Behind the Scenes of Managing a $33 Million Dog Study and Big Data in Pet Research

Poodle People (00:01.233) Hi Kelly, I'm so pleased that you are able to join me today. Kelly Diehl (00:06.318) Well, thanks for having me. It's great fun being here. Poodle People (00:10.449) Fantastic. So would you tell us a little bit about your background just so that we get to know you a little bit? Kelly Diehl (00:18.712) Sure, I am a veterinarian by training and I hate to say how long ago I graduated from vet school, but I was in practice for about 25 years before I decided to transition out of the clinic, got the job at Morris Animal Foundation as a science communicator and I do some of the scientific programs, evaluations as well. And I've been here about 10 years, just over 10 years. Poodle People (00:47.593) that's fantastic. So I always like to ask people early on so that we know what kind of pets do you have at home? Kelly Diehl (00:57.77) I have two kitties who are brother and sister. I have a Labrador Retriever who's getting up there in age. So we're dealing with all the geriatric stuff that comes with having a over 12 year old dog. And my husband is really into fish. So we have quite a few fish, more than I could possibly count. Poodle People (01:00.413) Okay. Poodle People (01:22.749) Okay, so I don't know anything about fish. So does that translate into multiple aquariums or are they in a large? Kelly Diehl (01:32.14) We have multiple, so we have six different aquariums and some of them are really big and others are kind of more what we think of for aquaria, right? Like smaller aquarium. Poodle People (01:44.657) Yeah, yeah. that's awesome. I bet that's kind of hypnotic, almost like watching a fire burn. You probably spend a lot of time watching fish swim. Kelly Diehl (01:57.71) And my cats love it right it's like cat TV right yeah Poodle People (01:59.977) gosh, I didn't think about that. Yes. So would you tell us a little bit about your role at the Morris Animal Foundation, how long you've been there and kind of what you do just so we have a little bit more than just your title. Kelly Diehl (02:20.524) Right, so I have been here as I said, actually I had to take that back because I used to say in 10 years and now it's just about 11 years that I've been at the foundation and I do a lot of different things. Primarily, I am responsible for looking at a lot of our communications, especially if they're science related. So I would do work maybe for a specific donor and write a piece for them if they sponsor to study. write most of the blogs that are up on our website. I'll help with some of the emails we may send out. I've done scripts for TikTok videos, so kind of a little bit of everything. But I also do some work in kind of the nitty gritty science stuff. I review a lot of the grant requests that we come in. I review a lot of the grant reports that we require from people that we give money to. I will do sometimes a conference and give a presentation. So like I said, a really broad spectrum of different activities. Poodle People (03:27.513) I that's always fascinating to hear what people do because one of my, you know, kind of subtexts with having this podcast is to remind people that there are fantastic careers with animals. Obviously, specifically with dogs for this podcast, but in general, I think it's important for people to remember that, you know, There's a big world out there and lots of different kinds of jobs and you don't have to, you can kind of imagine things. Kelly Diehl (04:01.166) Right, exactly. And if you had told me maybe even 30 years ago, this is what I would be doing, I would have thought, said, no, no, no, no, I'm going to stay in clinic. But life happens, and we make shifts as we need to for other reasons. And it's been a really, really great transition for me to do what I do now. Poodle People (04:26.109) I think that's a really important thing to remind people, especially young people are used to moving, but it's really not at all uncommon. I would say that I am on my third career and it sounds like you are really on your second career, even though they are related. So you use those skills and change as time goes on. Kelly Diehl (04:50.698) Exactly, absolutely. And it's not that I don't use my veterinary knowledge, I sure do every day, but I do it in a different way, right? Than I did it for years when I was in clinic. Poodle People (05:03.401) So before we get too far along, I happen to know the Morris Animal Foundation because you fund the university, researchers at the university where I work quite regularly, but for people who are not so familiar with it, could you give us a bit of a background on the Morris Animal Foundation and some of the goals that you deal with? Kelly Diehl (05:32.907) Right, happy to. We were founded 75 years ago, a little over 75 now, by Mark Morris Sr., hence the name Morris, not Morris the Cat, which sometimes those of us who are old enough to remember think it's Morris the Cat. So he started it. He may be known to a lot of listeners because he was created kind of the first prescription diet, which is Hills KD. Poodle People (05:45.446) Hahaha Yes, yes. Kelly Diehl (06:02.958) So if you have ever had an animal that has had kidney disease, you know, Hills KD. Anyway, he and his wife were making this in the kitchen of their house, which was above their vet clinic. And to deal with dogs that he saw during the depression that were developing kidney disease because, you know, people had trouble getting food. And what was left is the quality of dog food was really declining and also dogs ate a lot of what people ate. And of course it was during the depression. So it was really difficult time. He sees a lot of dogs with kidney disease. He realizes it has to do with protein and the quality of the protein. So he makes KD. His wife, said, decided, Fui, I don't want to make this in our kitchen anymore. And so he hooked up with a packing plant in Topeka, Kansas called Hills. And so that's where the name Hills comes from. So he hooks up with them. They agreed to pack his diet and we're off and running from there. And of course they still do all kinds of diets. Well, what Dr. Morris also recognized is there was very little research being done to help animals. Plenty of research done on animals at that time, but it