The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #293 - Burt Ward

TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.)

Burt Ward

I was in far more danger filming Batman than being with that baby lion. It was a very exciting show to me.  There was a lot of danger from explosions. Why aren't you using the stuntman instead of using me? Well, he doesn't look like you. It's an incredible amount of work and to save these animals' life and every life is precious to us. And we found that there is a way to properly feed dogs that will add a minimum of five years to their life.

Melanie Avalon

Welcome to the Melanie Avalon biohacking podcast where we meet the world's top experts to explore the secrets of health mindset longevity and so much more. Are you ready to take charge of your existence and biohack your life? This show is for you. Please keep in mind we're not dispensing medical advice and are not responsible for any outcomes you may experience from implementing the tactics lying here in you.  Are you ready? Let's do this. Welcome back to the Melanie Avalon biohacking podcast. Oh my goodness friends what a fun episode we have in store for you today. It was such a surreal honor to interview Burt Ward who is yes the original Robin from Batman and Robin and he is doing the coolest things ever when it comes to creating healthy epic non-gmo pet food which truly can extend our pets lives. So given that combination you can imagine that we touch on so many interesting topics in today's episode. Of course we have some shocking set stories and secrets from filming Batman and Robin. Prepare to have your mind blown about the lack of safety and things that went down on that set and then of course we dive all into pet longevity.  We talk about the problems with modern pet food today, what food you should actually be feeding your pets, how to care for and feed your pets and so much more. This is such a fun episode. I can't wait to have Burt back again and I can't wait to hear what you guys think. These show notes for today's episode will be at melanieavalon.com slash Burt Ward that's B-U-R-T-W-A-R-D. Those show notes will have a full transcript as well as links to everything that we talked about so definitely check that out and there will be two episode giveaways for this episode. One will be in my Facebook group, I have biohackers, intermittent fasting plus real foods plus life. Comment something you learned or something that resonated with you on the pinned post to enter to win something that I love and then check out my Instagram, find the Friday announcement post and again comment there to enter to win something that I love. All right I think that's all the things. Without further ado please enjoy this fabulous conversation with Burt Ward. Hi friends, welcome back to the show. I am so incredibly excited about the conversation I'm about to have. This might be one of the coolest conversations on this show honestly friends. So the backstory on this conversation a while ago now, maybe a year ago or so, I was on a podcast called the Derek Duvall show and I became friends with Derek. We talked about how we would always refer guests to each other and he sent me an email one day and said that he had had literally the coolest most amazing interview he had ever done and I simply had to interview this human being. I was an immediate yes and friends I am here with Burt Ward. I'm going to tell you a little bit about him with a bio but you probably know who he is because he is the original Robin from the Batman TV series and he and his wife Tracy have rescued more than 15,500 dogs and hundreds of cats in the last 30 years.

Melanie Avalon

They've created Gentle Giant's natural non-GMO ingredients pet foods to help all precious pets live longer and healthier and they found that dogs eating Gentle Giant's natural non-GMO ingredients dog and puppy food and following Gentle Giant's special feeding and care program, which I have a lot of questions about, are living as long as 30 healthy active years with a wonderful quality of life. They have also created Gentle Giant's natural non-GMO ingredients cat and kitten food to help cats live long healthy active lives too and you guys can learn more at gentlegiantsdogfood.com and gentlegiantspetproducts.com and actually Burt this is incredible timing because my sister just bought a new kitten literally like two actually so she got it right before Christmas and um but it's funny because I asked her right away I was like what are you feeding you know your cats what are you feeding them and I just think it's so important because people don't really like humans are so concerned with what they put in their bodies but I think people don't think about it with their with their pets very often yeah so I have so so many questions for you first of all to start did you ever so like back in the day when you know when you were doing Batman and Robin did you ever anticipate landing here with what you're doing with pet food and pet wellness

Burt Ward

Well, I always loved animals and I've had animals since a child, dogs and cats. And well, when I was doing Batman, I actually had a pet lion, pet lion. Yeah. His name was Puff. He was, uh, you might not, this goes way back, you know, he, uh, was the brother of Clarence, the cross-eyed lion, which was very famous. Uh, a lot of people haven't heard about it now, but in the day it was, uh, it was a very famous lion. I had gotten him after making a personal appearance in 1966 up in Tacoma, Washington at a place called the BNI circus store, which was, if you can imagine a, it's like a general clothing store, appliance store, had everything in a big store, but they also had wild animals in cages and it was set up. So, you know, nobody could get too close and nobody could get hurt. And, you know, they were very, you know, prominent in the way they, they handled things, but I fell in love with this baby lion and I ultimately, uh, I bought the lion and brought it back to Los Angeles at the time I was living in the Barrington Plaza in West LA, which is these tall condominium, uh, high rise. I got to know the owner of the buildings and he let me keep him. I loved it. He was the sweetest little thing you can imagine. I know people say, Oh, well, wild lion. This, this was more like a cat, just a regular cat. And I already, at the time I had like 20 cats in my house's apartment as well. And they, and he wanted to play with those little cats and boy, they wanted nothing to do with him, but he was the sweetest thing. And he, unfortunately in the wild, like 50% of them die. And in his case, his lungs never grew with the rest of his body. And, and he passed away after about five or six months.  And I just spent a fortune. I actually found the very famous doctor that Dr. McWhirter that had raised Clarence, the cross eyed lion that was on television and stuff as a full grown lion. And he cost me a fortune to have him come out like three times a week, do everything to try to keep him alive. And he was just the cutest, incredible thing. So gentle. However, even when he licked you, it was like having a file. It was like, I mean, I have sharp file, like you need the most sweetest thing. And he loved those cats and they wanted nothing to do with them. And we had the cat, I had a cat pan in the, in the bathroom for the cats to use. And he finally figured out that they were always going in the cat pants. So he, he would pretend he was asleep in blocking the doorway. Right. And those cats had to use the cat. So they had to ask him and they would tip toe. So, and he would just as they were passing all of a sudden, his big paw would come out and land on them. And he would just wash them and wash them and wash them in the most affectionate way he never heard it. You know, just the most amazing, you know, it's funny when animals are, are babies, they could be amazingly affectionate and wonderful.

Melanie Avalon

Wow. Do you think if he had, if you, you know, if he had stayed with you longer, you would have kept him like it was like a full grown lion.

Burt Ward

I would have tried. I would have tried. I would have tried. But, you know, you still have to, you have to be mindful that, you know, their instincts, you know, are wild sometimes. And you just have to be careful because, you know, we've heard of, all of us heard of bad things happening. And you just have to be really careful.  I think in retrospect, it probably was not a good idea to have gotten the baby lion. But I'll tell you, for the time he was on this planet, he got an incredible amount of love and affection. So I certainly am happy about that.

Melanie Avalon

Well, it seems like things were a little bit different back then. I was looking through your memoir a little bit and things were dangerous. It seems like on set and stuff.

Burt Ward

Oh, yeah. I mean, I was in far more danger filming Batman than being with that baby lion. It was a very exciting show to make. There was a lot of danger from explosions. I got the first week of filming four of the first five days I had to go to the emergency hospital with second degree burns, broken nose from a two by four landing on my nose when I was tied down on a table.  And it was a scene where Batman was going to rescue me in the in a subway. This was in the first episode and it was supposed to be a charge put in the wall. You know, he was supposed to blow up a hole in the subway. What happened was the studio had forgotten to build a breakaway set. So when they use this magnesium charge, which is a big loud bang, and it's got power, but it's not like a real explosion. It didn't move the two by fours because it was a solid set. It was supposed to break away and there was no time to build a set when you're in production, which would have taken two weeks. So the special effects guys in their wisdom, or I should say I'm being a little sarcastic, they use two half sticks of dynamite and they nearly blew the entire soundstage down. I'm tied down on a table, my arms tied in my sides, nothing I can do to protect my face. And when they blew it up, a two by four was blown up in the air and I saw it coming right down, landed on my nose and broke my nose. And then there was another day that we had where the Riddler shoots Robin in the Batmobile and Batman is in the what a way to go discotheque with St. John. And that's a whole story. But in any event, I'm supposed to be watching the Batmobile and the Riddler wants to steal the Batmobile. So he shoots me in the arm with the dart and I kind of like him supposed to be knocked out and lying there in the seat. And the Batmobile has an open, there's no cover over your head. There's a windshield in front and behind, but over the head, it's open. Production team had said, Bert, this is a quarter of a million shot. This is a one time shot. We've got 10 cameras filming this. It's entire city block on the Fox lot. Okay. All lit up. I mean, it was a giant thing. Whatever you do, whatever you do, don't you move when you're supposed to be knocked out. We don't care what don't you move? Right. And I was very good at taking direction. So what was actually when when the Riddler and Frank runs around and he gets in the Batmobile and he presses what he thinks is the starter button. And it's really a camouflage button that shoots off fireworks from the three metal stacks on the trunk of the Batmobile. And I mean, these two fireworks, I mean, a hundred feet in the air, I mean, real fireworks. And when they came down, they were burning through my hair into my scalp, burned through my arm, burned through my legs, burned into my shorts. It was incredibly painful. And I never moved. I know, I mean, as much pain as I, you know, I kind of like gritted my teeth, but but I never moved. And, you know, that was. And of course, I had to go to the hospital for that, but I didn't ruin their shot.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, that's like one of my fears since childhood, the fireworks that they're gonna land on me. That literally happened to you. Oh my goodness.

Burt Ward

It just can't believe how hot they are. I mean, it's a really, it's a serious thing.

Melanie Avalon

Were there conversations about all of this? Like, did you think like, were you just down to keep doing it? And were there conversations about this stuff happening or was it kind of just understood?

