Dr. Judy Morgan 0:00
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. I'm your host. Dr Judy Morgan, my guest today is Chef Scot Hill, the co founder of Woof Creek Wellness supplements for dogs and cats. Today we have an amazing show for you. You won't believe all the steps it took for Chef Scot to get to where he is now formulating these supplements. He did not follow a traditional path, and he didn't start out wanting to make food for dogs. He started out in restaurants. Tune in. Stay tuned. You're going to love it.
Dr. Judy Morgan 0:44
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. I'm your host. Dr Judy Morgan, my guest today is Executive Chef Scot Hill, who has become a culinary chemist for pets. We're going to hear a lot more about that. I think you'll be shocked at the knowledge that comes out of this guy. Scot, thank you for joining me today,
Chef Scot Hill
man, thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
Dr. Judy Morgan
So you've always had a passion for formulating food, and somehow that has shifted over the years to formulating for pets. But tell me, how did you get started with this whole like, I want to, I want to be a chef and like, that's never dawned on me as something I'd want to do. So I want to know how somebody gets in that direction.
Chef Scot Hill
Yeah, you know, honestly, I don't remember it being a passion of mine. When I was a kid, I just kind of grew up around
Chef Scot Hill 1:45
lots of home cooking. I grew up in Alabama, and I was always with my mother in the kitchen. My brothers were 10 and 13 years older than me, so they were out doing, you know, water skiing with dad or whatever, going hunting and stuff. And I was at home with grandma and the aunts and my mom in the kitchen. I didn't get to go. I wanted to go. So I think I really did absorb a lot, you know, just being around that. And I remember my granddad kept bees, and just remember sitting at their table eating honeycomb. And every single thing that I saw, I wanted to know how it worked. You know, how does this work, all the way from fried apple pie to whatever grandma was canning, you know, so it was, it was sparked that way.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Now, does did any of that transfer over? Like, do you have a vegetable garden? Do you farm? Do you have bees? Do you do any of those things?
Chef Scot Hill
I would love to have bees. That's a definitely on in the body. Yeah, yeah, definitely
Chef Scot Hill 2:48
I love to garden. I, in fact, just before we traveled to do this podcast with you, I had just finished a little garden project at home. I planted carrots.
Chef Scot Hill 2:59
I've had difficulty growing carrots, but it is important to me to watch things grow and to be able to to enjoy that harvest. Living in Florida, it's hard. There's bugs I've never seen before in my life down there, so but you figure out what times a year to do it and when it works for you. And I like also watching plants live their full life, like I'll, if I have six broccoli plants or 12 broccoli plants, I'll let at least one of them go to flower just to see what it does, let it, let it live its full life, you know. And that's so cool.
Dr. Judy Morgan
It is very cool. And I've done a lot of gardening over the years, some successful, a lot, not successful. But you learn so much as as you go doing all of that. And you know, looking at the plants and what they look like, one of the things when I started studying Chinese medicine and got really into the food therapy, it was so cool to me to look at like a walnut looks like a brain. Walnuts are so good for brain health. You know, beans, kidney beans, they they look like kidneys. You know they've got healthy things in them if you have kidney issues. So if you look at the food and so, what's that look like? Where? What's that gonna help? Yeah, nine times out of 10, it looks like what it is.
Chef Scot Hill
It's like there's a roadmap there. And they tell a story. Yeah, you just got to listen.
Dr. Judy Morgan
So we were talking earlier about hydroponic gardens, and my first round was very successful. My second round has not been so successful, but you just started one as well.
Chef Scot Hill
Yeah, it's a whole new ballgame. It's a little weird it. It has, like, AI technology and little cameras on it. But it's really cool, because it really started from all the news reports of, okay, there's salmonella in my carrots, there's salmonella in my organic broccoli, or E coli and this and that. And we understand how that can happen
Chef Scot Hill 5:00
In big Farming industry. And I was like, I want a little more control. And the kids are grown, so there's not a lot of you know, I'm not feeding that many. So this really works for Lisa and I to where I can pick a salad every night right off the thing, which is very cool, yeah, and I have strawberries in it. Now. I'm looking forward to getting those
Dr. Judy Morgan
Yeah, I know what my husband would make hamburgers, and he'd say, I forgot to pick up lettuce at the store. I'm like, I have lettuce. right over here. Pick your lettuce. Do you want red lettuce? Romaine lettuce? Pick one. So it's very cool. All right. So let's talk about your animals, because I know they're a very when you grew up in Alabama, did you have animals?
Chef Scot Hill 5:43
Yeah, you know, we always had a dog or and I've had many cats. You know, cats were just part of life growing up. Some were indoor, most were outdoor cats. And one thing that being where I am now, and thinking back,
Chef Scot Hill 6:00
I can remember when watching my grandmother or my mom feed the dog, when I was really young, they were scraping off of a plate, or they were taking parts of of whatever they were using that they they didn't want to eat livers and necks and things, and giving that to the dog. And then at some point that stopped, you know? And I remember the first time seeing my grandmother give the dog some kibble, you know. And I didn't think anything of it then, and I was like, Oh, cool. How convenient, you know. But now looking back, you know, I see where that all kind of started changing, and how cool it was before it changed. And then so all that started making me think about dogs and cats and how we feed them and stuff, you know, it's all really connected with how I grew up.
Dr. Judy Morgan 6:49
You decided to become a chef. How did that happen?
