Welcome to the Absolute Dog Sex and a Squirrel podcast. I'm Lauren Langman. I'm one of the world's leading dog trainers and it's my mission to help owners become their dog's top priority. In each episode, you'll discover how to gain trust and

communicate with your dog like never before, creating unbreakable bonds that make you the most

exciting part of their world. Okay, today we are talking bug. Now, when I say bug, we're talking

all of the itchy, flea, tick, giardia, worms, all of the nasties, all of the things that you just don't want in your house, you don't want in your dog. In fact, you just don't want, right? Not at all. And if I start itching, I promise I don't have any. But just talking about it makes me like a little bit. I do have a few funny stories about people and wormers. But anyway, we won't go there. Let's not go there.

Now, I've seen one of the stats on the board, and it's 15% of dogs have Giardia. Yes.

Like, that scares me. Oh my goodness. And then when you look at it further, they estimate there's roughly

25 million dogs and cats in the UK. So when you do the math on that one, it's 3.75 million potential dogs and cats can be carrying gear.

And if you think about it with the shedding, the fact that then if those say 4 million are shedding at the same time, that potentially means the spread is quite big.

Now, let's talk fleas, ticks, worms, giordia, all of the things,

prevention, like prevention, because I think this is big. Now, 25 years ago, I would not question

what my vet suggested. I put on my dog and I love my vet. I really love my vet. My vet practice.

They're just fantastic. So big shout out to my lovely vet. And we would do things like Frontline and more recently things like Prevecto and

seresto collars and drontal and all the other things. And I suppose about five years ago,

I started to really question it. I had a dog with cancer. She was young diagnosed, like three years old, diagnosed with quite

severe cancer, melanoma, and malignant. Like, it was malignant. It was potentially life-threatening.

And it really made me question a few things. And my dad the same. He was diagnosed with cancer

and it was fatal. Like, it was going to be a final

cancer. It was going to be a non-curative. And it just made me think about what we put on our

hands, what we put in our households, what we put on our skin, what we put on our dog's skin,

what we put in our environment, what we put in our dogs food, what we

maybe inject in our dogs or maybe what we allow them to ingest or we actively put on their

skin. And I suppose I got a bit curious. I got a bit curious. I think probably this is around seven

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