Dr Edward: 0:02

Hello and welcome to the Whole Energy Body Balance podcast. I'm Dr Edward and today we are exploring the world of the canine soldier the dogs that work with the armed forces, with Dr Kassara Andre, I'd like to welcome you to the podcast, where we explore all kinds of possibilities and practices that bring greater healing, connection and harmony to pets, people and horses. We aim to inspire you. We don't mind challenging you a little bit now and then. We really want to help you grow and create positive changes in healing your life. If that's what you like doing, this is probably a good place to be.

Dr Edward: 0:40

I'm your host, dr edward, the healing vet. I help deeply caring people, pets and horses unfold profound healing and healthy relationships through somatic awareness, loving, therapeutic touch, intuitive perception, kind training and energy healing. I also practice as an intuitive, integrative veterinarian and healer, helping pets, people and horses in person and all around the world. And, if I can get the right layout here, I would just like to welcome onto the stage Dr Kassara Andre. Welcome, it's ages since I've spoken to you. It's lovely to see you again. How are you going?

Dr Casara Andre: 1:22

Thank you. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be back. It's great to see you. Thank you so much for the invitation.

Dr Edward: 1:29

You're welcome. We're going to have fun today. So Dr Kisara Andresahilo, consistently motivated by her desire to help mammals of all species repair and sustain their health and well-being, she's a veterinarian by education and training, and she is an armed forces veteran. She was an army veterinarian. Yeah, yep, that is correct. So we're going to start off with a big question, because it's good to have deep conversations and big questions, I reckon. So who are you, why do you do what you do, and how did you get to this point in your life?

Dr Casara Andre: 2:12

That is a big question. I would love to tackle that one straight off the bat. Thank you, it is such a pleasure to be back with you, dr Edward. Great to see you virtually. It was more fun to see you in person Hi to all of your audience. It's always a pleasure to share with like-minded colleagues and people around the world.

Dr Casara Andre: 2:30

I am a practicing veterinarian in Colorado and, as Dr Edward mentioned, in my early career I was a veterinarian for the US Army Veterinary Corps.

Dr Casara Andre: 2:38

So that was really what started my love of the working dog and gave me a really particular viewpoint into their lives, into their service and as the veterinarian caring for their health and well-being, as well as their relationship with their partner, with their human partner. There's just a lot that you learn about care of the canine soldier and what happens to that canine veteran after they retire. How do we care for them in retirement. So I am very interested in behavioral health and its implications in somatic health and those intersections between which I know you are as well, dr Edward, and I feel that this topic one it's just interesting. It's an interesting thought topic to dive into who is the canine soldier, who is the canine veteran? But I think it gives us a really unique opportunity to think about behavioral health diseases that we see in the human veteran population, that we also see mirrored in the canine population. What are we doing for both and I'm really interested in? Can we achieve better healing for both by actually looking at those diseases together and are using some bi-directional healing ideas?

Dr Edward: 3:53

So one thing that immediately comes to mind for me is, you know, choice. I mean these animals are taken in and trained and then taken off and work in incredibly intense, dangerous, stressful situations. Could you talk us through a little bit about what happens with these little puppies from your perspective as a vet working with them? I imagine you would have seen them right throughout their life cycle.

Dr Casara Andre: 4:19

Yeah, Most of the animals that I worked with were two years and older, so once they had been received at their duty site, I did work for a short period of time on Lackland Air Force Base, which has its own dog breeding program.

Dr Casara Andre: 4:39

Many of the other dogs are purchased from kennels or bred at Lackland or owned by contractors, so that is an interesting piece of coming to the scene just as I was actually leaving the military was that we had a lot of dogs that were not actually owned by the military service but used by contractors, and kind of the odd role of how veterinary care was given to those animals was an interesting thing.

Dr Casara Andre: 5:04

So I was mostly interacting with dogs that had been trained, already gone through their basic boot camp, essentially, and then paired with a handler and then had had arrived at their first duty site, or dogs that had already been serving for a period of time. I really appreciate your call out for consent in the midst of this, which I think, along with any animal topic, no matter what it is, we're discussing, just from vaccines and surgeries to service in the military where is an animal's consent in there? Where should we be asking for it? What does that look like? And, for sure. How do we allow them to consent in every way we possibly can, particularly, I think, about medical care, cooperative care, training, things along those lines. So that was almost all the dogs that I was working with.

Dr Edward: 5:50

And these dogs are generally extremely high drive, extremely intelligent and probably pretty tough like high pain tolerance, high emotional threshold type dogs and I would imagine that they would love the work. Is that true, do you think?

Dr Casara Andre: 6:09

I absolutely, that's true, absolutely from a drive perspective, from a brain work perspective, from the challenge perspective, from being paired with a human and then that bond sharing. Amazing to watch those well-paired human-animal bonds exist. I will say that one thing that was difficult to often see sometimes were mismatched pairs, so maybe the very experienced dog with a very new handler those were. It was an interesting role to try to step into as a veterinarian to help both on the training side and also the medicine side, but really it came down to strengthening that bond and that definitely informs a lot of the work that I do now. Whether it's for a military dog, a working dog or just a household pet, it's really the bond that I think makes that animal's life um good, that, whatever their experience is on this world, to have that bond with a human um really is what shapes and strengthens their ability to live well, live happily so with a working pair, a human and a dog?

Dr Edward: 7:23

does that dog kind of live with the handler? Are they full-time, 24-7, with the handler when they're out in the field? Because this is something that really fascinates me. I mean, what happens when they're out, wherever they might be, if it's, you know, in a less intense environment or somewhere like Iraq or wherever where there's full-on, you know, really really intense stuff going on?