Chef Scot Hill
Well, being, you know what? When I was probably, I don't know, 18-19, years old, I left Alabama, went to live with a cousin in Oregon, and it was kind of a couple of weird things happened my my aunt. I was living with my aunt, and she broke her arm, and I had to help with Thanksgiving dinner, right? And I enjoyed it. That was pretty cool, but that didn't really say, Okay, I really want to go to culinary school, because that seemed like a lot of work.
Chef Scot Hill 7:20
And then my cousin got a flyer in the mail for a culinary school in Portland. I was just outside of Portland in Beaverton, and I was like, yeah, why not? I'll do it. It literally started with a why not? And went to culinary school, did a two year program, got out, got a great job as a dishwasher,
Chef Scot Hill 7:46
you know, and, and that was a good lesson for me, you know, you've got all this training, but, but you really still have to work your way to it. And it so happened, the restaurant that I went to that was part of their their deal, like you're, you're gonna learn this first. And to this day, I do enjoy doing the dishes. And when I was a chef in the restaurants, that was always the most important position to me as well.
Dr. Judy Morgan 8:14
Interesting. So did you stay in Oregon for to be a chef?
Chef Scot Hill
I was there for about three years. You know, I did school, I did a few odd jobs there,
Chef Scot Hill 8:24
and then right after Oregon, I went back to Alabama, and that's when I really started putting some, some of my skills, putting when the rubber hit the road for the profession. And I was like, you know, I might be able to do this for quite some time, and it wasn't through encouragement that I stayed with it, because my dad and I grew up in a really small town in Alabama. My dad's like, man, you need to go down there and work at the paper mill. Get yourself a good job in retirement. And I was like, I don't know if that's for me. I get it, you know, but so I found a job in my hometown at a place. Gosh, what was the name of that place? I think it was Jay Oliver's. Don't know why I lived in the in a trailer in the backyard of this restaurant, and I was having the time of my life. They gave me a place to live.
Chef Scot Hill 9:20
I was able to come up with specials and things. And I was, you know, I was 21-22 years old, having the time of my life that lasted six months.
Chef Scot Hill 9:32
I met someone. I think I was down in Tallahassee. Went down to Tallahassee from Chillsburg, Alabama, and I met a sweet young lady, and that lasted three months. But anyway, I ended up working for the governor's club in Tallahassee, really, starting every every time I got a new job, it seemed like I took a little step up and learning more from really good chefs. Yeah.
Dr. Judy Morgan 10:00
So you said that you ended up working in St Croix. How did that happen? I'm so jealous, like I haven't figured out how to move my business to St Croix. But if I could figure it out, I might.
Chef Scot Hill
You know, I was at the time right before that happened, I was I had owned my own personal chef business in Atlanta, and I was in Atlanta during the Olympics. I worked as a chef during the Olympics.
Chef Scot Hill 10:28
I was a pastry chef during the Olympics, I would take any chef job just to learn more as I could. And came time and I wanted to kind of do my own thing, so I saw a niche where I would come into your house and teach you and your friends a meal. It was mostly a bunch of people partying, watching me work, you know, but it gave me, it was another perspective for me. With the skill that I had, I got to be entertaining, and I got to have a lot of fun. And then 911 happened, and all of a sudden people were a little, you know, I don't know if I want to spend money right now. Really don't know what's going on. So, so that fizzled out. And my brother's like, hey, we don't really, you know, it's a weird time right now. Why don't you come down to St Croix? I got to go away for a month. I got a couple of dogs that that I would really like you to come down and and just sit with for a month. I'm like, Hmm, an island in the middle of the Caribbean. I think I could do that for a little while. You know let me check my schedule. Yep, on my way, I went down there, and I literally stayed for a month. And actually that was the first exposure I ever had to homemade food for dogs,
Chef Scot Hill 11:40
because my, my brother's wife had taken, taken a holistic, holistic medicine course, and was really learning a lot about chemicals in food and this. So she's like, I'm going to start making food awesome girls. And so she taught me how to make food for for her pups. I was down there for a month. It took maybe three days for me to decide I could get used to this. And I decided I wanted to stay.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Wow, How long did you stay?
Chef Scot Hill
I was there almost 10 years. yeah. My, my two kids are, as they say, Croixen born. And on St Croix. It's, it's a beautiful island. It's 26 miles long and eight miles wide, and it takes three days to get from one end to the other. The roads are small and full of potholes, but it's worth every bump.
Dr. Judy Morgan
You betcha it is. So what made you leave?
Chef Scot Hill 12:37
just the kids were getting to school age. The public schools are really good down there, but we really wanted
Chef Scot Hill 12:48
my we wanted to get them into schools that had football and things like that now they didn't. Nothing turned out that way. Neither my son nor my daughter wanted to play any sports.
Chef Scot Hill 13:00
It worked out to be the best time for us to leave the island. It was difficult to leave,it was difficult to leave. And also, I was executive chef at a couple of restaurants down there. My head was hitting the ceiling, and I wanted to know what more I could offer myself in my career. What could I learn? And looking at raising kids and college and all that stuff. Someday I wanted to move on up.
Dr. Judy Morgan
So there you go. So where'd you land back in the States?
Chef Scot Hill
I landed in the Tampa, Florida area, and, man, I tell you what. Judy, I did something I never thought I would do. I went to work for a grocery store.
Chef Scot Hill 13:41
I worked for Publix for 10 years. I was a chef.