Burt Ward

Well the yeah cuz the studio was more worried about losing down time of me being in the hospital i think my my safety.  What they they they're actually developed a policy on back man, which was if there's because i did have a stunt man but they never used him because he didn't look like me i mean they only used him in these very very far away shots and the fight scenes at a great distance you know where they couldn't recognize it was me he would do the, he and the stunt man for batman would do these and it's almost like a oh i don't know it's like a two or three minute fight scene all choreographed and everything and then on the close ups i i would do my stuff i i was a brown belt later became a black belt karate so i could do my own fighting perfectly well but it took time to choreograph these things and set up all the cameras and all that stuff so i just did the closest but other than that they had a policy on batman and that was, if there's anything ever really dangerous you know what i mean life threatening always use burt yeah and and i'll tell you something they but they were very smart i gotta hand it to them they took out this huge multimillion dollar life insurance policy on me okay and i could swear by the end of that third season they were trying to collect on that policy.

Melanie Avalon

Like actually maybe.

Burt Ward

Maybe. Why not get all those millions of dollars, you know?

Melanie Avalon

That's insane. Wow. If you could go back, would you have done anything differently with the whole experience?

Burt Ward

You know, I had a great time though. I mean, I would say the only two things I didn't like were the, you know, the, the danger, really dangerous stuff where, where I got hurt.  I don't even mind dangerous stuff as long as I can come away without really getting hurt, you know, but, but the, you know, the, the things that were really painful, you know, having to go to a hospital, I had never been to an emergency hospital in my life, you know, but, and then the other thing that I really didn't enjoy was the costume. I mean, I'll be honest with you, man was not built for tights.

Melanie Avalon

Oh, my gosh. Oh, man, welcome to the life of women.  So when it first started filming like at the very beginning and you're having these things, was it already a sensation or like when you went to the hospital? Would people know who you were like starstruck?

Burt Ward

No, of course not, because this was day one of filming before. This was when we were making the pilot. It wasn't even sold to the network.  And what happened was the very first day, the very first shot, I was supposed to be in the Batcave, you know, up in the Hollywood Hills where they were filming, they said, you know, here it is like six o'clock in the morning. You got to be there about it was about seven or seven thirty after all the makeup and the wardrobe and this and that. They said, OK, we're ready. We got the shot lit. You need to go into the cave, get in the Batmobile and you guys are going to drive out. Batman's going to drive out very fast and going to come towards the camera at the last minute, make a sharp turn to the left and head off towards Gotham City. And I said, OK, I didn't realize how fast or how dangerous it was going to be. So I I went into the cave and took a minute or two, because when you go from light to darkness, it's kind of like we're a speck of bill. It's totally dark. The Batmobile is black, right? So I found the Batmobile. I got in and and I at first thought it was Adam and Wes to play Batman, you know, in the driver's seat. But you know how you can have a feeling that something's a little different? I said, Adam, he said, no, my name's Hubie. I said, oh, well, hi. Well, what are you doing here? Why is Adam not here? Well, I'm a stuntman and this is a very dangerous stunt and the studio doesn't want to take a chance of Mr. West getting hurt. So they hire me. I said, oh, well, that's nice. I said, you like being a stuntman? He's oh, yeah. I said, I said, huh. I said, is it dangerous? It's all very dangerous. He says, but the good news, the more broke, more broken bones I get, the more money I get. I said, oh, yes, that's a way to look at it. So I said, well, why are you in this particular shot? Well, because this is really dangerous. Well, why is it dangerous? Well, we have to come out at 55 miles an hour straight at the camera and we're on dirt, OK, because this is in front of a cave and I've got to make a sharp turn and skid the back into the Batmobile around and then, you know, zoom off towards towards the Gotham City. And I said, oh, gee. And I thought about it for me. I said, well, if it's dangerous for you, is it dangerous for me? You say, oh, yeah, it is. And I said, I said, you know, I don't understand this. Don't I have a stunt man? And he said, yeah, you do. Oh, I said, well, that's great. Where's he? Well, last time I saw him, he was having coffee with Adam West. I said, wait a minute here. Then I hear him say, all right, close it up. Get ready to roll. And I say, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, there's a terrible mistake. Hold on. Hold on. And so the second unit director, his name is Ruben. He comes up to me, says, what's the problem? I said, well, this man's a stuntman. Yeah, we know that, Bert. Yeah, but he's telling me that he's got to come out at 55 miles an hour. And this is a dangerous stunt. Yes, Bert, we know that. I said, I understand. But he also told me that I have a stuntman.

Burt Ward

We know that too, Bert. Well, well, why aren't you using a stuntman instead of using me? We can't use him, Bert. Oh, I see.  OK. Well, wait a minute. Why can't you use him? Well, he doesn't look like you. Wait a minute. Why would you hire a stuntman to look like me if he doesn't look like me? Couldn't find anybody that looks like you. Oh my gosh. So you got to do it, Bert. I said yeah, but wouldn't it be better if the stuntman was here? It would, except it won't be good on camera because when you come up at full speed, you know, and the camera's on the right side, your face is going to be 100% on screen. And honestly, this stunt guy is a wonderful guy, but he's got a very large nose. He looks like Cyrano de Bergerac. And I said, well, geez. All right. Well, I'll do it. So this is my first day of filming the first shot, right? So I said, okay, I'm preparing myself. All right. So let me see here. First thing, let me put my seat. Oh, wait a minute. There's no seatbelt. All right. Well, let me hold on to the handle on the inside of the door. Wait, there's no handle on the inside of the door because they had to have room for the cameras and the lights and stuff to light up, you know, to throw light on you. I said, well, let me hold on to this windshield, plastic, thin plastic. It's like cellophane. Okay. What am I going to hold on to? And right then, and I hear him counting down and I hear the Batmobile revving up and he's, you know, he's got it in neutral and he's revving. You know what I mean? And then it's like the only thing I can hold on to the little metal frames holding that plastic windshield. That's like holding on to a toothbrush or something. There's nothing else solid. So anyway, I'm holding on to that. And boom, we go running, coming out fast. Like, I don't, I mean, I, it can seem like a hundred miles an hour, not 55. We go straight to the camera. I mean, the driver was fantastic. He did it perfectly. He makes that sharp turn, but then something unexpected happened. My door flew open. And when my door flew, remember it's centrifugal force. So when he's spinning around where the back end is spinning behind us and I'm closer to the camera, that's the force, you know, through the door open, I get whatever reason it wasn't securely shut. And it threw me towards going out the door. And just by instinct, I threw my hand behind me, my left hand. And I was, I can't believe it. I wrapped my little finger. I couldn't see it. It was just luck around the gear shift knob of the Batmobile. And it kept me from falling out, but it pulled my finger out of joint, you know, and it's probably pain. I had never had that happen in my life. It's like, you know, and, and, and I was wearing these gloves, you know, Robin has these green gloves. And, but instantly my finger was just so painful. And I looked it down and my glove was my little finger was twice the normal size because of the bone and had been pulled away from the socket. Okay. And anyway, and the, the door knocked the cameraman off the camera truck, not an arc lamp, one of those giant lamps.

Burt Ward

If it had land on somebody, you would have been killed instantly. There's no way you could survive that.  Because in those days, they didn't have the cool lightweight lights like they have now in big, heavy lights. And like a search, like you, like you see it in an opening of a car dealership was giant only way up on a pole. So anyway, everybody stopped and there's dust flying everywhere. And they run over to my door, Bert, Bert, are you okay? I said, yes, but my hand is killing me. And they looked down and, and again, I had my glove on, but they could see this. Oh, your fingers out of joint. They said, Oh my God, we got to get you to the hospital. And so they helped me out of the Bat Mobile. But I'm standing there and they're dusting me off. And they get a dust in my face and my ear and everything. And I said, okay, well, where's the car? They said, what car? Well, the car to take me to the hospital. Oh, Bert, we can't go now. Well, why not? Because we didn't get the shot. I figured, well, we, we, we got a whole crew here, Bert. It costs $30,000 every 10 minutes to shoot. We got to get the shot. That was at about eight in the morning. And I think it was known before they finally took me to the hospital after I had done the shot three more times.

Melanie Avalon

Oh my gosh, that's insanity.

Burt Ward

Then I go in, and now, of course, here I am in leotards with a robe, because it's so cold on these soundstages, I'm telling you, it's like you wouldn't need refrigeration without, just incredibly cold. So, and I've got my leotards with my bat boots, and I'm going into the emergency hospital, right, in a robe, and people are looking at me like, ooh, this guy's certifiable, you know, or whatever, and the doctor, you know, he's asking me these questions, he says, jeez, he says, you know, this sounds like dangerous kind of work.  Well, the next three days, I was back at that same hospital with the same doctor who was my duty under, and he was telling me by the, by I guess the last day, he said, you know, you really ought to reconsider getting into another line of work. He says, you know, this is, you see, you got second degree burns in the back of your neck, you got second degree burns in your arm, you got first degree burns on your legs, you get, you know, I mean, he's going on and on, oh, you got a broken nose, you know, he says, it's a, it's a hairline split, so we don't have to, you know, we don't have to set it, or whatever, but all of that happened. And then that was, it was like four of the first six days of filming.

Melanie Avalon

That's insane. Now I'm guessing like day players and guest stars and things like that, were they all just doing their own stunts? Because if they're not going to get you as...