Dr Casara Andre: 7:47

It does depend a little bit on which service they are working for. So how each service would handle their working dogs a little bit up to that kennel master kind of how that they, how they run their kennel and also the infrastructure that's available. So I was stationed US bases and so when there was a full kennel, that's where all the dogs were housed at night or when their handler was on leave, etc. And so, as you mentioned before those high drive dogs, you can just imagine what those kennel environments are like. They're very loud, they're very chaotic. Teaching that animal or allowing that animal to settle and recuperate, even after a surgery or procedure, definitely had to be thought about carefully. And then in deployment that dog and handler would just be together. So depending on which infrastructure was available, they might be separate, in a barracks and a kennel or literally on the same cot together.

Dr Edward: 8:42

So if they were out on active assignment in a battlefield, what happens then?

Dr Casara Andre: 8:49

Probably on the same cot together, just absolutely deployed as a pair.

Dr Casara Andre: 8:53

You know, what was really interesting was to hear the reflections of handlers that had dogs with them and how the presence of that animal so positively contributed to their own mental health experience, but also their unit's mental health experience, that even if that dog was not necessarily approachable or did not want to play the therapy dog role or, you know, just did not want to interact with other humans other than their partner, their human handler would still always report that other soldiers would come just to hang out, just to watch the dog train, just to be around that animal presence.

Dr Casara Andre: 9:31

And I think it speaks so much to the many roles that animals play, not just in a soldier environment and the veteran environment but in all of human experience. To really really have that emotional tie, that, um, psychological well-being tie, and if we're receiving that gift from them, then get behooves us to think about. How are we returning that, how are we caring for that? How are we making sure that they have the resources to give, since we're we're happy they give them, how do we make sure that they're happy and safe minutes of that?

Dr Edward: 10:03

so I know we're going to really dig into what happens with these dogs after active duty, when they are retired and they're a veteran, but there's a couple of other things that I'd really like to explore a little bit before we get there. So one thing is you know what happens? Do these dogs always have the same handler, or is there transitions? Is there changeovers for various reasons, and how do you think that impacts the dog and the humans when that happens?

Dr Casara Andre: 10:30

That's a great question. So again, there is some difference between how the different services will run their dog. So I was US Army Veterinary Corps and the Army provides veterinary services to all of the Department of Defense. So we would be stationed on multiple different bases serving different services Navy, marine, army but how the care of the dogs, the training of the dogs and their day-to-day life, that was dictated by the service that essentially owned them.

Dr Casara Andre: 11:00

And it was interesting to see, just as you've mentioned, the thought process behind how those dogs were placed with a handler, the training that those that pair received together, even who got to be a handler between the services. Others would have the human partner work their way up through sort of kennel training, kennel help, shadowing, to earn, you know, being able to be a dog handler and, and definitely that makes a difference, you know if you are an animal hearted person and that you want to be able to work with a dog, that gives you a completely different motivation than sort of just like you're, you're a dog handler now and definitely contributes, I think, to that animal's experience. Most of the services that I worked for would rotate the dog, potentially separately, so that dog could be deployed with a different handler if that handler retired or was sent somewhere else. And I'll speak to how I think that that was hard on both human and animal, to how I think that that was hard on both human and animal in the moment.

Dr Casara Andre: 12:09

But say first that I did have a chance to work with a National Guard unit. So these, because they are stationed within a state, kept the same dog throughout their entire working lifetime and the handler was usually the same. So that idea of a more stationary unit versus the larger army or Navy that would absolutely move throughout bases and could definitely be moved separate from the animal, the relationship and the partnership between the animals and the humans that stay together, it was significantly better. The wellbeing of those animals, I definitely felt, was better and from a medical care perspective it was much, much easier to have everyone on the same page about recovery, recuperation, things that needed to be changed because that message was directly to their human partner an idea of what kinds of activities they're expected and invited to do, what kind of service they need to do and what kinds of stresses and traumas they might be exposed to when they're out in an active battlefield.

Dr Casara Andre: 14:16

Absolutely, or even just a training scenario, I mean medical problems happen on the training field.

Dr Casara Andre: 14:26

So we think mostly about what are the skills that we utilize from dogs, and olfactory sense is huge, so whatever they're detecting explosives, narcotics, a mix of different molecules, so sort of that detection side. The protection or the patrol side would be some of the bite work so you can have, and in that category you could have dogs that are tracking, so it would track an individual or a scent or air scent, so kind of more area search than actual tracing. We definitely see therapy equine, so we had a lot of recreational equine units that was really fun to work with. I am mostly focused on dogs so I didn't have a lot to do with equine medicine but that was really fun um case on unit, some of the the dress dressage units, um, so protection and scent would probably be the biggest categories of skills that we use those animals for. And so with that comes training.

Dr Casara Andre: 15:27

So lots of wear and tear on joints, musculoskeletal injuries from traumatic injuries, running into something a fence, uh get into a fight Hopefully not If your trainer, your handler knows what they're doing and then definitely things in in um combat, which could be anything from uh stepping on IED going through a door and receiving a gunshot wound or a knife wound. So really the same risk that a human soldier would face, except that the animal's usually at the point. Usually the animal's going through the door first or tracking an IED, so very likely to be exposed. And the skill of these animals is really well known. So a unit that has a detection dog is going to be really good at finding any explosives in the area, so sometimes those animals can actually be targeted okay, so they.

