Physical Health/Disease, Podcast, Puppy Raising, Reproduction
Jane Lindquist Part 2: Weaning and Microbiome Episode
Jun
Jess Sedivy (00:00)
Welcome to the Functional breeding podcast. I’m Jess Sedivy Gunderson, filling in as interim host for Perry while she is on a break.
The FDC podcast is here to explore what goes into breeding dogs for functional health, both behavioral and physical. This podcast is brought to you by the Functional Dog Collaborative, an organization founded to support the ethical breeding of healthy, behaviorally sound dogs. The FDC provides educational, social, and technical resources to breeders of both purebred and mixed breed dogs.
You can find out more at functional breeding.org or in the functional breeding Facebook group, which we work very hard to keep friendly and inclusive. If you would like to support the podcast, you can find us on Patreon. There will be a link in the show notes.
Jess Sedivy (01:00)
Hi everyone.
In part two of our conversation with Jane Lindquist, we shifted into a newer area of exploration in her work as a breeder—how we think about weaning, early nutrition, and the puppy gut microbiome.
We built on everything we explored earlier around development and early experience, but zoomed in on what’s happening physiologically during that transition from nursing to solid food—and how that may shape long-term health and behavior in ways we are only beginning to understand. Jane references a great study on the Foodome, and we will drop a link to that in the show notes.
Before we jump back in, I do want to briefly frame this section. Jane shares her approach to weaning with a focus on the gut microbiome. Our discussion ended up bridging both the microbiome and diet, because what a dog eats affects what’s in their gut. The perspectives on diet in this episode may differ from what some breeders practice, or what some veterinarians recommend. At the Functional Dog Collaborative, our goal is not to endorse any single feeding method, but to explore the science and decision making behind different approaches to feeding so breeders can make informed choices. We believe that whatever your approach to feeding your puppies is, there will be some useful insights for you in this episode.
With that in mind, let’s jump back into the conversation.
Jess Sedivy (02:28)
Jane, welcome back. I would love to pick up with your newer work around weaning and your course, Weaning for Life. You really did a deep dive with this content and I’m kind of just curious as to what made you start to want to explore weaning and the gut microbiome in more depth.
Jane Lindquist (02:48)
First of all, I do have to give props to my friend, Magda Shirella, because she was the one that really turned me on to the gut microbiome and just how key it is to intentionally cultivate. It’s something that a lot of us have always done but just understanding how important it is to be intentional about it is something that I’ve really only come to recently. And I really came to it because of the questions that my students would ask about weaning.
I don’t think people realize how profound food is, how profound it is for us, how profound it is for our dogs. We were just having a conversation this morning, my sister, my husband and I my husband asked, how come all our grandparents were so short? Why were all those immigrant grandparents so short? Well, they didn’t have, good nutrition. I mean, we tend to think like, you know, that was great. They pasta all the time. Well, they were poor. I mean, they couldn’t afford protein and vegetables. And in the winter, my grandmother would get an orange in her Christmas stocking. was like, my gosh, a piece of fruit. Amazing. people got scurvy. That’s why they started fermenting foods because fermented foods have more vitamin C than foods in their natural state and more bioavailable vitamin C, people used to get scurvy in the winter because there was no fresh food to be had, okay? So people were short. They got rickets, they got scurvy, they had disease. ⁓ Farmers were in fact taller than urban dwellers because they had access to things like milk and animal protein and eggs that urban dwellers often didn’t have. So, you know.
What do they say that life is something that happens when you’re making other plans? So I was working on a learning theory course for breeders because, know, I find that that’s some place where breeders struggle a little bit because they don’t have a good grasp of learning theory. So when it comes to setting up good socialization sessions and training, you know, they don’t understand schedules of but I was working on that project, but I had a litter, and I said, you know what, let me just do a quick weaning project. I’m just gonna do 20 minutes, I’m just gonna say, this is what I feed my puppies. And here’s the list you can copy me. Well, know, nine hours of course later, because each juncture.