Burt Ward

Oh, no, they know they're all they're protected. Don't worry about this.  No, it's like us, Adam and I, where we're exposed to these all kinds of gases, this colored gas that you inhale and, you know, and things that where you have to be pulled out of something where you're on a metal lift and the lift wasn't secure and it comes up and hit you in the jaw, you know, and tried to lift you. I mean, I'll give you another one. And I don't really want to complain too much because overall it was a great experience, but I had a time, this is an example where they said to me in the morning, they said, Bert, in this shot, we need you to do this. It's, it's really not a stunt because you're really not doing anything. And they're hemming and hawing, you know, which means you're trying to figure weight and tell me something I don't want to hear. So they said, now look, Bert, after lunch, we have this shot. And I said, yeah. And these, the shot is like, you know, it's kind of simulating, like you're on top of a building. I said, Oh, what kind of building? Well, we actually are going to put you up on top of our sound stage. Oh, it's 80 feet tall, right? I'd say, well, what, what am I supposed to do on the sound stage? I said, I'm working at the script and with the script, I'm sure it's not, it's, it was miswritten because it's your script is saying that Robin is hanging upside down over the, over the top of this building. And, and they said, well, actually that is correct, Bert. And I said, wait a minute. You've got, he said, but don't worry, don't worry. We got two of our strongest stuntmen going to hold you. And they're not going to drop you because they know how important it is that you're in this show. I said, Oh, wait. And I said, but don't worry, Burke, go have a nice lunch. Right. So after lunch, okay. They say, okay, bird is signed to the shot. And I'm really having second thoughts. Right. You know, but what can I do? Like, I mean, they have, it's, it's in the script. So they said, well, I said, how am I going to get way up on top of that 80 foot sound scene? Well, inside there are these, there's stairs and I'll tell you they are, they are the most oldest, rickiest stairs, wood stairs. You step on them and they kind of move on your feet. You know, you see through and as you get higher and higher and higher, then you go up to the next level and you're getting higher and higher. And you finally get up into the south to the roof of this thing. And I'm telling you, it looks like it was on top of a skyscraper. It's 80 feet in the air. And that is when you're up there, it really looks, you know, and I said, look, no way am I going to let them hold me over there. The only way I will do this is if you'll get me a thick rope, like you, the kind that, you know, when you tie a boat to a dock, you know, there's like one inch thick. I said, you get me a thick rope that I can personally tie around my leg and personally tie around something.

Burt Ward

And then you, I'll hang over the top, but, and they said, well, how are we going to cover the rope? I said, well, just by the way the guy holds me, he can, his arm can cover. So they don't see that, you know, there's a rope underneath. And so they agreed to that.  And they said, but why are you so picky about this? I said, well, I guess maybe it's my life and maybe it's because we had fried chicken for lunch and everybody's got greasy fingers and flip out from under. There's greasy, greasy fingers. And they go, Oh, all right. Well, that's a good point.

Melanie Avalon

That's insane. They were going to literally hold you over the building.

Burt Ward

They did, and if they had their leg, I wouldn't have had this rope tied to my leg.

Melanie Avalon

Oh my goodness, I have to go watch now all these scenes with this in my head.

Burt Ward

I got another one for you. I can go on all day about this. There is another one they had where it's a catwoman show and they brought in three bingo tigers, wild, not trained, not circus cats. These are wild tigers. Okay. And tigers are gigantic. They're much bigger than a lion. They're gigantic.  And they had this super thick steel ring and they had this board like a plank. And the whole idea is that I am tied to this plank with my neck hanging over the end of the plank looking down at the tigers. I'm 12 feet above them and they can jump up to 19 feet. But I didn't know that at the time. I said, well, it seems like it's okay. It's 12 feet above. I had no idea what they could do. But I did have a bad feeling when I was getting on the plank to be tied down. I looked up and 10 feet above me in a steel cage with the cameraman and the director. That is a bad sign, Melanie. That is a bad sign. Why do they need to be in a steel cage and they're 10 feet above me?  Because the cats can jump that high, all right? These little tigers. So here's the story. You think, well, you know, this director, all he wanted to do is get a great shot. He doesn't care, right? What's a great shot? So they start rolling and I have my lines. They said, wait a minute, these cats aren't doing anything. We got to see them looking up. They're just looking around. They got to be looking up. The whole point of this thing is that Robin's in danger. And they say, okay. So above the steel cage, they're tapping on the metal, the points in the metal and stuff. So the tigers do look up. And then the director says, wait a minute. This is still not good enough. We're way up in the air. And all they're doing is looking up. Can you get them to kind of stand up or do something or get them some motion upwards? It looks like we see something because right now this shot is not very entertaining.  You know what they did, Melanie? What do you think they could do to try to get those cats to jump up in the air? I use you as bait? Well, almost. They hung meat over my head. Raw meat. Not directly, but like two or three feet away from me. And they're jumping up at the meat. And their paw is huge. It's like a tennis racket size. I mean, they're huge. These are huge wild animals. So those are some of the things that you don't hear about. And I really don't complain about them, but they're part of the experience, if you know what I mean.

Melanie Avalon

No kidding. One last question about that. Were any of the directors, like, more safety aware than others, or were they all just about the shot?

Burt Ward

No, they they they did care, but then they didn't care. You have to understand the whole point is, are they going to work again on Batman?  Well, they better get some good shots if they are not not going to work again. So they're kind of caught in a in a in a rough place where, of course, they nobody wanted us to get hurt. But on the other hand, if they didn't get a good shot, they likely wouldn't be invited back and they got families to support. And, you know, it's it's all about, you know, you got to make a living.

Melanie Avalon

crazy. Well, it sounds like you're doing something much safer now.

Burt Ward

I like to think that is, you know.

Melanie Avalon

It's a lot to go into the world of, you know, creating pet food for and changing pets' lives. When did you have that epiphany to do that?

Burt Ward

Let me tell you, well, here's what happened. So this is back in 1994. My wife, Tracy, and I, we had a daughter. We were living at the beach. We had a beautiful home about a block away from the beach, four stories tall with all these balconies. Because property in Southern California at the beach is just like so premium, you can't find 100-foot lot very often unless you're way up in Malibu. So we had this little tiny lot with five feet around a house that was 4,000 square feet, the four levels with balconies up to 40 feet high off the ground. And here you've got a three-year-old wanting to walk out on the balconies. And I'm about to have a heart attack if I see you're heading that direction, right? So I said, no, no, we've got to move. We've got to move. We've got to be on ground left.  If we're going to raise our child safely, we've got to be protected environment. So we decided to move east of Los Angeles. And we found this incredible place. It's a city called Norco, N-O-R-C-O. It's the last Western town in America where horses have the right-of-way over cars. It's incredibly animal-friendly. You see people can have animals here that you can't have in a city. For example, I mean, I have a neighbor that has an 800-pound pig. I've got neighbors that have emos, llamas, camels. You see people riding a camel. Camels? Yeah, camel. In fact, yes, I filmed a thing where I brought the camel in my house, okay? Yeah, it was really, it was quite something. They're incredibly smart. And oh my gosh, I mean, their head is just, their head is like, it's like a three-foot yardstick. I mean, it's the biggest thing you've ever seen in your life when you see them up close, you know? But in any event, and here, this is of all American town. You know how, like, you drive down the street and you see dotted white lines, right? Well, here in Norco, they don't have, well, they have dotted white lines, but their markings are red, white, and blue dotted. No way. That's amazing. Total all American, and every business in the city by law has to have a Western theme to the building. They're all Western buildings. And everyone by law has to have a horse tie-up. And there are so many horses here on a weekend, because we live right by this river. We have a beautiful five-acre property right by the river, and there's a 350-mile river by us. On a weekend, you'll see a group of 250 to 300 riders that ride right past us, because every property by law has to have a horse trail in front of it, and we're behind it. And they ride right down to the river and right along the river, and so it's a beautiful place. It's an incredible place. So when we moved here, we thought we'd get a dog for our daughter, who was three years old, and I had always wanted a Great Dane. I had many other breeds, but never a Great Dane. My wife, Tracy, was brought up with Irish Wolfhound, so we went looking for either a Great Dane or Irish Wolfhound, and they're not plentiful. They're kind of rare, actually, at the time.

Burt Ward

But we did hear of a Great Dane that needed to be rescued, and I said, what do you mean, rescue? Well, that's where somebody can't take care of anymore, and in this case, the person whose dog it was went to study in Europe and was leaving it with a neighbor who only fed it half the time, and oh my, it was a mess.  So we rescued this dog, and it was a Great Dane. Our name was Beauty, incredible. She, of course, we got her, and she was sick because of not being properly cared for, so we had to spend $3,000. This is back in 1994 to get her well, which we did. We also heard of other dogs, Great Danes, that needed rescue, but they were in their owner's homes at the time. They weren't like in a shelter where there's an immediate threat of being put to death because all the animal shelters are overfilled. You don't find an empty animal shelter. They're all overfilled, and I know it's a tragedy, but more than a million dogs a month are being put to sleep across the United States, a million, because there's no homes for them, and 70% are puppies.  It is just unconscionable. Anyway, we had this great day and we heard about others needing rescue.  And then someone called us about three weeks later and said, why don't you rescue these dogs? I said, well, I mean, there don't seem to be any danger. What do you mean, Bert? They're dying in shelters. And we did we found out that all the people that had had these dogs, they wanted to give up when they couldn't find somebody to give it up. They gave it to the shelter. The shelter put it to sleep. And you have to understand, if you go into an animal shelter, there's this tremendous barking because the dogs are frightened. And if you have a big dog like a great dame in a cage that's barking, who's going to take it out to play with it? Right. They're intimidated by it. So it was the first week in August of 1994. I said to my wife, Tracy, I said, we can't let these dogs die. We can't let them die. Look, just till we find somebody else, I'm sure we can find somebody in a couple of weeks, but we got to take these dogs so they don't die. So we started taking the great Danes.  Now, three weeks later at the end of August, 1994, in my home, I had one hundred and two great Danes, full size, and 61 puppies under five weeks of age. And how do we get the puppies? Because if they're born in a shelter or somebody has a litter and doesn't know how to handle them, they give them to the shelter. The shelter said, you've got to get them out now because there's disease is rampant in some shelters and, you know, they're all going to die if you don't get them out like right now, right now. So and now and my wife, Tracy, for the first three and a half, four months after this occurred, had to sleep on our kitchen floor. And you say, well, why would she do that? Well, because you've got seven litters. Each one of these is great Dane mother. You have to bring the great Dane. You got to get her to lie down. Then you got to bring in the puppy separate because the great Danes, they don't you're not necessarily careful.