was to serve human health, not necessarily animal health. So he created the Morris Animal Foundation to had provide grants to people because there wasn't funding out there to study diseases, particularly in dogs and cats. That's how it started. And of course that also represented a time where more and more and more people had pets versus livestock. so off we go, 1948, 1950, we start funding our first studies. We added horses to our portfolio in 1960, yeah, right, 1960. In 1967, we started to do wildlife. So we have a very big portfolio. And basically, we run calls every year for a variety of different species. We get proposals sent to us from around the world. We fund globally. And then we have a very rigorous process for selecting the best grants. We actually assemble. Kelly Diehl (08:18.03) We don't do that internally. And they say, hey, here we're ranking these. Here's the ones we think you should fund this year. And then we give funding out. As you mentioned, most of our grantees are based at universities, a lot at veterinary colleges, but we do others. But we've also given grants to, we've worked with the Wildlife Conservation Society. We've given grants to... gosh, some of the rescue organizations over the years. So we have a pretty broad portfolio of grantees. I actually got a grant when I was in private practice. We don't do a lot of those anymore, but I got one to conduct a study in my practice many, many years ago now. But that kind of is how we run. So we raise the money and then we give it out to others. Poodle People (09:11.581) So let's focus on how you raise the money. Is there a small amount from the sales of Hills that supports it or do you rely on donations? Kelly Diehl (09:23.886) Now we rely on donations and that's a really good question because how Dr. Morris set up our endowment initially was he put royalties from the sale of prescription diets into our endowment. Now that, we haven't gotten money from Hills for probably 30, 40 years now, quite a long time since that initial agreement ran out. However, provided the seed money to get going. provided our endowment. But the vast majority, we don't like to touch that, the vast majority of our donations come from just people. Like we solicit, we have a pretty large group of people who know about us. We have a few corporate partners who give us money, MA sponsors, studies, but those are not our main source of funding. It's really just regular people. Poodle People (10:19.517) regular people like you and me. Kelly Diehl (10:21.282) Mm-hmm Poodle People (10:22.887) That is amazing. I can attest to the importance of getting a Morris Animal Foundation grant because I know that our researchers definitely, you know, we see a lot of early career or post-docs or PhD students really interested in it because it's a very good way for them to build their skills in a competitive arena. that is not quite an NIH kind of opportunity. So it's really important for them early in their career to be getting these kinds of awards where they can start building some data. Kelly Diehl (11:09.142) Right, and you make a very good point as we have different granting categories are so we have experienced investigators and but we also have fellowship training grants which you mentioned they sound exactly like what they're geared to do which is to help train people in animal health research. We have first awards which are grants given to people who are beginning their careers right need that boost Poodle People (11:14.791) Mm-hmm. Kelly Diehl (11:39.2) of funding to get some data and then they can leverage that. And then we have pilot studies, are really, we call them the high risk, high reward category, which is they're a very like, hey, I got this idea. I need a little money to see if I can, you know, if it works. Those are more loose as far as their requirements, right? You don't have to have preliminary data and some other stuff. Poodle People (11:40.348) Mm-hmm. Kelly Diehl (12:08.024) But sometimes people take those, right? And then they go, hey, the pilot was successful. Can you give us some more money? So they function in all different types of ways. And I'm glad you brought that up because we do fund a lot of early researchers. Poodle People (12:25.127) Yeah. So let's focus a little bit on some of the canine research that you've done. I know that you are important in hemangiosarcoma as well as the golden retriever lifetime study. So let's save the retriever lifetime study and talk about some of the other canine. programs that you can describe to us. Kelly Diehl (12:56.086) Right. So our portfolio, like I mentioned, is pretty big. we have typically for years and years and years, we actually have what we're called open calls, which is you can come to us with any dog health problem that you would like to look at. And we funded a lot of different things over the years. Sometimes we'll do a targeted call. And hemangiosarcoma was one recently where we broke out and had a, we fundraised around a specific disease and said, hey, just come to us with your hemangiosarcoma grants. And so that was one case where we, and we're going to have another round soon because hemangiosarcoma is such a lousy. tumor and we don't know much about it. And so that is a special circumstance where again, we might have a real interest in something and go ahead and fund that. We just went through a call where we decided to focus more on senior dog health. And we had grants sent in specifically focused on issues affecting elderly or older dogs. But most of the time we have what's called an open call, which is anything. write everything in anything. But again, sometimes we'll target. have just to bring in another species. We're having amphibians and reptiles coming up soon for wildlife. So often we have an open wildlife. But this time, we decided to do some species focus. And we'll be listening to those deliberations here fairly soon. I hope that gives an idea like we just like everything. It often reflects what's a concern within the research community. Like you can see trends, right, over the years. If I look at the titles of let's, you know, for a few years, there may be something that's a problem within the community that people are very interested in. Cancer tends to be up there year after year, right? And it doesn't have to be hemorrhagic