Dr Edward: 16:17

They then become a target for the opposing forces as well, because they they help the soldiers.

Dr Edward: 16:22

So well, right yeah, correct and then I think about the psychological environment, the energetic psychological, psycho-spiritual environment that these dogs are in so you know, intensely traumatic, probably possibly exposure to explosions, injuries, blast forces. You know, I know that I've seen some stuff recently that they're seeing these kind of diffuse tbis in soldiers that that have firing rockets and all that sort of stuff and exposed to explosives. It's not just the physical body that gets, but the actual brain gets injured.

Dr Casara Andre: 17:05

Yeah, Absolutely, absolutely, and we've mentioned it already the psychological component of your handler. So what is the psychological health of the human that you're really connected to, the dog's absolutely feeling the effects of that of the unit as well as the actual physical danger. You know what's interesting about the canine side and we did speak with a canine handler. He had the dog after retirement. The dog recently passed away and one of the veterinarians on our team was actually his veterinarian and helped with his euthanasia.

Dr Casara Andre: 17:42

That handler was talking about so many years after the animal had retired would still be able to practice his scent work, practice his bite work, that the ability of him to turn it on in a moment's notice, even years after being retired, was like that. And what that brings up in my mind is the idea of canine PTSD. We already struggle so much with answers for human PTSD and we can tell the human that they're not in an active war environment. We can tell the human you are now retired and yet that distinction of what might happen, what risk you're in, how do we communicate that to an animal? And this retired canine handler was talking about the fact that he felt that in his retired canine veteran that was something he struggled with, of how to turn off, how to be restful, because that wasn't something that he practiced during his career.

Dr Edward: 18:41

Well, we could diverge a little bit there, and I think that is something that is not taught across the board. In domestic dogs, in all kinds of working dogs, in all kinds of situations and circumstances. The importance of teaching self-regulation and relaxation in dogs is something that I'm just really, really passionate about, and that's something that's not taught about at vet schools. It's something, something that just is really rare, and humans in general, being monkeys, tend to love to take dogs into high-stimulation states and roast them up, and they're really, really bad.

Dr Edward: 19:15

You know, I see it, when I was working in the vet clinic, a puppy had come in. The puppy's a bit like this the nurse goes oh, how are you going? The puppy gets excited. The nurse gets more excited. Next they say oh, how are you going? The puppy gets excited, the nurse gets more excited. Next thing, the puppy's jumping around like a mad thing. It's like, oh God damn it, don't do that, don't do that to the puppy, you know. So I think there's a real deep primate thing there. That is a bit of a clash and a problem for dogs.

Dr Casara Andre: 19:42

I agree absolutely, and I think that it also steals a huge piece of their athleticism to not intentionally train the off state between and high level athletes and yes, these dogs are amazing athletes and in their working career they can be amazing athletes but could they be safer, could they be better, could their retirement be better if we actually balanced what their muscles were doing, balanced that time that that nervous system was off, instead of essentially just running them out? But you know, I think we see a lot of these same ideas for human veterans as well. We put them into high stress, high stakes environments without training the off, and then, when it's done or you're off duty, none of your training is been for that moment. And I think that we need to think about what how that applies to dogs as well.

Dr Edward: 20:39

You are stuck on and I think post-traumatic stress is a state of stuck on this fight, flight in a in a very complex, absolutely multimodal, somatic, mental, emotional. The whole thing is stuck on and even if it's off, it's ready to jam on at the slightest little hint of any kind of thing that could be perceived as danger.

Dr Casara Andre: 21:00

Yeah, yes, absolutely, absolutely, and we can see it it so clearly when we think about any type of service animal. But a military service animal makes that even a little bit more distinct. You even have just a monetary value of how much training has gone into that animal, much less the value to their partner, to the human lives that they've saved, to the unit themselves that I spoke about, like all of the humans that care for that animal. If we're not caring for all those aspects, we're losing and definitely not utilizing valuable assets in multiple different spheres, much less that well-being of the animal. How do we care for it in active work so that it can have this lovely retirement?

Dr Edward: 21:47

yeah, and I suppose how can we switch from thinking of the animal as a resource that we can extract work out of?

Dr Edward: 21:54

to a conscious, thinking, feeling empathic, empowered, being who, and you know I kind of this whole thing of dogs in armed forces. I think the whole consent thing is muddy or murky at the very best, even with the dogs that want to work. Well, I think it's a bit the same with soldiers, human soldiers, to be honest. I mean, how much real consent is there at the whole level of soldiers being trained to go out and go into violent, difficult circumstances, of soldiers being trained to go out and go into violent, difficult circumstances? I think it's such a complex, worrisome kind of thing on all levels.

Dr Casara Andre: 22:34

Absolutely, absolutely, especially when we don't have mechanisms to help, when that imbalance occurs because there was a circumstance that they didn't consent to or that no one knew, knew about or no one was prepared for. Now can we repair that hurt? And I think that that is implicit in responsibility of can you prepare enough to repair the hurt or the risk or the harm if it happens? And if you aren't thinking about that, I think you're wrong from the beginning. And really thinking about the care of that animal holistically and can they survive well in this environment is really, really important. We can extrapolate even further to other high drive dogs, other jobs, other service animals Are they the right fit.

Dr Casara Andre: 23:23

Is their job a right fit for them? Is their partner, is their human partner, a good fit for them? And, obviously, from the veterinarian side, how do we care for that, how do we monitor for that, how do we know when it's not going well? And how do we convince the other humans who care for them that we need to make a medical intervention?