Burt Ward

And if they're so big and if they stepped on a puppy, that's it. It would kill them.  So you bring the puppies in. You got to then attach them and you got to try to keep them attached. They they come on down and they go this one and go that way. It is like it's it's almost like a game, but it's not a game. And then finally, the mothers had enough nursing, right? She's that's it. She's had enough. She wants to she gets up because she's got to go to the bathroom. And of course, you minute she gets up, you've got four law, four legs to be to make sure that they don't stand on any of nine puppies. Yes, it's like a shell game. You're trying to protect these puppies. So we get her outside and then we incubate the puppies in a warm area. Right. So they're protected. And she brings in the next litter, the next mother and the next litter. And by the time she got done with the seventh litter, it was time to start the first one again because they have to nurse every few hours. That's why she slept on our kitchen floor for three and a half to four months.

Melanie Avalon

Wow, she's a champ, like you were enjoying all of this.

Burt Ward

Well, yes, but it was terribly hard work. And so just to give you an idea, for the last 30 years of my life and my wife's life, we have had an average of 50 dogs in our house, 50, not 15, 50, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, they're in the bedroom, the bathroom, the kitchen, the living room, the areas we work, all of this, right, 24, seven. And my wife Tracy has spent about, well, in the early, it was like 15 or 16 or 18 hours doing this, but she got it down to where she could handle things in about eight or eight and a half hours, seven days a week for 30 years, there's no Christmas is off, there's no vacations, there's no trips to Hawaii. It's incredible amount of work and to save these animals life and every life is precious to us.  And the reason that we did this is because we couldn't stand to see them die. And when it came to the food, the reason we got involved with food was never to sell it, that was not our intention. We couldn't stand to see any of these big dogs die so young. And the ones that we didn't adopt when we would lose one at nine or 10 or 11 at the latest, we were devastated. We sobbed. I mean, upset Tracy and I so much. So we said, if there's a way to help these gentle giants, because the, believe it or not, Melanie, the bigger they are, the more gentle they are. It's the little dogs that are intimidated by these big human beings that are you know, and sometimes we'll bite you out of fear, but the big dog, he's bigger than you. We have great Danes here that when they stand on their hind legs, stand seven feet, five inches tall, four and a half inches taller than Shaquille O'Neal, the basketball player. And you know, he is an up to 305 pounds. Most people have never seen a 200 pound dog, much less a 300 pound dog. And you think, Oh, they must be the fattest dog. No, not fat at all. They're gigantic. One of our dogs, his name was avalanche. Okay. Hopefully so. He would come over to our kitchen sink, right? And lean down to drink from the faucet. And, and, and on all fours, you know, we're just standing there on four legs, not standing on the hind legs, just on all four legs. The lowest part of his back was five and a half inches taller than our kitchen counter and kitchen counters are 40 inches tall. He was 45 and a half inches at the back. He was bigger than a small pony and incredibly gentle. And, but here's the thing. They don't live that long. Okay.

Melanie Avalon

That was what I was about to ask, the larger dogs have a lot.

Burt Ward

And exactly. Great Danes traditionally live seven to nine years. English masses and Irish wolf hounds six to eight years. Other breeds can be anywhere from five to 10 or 11 years, all the giant breeds.  And so you have to understand, we love these animals. They're for our family. They're like, so Tracy and I decided that if there was a way we would try to help them live longer. Well, one thing we learned from living with these dogs is we learn how to properly feed them. The world does not feed their animals properly. We know it because we live it 24 hours a day, seven days a week for 30 years. Melanie, who do you know? Who do you think you could ever meet in your lifetime that would have that level of experience? And it's not just great Danes. We actually have 45 different breeds here and there's only 134 breeds of dogs in the world. 134. We've got 45 here. Almost a third of the breeds of dogs. And we found that there is a way to properly feed dogs that will add a minimum of five years to their life just by the way you feed them, which I can get into and explain.  But first in general, I want to explain how we got into the food. So when we got these dogs, instead of living seven to nine years, living 13, 14, 15 years, okay, we said, Hey, is there anything else we could do? I mean, we're living with it. We're not thinking about the outside world. We're not involved with politics. We're living with all these family members. Can you imagine having 50 family members in your house all day, every day, no holidays off. Nobody can come watch them for you. You can't leave somebody with 50 dogs. They don't know, you know, right? So we decided to make our own food and we thought it and we could afford it. We're very successful in our businesses. we could make the finest food in the world that maybe we could pull out another, on average, year or two years for each dog, right? In other words, it was a modest expectation, but we thought based on another, so we went to try to make our dog food.  And we found out that none of the dog food companies wanted to make food for us. You know why? Because they wanted to use the same ingredients that they use in regular dog food. And I'm telling you, it doesn't matter if we're talking the cheapest grocery store food you could find or the most expensive pet store food. I mean, I've seen them $150 to $180 a bag. I mean, it's insane, okay? From the cheapest to the, they all use similar ingredients, which many of those ingredients are controversial as potentially causing cancer.  And what is the number one killer of dogs and cats in the United States? So when we looked up these ingredients that these manufacturers said that they wanted us to use and we went back to them and said, hey, look, this is not safe. We don't wanna use these. They said, we'll go somewhere else. We make it for everybody. You're making nothing for you compared to what we make. Millions and millions of bags of food, okay? Why wouldn't we make something special for you?

Burt Ward

We don't care what you wanna pay. We're not gonna do it. We're making more money doing our stuff.  So we found a company that wasn't a dog food company that had much higher standards than a dog food company. And one that was actually in the grain and ingredient business, okay? And they made our food for us. They've been making our food. First of all, they've never had a recall in 80 years. We've never had a recall. And I can almost tell you that I never found a prominent dog food company that hasn't had a recall. I've never seen one that has. Maybe there's one out there, but I've never seen it. Okay, they've all seemed to have had recalls. And we've never had a recall.  Our suppliers never had a recall, you know? And, you know, there's something to say when you have that extra level of quality and, you know, that you check on things to make sure your food is safe. So, but here's the thing. We use the ingredients that we thought would be best. And we hired the top people we could find, paid them quite a bit of money to give us. We said, we don't care. It's the finest food in the world. We want it, period. That's what we want. No exceptions. So they made a formula for us. The formula, if you look at it on a bag, because, you know, you can see an ingredient, right? Like, for example, you could see rice. And you say, well, rice is rice, isn't it? Well, no, it's not really rice is rice because 98% of the rice in the United States has been genetically modified to accept pesticides. Now I'll explain that in a minute. Only 2% of the rice and almost every ingredient in food. And it's not just animal food. It's human food. The food we eat as humans, 98% of what we eat has been genetically modified.  And just now, the last year, are they really starting to come down on these companies? What they don't make, they put GMO as the wording on it. What they now are making companies do is say bioengineered. That's the current two term. But eventually they're going to have to put on the genetically modified. And people say, well, why do they genetically modify? And here's the answer. Basically, when a farmer grows a crop, pest bugs, varmints will attack the plant, right? And so the farmer will spray a pesticide on it. And if he sprays the pesticide to kill the bugs, half the time it kills the plant. So this giant company, 1996, the same people that make Roundup, you know, you've heard of Roundup, weed puller that people are suing because they've come down with cancer and stuff, right? Same people came up with a product called Roundup Ready Crops. And they took Roundup and they put it into the DNA of everything we eat for one purpose. So that when farmers would grow a plant, rice or corn or wheat or it could be fruits or vegetables, whatever they grow, okay, whatever it is, that when bugs would attack it, okay, they could spray pesticide right on that plant and it would kill the bugs, but it wouldn't kill the plant. The plant lived and the farmer was able to produce his entire crop. So he didn't, you know, he's able to feed his family. But the problem is that plant had pesticides on it and that seeped into the plant.

Burt Ward

And when you feed your dog or cat, you're feeding a food that has pesticides in it. And now it turns out that this genetically modified ingredient that they use to change the DNA of plants, it's a new thing called stacking, where when a bug will bite into a plant, even before the farmer sprays it with pesticide, the plant will let out its own pesticide and kill the bug. And what happens? You're having animals eat this food and humans eating the food. So is it any wonder if, you know, if people say, well, how can you have dogs living over 30 years? People, that's impossible. No, it's not impossible. I've got the medical records. I've got the dogs. I've got every three years their vaccinations for all these years. Well, I've got all the records. Well, but how can you do it? Well, it's not magic. It's not that we discovered the fountain of youth. We're just not prematurely killing them. And that is what we believe is shortening dogs lives. And there's other things. So the bottom line is we made the food and then all of a sudden our dogs were just kept living longer and longer. We have great Danes now that have lived up to 22 years. Most of our great Danes are living, I don't know, 15 to 19 years. Now, the average life is only seven to nine. You wouldn't be hard pressed to find a veterinarian that has ever seen a great Dane past 11 or 12. But we've got them. And, and it's the same with some of these other breeds. And we have one customer who, unless last Friday on January 3rd, he's been feeding his two dogs our food for 16 and a half years. One of his dogs on January 3rd turned 31 years old. He's got, he's got the rabies vaccine. He's got the, we got the medical records. So we're, we've actually already videotaped him when his dog was 29. He contacted, he says, you know, as soon as I see that you're talking about you have dogs living to 27, mine's 29. We saw, oh, come on. Oh yeah. We went down, we checked in, we looked, there's the rabies vaccination. There's the stamp of the veterinarian, the examination, you know, I'll bet. And, and we videotaped him and we made a TV spot of it. And now when his dog, now just last Friday turned 31 in another week, we're going to do, we're going to go down and film his 31st birthday.