I realize how alienated people are from food and how much they don’t understand food and behavior, how they tie in. And also, don’t believe anyone has previously mapped out the developmental timeline of lactation and weaning. And there are developmental periods. It may be out there and I don’t know about it.
I do think that there’s something in a couple textbooks, but I don’t know anyone that’s really mapped it out as fully as I did and laid those two timelines on top of each other and also given people actionable things per the developmental period, just in the same way that we did with puppy culture. And again, it came about because…I got student questions like, my puppies are three weeks old and my dam doesn’t wanna stay in the box with them all the time. And I’m like, that’s normal. She’s regulating them. Or even at 10 days old, the dam would be getting out of the box. And she won’t stay in with them 24 seven. No, she’s regulating them into meals. That’s normal. She’s still feeding them. Is she feeding them enough? Are they hungry? No. But people just couldn’t understand the dam doesn’t, isn’t supposed to be in the box. She’s doing a good thing. She’s teaching them to eat in meals instead of continuously rolling. So it just wound up to be a much deeper topic than I had imagined. And yeah, I do give the exact amounts of what I fed, but you know, there’s much more to it than that to get it right. So. That’s how I came to wind up with a nine hour weaning course. That’s how I came, yeah.
Jess Sedivy (07:35)
So we know from studies that early nutrition, especially colostrum, plays a role in intestinal development. And how do you think about the gastrointestinal system as part of overall puppy development? And can you kind of walk our listeners who might not be as familiar with it through those first few days and weeks of a puppy’s life and how their GI system is developing?
Jane Lindquist (08:03)
Okay, so I did not even realize that weaning stress was a thing. I didn’t know it existed. But once puppy culture came out, I started interfacing with a lot more breeders, different weaning styles, feeding models, and they had puppies that would have severe gastrointestinal problems when they were being weaned. like, I don’t understand, I’ve never seen this.
So I think what you have to understand about a good weaning protocol is it’s not you know, one day they’re on milk and the next day they get a complex food. It’s that you’re gradually folding in progressively more advanced foods. And for each food that you introduce, it actually triggers a physical change to the gastrointestinal system. So the size and characteristics of the puppy’s intestine is gonna respond to that food. It’s already changing and responding in response to first nursing, colostrum, then when the fatty milk comes in and the milk itself, that’s a whole other thing. It changes on a daily basis. It changes, there’s morning milk, there’s night milk that’s feeding the puppy information about when it’s time to be awake and when it’s time to be asleep. There’s stress milk, there’s cortisol milk, there’s antibiotic milk…the puppy’s intestines are constantly responding, okay? So they’re growing in response to these changes in milk and the milk is evolving over time.
I say over time, as the puppies are developing, the milk is changing with the puppies. And then when you start introducing foods, you know, that’s also a big inflection point in the development of the gastrointestinal system. And if you are intentional about how you’re introducing foods and introduce them in an orderly fashion from easiest to digest to most difficult, you’re never gonna encounter any kind of waning stress.
Jess Sedivy (10:24)
I think I know how you’re going to answer this but I’ll ask do you see weaning. As primarily a biologically driven transition do you see it as a behaviorally driven transition do you see it as a combination of both.
Jane Lindquist (10:42)
I see it 100 % both. And again, the questions from the students really made me realize this because we tend to think of weaning as something that stops, right? Weaning by definition means weaning off of something. That’s what we’re thinking of. But really it’s food socialization. in the same way that we bring experiences to the puppy in an orderly fashion so that each experience sort of levels the puppy up for the next experience.
Each food is leveling the puppy’s intestines up for the next food. But it’s also teaching the puppy mentally and physically to seek novelty in food. And that is tremendously powerful and important to the gut biome, which I know we really haven’t talked about yet, but.