Dr Edward: 23:41

Yeah, I've got a mentor, Lockie Phillips, who has created this thing called emotional horsemanship, and when it comes to riding horses, he's got this concept of a bio window the length of time that a human can be on a horse's back without it starting to cause damage to the spine. And this concept is something that has fascinated me a bit and I'm thinking well, what's the bio window for working dogs? What's the bio window for humans, dogs, what's the bio window for humans? And this is not just physical, but mental, emotional, psychological as well. You know, I suspect it's way shorter than what most animals are being demanded upon absolutely.

Dr Casara Andre: 24:18

You know, I think about some of the therapy dogs or therapy teams, humans and the dogs and their handlers that we work with in some of our disaster response scenarios and those animals are emotionally supporting humans and they're exhausted at the end of their shift. So, without even the physical, somatic injury component, it's exhausting to do your job, whatever that might be, and we need to recognize that, monitor for it and then be prepared to somehow repair, somehow make that better, if we can't avoid it to begin with.

Dr Edward: 24:57

So we've explored a little bit of the world of coming in and doing the thing as a working dog. So what happens? What's the process of them becoming a veteran, of being moved out of the forces?

Dr Casara Andre: 25:10

What happens, yes, so the whole process would be called disposition and again it depends a little bit on which service you're working for and the reasons for dispositions. So there can be medical or training and from the medical side, which obviously I was more familiar with, arthritis would be a super common cause. Year old German Shepherd that really isn't able to do those job functions well, or medically you're able to say this is not a good idea for this dog's body. Let's think about retirement. So that was the most common thing that I saw. But I'll I'll mention it can be for behavioral health reasons and often because of how that dog was handled, how that dog was cared for or not, and those were really really difficult to work with. But I will say, for all the ones that I had experience with, the handlers and the kennel masters were the first to go to bat for that animal, but it was very hard to see the consequence of that animal's working life creep up to its retirement.

Dr Casara Andre: 26:15

So this could be kind of cumulative layers of stress and trauma, PTSD, anxiety-type behaviors you're talking about Absolutely so just aggression biting at the wrong time. How often do we see that in companion animals? Because they're not being listened to? And so then add in these high stress environments, teams that are rotating around, um, humans that are stressed already in stressful scenarios, um it's. It's an environment where there's a lot of potential for harm and a lot of potential for things to get missed, which is why I think it's so important that when there is a medical oversight piece, that we're really, really attentive.

Dr Edward: 27:00

How rehomeable are these dogs if they've got behavioral issues?

Dr Casara Andre: 27:05

Highly, highly rehomeable. I've actually never worked with a case that was a behavioral euthanasia. Those do happen but they would probably be at Lackland Air Force Base and sort of working with a behavioral specialist. So every dog that I worked with for disposition found a home, which was lovely. There's usually quite a long list of families that want to adopt and again in my experience would go through list of previous handlers, would get first choice. Members of the armed forces or police force that maybe have experience with working dogs would sort of be next Two civilians. It rarely made it too far down before that animal found a home and usually a prior handler was usually who adopted them.

Dr Edward: 27:51

Okay, so you tend to get continuity with that Okay.

Dr Casara Andre: 27:56

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and I have some precious pictures of some of those dogs in retirement, of chilling on a couch eating an ice cream cone. So, they can have some really amazing retirements.

Dr Edward: 28:10

So then, care of the veteran, the canine soldier who's in retirement, and this is kind of where we really want to get into the meat and bones of what we want to talk about today. So you've got a couple of things that you want to explore with with us today, um, and the first point was importance of caring for psychological systems and their impact on physical body systems. So let's dig into that.

Dr Casara Andre: 28:33

That's a juicy topic yeah, I'm I'm fascinated by this one. We've already touched on it a couple of times throughout through our intro, and I think it comes down to the fact that we can't separate them out. We cannot consider physical systems and psychological systems as separate, because they're in the same entity and particularly in canines, who are so geared to connect to us as humans and, bidirectionally, us to canines, we're going to have those systems interact and overlap and when we think about these bonded pairs, we have both the physical and psychological aspects of the canine, but then we have the physical, psychological aspects of the canine, but then we have the physical, psychological aspects of the bonded human. And then what does that? What do all of those make together? And considering them as a unit, I think, is where, um, probably you and I are most interested of how to, how do we work on that as a entity all together?

Dr Edward: 29:30

because they're really not separate, they're not able to be separated well, they're intimately co-regulating on every level of consciousness, energy, physiology, the whole time that they're, they're together right absolutely, absolutely.

Dr Casara Andre: 29:46

And you know, today we're talking mostly about the, the canine veterans, of the, the animal that has served as a soldier, but I'll also just throw in a nod to the emotional support animal for a veteran and the animal learning to support the human veteran through the emotional changes they may be going with, through PTSD and thinking medically, are we supporting that animal? Knowing the turbulence of the human's emotional state? Is the animal's physiologic state able to handle the turbulence there? Does that idea make sense?

Dr Edward: 30:23

I'm I know it does to you from your work that it is so similar, but we can dive into that more that's kind of like a capacity thing, right, um, and with the greater resilience and um self-regulation capacity there is, the more input of stresses and traumas and things like that an animal can cope with in a healthy way would be what I would think of that yeah.

Dr Casara Andre: 30:51

Absolutely. But if that human is not aware of what they're putting off onto their animal, that can get really overwhelming really quickly for the animal, especially if they're untrained. And again that's a little bit more on the service animal side. But it just brings up this beautiful, all-encompassing idea of the unit, the family unit, that those bonds that are absolutely so inseparable those bonds that are absolutely so inseparable.