Melanie Avalon

Aww, oh my goodness.

Burt Ward

Now, so the thing is, look how people love their animals, right? I mean, just think, if you're a pet parent, wouldn't you want your dog or cat to live as long as possible? You know? And I will tell you, the food, when you buy from the 2%, that's all there is, 2% in the United States, which took us 18 months just to find a supplier of every single ingredient in our food. In order to say it is non-GMO ingredients, you have to have a certification from every ingredient supplier, not just the people that make the food, but the people that supply the ingredients to make the food. It goes down to that level, and they have to certify it. But the point is, it's incredibly expensive.  I mean, if you're buying something that 98% of the country has, well, you're going to pay a lot less if only 2% of the country has, right? So we take no salary from our pet foods, never have, never will. Never salary from any adopting the dogs, even though we charge a few hundred dollars. Okay, never took personally, never take anything from it, because we consider it our charity. And in any event, so now we have dogs with this one person's dog, you know, 31 years old, and we've got other people, one's got a 29-year-old dog. And I mean, the point of it is, these dogs are living longer and healthy, incredibly healthy. Our dogs here, Melanie, are so healthy on our food, and the way we feed them, that the only time they go to a veterinarian is every three years for a rabies update. No illness, zero, zero illness.  Okay, and I'll tell you something, all you have to do is talk to somebody who's gone to a vet, that their prices are now almost human prices. They're so expensive, veterinarian. And we're not trying to hurt vets. You know, I mean, we, it actually, ultimately, if more people feed our food, dogs will live longer, so they'll get more annual checkups. But they don't have to be dealing with diseases as much. And it's all about the food.  And it's about the feeding and care. And the way we explain it is way, if you want your dog to live the maximum lifespan, there's three things you have to be concerned about. One, how you care for your dog. Two, how you feed your dog. And three, what you feed your dog. Now, I don't know, do you have a dog or a cat? Personally.

Melanie Avalon

So I do not. My family has a puppy, and then my sister has a cat and a kitten, and I had them growing up.

Burt Ward

All right, so here's a wonderful test that your listeners, every one of your listeners who has a dog, should go do this test unless they're feeding our food. Because if they're feeding our food, they have nothing to worry about.  But go pick up three or four kibbles of the dry food that they are feeding their dog, three or four kibbles, and in one hand, just rub their fingers over those kibbles, right, for about four or five seconds. You know, rub them firmly, put the kibbles down, and rub their fingers together, and they're gonna feel a slightly greasy feeling. Now, they may have already noticed that from handling the food, or maybe when they went to clean out the dog's bowl after it ate, had kind of a slimy, greasy feeling to it. You know what that is? That's substance. That's not an accident that it's there. It was purposely put there. That is animal fat that has not only been sprayed onto the outside of the food, completely encapsulating every single kibble, but they fill the food on the inside with more fat, excessive fat. And you say, well, why would they do that? Well, let me tell you something. High fat content affects any living creature, including humans, to make them hungrier, to eat more food, to make you buy more dog food.  Let me give you a human example. 12 years ago, a man named Morgan Spurlock went into a McDonald's in Ohio. He ate breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack at that same McDonald's for 30 days. He gained 55 pounds and almost died. They made a movie about him called Supersize Me. Now, you may not have seen it. Many, many people saw that movie. And it was the same concept. High fat content has empty calories, like hardly any value, and it affects the brain to make you eat more.  But to tell you how dangerous it is, because you might have a pet food company say, well, we use it to encourage them and have a little bit of fat is good for them. Well, this is not a little bit, it's a lot. But let me tell you something. If you think about it, if you cooked a chicken or you cooked bacon, you cooked a ham, or whatever you cooked, you know, turkey or steak, and you took the grease, would you pour that down your drain into your garbage disposal? Of course not, because you already know that unlike water that evaporates, Melanie, animal fat doesn't evaporate. It, okay, it hardens, okay? Okay, and it hardens like cement after a day or so. And if you took a can of a bacon fat or any of these heavy fats or steak, and you let it sit there, you know, in 24 hours you'd be calling a plumber to replace your garbage disposal. So what is my point? The point is when you realize that animal fat will ruin a metal garbage disposal, why would anyone ever feed an animal that every single meal, every single kibble, every bite they take is encapsulated in animal fat?

Burt Ward

That's how we have dogs living so long, because we don't prematurely kill them. But there's other things as well, because, you know, it's like, I use the example, one of these locks, combination lock, you know, where I'm sure you've seen them like bicycle lock or something, where you have to turn something, say to the left to a certain number, then you turn it back to the right to another number, then back to the left, you don't need to a third number. And if you don't get the numbers right, it doesn't open, right? But if you get all the numbers right, it unlocks. Well, that's sort of the way to maximize the lifespan of our pets.  It is the combination of how you care for the dog, how you feed your dogs and cats. And when I say dog, I'm applying this to cats as well. Okay, it's just that when you have 50 dogs in your house and you've had 15,500 dogs and probably only 450 cats, you know, which is still a lot of cats, don't miss a proportionality, it's a very small proportion. So when I talk about dogs, I'm also exactly talking about cats. But here's the point is that, These animals, okay, when you feed them properly and you care for them properly, they're healthy. They don't get sick. And another thing, think of it this way, if you have dogs that have eaten this food with all this grease in it, their arteries are clogged, right? Their intestines are clogged. And what happens as an example to humans when they get clogged arteries? They get heart attacks, don't they? And they can die. So can dogs. No different. But in the case of dogs, it's worse than just the arteries, because when you clog their intestines, how does the food, the nutrients in the food properly get distributed throughout their body? You see what I mean? Because you're blocking it. You're slowing down the nutrition from freely flowing throughout their body. And then people say to me all the time, well, gosh, Bert, I've got a 14-year-old dog, and is it too late? And I say, no. And they say, well, why is it not too late? And I say, because something amazing happens with animals. This animal fat, Melanie, that I've been describing to you, it's unnatural in a dog's body. And a dog's body, as well as a cat's body, rejects that fat. And it actually will come out in the stool. And it takes about four or five weeks. But it will come out. So what is different about our food than every other food is that everybody else's food is putting the fat right back in so the dog never gets the benefit. But when people feed gentle giants to their dogs and cats, and about five weeks after their fully transition, we get calls from people saying, I can't believe it's the same dog. How can the dog is different? How can this be? And one lady called me up. She's sobbing. You know, Mr. Ward, Mr. Ward, you know, three years ago, my little dog stopped jumping up on the bed. We slept together every night for years. And I figured he was old and he couldn't do it anymore. And now I've been feeding your food. And now five weeks later, he's jumping up on the bed again. Thank you for giving me my puppy back. That's the words.

Burt Ward

Thank me for giving them their puppy back. Okay. And and it's and it doesn't matter what dog or what food it is. If you clog their arteries and you clog their intestines, you can't expect the results. Because all the time, people, they call me on the phone and they'll say, I just watched your videos and I'm upset. Why are you upset? Well, I see all these dogs running around like puppies in their 20s. And my dog is eight years old, and he's starting to have a problem getting up. And he's starting to have a problem walking. And it doesn't seem fair.  I said, Well, let me ask you, sir. Are you feeding him our food? Oh, well, no. Are you following our special feeding care program? How to feed your dogs? No. Are you feeding your dogs a minimum five times a day? No. Are you elevating their food and water dishes to a specific height? So they only tilt their head down and never lean down? But no. Well, what do you expect? This is real, Melanie. This is not like theory. You know, this is living with animals. And you know, April 28, my wife and I received four awards, we received two awards from the White House. One was the President's Volunteer Service Award for having rescued more than 15,500 dogs in the last 30 years. Actually, we stopped counting 10 years ago, I couldn't keep count. I don't know how many we've had. But I know it's obviously a lot more than 15,500. But I use that number because that's the number we actually counted to. And the second award we got from the President was the Lifetime Achievement, President's Lifetime Achievement Award for what we interpret to be the success we've had in helping animals live longer, by our feeding care program, by our food, by dissemination of information.  And then those two awards and the other two awards we got from the United Nations, my wife Tracy and I were individually awarded their Humanitarian Award for the efforts we've made with animals. And it's wonderful. Don't misunderstand me, Lifetime Achievement is fantastic. But the greatest gift we have is to see dogs living longer and healthier. And when I get people that call me, and you can tell in their heart, they are so thankful. And the letters we get saying, you know, you've changed my dog's life, you've changed my life. You know, I had a guy that wrote to me, actually, I never even spoke to him that wouldn't know how to reach him. But he sent me an email years ago, and he says, my German Shepherd big rig has been eating your food for 15 years. He just died. He was 23 years old, 23 years old for German Shepherd, and never had a sick day in his life. words And we see it here, you know, and of course, dogs eventually will die. But in our case, do you know what happens? It's like they're not dying from pain or illness. They'll go to sleep and they just don't wake up. And it's because they're so old. I finally, you know, their bodies give out. And but what an amazing, long life they've had. And, you know, it's funny, the only complaints we've ever got somebody call and complain.