The gut biome, it’s the wild west, okay? I mean, I shouldn’t say the wild west. It’s the Great Plains, the unexplored west, okay? It’s just every day they’re finding out something new that is wowing people. But the one thing that seems to be universally agreed upon is that diversity in diet is a key component to a good gut, healthy gut biome. The more diverse your gut biome is, the better regulated mentally and physically you’re going to be, and that comes from a diverse diet. So, again, it was the questions from the students that made me realize this. And, the question in particular that I get frequently in puppy culture, there comes a point in the puppy’s development where I say I’d like to introduce something new every day. And people struggle with this. They’re like, I run out of things. I’m like, how do you run out of things? mean, today the puppies forage pears under the tree. That’s new. Today, puppies had their first take-a-treat meatball.
That’s new and people are like, food, yeah. Today the puppies ate in a crate with the door open, that’s new. Today the puppies ate out of bowls on the back deck, it’s new. So food as you know, as novelty, as part of a good socialization program, I think that’s something that’s really underappreciated.
Jess Sedivy (13:16)
Food too is when you look at wild canines and also when you look at humans and when you think back about the coevolution of humans and dogs being domesticated and things like that, food is really crucial to that entire relationship. And it’s fascinating to me how that gets lost because you know, when you’re looking when you study wild canines food is their entire existence it’s it’s hunting it’s social building and it’s not really that different for humans either so thinking about that. You know like how does gut health how do you see it fitting into this broader picture of puppy culture and the broader picture of just how puppies develop into dogs.
Jane Lindquist (14:09)
Right, well, I think maybe what we need to do is touch lightly on what the gut biome is so people understand it. And this is LITE, okay, so.
Jane Lindquist (14:22)
It turns out that what you think of as you is to a large extent not really you. mean, you have these trillions of organisms that live inside you that do a lot of the work of your body, including things like neurotransmitter signaling that we need more serotonin here, like things that you think of as brain function, they call the gut the second brain. There’s all these, it’s mostly yeast and bacteria, but there’s also some fungi, some we have a symbiotic relationship with them. We give them a place to live, we feed them, and in return, they help, modulate our immune system, they train our bodies to recognize pathogens and destroy them. And they do help with digestion, they do help break down the food that we eat. So for your immune system, your health and your mental capacity, your mental health, all of that is really controlled by your gut biome. In fact, scientists call the gut biome the second brain now.
What happens is the gut biome keeps you healthy in different ways. One way is just simply by crowding out the bad guys. If you have a robust and diverse gut biome, if you have a lot of good guys in there, and I’m just calling them good guys and bad guys, there’s just no place for the bad guys to land. So when you breathe in or eat that pathogen, when it gets into your system, it’s like, sorry, keep moving, there’s no room here.
Also, there is an intelligence to them teach own defenses to come in and fight the bad guys, they signal to your body, look, this is this one, he doesn’t belong here, come get him. but it but it also trains us not to attack our own cells. Okay, so that’s a lot of allergic responses and autoimmune problems. That’s what it means. Our body is not educated enough to be able to distinguish between what is friend and what is foe. So we start attacking our own bodies. So that’s a very, believe it or not, LITE explanation because people have written volumes already about it.
So. As far as how it fits in with puppy culture and behavior, I think it’s apparent that behavioral health is gonna follow gut health, that there is going to be a difference. I mean, listen, did you ever go out on a wine bender, how bad you feel the next day? Or even just a junk food bender? I mean, how do you feel the next day? And aren’t you a little more likely to be a little cranky with those around you when you don’t feel well inside, right, from eating bad food?
So there’s a real effect there. There’s a real effect.
Jess Sedivy (17:31)
So we talk a lot too about how breeders use a wide range of feeding approaches. People feed raw, they feed kibble, they have ⁓ kind of a hybrid diet. How do you think about supporting gut health across those choices?
Jane Lindquist (17:48)
Well, I think you meet people where they are with it. And I also think that if you are an ideologue and tell people, you’re poisoning your dog with that processed food, you may be virtue signaling yourself, but you’re not helping people, right? So.