sarcoma. There are lots of other. Kelly Diehl (15:12.376) cancers obviously that affect dogs. And that seems to be a biggie. There's always a fair number of cancer grants that we receive. But again, we can see things kind of come up and down as maybe a new disease crops up. There are new maybe treatments that a new treatment comes out and people want to look at it, right, a little bit more closely. So, you know, again, that can bury a little bit year by year. Poodle People (15:12.817) Right. Poodle People (15:41.277) Are you seeing a trend in older dogs, as we have dogs as part of our family, and they are living healthier, longer lives with really good veterinary care? Are you seeing things like increased titles addressing things like osteoarthritis or other aging diseases? Kelly Diehl (16:05.282) We do, and you named one of them, which is osteoarthritis. Another one that has been really, I would say prominent the last few years has been addressing cognitive decline in dogs as they get older. So we had a lot, I'll bet you we had more or as many grants in this past. Poodle People (16:22.205) interesting. Kelly Diehl (16:32.856) cycle that we're looking at cognitive, slowing cognitive decline, looking a little bit closer at it. But osteoarthritis too. Poodle People (16:43.357) I have to admit, I wish I were qualified to be on your review panels because I would love to read those proposals. Yeah. Kelly Diehl (16:51.042) Yeah, they're pretty interesting. Obviously, cognitive decline is really important in people. we are seeing some people who are trying to, mean, some of it is cognitive decline studies for the sake of the dog. But there's also some interest in learning whether dogs are good models for cognitive decline in people. And so we're seeing some of that. Poodle People (16:58.62) Mm-hmm. Poodle People (17:16.188) Right. Kelly Diehl (17:20.62) I know this is poodle people, but I'm sure people have cats. Cats actually may also be good models because it looks like they get forms of vascular dementia, which obviously people know about, the strokes, right? But dogs actually have some changes similar to Alzheimer's in their brains. So really different. So we may have two different species, two different models of dementia in people, but Poodle People (17:33.991) Yeah. Kelly Diehl (17:50.03) that needs to be teased out more. But we saw a lot of that. People, you know, how can we keep our dog's brain activity good? Because that contributes often to euthanasia in older dogs, right? Like the dog that doesn't, like somehow loses house training, begins soiling in the house. Dogs that they don't respond to their owners, right? And it fractures. that human animal bond because they don't recognize people. can have sleep disorders. if you know people with Alzheimer's, they pace. Well, dogs can pace too. And so again, how can we keep brain health, their minds active as they age? Poodle People (18:25.191) Mm-hmm. Poodle People (18:39.997) So is it sort of similar to the adage that motion is lotion except activity in the brain is the lotion? Does that make sense? So keep your dog engaged in different things. Kelly Diehl (18:51.374) Yeah, right. And there are some very good tools out there to evaluate dogs for cognitive decline, which is also a relatively new disease, right? I can say we've been talking about it in veterinary medicine for probably almost 30 years, but for a while people didn't even know if it really happened. And a lot of stuff was like, that's just normal aging. And it's not. We now know There is a syndrome. does happen. It's not normal aging. I think there's normal. And it parallels what we know in people a bit. So it's really interesting to see a lot of those studies. And some of it is recognition. have somebody who's doing a study. really, they're just working on, sounds weird, but graphics to educate people that they want to develop some. tools that they can give veterinarians. So you go to your veterinary office and we've all seen those posters, right? Like this is what dental disease looks like or heart with heartworms in a jar. Well, they're trying to do something that you would be reading while you're waiting for your veterinarian that would talk about cognitive declines, a little bit about arthritis to recognizing those signs. Poodle People (20:12.317) actually sounds so practical. Kelly Diehl (20:15.63) Yeah, it's one of the practical studies. So we have a pretty big range. Like we'll fund stuff like that and we'll fund things that are real like tissue culture on a bench, right? And a whole range, whole range of different types of projects if our expert panels feel that they are worthy and we try to assemble a panel based on what we see grants coming in. So if we see a lot of cancer grants, well, we're gonna get a couple oncologists right in there. Poodle People (20:26.204) Yeah. Kelly Diehl (20:44.896) If we see cognitive, then we need a few neuro people, right, in there and people who deal behavior, behaviorists we might see. So we sometimes have to tailor our panels based on what kinds of grants are coming into us. Poodle People (21:03.291) Yeah, I have to admit that I thought you funded more bench science and not really so much applied science, so that's really interesting to know. Kelly Diehl (21:13.004) Yeah, we do. we all do. We funded clinical trials, if drugs, typically, obviously, different therapeutics will. But we do also do some bench research, which our researchers tell us is very important because there are not a lot of animal health focused granting agencies out there and many of them focus, and this is fine, on like a clinical trial or something that's gonna be right away, right? It's gonna have a direct application to animal health, but sometimes you need those basic studies, right, to answer questions and that funding is really scarce for animal health researchers. Poodle People (22:06.599) Yes, you are definitely a lifeline for a lot of equine. Kelly Diehl (22:12.884) Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Those guys don't have a lot of funding opportunities. And we've heard that from the equine community over and over again, like, you guys are the only ones who would fund something that's a tissue culture, let's say, study versus, though we have done obviously some practical studies to we've done some equine