Dr. Judy Morgan 13:47
I guess they do cook food
Chef Scot Hill
when, when I was hired, I was one of maybe five chefs working in the whole company, and I was hired their new
Chef Scot Hill 13:58
project called Greenwise. Now that's this that chain's greener, type store, you know, cleaner label stuff. And I was a chef at one of their food areas inside the store, and then they came to me one day and said, You know what? We have cooking schools. They're a vocational for anyone can go and take classes. And I was like, that sounds pretty cool. So as a sous chef at a cooking school, I did that for a few months, and they gave me my own cooking school. They said, Hey, you look like you would like to do this on your own. So then I was the executive chef at the cooking school for a while. And man, was that fun. You know, working with kids and working with adults and classes and doing we taught everything from sushi skills to French cuisine to Greek cuisine, everything. So we really had to be well rounded. And then before I left Publix, I started focusing on nutritional recipes, and that really helped transition me to where I am now.
Chef Scot Hill 15:00
For the last Three years at Publix, I worked at the corporate office and developed recipes, working closely with the dietitians and nutritionists of Publix.
Dr. Judy Morgan
This is so cool. Yeah, so, I mean, your career has kind of hopscotched so many like, I didn't even know there were all these different opportunities. It's sort of like you're a chef, you're a chef, you know, you're either a chef at a little, you know, greasy spoon diner, or you're a chef at a five star Michelin restaurant. There's things in between, but this is, this is pretty cool.
Dr. Judy Morgan 15:34
So your notes say you've always been a culinary chemist at home. What does that mean?
Chef Scot Hill
you know, there was when I was, I guess when I was in Atlanta, I discovered this book. It was, it's by the author's name was Harold McGee, and it's called On Food and Cooking, the Lore and Science of the Kitchen. And I opened it up one day, and it started,
Chef Scot Hill 15:57
just at a glance. There was drawings of molecules and all this stuff. And I was a science geek from a kid, you know, and I always loved space and this and that. I didn't do well in chemistry in high school, but the more when I started applying that to something that I loved, like cooking, I wanted to know why certain foods? Why do you have to heat the oil in a pan first, before you, before you put the food in so the food doesn't stick all these little things I knew the chef had told me, or I'd learned it in school, but I wanted to know why. So that part of it ends up there's a lot of chemistry. There's a lot of physical science and chemistry going on there, and this book explained a lot of that. So I beyond the book, you know, I started just digging and digging, and that's, I love, that part of food. And turns out, as I started getting into it, there was a lot of restaurants that started getting into molecular cooking and and working with nitrogen to freeze things and all these crazy things. And I'm like, Hey, this is pretty cool stuff.
Chef Scot Hill 17:02
Build a bomb or cook. I don't know what you want to do. I stuck with cooking.
Dr. Judy Morgan
It sounds like a better plan.
Dr. Judy Morgan 17:10
So do you do all the cooking at home?
Chef Scot Hill
I do probably a good 99% of the cooking at home.
Chef Scot Hill 17:16
And sometimes I ask Lisa, you know, you want to be sous chef tonight. She always does want to be sous chef. And we, we do. We have a especially if it's been a stressful day, I might say, Hey, you want to cook for a little while, and we'll cook together in the kitchen. And kind of everything else blows away, you know.
Dr. Judy Morgan
And we kind of do the same, yeah, because my husband, Hue, does 99% of the cooking. I do the dog cooking. He does the people cooking, which is so funny, because now I've started helping with the prep, you know, slicing and dicing, and doing a lot more stuff for him. And the dogs are so confused, because they're always sitting at my feet going, but you only cook for us. Like, obviously, whatever you're chopping right now we should be eating.
Chef Scot Hill
They're looking at you going, waiting here.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Yeah, there's a little chaos that goes on, and they're underfoot and yeah, so every once while, I have to throw them a little bit of something so that, you know they're not totally
Chef Scot Hill
Yeah, I do that too,
Dr. Judy Morgan
so they're not totally disappointed. Okay, we've got a lot more to cover here. We're going to talk about your restaurant. We're going to talk about your pivot away from being, the human chef, but we need to take a break to hear from our sponsor. We'll be right back.
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Dr. Judy Morgan
Welcome back. You're listening to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast, and my guest today, Chef Scot Hill, who is the owner of Woof Creek pet supplements and products, awesome stuff. We're going to get to that stuff.
Dr. Judy Morgan 19:53
So we're hearing his exciting history, which just kind of blows me away, all the different things that he's already done in his life. But at some point you owned your own restaurant.
Chef Scot Hill 20:05
Yeah. I was fortunate to be hired at that restaurant before I became owner by default. And I'll explain. I was at Publix, like we discussed, and I was like, You know what? I really like this great company and everything, I kind of, I want to tone it down a little bit. I'm ready to get back in the kitchen, because I was pretty much at a keyboard a lot I did a few couple of weeks in a test kitchen, and then documenting everything. And the documentation part was, it's not really me,
Chef Scot Hill 20:39
which you know, it needs to be, I'd be better at the my job now, but I like hands on. So I started looking around, and I found a little restaurant in downtown Tampa, and the hours were great. It was like bankers hours, as we call it,
Dr. Judy Morgan
wow. It was, yeah, because I always think of the restaurant business, you're there at all three o'clock in the morning,
Chef Scot Hill
and that's what I thought I was going to end up with, and I found this. It was a restaurant in the business district in downtown, open from early morning to lunch, and then, you know,
Chef Scot Hill 21:12
we were closed on weekends. Lisa, my wife, hired me, and before she before we were a husband and wife, and we worked together so well, and then a relationship bloomed out of that, and that's how that started. We were having so much fun. We literally we took this little restaurant, we changed the name, we built, we made it brighter. We actually called it Bright Side, and we changed the menu, we brought in new equipment, we changed the whole decor, and then the pandemic hit.