Burt Ward

They say, you know, you and your wife are so nuts for dogs and cats and other animals. Why don't you do something for humans? Okay. Right. I said, well, no, wait a minute here. If I help you keep your dog or cat living an extra 10 years longer, don't you think I've done something for you as well? Oh, well, I guess you put it that way. I yeah, I guess I'd have to say so.  This is real. This is how we live every day. And when you feed your dogs, yes, I didn't get into it. Elevate their food and water dishes. There's a specific height for every dog, a specific height. And you say, well, why is that? There's a bunch of reasons. One reason is, okay, is because when you see these TV commercials and a big dog coming over and eating from a bowl on the ground, okay, because of leaning down to get the food like that, the dog could accidentally get air into their stomach, which is bloat, which can be followed by torsion, which kills up to 10% of the dogs in America every year. It's a deadly condition. And you've only got, if it happens, you've got 35 to 40 minutes. Get your dog to an expert surgeon. Your vet most likely can't even do the surgery and you're looking at an emergency clinic fee of about five to $10,000 to save the dog's life. Plus they go through agonizing pain trying to save that animal. Okay. So you don't want that to happen. It's entirely avoidable of all the dogs we've had here, not one of the thousands upon thousands of dogs ever got bloat and ever had to go to the hospital. Ember, because we know how to avoid the deadly condition. And one of the ways is elevating your food and water dishes.  And another thing is people say, well, why is it so important besides that to Ellevee? And I said, because do you know what the greatest stress on a dog's body is? And they'll say, Oh, I don't know, running, playing, worrying, barking. No, the answer is the greatest stress on a dog's body or cat is digestion. Digestion. And when you feed an animal like the world feeds dogs and cats twice a day, you're shortening their life by a minimum of five years. An animal should not have to wait 12 hours to eat between meals. We feed our dogs a minimum and I've got 50 in my house. So if my wife who cares for them by herself can feed 50 of them a day, whoever your listeners are, they can feed their dogs five times a day. Just like my wife does smaller, more frequent meals. And also something else, dog's bodies wear out much faster than human buttons because we're designed better than dogs. And you see 90, over 90% of dogs die of cancer. So in the way I'm going to describe what I'm going to tell you, most people would never even get to this point because their dog will already have died of cancer because of feeding food with GMOs in, okay? Okay. And being exposed to pesticides and stuff like that. But for the ones that could get beyond the killer of cancer, and certainly the ones that are on our food, all right. The next level up is that their bodies just wear out.

Burt Ward

They just wear out. Okay. And when a dog can't get up very easily or can't get up anymore and it starts peeing and pooping on itself, that's when people take it to their vet to be euthanized, even though mentally the dog is perfectly alert, perfectly alert. And sadly that dog has trusted you and loved you its entire life.  It would never believe that you would put it to death. What an incredible injustice doesn't have to happen. Okay. So why we don't prematurely wear a dog's body. How do you avoid that? Well, think about it. When a dog comes over and has to lean down to the floor or even to a small race thing and get food and come up and chew and swallow, then lean down to get more food, come up, chew and swallow, then lean down to get the water, come up and swallow. You're prematurely wearing the dog's body out.  You need to conserve energy and anything you conserve will last longer. Living with animals, Melanie, is not something we read in a book, not something we ever knew. Nobody ever taught us this. It comes from daily caring for 50 dogs in your house every day, 24 hours a day. Like I said, no holidays off, no Hawaii vacations for 30 years.

Melanie Avalon

So you're not a fan, I presume, because a lot of my audience does intermittent fasting and might apply those habits to their pets. You would not be a fan of that protocol.

Burt Ward

No, because their bodies can't handle that, they can't, they can't take a stress. I mean, you think, well, a dog's a tough dog. Their body can't take a stress that a human body can. We're designed better than them. That's why we live longer than them.  Everything we do, Melanie, is common sense, really. But people, they're busy in their lives. They have so many worries. I mean, my gosh, supporting your family, caring for your kids, raising them, trying to have a happy life, trying to take care of you and your spouse. There's so many issues in life that people don't focus or have the time or choose to focus as much as we have done on our animals.

Melanie Avalon

Well, you're definitely what you were talking about earlier about the guy who was upset because you weren't, quote, helping humans. I know that vets, I think vets have the highest suicide rate or it's up there for suicide rate because they're, you know, basically they're just dealing with like these health conditions and pets and having to put them to sleep.  So you're, you know, you are changing that. So you're helping the vets.

Burt Ward

You know, that's that is a wonderful thing, I'll tell you, something else, something else that is really noteworthy, okay, is that we, we have so many people that will call us that have never heard about it, and, and, and they'll call just because they can't believe it, you know what I mean? They can't believe the dogs could live this long, or live this healthy, you know, there is a prominent university, veterinarian university in the United States, that one of their professors called us a few months ago, and said that we're, we're doing a test about copper in dogs bodies, and it is believed, I guess, I don't by the government that there's too much copper in pet foods, okay, and they're doing a, tests, a big test, me 1000 dogs in this test, right?  That's, that's a lot of animals. And you can imagine bringing them in every week to have blood drawn or whatever they do in the test. I mean, 1000. The logistics are mind boggling. But this, this professor called us and they, and she said, I never heard of your food. But I want to know everything about your food. I said, well, I'll be happy to tell you. But can I ask you why? And they basically related about this test. And they said, it you know, we assume all medical profession assume there's too much copper in pet foods. And in our test, every one of the 1000 dogs in our test, tested for too much copper, except for one dog. And that one dog was eating this gentle giants that we never heard of before. And so we want to call you and try to what the heck that you have upset this test. You know, what have you what are you doing? You know, and and I mean, we took it as an incredible compliment that and so of course, we furnished the information and stuff. And we'll see what comes of it, you know, maybe it'll get published, or I don't know. But but the point of it was, is that the pet the food dogs eating our foods, that at least for what we've heard of back and we, you know, hear from people all the time, they're not getting sick, their pets aren't getting sick either. And they're living longer. I have I could pull out probably at least 500 letters over the years to read them to your people have literally thanked us and thanked us and thanked us for giving their dogs a longer life.

Melanie Avalon

Have you found that so if people are listening and they have pets, does it matter when they start the animal on this new diet, the potential, like how many how many benefits they can have? Like if it's a dog is older in age, is it too

Burt Ward

No, because, as I said, that animal fat will work itself out, and that's not because of our food. It just, the body rejects a foreign thing, you know what I mean? That animal fat is not good for the dog, and that excessive fat, and it rejects it. But the problem with the other pet foods, they're so full of fat, not just on the inside but on the outside, coating it, that it's replacing it as fast as the dog is trying to get rid of it, okay? We don't do that.  Our food is much lower in fat. If you were to look on a bag of any bag of dog food, typical bag, next to the list of ingredients is what's called the guaranteed analysis acquired by federal law. And the first item is protein. The second listed item is crude fat. Now, they don't just say fat. They say crude fat. Why do they say that? Because it's saturated fats. It's not the good fats. And if you look at the saturated fat content of most pet foods, you'll find that the fat content ranges from 12% to 22% or even higher. Pure saturated fat in the food. How long do you think you or I would live if we ate 22% saturated fat at every meal? Not long. So ours is what's naturally in the food, which is about 9%. The difference, big difference, okay? And the other thing is we don't, you know, all of our ingredients are what we call clean and natural. There are no, I mean, one of the things that just amazes me now is that you hear all these pet food companies, they're bragging, oh, our food has a three-year shelf life. Can you imagine three-year shelf life? I said, wait a minute, why would you want to be bragging? Who wants to feed their dog a food that was made three years ago? I wouldn't be bragging about that.  And but just like when you care for foods that are natural, you have to have a little more care. I mean, we have one of our retailers, unfortunately, in the past, during the summer, their warehouse was full, they would put a trailer of food, they would keep the dog food in a trailer out in the hot sun. Well, it's 95 degrees out, but in a closed up trailer, it could be 200 degrees, destroy all the nutrients, cause mold, cause all kinds of bad things happen to the food. You know what I'm saying? Because you, but with these companies that now are spending fortunes to make them almost like cardboard, indestructible, right? You can't destroy the food, but with ours, we require our retailers, they have to keep it inside in a cool, dry place because it's natural, there's no added pesticides, there's no chemicals, there's, you know, there's no extra preservatives.  Everything we have is natural and it needs to be protected. Even, and people say, oh yeah, but when you cook those foods, you cook out the nutrients. Well, no, not true at all. If you cook like you cooked in your oven, you would, but look at a temperature just above the safe, you know, the minimum level, you know, that will protect against any, you know, any illness causing thing. We cook above that, but it's still very low temperature. And actually our prebiotics and our probiotics, which are great for the body of any living creature, are sprayed on after the food is cooked so they're not damaged by any heat.