behavior, which is another area that a lot of people can't get funding to study equine and equine welfare as it relates to behavior. And we have a wonderful donor. She's a retired veterinarian who, that's her passion. She worked, yeah, and she funds some small studies every year just looking at equine behavior. Poodle People (22:53.404) Hello. Poodle People (23:00.107) I love that. Bravo to her. So let's segue to the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study. Kelly Diehl (23:10.542) Mm-hmm. that's a big one. Poodle People (23:13.669) Right, yes. Kelly Diehl (23:16.526) So for us, I just talked and waxed poetic about how we fund studies. And now I'm going to blow that all up and talk about Go To The Retriever Lifetime Study, which is very, very different for us because we are actually managing that study. We've never done that really before. Ray had an in-house study that we are actually conducting, obviously with the help of 3044 dogs. which is how many dogs were originally rolled. In this study, we have 2,700 owners and veterinarians, you get the idea that some people had multiple dogs in the study. And it was conceived originally as a cancer risk factor study, because we know goldens have a high incidence of cancer as cause of death. That was out there a couple of decades ago. And it was of special interest to the foundation. And we thought, why not? We'll see if we can pull this off. And since we've started, there have been a few, there are a few large longitudinal studies that are going on as well, some of which we are collaborating with or we provided like, here, don't do this. Here's what we did wrong getting this going. it end, it's a $33 million study, which is enormous. Poodle People (24:45.757) Thank you. Kelly Diehl (24:45.784) for us. mean, just huge chunk of change over the last, let's see, we have started enrolling in 2012. So we're getting into our 13th, we're in our 13th year, kind of now. And, but we'll, it'll probably wrap up within the next couple of years as, you know, we would expect the dogs to be aging out of the study. We think we are providing, not we think. We know we're providing data on other diseases as well. And as our dogs age, it's also becoming, we've added, we've glommed on some other pieces to the main study looking at particularly, you mentioned osteoarthritis. We have a cognitive decline questionnaire now that's added on. We have a neuropathology piece where this is kind of gross, but we ask people to donate their dog's brains. Poodle People (25:44.221) Mm-hmm. Kelly Diehl (25:45.138) after they pass and we send them, we're working with the Mayo Clinic in Arizona on that and they're looking at it again with in relation to Alzheimer's because we have behavioral data. So it's actually, we like to say sometimes it's kind of morphing into an aging study because we're capturing all these diseases in real time and of course we followed the dogs. They had to be between six months and two years of age when they enrolled. We follow them through their lifetime and capturing every year, biological specimens, data, even if the dog's perfectly healthy, right? So we have years and years and years of data, years and years and years of samples. And then of course, we see the dog starting to develop disease. And especially if they have cancer, we collect extra samples. We have lots of tumor specimens from these dogs. So we have a really big bank now of samples. that include, again, blood, urine, feces, hair, toenails, urine, and as well as all these extra tissue samples and lots and lots and lots of data points that are just questions and answers. Poodle People (27:00.285) So how is that implemented? Are people enrolling and then going to their regular vet and having them take all of those samples, the hair, the toenails, all of that stuff and send it to you? Or are they local to you? Kelly Diehl (27:13.857) Yeah. No, they are all across the United States and we had hoped to do that, right? We wanted enrollment that was kind of dispersed. So, because we see regional difference, we wanted to capture if there were regional differences, especially when it comes to cancer risk, right? So we know where these dogs live, we know where they've, if they've traveled, we... Poodle People (27:23.697) wide. Poodle People (27:30.075) Mm-hmm. Kelly Diehl (27:41.09) We've had some people start doing GPS work, right? Like how far are you from a Superfund site? You know, that kind of stuff. Water sources, so we have all of that environmental information. And we got lucky because you can't, if you're doing a longitudinal study, you can't really, you don't want to influence, right, people too much. You just let people come to you and sign up. And we got lucky that we had pretty even distribution. have a dog at least, we only did the lower 48 states, right? So we have a dog in each state, at least one. And we have pretty good regional distribution as far as we use some of the CDC regional areas. So there's like the Northeast, the Southeast, Midwest, Rocky Mountain region, Pacific, right? And those are, I mean, sometimes we'll look at stuff regionally, we might look. Poodle People (28:19.047) Mm-hmm. Kelly Diehl (28:39.362) by state. haven't done a ton of that yet. We have started to look at some of the environmental data. so we just let people come. We also got really lucky, and I'm knocking on wood, that we did not say, we need so many female dogs, right? We just let, again, people sign up. And we got a pretty good distribution at the start of intact males and females and spayed and neutered females and males. That has changed over time, right? Because a lot of dogs were neutered or spayed after they enrolled, right? Because we had some dogs that like six months of age, some dogs were breeding dogs, they were show dogs, they had all different kinds of jobs, as we like to say. so we got a little bit lucky in that too, because that was sort of helpful in having a distribution of different dogs. Poodle People (29:17.17) Mm-hmm. Kelly Diehl (29:39.086) So anyway, that was kind of how it started. And when people wanted to enroll, they had to go to their veterinarian and the veterinarians had to agree to do to participate, right? Because it's actually worked for the veterinarians, right? They have to see these dogs, they have to collect all