Chef Scot Hill 21:49
We poured everything, yeah, we poured everything, blood, sweat and tears and all of our money into this thing. And then, just like it hit all of us, the pandemic hit us, and
Chef Scot Hill 22:02
we, I mean, no other way to say it. We lost it all. We lost everything. We had some great contracts lined up. We had a contract with the Yankees to do their spring training meals and stuff like that lunch every day. That was great for us. We had all the business from the lawyers at the courthouse, people that were unfortunately going to courthouse to pay tickets or whatever. They would hear about our place, and they would come and eat with us and and it was fantastic. We hung on for a little while. We tried to do the, you know, the no contact order here at the door, we'll bring the food to you. But then we realized this thing's going to last a while. And everyone went home, and our primary business was every office building downtown. And those went vacant, and it was, you know, ghost town down there. And everyone went home, and I was like, what am I going to do now? And turned out we had some extra time on our hands, right? And whereas before...
Chef Scot Hill 23:10
yeah, not a great combo, we didn't have a dog though. And the kids had been, oh, can we get a dog? Can we get a dog? And we've been saying no for a long time because it would we're like, it'd be cruel. We get a dog. And while we're still in this restaurant, we're never home. You know? And all the chips started falling together, like, Yeah, I think now's a good time, you know? And that's kind of how that started.
Dr. Judy Morgan
So, okay, so you got a dog. So which dog was this?
Chef Scot Hill
This is Lily Lou, good southern gal.
Chef Scot Hill 23:49
Lily Lou, actually named after my, my grandmother, Lily.
Chef Scot Hill 23:54
But Lily poodle, standard poodle came to us and she was, she is a great girl. And she, when she came to us, she was nervous, She was, she was a puppy, but she, she was looking for a home, you know, it, she needed to be rehomed. And we stepped in and helped with that. And she was nervous. She had some allergies. She just wasn't as healthy as I thought she could be.
Chef Scot Hill 24:27
And that's what started my journey of trying to figure out, okay, I'm kind of bored. I don't know what I'm doing. It started as a hobby to make treats for her, because every treat I bought at the store, I did not like what was in it, most of them had glycerin, because now chewy things are important. And I was like, I don't know that she needs glycerin, you know, or rice or, you know. So I'm like, What can I do? So I started studying, you know, and it kind of snowballed.
Dr. Judy Morgan 25:02
so you started making treats for the dog. How did that turn into because most of your your supplement line now is powders, you do have some treats too, right, which are minimal ingredients.
Chef Scot Hill
And that's, that's how we started. We started making treats, and we made two treats, and then, and then, that's when we really started noticing Lily. As she got older, she started manifesting some stress issues. You know, we could see the symptoms of stress, whether it was
Chef Scot Hill 25:35
new environments. It was weird for everyone during the pandemic, when you were walking dogs through the neighborhood, no one got close. Dogs couldn't meet, dogs didn't talk, she wasn't socialized. So I'm like, What am I going to do for this stress? That's where the supplement ideas started coming out. I'm like, There's got to be something that I can do, that I can supplement her diet with, that can help her her system. And as I was researching products and see what I could buy for in the interim, once again, everything was in a tablet form or a chewy form that had junk in it. Just didn't want to give my baby. And I was like, Well, I just won't hold it together. I won't put it I'll just turn it into a powder.
Dr. Judy Morgan
exactly, you know. And I say this to supplement companies and to pet owners all the time, because people send me emails with, what do you think of this product? And almost always, the pet owner gravitates to a chew because they don't want a tablet or a capsule that they have to shove down or convince the dog to eat in the food. But if it's a like a semi moist chew. You can feed it as a treat, and the dog tends to and even cats tend to take them readily. But it's not the active ingredients that are generally the issue. It's the inactive ingredients to hold it together with the humectants, and you know that to keep it soft, but hold it together. And I, I struggle with those because I don't like those inactive ingredients, and so I'm a huge fan of powders, because you can make them without fillers.
Chef Scot Hill
And it, it seemed like a no brainer, you know.
Chef Scot Hill 27:19
As I was looking at all the studying, okay? What can help her with her stress?
Chef Scot Hill 27:26
The things that were holding it together, like you said, those binding ingredients and all the fillers were, some of those are causing the problem. You know, they're counteracting what the the statement is, what the function is of that supplement. And my whole thing is minimally, that word processed as possible, so,
Chef Scot Hill 27:49
so that everything's not Ultra processed a powder form just made the perfect sense. And then it can just sink into the food, especially if you're you're serving fresh food. And even if you're not, you can mix it with water or, yeah, stock. But anyway, that started the journey,
Dr. Judy Morgan 28:07
which is very good. So you know, obviously no medical background, no veterinary background. So what kind of things did you study to help get you to this, like, these are the things I need to put together.
Chef Scot Hill 28:26
Yeah, I went at it first as a chef. So I'm thinking first, I'm thinking flavors, and then at some point I'm like, okay, you know, it turns out I'm not a dog, and I don't really know what they like. And you know, if you watch advertisements and everything, they all like bacon. They like bacon. They like bacon, or whatever, you know,
Dr. judy Morgan 28:48
or artificial bacon flavor, because there's really no bacon in there. But okay,
Chef Scot Hill
so the first thing I did, I said, well, I need to learn more about dogs, you know, I can. I can go at this with my heart and with the passion that I have for food as a chef, but I really need to know more about what makes a canine a canine, so I started taking canine nutrition courses and
Chef Scot Hill 29:11
digging as deep as I could. And at some point during that journey, we found this amazing resource of Dr Judy Morgan.