Burt Ward

I mean, it's all these little things. And another thing we have, we have our ingredients, we have a certain minerals in our ingredients that aid in digestion. So in other words, if you think about it, when an animal eats food, what counts is not how much food it eats, it's how much food the dog's body absorbs what they eat, you know? I view pet food companies as they would love to see a dog keep eating and eating and eating and everything the dog takes in the mouth comes out the other end.  So they would have to keep eating more and more to get the minimum nutrition, okay? But we use chelated minerals. It's C-H-E-L-A-T-E-D, but pronounced chelated. And what that does, it helps the body absorb more. So what ends up happening is the dog gets more nutrients with less volume. Well, a pet food company does not want less volume, right? I mean, that's like holding up a mirror to a vampire or a cross to a vampire. They don't want less, they want the dog to eat tons of food. We don't want dogs to eat more food. We want them to eat as little as they need that gives them full nutrition.  And you say, well, why is that? Why would you not want them to eat more? Okay, and we don't limit them. By the way, that's another thing. We've taught our dogs to self-regulate because people all the time tell me, oh, well, I feed my dog exactly two cups a day or one cup or a half a cup. I say, really? Exactly, you do that. Oh, absolutely. I said, well, let me ask you, like, let's see here. Now today is Monday, right? Yeah. Well, when you got up this morning, were you exactly as hungry this morning as you were yesterday, Morty? Oh, well, no. Well, then why would you expect your dog to be exactly as hungry? So when you feed them a specific amount, one day that could be fine. But on another day, it might not be enough. And then the dog is hungry and the dog is stressed. And you know, when you've heard the term stress kills, that shortens lives. And the dog can't tell you, mom, I'm hungry, dad, I'm hungry. They can't. So we've taught our dogs, which is very sophisticated and it's explained on our website, gentlegiantsdogfood.com, how to teach your dogs to self-regulate so they never go hungry.  Now that doesn't mean that you leave the food out all day. We put it out and remove it after 10 minutes. Why? Because of that condition called bloat and torsion, which is caused by food on the stomach combined with stress or exercise. There's so much information. And all of this, we just learned, we live it, Melanie. So it's not something that we have to look up or read. We see it every day. And when we do what we've done, we've got five dogs here and now over 20 years of age. Five.

Melanie Avalon

You've touched on so many things I agree with so much and it's interesting because it's things I talk about for like humans, but we're not talking about it for animals. So the GMOs and the pesticides and the Monsanto and the Roundup, they're all water soluble so they can get into all of our cells, it's pervasive in the body.  And then the heat processing is just really horrible and adulterating those ingredients and creating advanced glycation end products. And yeah, it sounds like you said it's like the combination of all of the things.

Burt Ward

And then just think of it this way, do you know, for example, now we are all throughout the United States, General Giants has sold in all the Petco pet stores. In addition, we're in some Target stores and we're online with all the online companies, you know, petco.com, petsmart.com, target.com, chewy.com. We're available all these places, but the thing that I, that I wanted to convey to you is that people, people want the best for their dogs and people are, are much more aware in today's world about the health of their animals than they were 20 years ago, you know, and they, and they, and they, but, but the problem is there's so many people that are saying something in their ear, Oh, you should feed this food, or you should feed that food.  Right. And when people ask me, they say, well, what do I tell these people that keep telling me to feed this food, that their food is so great. And here's my answer. I said, if anybody ever tells you that you should feed your dog or cat, a particular dog food or cat food, just ask them one question. And here's the question. If this food that you are so highly recommending is so good, please show me photos and videos of how long these dogs and cats are living. Guess what? Nobody, nobody period. And one of the one amazing thing I want to share with you, just total coincidence, my wife, Tracy is like an avid photographer, right? Gee, Oh my gosh. She's either videotaping or pictures all the time. Well, when our daughter was born, our daughter, we have a daughter now. She's now she's like 33, but when she was born, and of course, and all through her life, my wife took photos of her, right? And we have the same dogs here. Unless we've adopted him, we've had the same dogs all these years. Well, you know, if you were to look and say a two-year-old dog, and then looked at a four-year-old dog and a six-year-old dog, you would be hard pressed to try to tell, you know, how old they are, right? Because you can tell a puppy and you can tell a grown dog and you can tell a very old dog, right? But you, you can't really between their ages, you will pick their ages very well, right? But with a human, do you think you can tell the difference between a two-year-old and a six-year-old? So by wife, because she's taking pictures of our daughters, the daughter every day, oh my God, so you're coming out your ears, right? Between the dogs and the photos. I mean, what's the life's work here? But, but here's the thing is that the same dogs are in the photos from her all the way from at the time she was born to where she's in her twenties. And it was actor 22, our daughter refused to take any more pictures. She had enough. She just said, that's it. I'm never taking another picture again. I had it, you know, Oh, just hold this one dog. No, no, no, you know, but, but so the thing is, and that we've had several major companies tell us, say, you know, this one photo composite that you have of your daughter at a year and a half with this little American Eskimo, which is a cute little white breed, it's about 25 pounds.

Burt Ward

And then the same dog with her when she's 21 years old, 20 years later, right? And then, then next to that is a composite. When we got our daughter, Melody, these two great Dane puppies, they were four months old and 17 years later, there she is with those dogs. Now, now number one, you ask a vet, no, can a great Dane live beyond 10 or 11? No, they only live seven to nine. Well, this is 17 years. And they said, well, I can't be the same dog. Really? Well, look at all the spots of that dog. How, how do you, would you get in a video where it's moving, not where you can retouch it in Photoshop, how would you get all those spots to look exactly alike 17 years later in a moving animal? Well, there's no answer to that because you couldn't, you can't do that. You can't do that. So the, and, and on our, on our website, if people go to general giants, dogfood.com, we also have a general giants, catfood.com, but they go to general giants, dogfood.com. The first thing they see is a full spring video of my wife and I Tracy in bed with 50 of our dogs.

Melanie Avalon

I've seen this, yes.

Burt Ward

They can't get all on the bed, probably seven or eight, maybe at a time, can get on the bed. But they're all around the bed. Some of them are out of reach of the camera, and they go in and out because you don't have a wide enough lens to hold 50 dogs all the way in. But they're all there, okay?  And it's an 11-minute video. And we slowed it down because when we first tried to play it at full speed, it gives you a headache in about 20 seconds, which a human being cannot watch all these animals moving in all these directions at the same time without getting a headache. So we slowed it down. And when we slowed it down to slow motion, what's great about it, you can see that not only are the dogs loving to us, but they're loving to each other, which brings in another point about a nurturing living environment and the importance of happiness in your home.

Melanie Avalon

It's so important.

Burt Ward

And one thing, my wife, if Tracy were here now, she would tell you for all your listeners, everybody at some point will get worried about their pet for one reason or another. Okay, it can happen, right?  The dog either seemed to get injured or you got worried, whatever it is, you never show it in front of the animal. There's been always studies done where they had two rooms and a glass between the rooms and they had like a dog in one room and and their pet parents in the other room. And the pet parent would just, you know, doing whatever they're doing, happy, and they'd open the door and the dog would come in and kind of play and do the thing. And then they had that same parent, that parent, worry about something, okay? And they'd open the door and the dog would come in and be jumping all over trying to protect them because they sense it. They're far more sensitive than we give them credit for, far more sensitive. And you have to understand how an animal thinks and we really understand how they think. We as humans can see what I call shades of gray where something is not all good, but it's not all bad, right? You know? Yeah, the nuance. The nuance, exactly. But that's not with the dog. Dog sees things in extremes, all good, all bad, friend or foe, life or death. And when a dog senses that you as the pet parent are worried that you know what they think? They think that you're in danger. No, they think you're in danger. And they understand, here's something that's profound. The animal understands that without the pet parent, they couldn't survive. So not only they love you, but they're worried for their own life. And now they are on guard and they're looking. Where is that danger coming from? Where is it? Where is it? And it could be that simply you're worried about them. So you never show it. In fact, my wife's famous phrase is, any worry you show in front of a dog will last forever because you're keeping them worried by worrying.  So even if it's a serious thing, even if your dog is a bad health condition, in front of your dog, everything is fine and everything is going to be fine and I love you so much and you know all of that. You've got to protect them.

Melanie Avalon

Wow. Well, this is incredible.  I will touch on just one thing because I know my listeners will bother me about it if I don't mention it. I do wonder with the the fat content. I know like that high fat content is a problem. I wonder how much of it is the process refined added fat combined with the process refined cart, like the entire well, absolutely.

Burt Ward

head right on it. Let's talk about avocados, for example. They're full of fat, but it's a healthy fat, right?  But you have to understand that what the pet food companies put into the food, they don't somehow extract healthy fats. They don't have access to withdrawing health. They put in the saturated fats, which are the worst fats.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah, the refined version, it's just, it's not natural. And then it's combined with like a high carb diet. It's all processed. So it's just inflammatory. It's just not good.

Burt Ward

Well, I mean, look, you know, look, what's going to happen here in a few months. You're hearing all these big pharmacy companies and all these food companies starting to get scared. You have serial companies. Somebody was on the news talking about, I think it was General Nils that majority of their foods are all genetically modified. I mean, there's people are really, I believe this year, Melanie, going to becoming fully aware of the dangers of genetically modified organisms and pesticides in foods.  And our food right now is the only one I'm aware of that is 100% non GMO. I mean, I saw one other one that now no longer says that they're non GMO, but when they did, they had a little disclaimer under that saying this food was prepared in a plant where there could be a minute cross contamination with, you know, genetically modified. You know, that's that says to me, it's like saying our bag only has a little bit of cancer in it. Not too much cancer, just a little bit of cancer. Oh, which reminds me, if any of your customers feed gentle giants, okay, one very important thing, we are fighting to keep pesticides out of foods, right? And to keep dogs from getting cancer. It's part of our overall battle here for life. You've got to be careful every anyone that you don't introduce cancer through a treat, or buy food from your table. So if the next door neighbor comes over and says, Oh, I just bought these dog cookies here. Can I give your dog one? Oh, wait a minute. Is it say non GMO on the outside of the packaging? No, no, thank you. Don't give it to my dog, because that cookie can contain genetically mod and will likely 99% contained genetically modified organism which has pesticides in it. And then pesticide can start the cancer.  growing in your dog. Same with your food on your table. Even though you might be a fabulous cook, if you're cooking food that isn't organic, if your fruits and vegetables aren't organic, and non-GMO, okay? In fact, you can even be organic and not be non-GMO. But you want non-GMO, you gotta keep out things that have been genetically modified because anytime we as humans take something, I've noticed it in my own life, I'm very careful about what I take. You know, there's so many advertisements on television, take this supplement and that supplement. Well, let me tell you something. In my opinion, anytime you introduce something into your body that isn't naturally there, there's gonna be side effects. Now, theoretically, if you took a healthy vitamin, that could be a good side effect. But you could take some of these things that oh, you'll do this and you'll be better off this and oh my gosh, that, there can be side effects that can cause bad things.  Look what just came out and now is a gigantic scandal about alcohol and cancer. Did you see this on the news? My turn. So we are what we eat, but we have to be very careful. We have to be smart. And when you have an animal, you also have to be careful and make safe decisions for your animal.