these samples, they've got to package them up. They send them to our biobank, right? Some go to the biobank, some go to, because one of the perks of the study is we give them their blood work for free, right? So some have to go to a lab and get blood work run and some get stored and tissue samples go to different places. we have a association, we have people double reading, looking at like the tumor samples, right? Cause you want to be really sure there's agreement on that. So that requires a little bit of coordination. So it's a lot of coordination on our part. That's really what we provide is sort of that. Poodle People (30:07.133) I'm sorry. Kelly Diehl (30:36.876) nerve center for where are the samples? Are they getting where they need to be contacting the vets? We send out packages, right, with all the samples and instructions and the sampling stuff. So they use our kits that we package in the office and send out to them to collect these samples. So it's a lot of logistics, right? And that's what we provide is logistics. We're the repository for Poodle People (31:00.049) Right. Kelly Diehl (31:05.422) all the data so we manage all, we have a whole team that just manages the data because then the flip side is we have to be 100 % sure, right, that if a researcher comes to us and says, want 100 samples of dogs with hemangiosarcoma and they have to have had a postmortem, right, they have to have a diagnosis and we want all their samples, we then have to be able to generate that list. that pick list as we call it, right? Contact the bio repository, make sure they're pulling the right samples, right? Match them up and send them to a researcher. So then you have those logistics, Is stuff coming back out of the bio repository, back out of our database. And we have to feel really good and secure about when we send that out to a researcher that it's all accurate. So like I said, lots of logistics and we handle that. Poodle People (32:01.671) So I have two questions that I want to get to. The first one is really easy. How many people are actually working on that? Because that is an incredible amount of things to be managing. So I imagine you have sort of administrative slash managerial staff as well as veterinary staff. So can you kind of describe? Kelly Diehl (32:22.038) Right? You're going to be surprised. have like about anywhere between eight and 10 people who do that. Poodle People (32:28.795) I was actually afraid that you had a really small staff. Kelly Diehl (32:31.79) We do, we have a pretty small staff. Now we lean hard on the veterinarians and their, you know, their veterinary care team, their vet techs, right, to do some of that work. They're gonna package all that stuff up. But then we have the in-house people who send out the kits, process the data, talk to people every day on the phone, like my dog's sick, what do I do? What do I? Sadly, now my dog died. What do I do? Right? How do I get a postmortem done? So they kind of do that. And then we have a data team that is processing all of these pieces of information. I actually now help with some of that. So I will look through a dog's record when mostly I'm working on deceased dogs right now. to see like, okay, what was the cause of death? What did the veterinarian put down? What do we actually know? Because sometimes people, like all of us, we hear, my vet thinks it's a tumor, right? Well, is that really true? Can we say that? Is there a high index of suspicion, a low index? Did the dog have a postmortem? So we double check all of that data. And that's what I'm working on now is double checking all of that again, because our researchers really, really, really need to be sure that we're accurate. Poodle People (34:02.011) Yeah, that's a lot of data points and a lot of management. It's amazing that you pull it off with such a slim staff. Inquiry. Yeah, I'm sure. You know, they are very highly skilled at managing those things. You can't keep all of that straight easily. You have to have a plan. Kelly Diehl (34:07.139) Right. Kelly Diehl (34:11.488) Yes, my staff would agree. Kelly Diehl (34:25.1) Right, right. And we definitely made, you we had a pivot over time. We had to change laboratories at one time. We've changed our biobank, which was a big thing. Poodle People (34:36.093) The way that technology has changed in the past 12 or 13 years, you know, has probably impacted you as well. Kelly Diehl (34:48.086) Right, we redid the whole interface that people were using. We had to redesign it because it was just getting so clunky, right? The old one, you can imagine, using software from 12 years ago. Yep, right, so that was unexpected, let's just say, thing that we had to do a few years back. Poodle People (35:02.363) Yes, I can. Poodle People (35:07.463) Right. Poodle People (35:11.709) So my research question, if I were a researcher, would be to, like I am dying to know if dogs in Kentucky also have very poor social determinants of health that, you know, are they dying in the same way that, or are they developing the same diseases that citizens in Kentucky are experiencing? So I would. love for someone to look at that closely. I think that would be absolutely fascinating. Are you seeing any anything that you can share? Kelly Diehl (35:47.342) We have done, we did do a little bit of work with the University of Denver, looked at some social determinants of health in some of our dogs. And we have someone else who's gonna expand on that because, and in fact we have one person at Ross University, which is in St. Kitts, actually looking at that, but from broader spectrum, not necessarily regional. However, your question could actually be answered because we know what dogs are in Kentucky, right? We know we've got years and years of data from people and we could do that. That study could be done. Poodle People (36:27.762) Right? Poodle People (36:37.297) Right, it could be, yeah. It would be interesting to see how much our human lifestyles, secondhand smoke, inactivity, all of the things that I am acutely aware of having lived in Kentucky for some years now, those things contribute to our high rates of disease, of chronic disease. And it would be interesting to know if that... Kelly Diehl (36:39.459) Mm-hmm. Poodle People (37:06.533) lifestyle also affects dog health. Kelly Diehl (37:10.006) Yeah, it would