Dr. Judy Morgan 29:20
Never heard of her,
Chef Scot Hill
and there, as with anything, there's tons of information out there.
Chef Scot Hill 29:28
There are a select few that are good, and that that rise above the others, and you can really see that they're pliable, that you can really use it. And so that's how it started. I started the research, and I figured out I had to slow down my business plan. I had to educate myself first, and that's what we did.
Dr. Judy Morgan
So at what point did you you were making all these you were pulling together ingredients to make your dog Feel better. at what point did you say, hey, this could be a business. Like, what was that tipping point?
Chef Scot Hill
I think that was Lisa tapping me over the shoulder when I'm at the computer, and she's like, this looks like something we could do. And honestly, I had, for the longest time, I had wanted to,
Chef Scot Hill 30:19
to have my own product, you know, and I think that's part of the chef mind I want. I want something that I can call my own.
Chef Scot Hill 30:26
And it's some point it's good in your life when you have someone that can say, Okay, go do that and that for the first time in my life, that's first time that it ever happened, someone that was willing to work with me and say, go and go do that. And I was like, damn,
Dr. Judy Morgan
wow, especially if I have somebody who's going to support me in this. You know, when I wrote my first book, From Needles to Natural, I worked on it for a year, and I actually initially wrote it in six weeks, and then I kind of put it aside because I didn't know what to do with this manuscript that I had, and I don't know, eight months later, I was like, yeah, maybe I should get that out and finish it. So I took three weeks off from work, went and holed up at a time share in California with my husband, and worked eight hours a day, every day, to get this thing finished. We get back home from California, and I have my finished product, and I'm still tweaking this and tweaking that, you know, like moving commas and changing words. And finally, my husband walked over, and he held his hand over my Send button on my computer, and he said, If you do not send this into the publisher, I'm hitting send. somebody needs to get this moving. we need that person who says it's good enough. You know what you're doing. This is great. Make it happen. And if he hadn't been that extra push, so yay, Lisa, because if he hadn't been that extra push to make me actually get it out there, this Naturally Healthy Pets would not exist. Because that was the start.
Dr. Judy Morgan 32:07
So we all have to have, probably that, you know, that little voice that stands behind us going, you know, let's go.
Chef Scot Hill
I spent a lot of time saying, this product isn't ready. This product isn't ready. This product isn't good enough. And you know that thing of wanting to build my own thing for the longest time, it never made sense. The puzzle pieces were were not fitting together until I started making this product to help someone. And I'm helping these pets. We're helping their their their parents, you know, and that that was a no brainer. Then it was like, Okay, we got this. We're gonna do this.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Yeah, I mean it. I say this to people all the time who are like, I want to start my own business. Or, you know, I saw this this great, you know, my friend did this, and they're making all this money. Well, if you don't have a reason. Like, if it's just a get rich quick scheme, it's never gonna work. It's never gonna you have to have the passion and a reason for why are you doing this? And usually that reason has to be, I'm helping solve a problem for someone, whatever, whatever that problem may be. And in your case, it's animals who are suffering with different things, because you've gone way beyond the stress and immune supplement. So what was, what came after that?
Chef Scot Hill
stress was first and then we did immune we were following Lily. Lily, you know, she started getting tear stains. And I'm like, okay, tear stains. Here we go. Google tear stains, and you weed through all this stuff from the large manufacturers that tell you what the problem is. And then you, you start dialing in what's going on, and you land on, okay, let's, let's work on a healthy immune system. What do we need? What kind of superfoods can we add to her diet that would help boost or regulate her immune system. And so we developed the immunity and allergy supplement. And then from there, we just kept thinking, Okay, what else can we do? You know, and it's,
Chef Scot Hill 34:17
I get really passionate about it. It's so cool to follow sometimes, sometimes I'll follow an ingredient, you know, I'll have an idea like and that's part of how the Immune Formula started. I was really interested in kelp, and what's going on with kelp, you know, can I find organic kelp? Where? Where is kelp grown? That the waters are the purest. Turns out to be off the coast of Nova Scotia and and it looked closest to us. And so I'm like, Well, I would think I would like to use kelp in this. And that's how things work for me, you know, I don't just, I don't, I don't see a product and go, I think I can make that product. Let me see what's in the Ingredients and see if I can mimic it. You know, I fall in love with the ingredients.
Dr. Judy Morgan
That is very cool. So, you know, we all have this one thing in our life that that we're meant to do.
Dr. Judy Morgan 35:13
So, I mean, for me, it's the energetics of food. So if you name a food, I can taste it, I know what the properties of it are. It's like my idiot savant thing.
Dr. Judy Morgan 35:25
And so for you, it's the I found these cool ingredients, and how do I make those work for what I'm trying to accomplish, which is so cool.
Chef Scot Hill
It it's a lot of fun.
Dr. judy Morgan
It was very cool. So we met you originally when we did a
Dr. Judy Morgan 35:44
Naturally Healthy Pets Experience. It was actually our first one that we put on down in Tampa. almost in 2023, I want to say.
Dr. Judy Morgan 35:55
And so you guys asked if you could be a vendor. We had never heard of you. And I was like, I don't know. What kind of stuff did they make?
Chef Scot Hill
yeah, that was a big opportunity for us. We hadn't been part of an experience like that. You guys took a big chance on us, which is so cool.