Whatever you’re feeding, whatever you can do, let’s just level it up, okay? If you’re feeding kibble, a little bit of sauerkraut in your dog’s food, you have done something good for your dog. If you do a little sauerkraut plus maybe a little fresh food of some kind, you’re doing something good for your dog. It’s a continuum, okay? Listen, I have a can of kibble in my house because I use kibble trails for my dogs.
I’ve experimented with eliminating kibble entirely like zero carbs in my dog’s diet. I did not find my dogs did better on a truly zero carb diet. Some people are very adamant about that and that’s great too. But what I’m saying is it’s not an either or situation, it’s a continuum. So if you’re a kibble feeder now,
First of all, maybe you’re gonna try and find a kibble that has a little less isoflavones. You’re gonna try and look for something that has fewer legumes. And you’re gonna try and just introduce some other foods, starting with some fermented foods, maybe a little fresh raw, if that takes your fancy, maybe some bone broth if it doesn’t, you
I am not big on supplements, supplements. would much prefer to get that through food sources and that is gonna kind of lead into I think another thing that we’re gonna talk about which is the science, the exciting science behind the microbiome and food and nutrition…because that’s gonna, yeah. Yeah, let’s jump right into that because I think that you were interested in knowing where the science is strong and where the science is weak and I would reframe the question to say where the science is interesting right now.
Jess Sedivy (19:52)
I was gonna say, let’s jump right into the science. Let’s do it.
Jane Lindquist (20:09)
And right now what’s really exciting me is food networks and the foodome. So these network scientists have started mapping the foodome and they’ve identified so far 80,000 different molecules in food. So like for instance, when you look at a label and it says protein content, they’re saying, I mean, that’s one of 20,000 different molecules that could be protein. That what network science says is that no two things are the same when coupled with two other things. So the way that things interact with each other, the way that a protein acts on your body is going to be completely different in the presence of other nutrients.
So it’s moving away from the reductive 20th century model of the nutrition label. mean, listen, the nutrition label, again, props to those people. That was huge that we recognize that there’s certain basic things in food that everybody has to get to survive. I mean, goes back to my four foot 11 grandmother. That was because they didn’t understand nutrition or they couldn’t afford it.
very narrow range of food, they didn’t have availability of food. Well, now we understand a little bit more, but that has of has boxed us in to an idea that if we meet these, well, it’s got protein, protein is protein is protein, oh no, protein is a completely different thing in the presence of other foods. So, the next big thing is everything, is what I say. That it’s not so much about what percentage of bone versus meat you have, and we’re not gonna argue about whether 1 % organ meat or 2%, or we’re not gonna get hung up in this. We’re gonna be just trying to finger out into as much variety as possible because as we…reconfigure these foods each day, we’re bringing some new immense nutritional benefit that we really don’t own. It’s more about letting go and yeah, being intentional about how you introduce these things, but also not getting too retentive about the exact nutritional ingredients because that limits you.
Jess Sedivy (22:52)
Yes, it’s very much a, and you talk about it in your class too, ⁓ very much a balance over time, which is, you know, probably how most species eat in general, it’s balance over time. Yes, it’s exactly how it works. And so we talked a little bit about, you know, breeders who feed kibble and how they can level that up. For those of us who do feed raw and fresh, but we know that we are going to be sending puppies home to a home that is going to want to feed kibble. Is there something that we can do as breeders that really helps set them up for success to make that transition?
Jane Lindquist (23:25)
Right.
Well, that’s interesting because ⁓ I did do a podcast on that and it’s episode 44 on how to transition puppies.
