr. Marty Goldstein:
George is beyond, beyond great. He just contributed a section to the new book I just wrote. Brilliant beyond anyone I've ever met and what's interesting is that there is so much documentation right now, even in the National Institute of Health of the United States, showing the efficacy of intravenous vitamin C in addressing and successfully treating COVID, but you don't hear about it. And it's such a shame. It's why this movie has to come out as just a wake up call.
Cindy Meehl:
George happens to be my doctor too.
Chris Onthank:
Isn't this funny? What are the chances of that?
Cindy Meehl:
... vitamin C drips last year, I do it like every month or every two, three months. And I started doing it because while we were filming and I kept seeing these dogs go on IVC drips and have these amazing recoveries. One dog literally paralyzed from a rabies vaccine and got up and walked after four days of being on IVC. And they had wanted to put the dog down because it had a hydrocephalus of the brain. Anyway, I've been doing C drips myself, just based on... And I went to George, I said, "These dogs are getting so much better. I keep seeing this." I said, "Do you do C drips here?" And he said, "Oh sure. We do them. They're called Myers cocktails." And so I started doing them too.
Chris Onthank:
Thanks to Louis, I guess it's Louis.
Dr. Marty Goldstein:
It's Louis.
Chris Onthank:
Great stuff guys. Wow, what a small world that is. Well, I just think that we need to embrace this as people that love pets for ourselves and also for the pets. Where do you see this in five years? Because I know that whether it's the practice of George Zabrecky or it's the practice of Dr. Marty Goldstein, sometimes I've seen people refer to you guys as kooks. I'm sorry to say that, but like, "These guys are crazy." And I'm sure that's been the response over the years, but where do you see this in another five years?
Dr. Marty Goldstein:
Well, I think the documentary is a timeless film. It could get released five years from now and be as effective and as correct because nature and healing is timeless. So I'm sure Cindy is concerned, but I'm not concerned about this documentary. I think it's going to get re-released.
Chris Onthank:
How do you see that the general public... How are the vets reacting to this?
Dr. Marty Goldstein:
Every veterinarian that I know who has seen it has given me the thumbs up.
Chris Onthank:
Wow. That's great. That's great. All right.
Cindy Meehl:
The thing is of course, Smith Ridge Veterinary Center is being inundated from the people who've seen it, who also have these pages that are huge and they've had no results. And then they're coming in there and what we really need is obviously Smith Ridge can't handle every pet that wants to come there. But what we really need is a lot more veterinarians. Instead of having these cookie cutter, big conglomerate companies buying up these vet centers, these veterinary clinics and having it become cookie cutter medicine. It's like a chain, vet clinics have now become chains.
Chris Onthank:
Oh, yeah.
Cindy Meehl:
We need more people who will create clinics that do this type of medicine so that everyone has access to it. And if people do want to find a veterinarian, they need to go to the A-H-V-M-A, which stands for American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association, put in your area and you can find a veterinarian that does practice alternative methods along with conventional. It's integrative so they do conventional medicine, but have supplements and alternative things that are less invasive. So go to the AHVMA and find a veterinarian. If you're not getting results with your pet, honestly, then you need to keep looking sometimes.
Dr. Marty Goldstein:
Absolutely.
Chris Onthank:
That's great. Well, I can't leave this interview without asking you, Marty, maybe you can shed some light on this, about the COVID-19 epidemic. At my facility, we have people coming into our facility still and because we were considered necessary, we never actually closed down because we were caring for first line responders and we were caring for their pets. So we stayed open. But one of the things that we were wondering is where we're handing off dogs and where we're exchanging with these people, even though we're doing it outside with masks on, can dogs infect people.
Dr. Marty Goldstein:
If you have COVID and coughed on your dog, that virus just like, if you coughed on a piece of furniture or something that could serve as a vector or a vehicle to transfer it, there have been a couple of cases of dogs found with COVID, but they got well. There was the one tiger. There was supposedly a cat found, but they're not affected negatively by COVID. They could serve and that's why dog parks, you have to just watch out because the dog could carry the virus for a certain number of hours and expose you to it. Coronavirus has been around in dogs and cats and we've been treating it for years. But it's usually a gastrointestinal kind of upset, not a terminal fatal disease, like when it mutated into people.
Chris Onthank:
Yeah. I also heard that fur, which has a natural oil on it, is pretty unstable environment for the Coronavirus to stay on. So that was something I had heard, so that is correct. Yeah. Good. We don't need to get crazy that if I pet my dog and you go over and pet him that I'm going to get infected. I think there's been a lot of people asking us at our facility and I'm sure your facility is this something that's easily transferred. But I guess that the research shows that it is not very easily transferred. Is that correct?
Dr. Marty Goldstein:
It's not. It's just in a social distancing, properly applied like at a dog park, just makes sense.
Cindy Meehl:
Yeah and we have a Facebook video that's coming out in the next week or two about this and I've been researching it and there's no real documented cases of people catching it from their pets.
Chris Onthank:
Oh, well, that's great news. That's great.
Dr. Marty Goldstein:
They don't.
Cindy Meehl:
Listening to everybody and all the scientists and this and that. And you can also go to the American Veterinary Medical Association and they do have stuff on COVID as well. So anyway, what my research says, no, they haven't really transmitted it.
Chris Onthank:
And on your Facebook page, which is Dog Doc, is that how they would find it on Facebook?
Cindy Meehl:
You can search the Dog Doc or Dog Doc the film, either one.
Chris Onthank:
Okay. That's probably some great information on there, Cindy, that you guys are putting.
Cindy Meehl:
It is. Please follow us on Facebook.
Chris Onthank:
Fantastic. We will get our viewers to do so. I want thank both Marty and Cindy for being on the show today. I think this has been an amazing, informative program today and so much valuable information. And you guys can watch Dog Doc, as I said, I found it on Amazon Prime, but some other areas as well, other platforms. And I want to thank you guys for being on the show.
Dr. Marty Goldstein:
It was a pleasure.
Cindy Meehl:
Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.
Chris Onthank:
Great. Well, I hope to get to see you both soon. Okay, well that's it for today. And I really hope you guys found our show to be interesting. I'd love to hear your comments and have you join in the conversation. You can also visit us on caninemaster.com. That's C-A-N-I-N-Emaster.com. And let me know what's working for you and what's not working for you. Send me your videos and your photos so I can see them and see what's going on with your dog and let me help you solve your problems. Goodbye for now and I'll see you next time on Canine Master Radio, where I will continue to help you master the relationship with your dog.