be. And we can answer a lot of that because we ask those questions as part of this giant questionnaire. So we talk about secondhand exposure to secondhand smoke. We talk about environment like, what's your water sources? Like I said, have dogs. We can use GPS to help us. We can use zip codes. right, to look at where dogs reside. We ask about exposure to carpet flooring. We, you know, recently this came up for people, right? What's your primary cooking fuel? We've asked that for decades. I mean, or, you know, as long as the study's been going, we had some toxicologists help create the questionnaire. So we actually went to different experts too, to help us Poodle People (37:53.084) Right. Kelly Diehl (38:06.776) create this questionnaire. Exposure to, like, does your dog swim? Where did they swim? How often do they swim? Temperature of the water, which actually gets to metabolism. At first, I thought, why are we asking what the temperature of the water is where they swim? But it actually has to do not necessarily with toxin exposure, but really with metabolism. because you expend more energy if it's cold water and you're swimming. So that's a whole different thing. But we ask those sorts of detailed questions because we knew someday somebody would want to know. We know that laminate floors, for example, can off gas for much longer than we thought. And carpets are obvious because we can all smell it when we get new carpet. And yeah, so all of that exposure data, that's all sitting there. waiting for someone to look at. Poodle People (39:06.617) Is anyone, so laminate flooring is my, I despise it. Like I have this personal thing. I think it contributes to, this is my non-scientific guess, but I think that the proliferation of laminate flooring is not good for dog hind ends. And that is just watching my dog scramble on it. and knowing that as Americans that's what we continue to choose. Are you seeing those kinds of interest in those kinds of things as well? Are you seeing researchers ask specific questions about things like that? Kelly Diehl (39:51.022) You know what not so much. Yeah, what I would say if I had a Say what I see the most of people's current interest in the study is they really really really want to find what People call liquid biopsy, right? So biomarkers a disease that show up way before your dog has a tumor and So what they, what we see a lot of research because we have that data, right? have Doug gets Tamanja Sarcoma, let's say at nine years of age. Well, for nine years we've been collecting blood samples, right? When does something maybe show up? We have a lot of folks who are interested in, hey, give me this many cases of dogs with confirmed Tamanja Sarcoma and I want their blood samples for the previous five years, right? Before diagnosis, because they want to look for stuff. Poodle People (40:46.599) to see one. Kelly Diehl (40:50.03) And the other thing we can provide is, though it gets tricky, is age-matched controls that have not developed cancer. And we actually did a sub-project a few years ago where we went to our cohort and said, hey, you got any older dogs that were not too old for the study, but they're still alive, they had to be over 12, they had not had a malignant cancer history? We want some blood for them because we need controls, right? We don't have serial blood work, but at least it gives us a control population because where we're running into sometimes problems is we provide, had a, this is just an anecdote, we had a person in the Netherlands who's looking at our dogs and they wanted to look for genetic, right? Like is there a gene like we know about breast with women, right? And breast cancer, right? Poodle People (41:47.762) Thank Kelly Diehl (41:48.75) right? And is there a genetic underpinning also thinking maybe that could be bred out of Goldens? But she was looking, so she's like, I need this many dogs with a managerial sarcoma and this many age match controls. We're like, sure, here you go. And then we had a caller periodically over the last two years because we're like, that dog that was 11 and didn't have cancer. Well, guess what? It got cancer. So we have to send you another sample because that one now goes into your cancer pile, not normal. And so that's been a bit of a challenge to do. Again, we have some older dog data. And a lot of this data, we were, a lot of the genetic data, if people know about the V Foundation, which is for human cancer research, they actually gave us a grant so that we could do a lot of our genetic studies. And that genetic Poodle People (42:20.775) your yeah. Kelly Diehl (42:44.108) work, which would cost people a lot of money to run, is actually free. So we give it free to researchers. So we're like, don't bother doing this genetics. We got it already for you. We got the raw data. You just take some money and go do some other stuff with it. So that's a really, we're really proud to be able to, we're still increasing that bank, but yeah, we're proud to be able to have that for folks. Poodle People (42:49.404) Go well. Poodle People (42:55.857) Right? Poodle People (43:08.549) It's absolutely amazing to hear about it, really fascinating. So one thing that I see, I actually work in proposal development, so I read proposals. And I have been seeing a lot of PFAS and PFOS both calls and proposals. And I'm wondering if you are seeing researchers who are interested in that and or if... there will be a way to figure out if dogs have been exposed. Is that something you're testing or asking about? Kelly Diehl (43:43.566) We, haven't seen a lot of proposals come in, but I would, well, I guess the question is whether it falls under, because we do have some people interested in exposures, right? And cancer, but that can be pretty broad, right? We have some people interested in having metal exposures right now and volatile organic compounds, but they're not specifically like, I would expect us to have it, but I haven't seen one specific for that. Poodle People (44:17.373) Okay. I mean, I think we can probably guess if we have PFAS and PFOS in our bodies, our dogs probably do as well. So it's just interesting, interesting thing. Kelly Diehl (44:28.206) Mm-hmm. Yeah, we've seen some people actually interesting work done in horses looking at endocrine disruptors, in writ large and grazing, right? And