I do not transition my puppies onto kibble. just, we do do kibble trails so they get some kibble. And then, you know, I send my puppy owners home with about a month’s worth of raw food and ask that they feed it. And I say, listen, if you want to switch to kibble, I hope you don’t. I hope you see the results and want to stay in raw. But if you don’t, just cut in kibble over the course of about a week, you know and I’ve never had a problem. I did do a survey of breeders and that’s what that podcast was about. It was quite interesting. There were a number of breeders cold turkey and they never, the puppies never had a problem with the switch over to kibble. And I think it’s because again, if you have laid in, we didn’t even talk about colonization, that the the gut biome is colonized in the very early part of a puppy’s life. That’s why it’s so profound for breeders to be on board with this. And once it’s colonized, it’s gonna remain more or less stable. So once you, it’s just like the first 12 weeks of socialization, that once you establish certain things, it’s sort of like a ticket to the puppy owner that, well, your puppy has a good gut biome fundamentally now, and you just, if you maintain it, you’re gonna have excellent health.
But the other benefit of that robust early colonization of the gut biome is that they’re gonna be able to handle switching to kibble. They’re gonna get more nutrition out of their kibble because they have a better ability to absorb nutrients. And that actually has been studied.
So I just, I think that the best thing you can do if you’re sending your puppies home to a kibble home is to try and at least send the puppy home with some natural food and some ferments and see if you can’t even just get them, puppy owners on board with, just put a little sauerkraut, a little kefir, a little yogurt, it’s delicious, a little fruit, you know, just that the add-ons are good.
Jess Sedivy (26:01)
I like how you said level up. I really do, because I do think that there’s just a little bit that everybody can do a little bit better. And we don’t have to necessarily restrict that or judge people’s feeding decisions and things like that, because there is a middle ground. ⁓ And so, you the previous episodes that you’ve been on the podcast, it is a very big theme that you treat your puppies like individuals, your dogs like individuals, and you’re reading them all the time. And so when you’re going through this weaning what signs do you look for in your puppies that really kind of you that you’re on the right track with weaning and what you’re introducing and that you’re getting that gut biome colonized and that you’re headed all in the right direction?
Jane Lindquist (26:46)
Good question. That was one of the things that I was like, my gosh, I have to talk about this. And it wound up being a big topic is stools. mean, that is, you know, reading puppy stools, won’t say aghast because I was that person too that when you see the puppy that’s overeaten and you have that liquidy stool, that light yellow stool, you’re like, my gosh, does my puppy have, do I have parvo? No, your puppy’s a pig. That’s what the problem is. Your puppy’s just eating so much that he can’t even digest the food. Or the first time you give your puppy hamburger and then you see a mucus covered stool that you’re like, what’s going on? And by the way, plot spoiler, it’s normal and it’s normal in children too. I don’t know if you’re a human mom, but children when they’re being weaned, there can be mucus in the stool. It’s anytime you have a change in the gut biome, there’s gonna be a certain amount of I don’t know why there’s a transitory amount of mucus in the stool, but you could hypothesize that it’s the gut mucosa changing in response to the new food. So yeah, I mean, that is the biggest thing is learning to read stools to know you’re on track. And obviously, are the puppies clinically normal and happy?
Jess Sedivy (28:16)
As you’re thinking about weaning, I would recommend that everyone listening to this podcast take your course. So that that’ll be one of my plugs for your course. But as you’re as you’re going along and still thinking about this, because I don’t think any of us are ever done evolving or done questioning, where in this space of gut biome and puppy weaning, do you still want to explore things and do you still want to make changes and learn things on? Your own experiments.
Jane Lindquist (28:45)
That’s interesting. ⁓ Well, you if I had funding, I would definitely do a study of ⁓ different dietary models. It’s an interesting thing.
Again, a conversation of just having with another bull terrier breeder today. How the puppies I keep somehow always seem to have a ton of bone and substance. I’ve just never had one that grew up, you know, weedy. And puppies that I’ve placed that I’m like, ⁓ this is going to be the one with thumping bone, you know, and they turn out to be weedy and I, I really am beginning to have a suspicion, it does have to do with the food because you’re just feeding raw food, okay, I bought the raw mix, it says complete and balanced, that’s it. It’s not the same, you know, as throwing in your, your free range eggs from time to time, your ferments, all the other things, dairy ferments, even though technically mammals are not supposed to drink milk after they’re weaned, okay? Like people talk about lactose intolerance. No, there’s no lactose intolerance. There’s a genetic mutation in Northern Europeans that you can drink milk, nobody’s supposed to drink milk. But fermented dairy, we are adapted. And so are dogs because what is I mean, think about where would you get fermented dairy, the stomach of young animals. So they are adapted to eat fermented dairy. So fermented dairy, fermented vegetables, and again, a variety of dairy and vegetables, not just the same yogurt every day.