Dr Edward: 31:19

I haven't done a lot of direct work with service dogs like army kind of armed forces dogs, but I have had a client that I've been seeing recently.

Dr Edward: 31:25

That is a dog, that is a support dog for a human who's got pretty severe post-traumatic stress after a really bad traffic incident. And you know, one of the primary things I do is teach people how to regulate, help their animals regulate with, with touch, with relaxing touch. And I've got to say I've noticed a big difference in the human with him doing that with his dog, because the he's shifting his dog's nervous system but then his nervous system is shifting in response and co-regulating. And I nearly always see this with all the animals and I kind of think of most domestic dogs as unsung therapy dogs, support dogs, emotional support dogs anyway, and I see this kind of universally. You get an anxious dog and you teach the human how to teach the dog how to regulate. I see all sorts of changes in the humans really quickly too, absolutely absolutely. So what sort of things do you recommend when it comes to caring for the psychological systems of the animals, these veteran animals?

Dr Casara Andre: 32:31

You know, dr Edward, at the moment I'm really focusing on just awareness for the human partners of what that impact is. Because, just as you said a moment ago, that if the human can be regulated by guiding their animal, the human being aware of the turbulence they're creating, really is such a powerful step to calming those waves, really is such a powerful step to calming those waves, not that the dog can't continue to help, but just the awareness in that bond of what's going on allows us to monitor the animal, assess whether it has the resources that it needs to support the human, that it gets medical care, and monitoring that it should and that we can intervene if we start to see stressors on its physiologic system. I've really been interested. Well, you, you, I know that you're also working with the endocannabinoid system and cannabis support or other support to the ECS.

Dr Casara Andre: 33:25

You know I've really been noticing how I see systems really get weaker, like urinary. I see a lot of urinary issues, skin issues, immune system issues and it's a blessing to be able to think about how can I support the endocannabinoid system to regulate all these subsystems that might be taking extra strain. But I've also encountered a couple of situations where I feel like there needs to be a lot of care in how I support the ECS because sometimes, sometimes the turbulence is inappropriate and I don't. I've found a couple scenarios where it has been not helpful for me to support the animals ECSA with cannabis without very directly addressing the turbulence the human was causing. Because, as we're supporting the ECS, we're essentially teaching it to balance, to where it is and if the situation is bad.

Dr Edward: 34:24

We're sort of teaching balance to an abnormal state and I think that can have some consequences makes me think of a client I had years and years ago who was had a dog with epilepsy, and this fellow had a traumatic brain injury so he was inclined to be very volatile. But when I told him, hey, your volatility is actually harming your dog, there was the biggest positive change in that man's behavior that no other intervention had ever ever got close to yes, yes, absolutely behavioral health disorders are not exclusive to humans, too.

Dr Edward: 35:07

Is the next thing you're going to say something?

Dr Casara Andre: 35:08

sorry, I butted in I actually think that that ties in really well. Um, I was just going to mention, I practice in colorado, as you know, and we have some interesting policies around psychedelics at the moment, and so, while this is well, I'll approach it from two points. I think that we should be considering psychedelics for care of the canine veteran very carefully and with a lot of oversight and a lot of slow, slow progress.

Dr Edward: 35:41

Slow progress. We're particularly interested in.

Dr Casara Andre: 35:43

DMA yes, yes, yes. And consent how are we addressing consent in some of these? So it's so many things to tackle there. But I think therapeutically absolutely we should be considering them in canine veterans. But we're also seeing a lot of unintentional support animals. So you mentioned support animals and emotional support animals and we see a lot of veterans pursuing psychedelic use for their own mental health. My question is are the animals in their sphere trained and able to support their human through that experience? And I think that that's something that's not being considered carefully enough in the landscape that's emerging, definitely in our state, but just more broadly, as humans try to delve into some of these mental health issues of their own, what is the consequence and impact on animals that might have their own behavioral health issue to begin with, but also we're essentially just trying to shed the human health behavioral issue into the animal? Is their capacity, does that piece of the bond, that side of the bond, have the capacity to carry that emotional outburst, that emotional turbulence?

Dr Edward: 36:58

That's a good point. Now, now I'm going to apologize in advance if any of the renovatory noises come through on the recording. I'm just going to be kind of muting myself in between cassara speaking, because someone on the roof outside with a rattle gun making all sorts of noise, moving the background noise. Depression will deal with it, but it might not. So what sort of behavioral health disorders do we see in these veteran dogs and how do you approach helping them with them?

Dr Casara Andre: 37:25

You know well, musculoskeletal for sure.

Dr Casara Andre: 37:28

So that's like a clear cut.

Dr Casara Andre: 37:30

Yes, obviously, arthritis.

Dr Casara Andre: 37:31

We need to be taking care of their bodies. We need to be taking care of their bodies and I really thinking about how can we extend, extend their longevity of health and well-being without jumping to cannabis, massage, acupuncture, the modalities that really help that body rebalance in and of itself, and I want to call out some of the work that you're doing of just teaching the autonomic nervous system to regulate where it should be. I think if we focus a lot of our modalities simply on creating that internal resilience, we wouldn't end up so quickly at our non-steroidal steroid surgery and we might, we still might need those throughout the animal's lifetime. But, as we said throughout this conversation, I think if we focused more on that internal balance and helping that system know where it is on versus off, we would see a lot of our modalities be more effective and longer lasting well, personally I I reckon that dogs should be in healthy relaxation, or what I call the green zone of arousal, 80% to 90% of their life, including sleep time, of course, which is a large part of that.