they have some interesting stuff because it may link to equine metabolic syndrome. So we've seen some of that from those guys, but I haven't seen a PFAS PFOS one yet. Poodle People (44:58.511) Okay, interesting. So are there any, so as the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study comes to an end, what things are on your horizon? Will you just take a deep breath or will you embark on another large study? How do you see things going forward? Kelly Diehl (45:21.932) Yeah, think what we're thinking right now is no more big studies for a while because we going to need to, we're trying to figure out too, over the next probably decade, managing our repository. focusing on really getting out there and letting people know what we have. You don't have to be veterinarian, right? We'll let people who do human focused research, they can have access to the samples. The samples cost us a lot of money to maintain, which we are kind of estimating, well, how long do we want to keep them? How do we pay for that, right? Because we're going to have to. fundraise specifically for that. We're always gonna need a team to administer, send out the data. I mentioned generating picklists and stuff like that. So we'll always have a few people. We actually talked not that long ago to a wonderful researcher who did the Women's Health Initiative. If you've heard of that, it was done out of University of Washington. And they're probably 10 or a little bit more years from when they closed it. but they're still managing it, right? There's a small staff that still sends data and samples to people if they want it. So we know that we're going to be doing that for a while. And we have some in-house capability now. We have some folks who, some epidemiologists who will write papers that we'll write, right? Out of the foundation, which is not something we typically, again, do. But we will do that. And we're looking for partnerships because I think we're going to really try to accelerate the data analysis over the next few years because it doesn't do any good if it's just sitting there, right? And nobody's really looking at it. So we're trying to find new ways to fund people to do that. We have some partnerships we're working with, the Royal Veterinary College in the UK. Poodle People (47:26.684) Right. Kelly Diehl (47:39.278) we're paying for actually a postdoc. So here's one example where we're actually paying for a person. We're helping provide salary. They have a really large group there that looks at, that does these kind of epidemiologic studies. So we've partnered with them, paying for a trainee. So we're paying for their salary, but they have to look at our data, right? Like that's the deal. And with the guidance and mentorship of this really powerful group. there. So we're looking to make more of those kind of partnerships. Yeah. Poodle People (48:14.397) That sounds amazing. It sounds like you have so much data that people really could be studying all kinds of things for years. Kelly Diehl (48:26.828) Yeah, really. I'm going to make a joke, but it's not a joke to us. You know what the messiest data, you think it's the environmental data, but the worst is diet, right? The diet data is really hard to sort through. And I know people who do human health research and they think our data is like, you know, most dogs eat the same food every day, right? But it's still really, it's the messiest data we have. Poodle People (48:41.789) So. Kelly Diehl (48:53.966) And it's taking a lot of time to do what's called clean it. You probably know that term, which is again, trying to look at what people write, like write in and what category maybe that should go in. Do we have a big category, a small category? Right. I will give my favorite example, which is dairy. You know, do you give your dogs any dairy products and people, you know, and some people are like, I just want to know if it's dairy, right? So you have dairy big category. Poodle People (48:59.805) Mm-hmm. Kelly Diehl (49:22.818) Then maybe you have cheese. Maybe you have fermented cheese, right? Not cottage cheese. And then sometimes we have people write stuff in because they're not quite sure where it fits, but then you have to fit it in, right? You have to put it. And so cleaning the diet data has been a pain. And I think we all probably have some data that will be like big categories, like does your dog eat raw food at all, right? That kind of stuff. Poodle People (49:37.266) Right. Poodle People (49:51.805) Mm-hmm. Kelly Diehl (49:52.482) But it would be nice to get granular in that. But that's going to take a while. And that would be something that we would be working on, right? Even after a study is done, we have data cleaning projects that need to be finished. Poodle People (50:01.255) Sure. Poodle People (50:06.929) You are so glad that my dogs are not in there because I try to top dress their kibble with something different every day. Kelly Diehl (50:15.63) It's hard and like even if you you know If you keep I think people know for themselves how hard it is to keep a food diary I will say people are better for their animals. There's no question, but it was Because that's always the sixty four thousand the million dollar question I get from people was just what is the best not diet to feed so my dog doesn't get cancer, right and I we can't answer it right now. We just we can't Poodle People (50:23.559) Yes. Poodle People (50:38.587) Right? Poodle People (50:42.397) Right. Kelly Diehl (50:44.27) because we just, have to look at it. And the vast majority of our dogs eat kibble. So at some, it makes up some percentage of their diet, right? So it's not as easy to say, are you, like if you went to a person and you go, how much red meat do you eat? How much other meat do you eat? Are you vegetarian? Are you vegan? Are you dairy-free? you gluten-free? There's some big categories you could look at. but and then compare, but ours are gonna be tough to compare because so many dogs eat sort of similar, if you look at it from a high level, similar diets. But we'll have some data and it'll be very interesting, because we made people do it for years, right? Write down, go look at the actual labels on their diet bag or measure, which is tough for a lot of people, but they do it, measure what they're giving. Poodle People (51:30.567) Mm-hmm. Poodle People (51:41.287) people don't measure what they're giving. Kelly Diehl (51:43.938) Well, they do. But like you said, you top dress. If I said, well, how much do you give, you know, for some folks that's hard, but they do it. We have a lot of people who got, because they know they're going to get asked. So they kind of watch it a little bit differently. Yeah. Poodle People (51:49.031) Yeah. Poodle People (51:59.057) Right. Do you have some people who are on a raw diet? Because that kind of doesn't matter. Kelly Diehl (52:09.688) We do have a few. We do have a few folks who do, but I don't think I'm going to have to knock on wood with this. I don't think we have very many at all. They're exclusive raw diets. We have a lot of people who mix some in. And, you know, it can depend a little on and people change over the years, right? Because maybe their dog develops a condition, they need a prescription diet. So they switch or they have to do something different. have dogs with, mean, golden retrievers are allergic dogs. We have a fair number of dogs with allergies and they have to be managed a bit differently. But we'll see, but that's our messiest bunch. Everything else is much easier for us. Even some of the conditions are much easier for us to tell researchers if they come to us. But we have a few people who have, I don't say they volunteered, but they're interested and they may help with cleaning that data up. Poodle People (53:19.421) So as we kind of bring our fantastic conversation to a close, could you talk a little bit about how people could get involved in the research, either in supporting it or being aware of it? What would you suggest for our listeners? Kelly Diehl (53:39.03) Right, well definitely go to our website, which is more soundballfoundation.org because we have a couple different newsletters that people can sign up for. We have one that's devoted more to the golden retriever lifetime study. Obviously a lot of our participants are in that emailing list, but we have other people who are interested in hearing some news that's very tailored right to the study participants. We also have a monthly email for researchers or people interested in research, right? Where it will not only can you find the upcoming calls and different research kind of examples and all the application process on our website, but this email will keep people up to date like what's coming up as far as our research opportunities and anyone can sign up for those. And then the final one, have something called tips and tales, which is our general monthly email that has, again, that same sort of flavor, like it'll link to a blog, maybe that's of interest, it'll give some announcements, but those are more for our general donor population. We also have a quarterly, like, I don't wanna call it a newsletter because it's bigger than that, but, quarterly publication that comes out called Animal News and in it that's going to talk more about these are the studies we just funded. Here's an outcome that we have. Here's a interview with a researcher what they're doing. Here's we always have an update on the study in there, little one pager that sometimes we give more statistics in. So all of those are available for folks. are on Facebook, obviously, we're on Instagram a little bit. We don't have a huge social media presence, though we are, most of our stuff, our biggest area is LinkedIn, right? Because that tends to be where a lot of our, particularly our researchers are. So that's also where we reach out to them. But you can follow us on LinkedIn and we'll talk about some big, that's where we put some kind of splashy sort of findings if we have them and Kelly Diehl (56:06.04) promote again our research and what's coming up so you can find it there. Poodle People (56:11.581) That's a really good tip because I don't think I follow you on LinkedIn, so I definitely will. Kelly Diehl (56:16.942) Yeah, definitely. And also last on that, if you go to our main page, you can also look at where, how to donate with all different kinds of donations. We have people who donate via our tribute card program, which you can honor a deceased individual. And that can be a dog or a person. We've had people give a donation in honor of a person who's really into animals. also have, you you can celebrate a birthday. We have some people who run their own fundraisers for us and they may have like, we have people who do quite a few in the golden community, right? And they'll have like, we're gonna raise money, know, we're gonna have this get together and we're going to raise money for more cinema foundation. And so we have information on how to do that on our website as well. Poodle People (57:11.261) Well, that is just fantastic. It's been so interesting. This hour has just flown by. I will have to invite you back on to catch up on more things because I feel like I could talk to you for another hour without stopping. But I want to be respectful of your time. And I'd just like to thank you for coming on the podcast to share some information. Kelly Diehl (57:18.722) No. Kelly Diehl (57:39.208) I loved it. I loved talking about what we're doing and I so appreciate you inviting me to. Come on. Poodle People (57:46.481) You are so welcome. It really has been a joy. It's so interesting. I follow the Morris Animal Foundation because of my work, which originally got me interested in what you do. And I think that the foundation is really unique. You are big, but so small, so few people. Yet you have a huge impact. Kelly Diehl (58:08.43) Right, well, we, you know, I knew about Morris Animal Foundation for years, right? Because I, as a resident, right, I think we in that community know it is one of the few places you can go for financial help, right, for research. And yeah, we're a mighty group of, I think we have 38 total people doing the whole. whole mess and that includes the study folks too. Poodle People (58:40.519) Well, keep on doing it, it's really important. Kelly Diehl (58:43.912) I, well, we're hoping we got another 75 years in us. Poodle People (58:47.673) Yeah, exciting. Thank you so much for joining us. Kelly Diehl (58:54.018) thanks for having me on. appreciate it. Poodle People (58:56.327) Absolutely. Take care. Kelly Diehl (58:59.24) You too. Bye bye. Poodle People (59:01.085) Bye.