Jess Sedivy (30:17)
Right.
Jane Lindquist (30:44)
I do think it has a profound effect on ⁓ the bone and substance and the longevity and health of the animals. Our dogs in our household, I don’t want to jinx myself, but they just live a long time. And I see my co-owners that really are very intentional about giving a wide variety of add-ons in food and really, as we say, leveling it up even within the raw model. Their dogs are living longer.
So if I could study something or know something or could get a grant, it would be to see is there really an effect? Because we’re talking about a couple hundred dogs. It’s not thousands of dogs across breeds. So I can only tell you what my experience is. And it’s my observation, interesting one, but.
Jess Sedivy (31:37)
Well, that’s how the best research questions start, I think, you know, with our with observations and then saying, I’m curious about this. And so we should we should pursue this. this is obviously a very big, far ranging topic. we could talk about gut biome and all day long. And I think it’s really cool that it’s finally it isn’t even really just an emerging you know, scientific topic anymore. We’ve moved past that where it has definitely become more established. But I think it’s really cool that in people and in dogs were talking about this more and there’s more attention brought to it. Is there anything we missed in the conversation that you think is really important to bring up?
Jane Lindquist (32:16)
Let’s see.
I think that you, asked me is how much of what I do is planned versus reacting to what I’m seeing in the puppies. And you know, the way I would describe it is there’s definitely a playlist, but the songs get shuffled a lot and some get skipped. And I think it’s fascinating how differently they take to food. And I don’t mean just how quickly they’re weaned or how quickly they learn to eat or tolerate foods, but their whole behaviors around foods are so different. I was just talking the other day about how behaviorally it’s really a thing for some puppies to eat out of a dish by themselves.
I fold crate training into my weaning, that’s not in this it’s more in the newborn to new home course. But one of the steps is they each get an individual dish of food in an open bank of crates. So I have all these little crates that they go in next to each other and I put each puppy in a crate, open door with food.
And normally, the first thing they wanna do is run in with one of their litter mates and eat together. So you’ll get like a cluster, like, you know, it’s like a bacterial cells, you know, going around and they’re like, no, no, no, we have to be together. Like they don’t wanna eat alone. And it usually takes two or three days before they’re like, okay, I’ll be this, you know, and I’m not closing the doors, but you know, the last litter I did, the first day I put them in by themselves and they’re like, yeah, this is good. Yeah, I’m happy, I’m content with eating by myself. So it’s interesting when you start paying attention to it.
Jess Sedivy (34:11)
It is, and I love the flexibility. And so we are gonna drop some things in the show notes so people can find you, but let our listeners know where they can find you.
Jane Lindquist (34:18)
You can find us at c. Please, please do join us at the Puppy Culture Discussion Group on Facebook. What a great group, what a, wonderful group of civilized people who are just incredibly polite and supportive and
Jess Sedivy (34:43)
Jane, thank you so much. I really appreciated this. This was, yeah, it was wonderful.
Jane Lindquist (34:46)
Thank you so much. This was great, Jess. Thank you so much.
Jess Sedivy (36:32)
To learn more about the functional dog collaborative, visit functionalbreeding.org. This podcast is brought to you by the Functional Dog Collaborative. This episode was produced and edited by Charmaine Swan with production support from me, Jess Sedivy Gunderson. If you’d like to support the show and FDC itself, you can find us on Patreon. Check the link in the show notes. Enjoy your dogs.
Show Notes:
To learn more about Jane and her courses, visit puppyculture.com or madcapuniversity.com