Dr Edward: 38:42

But some dogs don't even get that in sleep. They're kind of like they're not really asleep, they're just poised to wake up because of the slightest little sound or anything right.

Dr Casara Andre: 38:50

Yes. And what if they're human? It's equally jumpy. So that could complicate the matter in and of itself. So we have this animal that we're trying to get to rest and that yet its biologic rhythms are being set abnormally by what's going on around it. That for me carries a lot of weight because I think that again here in my state we're seeing a lot of veterans pursue psychedelics for themselves, for their own mental health. But we really need to think about who else is in their household. And it might not be a retired canine veteran, they might not have their own version of canine PTSD, but their service animal might not be appropriately trained for this. So it's just this bigger overarching concept of how do we care for that intersection of physiologic systems and psychological systems got loud noises here.

Dr Edward: 39:50

Sorry about that. That you wanted to talk about is the potential of leveraging existing human animal bonds to potentiate healing across species in human animal bonded pairs of grips. Now that is a mouthful of a sentence, but I think there's some very interesting.

Dr Casara Andre: 40:06

That was a long one.

Dr Edward: 40:10

I'm so excited about this one.

Dr Casara Andre: 40:13

Fascinating. Yeah, I'm so hopeful for the potential that this bullet point holds. So in human veteran mental health care, a hard piece of success is establishing the relationship with the therapist, with the care providers. When humans, mental health and I think that's a big theme among our world of not necessarily connecting with the therapist or someone who's trying to help, and we definitely see that on the animal side how many times do existing behavioral health issues prior an appropriate clinical handling? So clinic induced trauma, emotional trauma, how many times is that prevent our ability to give appropriate, timely, adequate medical care Because the animal's like no thanks, I don't want to participate. And those are really really true in canine veterans as well.

Dr Casara Andre: 41:24

Service dogs, high drive dogs so that's a large portion of my other clientele is just high drive dogs that they're on, and when you give clinical restraint inappropriately, they're really likely to interpret that in a very negative light. So we have this barrier of how do we actually create relationship and rapport enough to guide an animal through a medical experience whatever that is massage, acupuncture, an actual experience, whatever that is Massage acupuncture, an actual procedure, doesn't matter. How do we establish that rapport? So this idea really talks about leveraging existing bonds instead of thinking about and I'll just personify me myself as the provider. I'm going to make you better. I'm going to come and intervene and work on this bond, or your body or your mind. For me, this idea captures the thought of me having a little bit more distance, a little bit more respect for some of the trauma that might be already present. So, working from a trauma informed veterinary care perspective and asking how can I leverage someone that this animal already trusts, how can I leverage an environment that this animal already finds is safe? And if we're thinking about a very dynamic bond, maybe there are behavioral health issues on both sides.

Dr Casara Andre: 42:41

You said exactly this. Can we leverage that connection to make both the human and the animal better? So, like your gentleman who was guiding its animal through autonomic regulation for massage against a seizure, was feeling better themselves. I think that's a perfect example of this. That human was not able to take action for their animal until you guided them to that bi-directional exchange, to leveraging each other's well-being to reach that common goal. And I love that idea as a practitioner, especially when you bring in ideas of endocannabinoid system balance and tone, the dynamics of a family unit or a bonded pair, and I think we already see all these connections and patterns and the, the tone between um individual entities in the, in those pairs, and if we can really utilize that, I think we're already multiple steps towards that healing better than we would be on our own so how do you see this rippling through a whole family or a group or in that kind of active dog thing, a unit that the dog's embedded in?

Dr Casara Andre: 43:54

Yeah, I. What we are really thinking about for this at the moment is towards research in the psychedelics for the canine veteran. So let's take for a moment the idea of utilizing NDMA for the canine veteran. As we see research come out for use in the human veteran, can we extrapolate that to design research for the canine in? In that scenario, who is the guide? How do we establish enough rapport in advance to guide guide an animal through a dysphoric experience? And this is where I think we absolutely, if we're going to pursue that type of research, need to really think about how that handler becomes involved so can you explain what you mean by dysphoric experience?

Dr Casara Andre: 44:57

Absolutely so. A dysphoric experience could be actually with any drug. So you can give a sedative, you could give a pre-anesthetic, and that dysphoria is the feeling not in your right mind.

Dr Edward: 45:06

I don't understand where I am am this doesn't feel okay.

Dr Casara Andre: 45:09

Um, I feel different and I don't know what to do about this and it's not necessarily bad, it's just not the same, and that's tough for humans. And then when? You put an animal in a dysphoric experience you.

Dr Edward: 45:26

You can either get a positive dysphoric or a negative dysphoric experience. I could imagine.

Dr Casara Andre: 45:32

Well, I think it might. Well, there's so much coming out in terms of what we can know here, so I think there's a lot that we have yet to learn. But maybe the idea is that the dysphoric experience is not positive or negative, but it allows the brain circuits to be mapped one way or the other.

Dr Edward: 45:54

so potentially, that dysphoria is yeah I was more thinking of using the kind of behavioral medications that we do use, that you can get um, is it cool? But it doesn't work. I can't remember. The proper technical term is falling out of my head right now. Um, where they get paradoxical excitation. That's the word I'm trying to think of, right, so that's kind of a dysphoria thing, it's, whereas another dog might have a dysphoria which is kind of like I feel calm and that's actually a good thing. That's which is kind of like I feel calm and that's actually a good thing. That's what I'm kind of getting at. Does that make sense?