Chef Scot Hill 36:12
It really being part of that led to the development of our relationship, obviously, and really was pivotal for our business, our company, we started becoming recognized, and we had it gave us even more reason to be passionate about what we're doing, because we started hearing how many people we were helping buy the products that you took on and that you're selling through your website and stuff,
Chef Scot Hill 36:39
and just being in the room that day and listening to the speakers, listening to yourself, and watching all the people share,
Chef Scot Hill 36:50
the people that attended, sharing their issues or or their triumphs. You know, seeing all that firsthand was really a game changer for us.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Yeah. I mean, when, when you're kind of down in the pit with the pet owners and hearing what they're struggling with, it gives you a really good idea of, you know, where, where are there holes in the industry? What? What? What do we need to what problem do we need to still solve? and there's still, you know, part of the problem, unfortunately, is being caused by the pet food industry, the veterinary industry, you know, so you make immune system support products, versus, unfortunately, the veterinary industry has gotten into the how many ways can we wreck the immune system? It's a huge battle. So, you know, all the immune suppressing drugs that, you know we kind of need our immune system, like, I look at all the diseases that are running rampant, like, even when covid was here, I was like, Well, I've got an immune system. I'm pretty sure it works. Let me give it a little extra vitamin C and D and zinc, And I didn't get covid Until late 2024,
Chef Scot Hill 38:09
covid was chasing you, and couldn't catch you.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Could not catch us. And my, my mother, never had it. She's 88 she's never had it. She lives with us.
Dr. Judy Morgan 38:19
You know, we just we have functioning immune systems, and, you know, I think that is so critical, and so we are wrecking our animals health because we're wrecking their immune systems. We're feeding them bad food, we're using immune suppressing drugs, and they don't get the mental stimulation. There's so many reasons,
Chef Scot Hill
and there's so many immune suppressing drugs that you don't even know that you might be taking or giving your loved, loving pet. And you know, with the
Chef Scot Hill 38:54
when customers come to us like if either they contact us through the website, or sometimes we do farmers markets, and we talk to them directly, and they'll give us an issue. And nine times out of 10, my dog has allergies or this, and that
Chef Scot Hill 39:11
many times, I'll through that conversation with the customer. They may not leave with one of our products because I want them to make some changes first. Because my products are called supplements for a reason, and I can't supplement a bad diet. I can supplement a great diet, you know? And they will only work so long if you're not already working on the system with real, fresh and good food. So we have conversations with our customers, and it's important to us that that we don't just sell you the product, that we can help you,
Dr. Judy Morgan
yeah, well, and that's and we're gonna, we're gonna take a break to hear from our sponsors, but that's a great lead in because I want to talk about what you feel is appropriate and what you're feeding your dogs. And I want to know if you're the chef for the dogs at your house too. We Will be right back. Stay tuned.
PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT #2
Happy New Year. I and the NHP team are feeling great about 2026 and we want to welcome in the New Year by offering our podcast listeners 50% off any of my books. That's right, 50% with code PODCAST71 when ordering on NaturallyHealthyPets.com.
Dr. Judy Morgan 40:24
Welcome back. You're listening to the Naturally Healthy Pets Podcast. I'm Dr Judy Morgan with my guest today, Chef Scot Hill. And so we know that Chef Scot does the cooking for the family most the time. But what about the dogs? You have two dogs? So there was Lily Lou. And then did you get Lily a dog?
Chef Scot Hill
Yeah, we got Lily Lou, Leila Mae,
Chef Scot Hill 40:48
it gets confusing. Yeah, I prepare their foods too. Yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Judy Morgan
So you make all their their fresh food from scratch. Are you raw feeder or gently cooked?
Chef Scot Hill 41:03
Raw. I do the BARF and I grind, you know, I grind the meats. I've been through a couple of really crappy grinders until I was like, All right, we're gonna invest in this. We're already saving money on vet bills, you know, by feeding them this way. So we got us a really good grinder.
Dr. Judy Morgan
And I have to say the good grinder was kind of the tipping point for me for really being able because at one time we had 13 dogs, I was grinding a lot of food. I wrecked my husband's plastic grinding attachment to his KitchenAid. Then I wrecked the metal attachment to the KitchenAid and wrecked the KitchenAid grinder when I wrecked that one. So that was like a nice little $500 OMG. And we still don't have another KitchenAid mixer. It's been 10 years. I probably should buy him one. It's about time. But instead, we went out and bought this carnivore one horsepower grinder that is just amazing.
Chef Scot Hill
Yeah, it makes a difference. You know, I experimented with. You see, on social media, all these beautiful plates of and a lot of people do feed raw in chunks. Yeah, you know, if I give my girls chunks, they're gonna go and eat it on the couch. You know, they're gonna pull it away and go hide it. It's in their instinct to grab a chunk from the animal and go. And so I found it's better for us. If I grind it, they stay at the bowl, and they don't drag it around the house. I do. I do, even though I make their food and prepare it all up and I put it in a little containers and freeze it. I like to use glass containers and we'll freeze it. I do give them raw, meaty bones. Still give them that you just can't beat it for I mean, I don't know if anyone's ever tried to floss a dog or a cat's teeth. Just let the bones do it.
Dr. Judy Morgan
You know, years ago, oh gosh, 20 years ago, at least, they used to make these. Maybe they still make them, but I never go to a pet store these floss balls and so they were this, like, long green plastic strips. And basically, when the dogs would pull it, would pull through their teeth and floss their teeth. It was great, except, you know, they'd pull on them enough that then they'd start to fall apart, and then you have to worry about them eating the stuff. And it was all over the house, and it's plastic, and, yeah, it didn't last very long,
Chef Scot Hill
the raw meaty bones. You just keep a pile of them in the freezer or whatever, and sometimes they're just on sale because no one else really wants them.