Burt Ward

We adopted a dog to one guy and called me up and said, hey, Bert, you know, just got this new motor boat and I wanna take my great Dane out on it. And I wanted to see what you thought. I said, you know, think of it like your wife's diamond ring. You'll leave them both at home because the motion of a boat on the water can cause a dog to bloat if it has any food on the stomach.  And in fact, the way I described this whole condition of bloat and torsion to people, I said, remember when you were a kid, remember the famous phrase that your mom or dad or somebody said to you, don't go in the swimming pool for 30 minutes after you eat. And everybody's heard that, right? Well, why did they tell you that? Because they knew that if you had food on your stomach combined with any stress or exercise, you could get a cramp. A human that gets a cramp can lie down 30 minutes, you're fine, but not a dog. Dog stomachs are poorly attached in their bodies and the slightest stress can cause a dog's stomach to flip over and when it does, it shuts off everything going in and out of the stomach. The stomach immediately begins to die and that's when you've only got 35 to 40 minutes to get them to an expert surgeon like an animal emergency clinic or specialty clinic. I probably 90% of the vets can't do the surgery, requires it, you know, it's kind of like I say to people, God forbid if you had to have open heart surgery, would you go to your family IMD? Of course not, you would go to a cardiologist, you would go to an expert, right? Somebody who's trained in open heart surgery, you have to go to a specialist. Same thing about this is some major surgery, they slit them from the neck to the groin, you know, to get this dealt with in their stomach. It's a big deal.

Melanie Avalon

Yeah. And the more you're talking about it, Burt, because on the show we talk a lot about as humans going back to our evolutionary past and, you know, embracing stressors and things like that.  But dogs are a species of animal that literally got adopted into, you know, domestic life with humans and were completely taken care of. So they've evolved differently. You know, they didn't evolve the way we did as humans.

Burt Ward

Exactly. That's why they say a dog is man's best friend. You've heard that famous phrase, because he wags his tail instead of his tongue.

Melanie Avalon

Oh my goodness. This has been so eye opening and mind blowing.  I'm like, I'm in awe and in shock of what you're doing, you know, working with all these dogs and, and this food and, and all the little things you've learned throughout all of it. I mean, I mean, nobody, I have nobody else is doing this. And that's incredible that you got those awards from, you know, the president and United Nations. And so, so people can get the food, they can get it online.

Burt Ward

Right. And they get into stores, all the Petco stores have it all across the country, you know, and we're also in Canada. And we're actually going overseas. And that's one of the problems we actually to go overseas, we have to make our food in Canada, we can't make it here, because the the EU rejects a lot of American ingredients.  You know, there was there was something I saw in the news, where they were discussing that in the United States, there are over 10,000 approved or or or ingredients that are that are you can use that are questionable. In Europe, it's like under 400 or something. So I mean, you've heard these things like, like, what is it cereal here, that has the all this fall stuff in it, you know, color die to be orange. And in the EU, you have to use carrots to get the orange color, whereas in America, they can get by using a color dye. And it's like, geez, I think our Americans are in a, you know, and I love our country and love everybody here. But we got to take care of our health. I mean, you know, and I'll tell you another thing, a little piece of advice I have for people, I tell them, Melanie, the first 100 years are the hardest. After that is pretty smooth sailing. The first 100 years? Yeah, are the hardest on you. Sailing after that.

Melanie Avalon

Oh my goodness. Good advice. That's inspirational. I am so inspired.  And so friends, check out Gentle Giants. You know, you can literally change the life of your animals. And this is just so, so incredible. So thank you for what you're doing. And I'm really excited to see. Hopefully, I really do think, like you said, this year, awareness is going to grow about all this stuff even more and more.  So the last question that I ask every single guest on this show, and it ties into what you were talking about with the dogs and the stress and not letting them see your stress, because I think mindset is just so important. So what is something that you're grateful for?

Burt Ward

I'll tell you something, we have a phrase that we use, you know, and we think about, you know, and it's really that life is the most precious commodity in the world. And life is so precious.  And everything we do, you know, in our lives, we try to make it meaningful, you know, you know, it's so I mean, I have many phrases and things that, you know, I say, because I that's just the kind of person I am. And I said, like, you know, don't take life seriously, don't get out of alive anyhow, and the best things in life are free. See, here I am good for nothing. And your helping hand is at the end of your arm, you know, get, you know, speak when you're angry, and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret. I've got all these things through the earth. But you know, we recognize the preciousness of life, and we recognize that every life is precious, every life is precious. And and I can only hope that, you know, our world learns this, you know, it's very hard for people to be kind and to do, you know, but you can you can you can all get along, you just you just but we we've got to protect our pets. I mean, they really need protection, you know, and your dog or cat would lay its life down for you.  But but you need you as a person need to also protect it and put it in in risky situations. You know what I'm saying? It's that. And so, you know, we we recognize the preciousness of life. And that's really everything we do is is targeted to that. And my wife and I say all the time, we we want to leave this planet better off than we found it.

Melanie Avalon

Oh my goodness. I love it so much.  Well, thank you so much, Bird. I literally cannot thank you enough for what you're doing. You have you've changed so many lives over decades and decades. And now it's expanding or it has been expanding. It's not just humans. It's the entirety of our pets. So thank you so much, friends. Get Gentle Giants. So the main website.

Burt Ward

is generalgiantsdogfood.com or generalgiantscatfood.com. Also our store is at generalgiantspetfood.com and they could go there too.  And our websites have got so many videos and also some fun television shows I've been on. I was on with Ellen on the Ellen DeGeneres show. I was on with her and she's been feeding her dogs our food for many, many, many years and a lot of other people. Oh, in fact, I'll tell you there's one show, we have on there, I'll tell you real quick. There's a television program called Inside Edition. You probably have heard of Inside Edition. This is years ago. They heard about one of our dogs. Her name was Tara, a Russian wolfhound. A Russian wolfhounds, by the way, like Great Danes, traditional lifespan, seven to nine years. And our Russian wolfhound, Tara, again, we have her medical records, was 25 years old. They wanted to come out and see her and watch her and videotape her. And they came out here and they spent a whole day videotaping all of our rescue dogs. They spent a lot of time videotaping Tara. They finally ended that segment, which they have been, they rerun it on their website. We also have on our website, the Inside Edition and the title of the segment, could this be the oldest living pooch in the world? And that was the title of it. And at the time she was 25 years old. She lived to 27 and a half. When you consider that her life then was seven to nine years, she technically lived four times her normal lifespan. But they were amazed by her and she would jump up and play. She had a best friend and every day they would jump up in the air and play with each other, you know what I mean? As though they were wrestling and until just about the day she died. And again, she just went to sleep and didn't wake up and we loved her so much, but she had an amazing, healthy life. And we can all live longer and healthier. We take care of ourselves and take care of our pets and protect them.

Melanie Avalon

Wow, this is just so incredible. So thank you, thank you again so much.  This is such a way to start the year, such a high honor. So friends, get it now, check out all those resources, watch the videos, and yeah, have a wonderful 2025. Do you have any exciting goals for the year?

Burt Ward

Well, it's so funny you should you should say that. But, you know, on Batman, I'll tell you one real quick story. In our Batman movie, when we were facing the four villains, the Riddler, the Catwoman, the Joker and the Penguin, Batman and Robin were called into Commissioner Gordon's office to discuss it, and Commissioner Gordon says to Batman, he says, Batman, any one of these villains could wreak havoc on Gotham City. But the four of them, the Riddler, the Penguin, you know, the Joker, the Catwoman, what do you think they have in mind? He said, very stoically, he says, I think their main objection objective is the entire world.  So for our our our their minimum objective, I said, their minimum objective is entire. So our minimum objective now is we are going into supposedly this year. We're working out to go into 27 countries and next year, 75 countries. Again, we take no salary, but it is our life's work. And, you know, there's so many people that love their animals and their kids love their animals. And, you know, just think about it. For the average person who gets a dog or a cat for their child and at three or four or five years of age and in 10 or 11. Now they're saying goodbye because the animal didn't live very long or maybe 10 years or 11 years, you know, and and and our daughter grew up. And all of them, all of them were with her. OK, until she was in her 20s. And wouldn't it be a wonderful thing when you get an animal for your kids that they grow up and enjoy them as an adult, as well as when they were a child? Yeah, it's all about life and the preciousness of life. So I will conclude, as we said on Batman, turn the wheel.

Melanie Avalon

Oh my goodness, thank you so much. Well, I love it. Thank you, Burt.

Burt Ward

All right, well, take care, Melanie. Thank you.

Melanie Avalon

You too, thank you. Thank you so much for listening to the Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast.  For more information, you can check out my book, What When Wine? Lose weight and feel great with paleo-style meals, intermittent fasting, and wine, as well as my blog, MelanieAvalon.com. Feel free to contact me at podcast at MelanieAvalon.com. And always remember, you got this.