Dr Casara Andre: 46:35

Absolutely Well. Let's just chat for a moment about dysphoria on THC. So it's. You know, the substance doesn't matter what the substance is. The dysphoria is simply being out of your normal state. This is not what I normally perceive, and we can have that with any set of molecules. Again, pre-anesthetic drugs, pain medications and cannabis is something that I have a lot of familiarity with, and I know that you do as well. Sometimes we need to creep that animal up towards that dysphoric state. So think about a seizure really severe anxiety, to begin to soften some of their existing ideas, the existing patterns, to then shape them in a different way. So say, using THC before a massage, using THC before you're going to do some body work, so getting enough of those patterns to break down. Sorry, let me find my mic.

Dr Edward: 47:28

You might use low doses so that they can then habituate to the dysphoric state, so that it can then become a positive experience rather than a negative experience. Is that what you mean?

Dr Casara Andre: 47:40

Absolutely. But recognizing that dysphoric state can be negative. And if we're not there to take a lot of care about guiding them through that state, then we're kind of just tossing the dice up in the air and like, hope you do okay. But I think this is exactly what the human side of medicine is working on now about guiding through a psychedelic experience, guiding through a difficult, having a coach to help you figure out what step could come next. How do we do that for an animal? How do we establish that rapport? Again, that's kind of what we're talking about here. Can we leverage something that animal already trusts? When we're going to change a pattern? Can we lean on patterns that are already present, already strong, already positive, so that as we change and mold some other patterns, we're much more likely to go positive than have a negative experience under a substance that's really really powerful?

Dr Edward: 48:40

So are there any research studies getting set up for MDMA in dogs, or are we not quite at that point of structuring and working out how to do that?

Dr Casara Andre: 48:53

no, not that I'm aware of and not that our team is um to a stage of advancing we do.

Dr Casara Andre: 49:01

We have been speaking with a few um universities that have interests. But I will say I have a lot of concerns about the human psychedelic research field. I think there's a lot of animal abuse happening now in some of the studies that are coming out that you just look at these study designs and question the ethics review board and who thought that this was an okay thing to try? And then you read some of the literature that's coming out from the human side and I have concerns about the ethics and the strength of that current research environment to properly care for an animal. So at the moment we are not actively pursuing that with any group because I don't know that our research industry has the ability to think about consent and the right way to take care of an animal, to really take it slowly enough to be careful. There's so much drive for the quick answer to have the patented thing that I think we really need to be cautious when animals are involved. They need a lot of advocacy.

Dr Edward: 50:19

Yeah, my thought would be that you need to start at very low dose and inch it up, and inch it up until you see the slightest little signs of anything and see what happens and see what kind of responses you get at that point, rather than going towards threshold doses and high doses. I don't think that very good.

Dr Casara Andre: 50:36

Absolutely. And what can we do with leveraging these bonds so that it's less about dose and it's more about rewiring a circuit? And we know that if we can really get that bond tight and healthy, that that's truly what's going to make change. We know more about the period after exposure to a psychedelic that say psilocybin or MDMA. The two to three weeks after the exposure are actually where that critical period is open and those circuits are rewiring. That has nothing to do with the dose.

Dr Casara Andre: 51:12

We see that those critical period reopening really tied to how long you were exposed to the substance during the journey a human would say, or the ceremony or the experience but it's what you do in the weeks afterwards that really dictate those long-term changes. So in animal work I think we should be looking more at what does their month look like after treatment? What does it look like beforehand, what does it look like afterwards? What is the environment that they're in? And if we cannot safely guarantee that environment, then we shouldn't be pursuing that initial exposure. And that, I think, is hard for our human research environment to kind of get behind. We like to see big results and dramatic results and working with respect in animals requires us to go slow.

Dr Edward: 52:02

Okay, so maybe that's not an option just yet. Just curiously, have there been any anecdotal, accidental or deliberate MDMA stories you've heard of people using it, perhaps a little bit what you might call tongue in cheek, very much off label, and if so, what kind of things have happened?

Dr Casara Andre: 52:23

Yeah, we do have an exposure survey out and we do get interesting submissions to it. We have one of our teams working on an article publication about a gentleman speaking about use of ayahuasca in a cat and that's had some really interesting positive outcomes. Now for your listeners, ayahuasca is a very, very powerful psychedelic, very long lasting, so not kind of slow slow approach that dr edward and I were talking about it's like the biggest one of all in some ways, yes, and I don't know.

Dr Casara Andre: 52:59

I don't know why that tends to be something that comes up, but again, emphasizing respect, emphasizing consent, emphasizing safety of what happens and around that experience for the animal and afterwards is so important. Again, I'm in Colorado so I hear lots of anecdotal reports of animals being exposed to psilocybin. Particularly the ERs are definitely seeing exposures and again, what's really coming up is that it's what happens afterwards, what happens after that exposure. That's the most important and that we need to be prepared for that. As we see exposures in the ER just from an accidental intoxication. It's not just about that moment, it's not just about while they're in your clinic. It could be more important to check in on them a week, two weeks, three weeks out, because that might be where we're actually seeing some new behavioral health issues arise that we're not even catching because it's past the exposure. But those next couple of weeks are really impactful.

Dr Edward: 53:59

So, in general, with these accidental or potentially kind of gray zone deliberate things, are you seeing positive or negative impacts overall?