Dr. Judy Morgan
I've seen Turkey necks all the time at the grocery store. Now,
Chef Scot Hill
my girls love turkey necks. Yeah, they love turkey neck.
Dr. Judy Morgan
My dogs are too small and don't have good enough teeth,
Dr. Judy Morgan 43:35
so I'm a grinder too, because I've got little guys, and we've always taken in the now, we have two young ones, but usually it was always the senior dogs that had a million problems. So I had a lot of Toothless dogs. So they, you know, the ground food works really well. But amazingly, I used to feed my dogs like the shank bones that had just a little bit of meat left on them. You know, way too big for them to eat the bones. But even my, my Toothless dogs would sit there and pull off the little bits of meat. Their gums were so tough, so they weren't getting anything out of the bone, but they would lick the marrow and still pull on nutrients of meat and getting nutrients. And, you know, it's what they're meant to do. So it's, it's also mental stimulation
Chef Scot Hill
It's in their DNA. And I'm glad you said that. It is mental stimulation. It's more than just what they're getting internally. It really, I can see my girls' mood change, you know, they like Man, that was good stuff. And they'll come over and give me a little kiss yeah, but it's like a thank you. Thanks, man. That was good.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Well, I think that's one of the problems with like, our indoor cats, they don't get to hunt. To hunt and pounce and catch their prey, and that leads to the high stress levels that we see in the cats. And it's one of the things I tell people quite often, is look, if you're if, if you have an indoor cat, they still need mental stimulation so you can play laser tag With them. You can play whatever you want, like we have wool mice that we throw and they'll chase. But the laser tag is actually a huge frustration for the cats if they don't catch something at the end. So you have to throw something down and put the laser on it at the end and let them actually catch something. Yeah. Otherwise, you've just actually added to their stress. It's like, Where'd it go?
Dr. Judy Morgan 45:23
Yeah, poor kitties,
Chef Scot Hill
it's fun to watch, but, gosh,
Dr. Judy Morgan 45:28
it's fine because they enjoy the game. That's part of what they do, the chase and the prey. One of our cats the other day, I'm sitting there having my morning coffee, and I see three cats run by the bedroom window, and the first one I could tell had something in his mouth. I'm like, What's that cat got? And by the time Hue looked out the window, he was looking at cats two and three who were just chasing cat number one and didn't think anything about it for the rest of the day. And after we fed the dogs dinner, we were ready to put them out on the back patio. And there's two cats on either side of one of our swivel rockers on the patio. What are those cats doing? And they're both from each side under there. And so I'm like, All right, there's something out there. Before I put these dogs out, I gotta go see what these cats are after. And I go lift up the chair, and there's a rat. Oh, so what we finally figured out is, in the morning, the cats had gone down in the woods, got a wood rat, brought it up, and that poor rat was on our back patio all day, and the cats were tormenting this poor thing all day. So when I let it out from under the chair, of course the cats ran, the rat ran. And I'm like, okay, little rat, time to go. That dumb rat kept coming back. It kept coming into the outdoor kitchen. So then I put the dogs out, and now the dogs see the rat, and the dogs see the cats. So now we've got the dogs chasing the cats. The cat's chasing the rat. It was a free for all for about an hour. It was mayhem. I nobody ever caught the rat that I know of. The rat finally is not there. I don't know what happened to it. I don't really need to know. But yeah, so that is what cats are meant to do. That is what dogs are meant to do. Yeah, they need a little there was a lot of mental stimulation.
Chef Scot Hill
I'm glad that came up. You know, we love it when we hear people say,
Chef Scot Hill 47:12
my pets are my babies. You know, I treat them like people. And I love hearing that, because I'm thinking, Okay, you're treating them well. But we can't get too caught up in that, because we always we need to understand that, though, that is my baby, it is also a canine, you know. And there's some, some biological and genetic needs in there. And we were talking earlier, and you mentioned, yeah, your dog is barking out the window. Sometimes they need to, yeah, right? They need to bark. It does. Does it drive you crazy? Sure, it drives you crazy, you know. And sometimes they're barking at seemingly nothing.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Oh, yeah, but they're, they think there's something there, or they see something that we don't see. I mean, they're, they're a lot more or smell something, for sure, they're a lot more tuned in than we are. Yeah, I have two Barkers at mealtime, two out of four. It's loud. It is crazy. And if I, if I give them the look like the mean mom face, they stop, yeah. But then as soon as I turn my back to them to go back to making food, they bark again.
Chef Scot Hill
We've got one Layla. Layla barks at the two German shepherds that live next door. And when, when Lisa's in the room with Layla, Layla will bark like someone's coming at the house with a machete,
Chef Scot Hill 48:27
and I caught her yesterday morning. No one's watching Layla. She's standing in the window just staring at those dogs, not barking at all. And then when she saw me, she went woof. She's like, Oh no, I'm supposed to be barking and protecting you. Yeah, it's so odd that she wouldn't go into that behavior unless someone was watching.
Dr. Judy Morgan
It's, you know, if a if nobody's in the woods and the tree falls, Does anybody hear it? So where do you source all of your food for your dogs. I mean, are you grocery store shopping for this, or do you have special tips for where to get good stuff? Being a chef
Chef Scot Hill 49:11
Yeah, you know I've tried so many different things. It is so difficult. You know, it's even even for me, who is all about raw feeding, it took a while to break that mentality of, you know, gosh, I'm feeding my dog, and it's costing a little bit more than it's costing me to eat on certain meals some days. And I had to break that mentality because I know that what I'm doing is just as good as medicine. You know, absolutely so. But thinking about that, it's still not easy on the purse, and you really have to think about where you source things. So I do. I'll, you know, open up my grocery store app and see what's on sale. I do still,
Chef Scot Hill 49:53
if like, ground chuck is on sale, I may not get it, because it's not the ground chuck that my girls need. I try to stick As closely to grass fed as I can. I try to do, you know, organic vegetables, if when I'm adding vegetables, because I don't have an opportunity to feed fur and stuff like that, so I use vegetables for fiber.