Dr Casara Andre: 54:10

Depends on how it's done, depends on how intentional that human is and how safe the environment is. There's lots of reports of the accidental ingestion. So into the stash, you know, just like it used to be for cannabis. We're at that time in history where psychedelics are not quite as stigmatized and so they're a little bit more openly used, but that means that they're left out on the counter or using a little bit more of a recreational setting. So exposures are definitely increasing. But I've definitely heard some amazing reports.

Dr Casara Andre: 54:44

We have some really interesting reports from owners who are working with surrogate healing, so intentionally working with a psychedelic themselves to be clean and hygienic about the bond they're sharing with their animal and sometimes really making a lot of progress with that animal's healing, because the human is really working on their own emotional and physical health and those are fascinating, those are so interesting to dive into. And physical health and those are fascinating, those are so interesting to dive into and to guide and we're really focusing on the monitoring through those. Can we use some of these in-home tests, some of the urine stress tests, some of the cortisol testing? How can we make sure this animal's going through this experience? Even if it's a human that's consuming. It's still a stressful experience for everybody.

Dr Casara Andre: 55:29

Absolutely and hopefully are you stressful rather than harmful? Stressful, yeah, yeah, Growth and change. I will say that I'm really interested in it's far from well, I don't know that it's too far from our canine veteran concept, but I'm really interested in the use of psychedelics for immune system disorders and thinking about can we begin working towards reordering somatic side, the somatic side of the body? There's so much focus on the nervous system side, the cognitive pieces, the cognitive circuitry, but the nervous system is in the periphery as well. Can we really approach some of these tough external diseases in some new and inventive ways by thinking of that body as a whole and focusing more on regulation and balance than the disease states? So I think that would be fascinating than the disease states.

Dr Edward: 56:29

So I think that would be fascinating. Well, I personally see the nervous system as somatic anyway, because that neurofascial network is everywhere and the fascia and the neurological sensory awareness is. More than half of the awareness of the whole body is coming from the soma, the body.

Dr Casara Andre: 56:44

So yeah, that would be very interesting.

Dr Edward: 56:48

And I hope that we'll get you back sometime and talk about a study that's being set up for ethical, beautiful mdma experimentation with animals with post-traumatic stress. But that might be a year or two off by the sound of it, or maybe longer well, when it is, you'll be the first to know.

Dr Casara Andre: 57:06

We will keep you in the loop.

Dr Edward: 57:08

Yeah, so let's wrap this up, and I'd like to finish off with a couple of questions. The first one what is the change that you want to be and inspires others to be in this world?

Dr Casara Andre: 57:22

Thank you for that question. It was well phrased and it was fun to think about. The answer that I wanted to share was I'm really interested in building and sharing paradigms that focus on this one health aspect and we've talked about it all throughout today's discussion the fact that animal, human and ecosystem health are inseparable. We really focus on the human animal connection, but we exist in the world around us, whether it be your household, your geographic region. We have to think about all of that interconnectivity if we're going to care for anyone part of it. So propagating one health solutions, one health ideas, would be the way that I would love to bring some healing to the world.

Dr Edward: 58:09

Beautiful, and what do you think is humanity's biggest blind spot when it comes to your work and our shared journey of evolution and healing?

Dr Casara Andre: 58:21

Similarly to my previous answer, I think the anthropocentric perspective that we take, so the human-centric. What do I think about what I'm seeing? How is what I'm seeing viewed through my context, through my lens? I think it is our biggest blind spot and while our ability to project has gotten us so far, I think it has made us miss a lot of beauty and a lot of ways that we can be well and in unity with everything that's around us. And if we can switch that to a one health perspective and really thinking about our animal companions, maybe leveraging their well-being, I think we would see a lot of progress towards planetary health I totally agree.

Dr Edward: 59:05

I've been starting to do some, some study and learning with um the caro people wisdom through elizabeth jenkins, who's just had a seven week course out on the shift network, and their thing is that everything is living energies and we want to be in right relationship with everything, whether they be conscious beings or trees or the places on the earth or whatever. And I think that really goes back to that that whole one health, one earth. We are all part of one big thing that's alive and intelligent and the more we can realize that, the more our behavior is going to naturally change in ways that will heal the everything. I think I agree 100 beautiful.

Dr Edward: 59:53

Thank you so much for your time and energy and wisdom today. It's been a really broad-ranging, very, very interesting conversation. Um so, dr cassara, where can people find you? I mean if, if you're in colorado, I would be running off to to find out when dr cassara's next got some availability. If you're in Colorado, I would be running off to find out when Dr Pizarro's next got some availability, if you see her, because she's totally awesome.

Dr Casara Andre: 1:00:16

Well, thank you so much. Our website, our psychedelic work, veterinarypsyorg is probably the best place to find some of our newest work and definitely for things going on in Colorado place to find some of our newest work and definitely for things going on in Colorado and we'd love to connect for whatever interesting reasons strikes your brain, please reach out.

Dr Edward: 1:00:35

We'd definitely love to connect with you. Do you have a website for?

Dr Casara Andre: 1:00:40

your clinical work too. I mostly would work through that one and people can reach out to that email receptiondesk at bednarsciorg and then my team will make sure that that inquiry is routed Again. We'd love to connect. It is such a fruitful feel. There's so much that's happening.

Dr Edward: 1:00:58

It really takes a lot of collaboration, beautiful. Thank you so much. We're going to say goodbye for now. Hopefully we'll see you back in the next episode. And until we next see you, pleaseara and myself, give your pets a lovely slow, relaxing, regulating pat.