Chef Scot Hill 50:17
But it's a good idea to check in to see if there's a co op in your area. You know, we're fortunate. There's a couple of butcheries not too far from me, and they have what they call their dog freezer. Yep, it's all the stuff that no one else wants to buy.
Dr. Judy Morgan
So a lot of a lot of butchers are actually just throwing that stuff away, or it's going in a scrap bin. And I'll never forget, we had a local butcher that opened near us when we lived in Jersey. And so we would go, because my husband has to have his big, fancy, dry, aged steaks. And so one time we were in there, I said, What do you do with all the scraps? And by the way, can you get heart and liver and kidney? And the guy looked at me like I was nuts. And I said, Look, this is before, you know, the whole raw feeding thing was popular. I said, Look, this is how I feed my dogs. I'm a veterinarian. I have a lot of clients. This is how they feed their dogs and cats. And we need, you know, need sources for this. And he was like, I never thought about it. Within a month, he was selling packaged, you know, all the leftovers, tidbits, pieces for dogs. And had brought in all the different organ meats and stuff, and so, you know, the local butcher turned into also the dog food pusher.
Chef Scot Hill
You got to step out of the conventional thinking a little bit. And honestly, you just,
Chef Scot Hill 51:34
if you're fortunate to have grandparents like mine that lived, you know, on a farm and did that, you just kind of take your brain back to what, what were they doing? You know? I now, I know, half the time I went into my grandmother's house, she's frying chicken livers and gizzards, you know, they were eating that stuff. I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole back then, you know. But they were eating that stuff. Yeah, that stuff was ready, available. Now, you kind of have to look for it. Yeah, there's an outfit down in Miami, Raw Fed Miami, yeah, in that Raw feeding Miami. Yeah, that's where I'm fortunate to be one day shipping away from them. So I get a lot of my stuff from there, because I like to vary the proteins. And I can't always do that with what I can buy in my area. And when I can't do that, I will sometimes go and buy some pre made venison raw, you know, like from one of the pre made raw companies, or something like that, and I'll be able to supplement some sort of protein or rabbit or something, right? If I can't find rabbit at the butchery or whatever, right?
Dr. Judy Morgan
Yeah, a lot of the ethnic markets are great places to shop as well. We have, we have quite a few Latino markets around here, so that's a great place to find some really weird things, like, if you're looking for pig tongue or cow tongue, or, you know, hearts, livers, you can find spleen we can find all kinds of
Dr. Judy Morgan 52:51
weird things that we would kind of look at and go, Well, I don't know if I want to eat that, but it's a great source. I love going in those markets because I look at the fruits and vegetables. I'm like, I don't know what half of these are. I think a lot of them are, like, Caribbean fruits and vegetables that I just do not recognize at all. Like, I wouldn't know what to do with that
Chef Scot Hill
exactly. And, and, you know, you can look and you find these things, and you look it up and see, is that going to be good for my dog? And, you dig into it, and, yeah, you know, right before, I think it was yesterday, I made a batch of food, and we were talking about gardening, before we were on the air and and I just harvested, harvested some broccoli. And I think it was one of your podcasts, or one of your videos I was listening to, and you're like, save those broccoli stems, you know? So I did because I had right there. I mean, a broccoli there's really not a great yield. I think my broccoli plants probably cost me 500 bucks a piece. There's not a great yield. So we take the leaves off of that, we take pieces of the plants that we even buy, yeah, and we grind that up for the dogs.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Yeah. Absolutely, yeah, absolutely, yeah. It's funny, because I never thought about eating beet tops, yeah, the leaves. I always ate the beets. I didn't know you could eat the leaves. But, you know, then I in making dog food, I'm like, Oh, you can use those to make dog Hey, those are really good. Yeah, the dogs don't get them anymore. They're mine.
Dr. Judy Morgan 54:19
So how often do you do you make their food every day? Or do you set aside time for making big batches?
Chef Scot Hill 54:30
Yeah, it takes a couple hours to do. So I do set aside time to make
Chef Scot Hill 54:34
I do about 14 to 15 days. You know, stretch on that make enough for 14 days, and I find out that's a good period of them to be on one protein for a while, and then I'll switch it up and go from chicken to beef and from beef to rabbit or something like that. And honestly, sometimes it's one one batch of food might be okay. This is what's left in this part of the freezer. This is what's over here in this part.
Chef Scot Hill 55:00
The freezer, and there might be spleen from a cow, liver from, you know, a pig, and the the muscle meat is going to be from a chicken. So, yeah, it's like, I'm feeding them a turducken.
Dr. Judy Morgan
It's a smorgasbord. Yeah, it really is, you know, I know that some people get really stuck, and it comes from the veterinary field, don't over change what you feed them, put the same thing in the bowl twice a day every day. What horrible advice.
Dr. Judy Morgan 55:27
So I my dogs rarely eat the same thing two meals in a row. It's just whatever I pull out because I have lots of different things in there. And I've really gotten away from making my own because I have such great sourcing of human grade really high quality products. Yeah, so it's if somebody doesn't want to spend the time. Certainly, there's so many options, thankfully. And it's just in like, the past 10 years that it's really kind of exploded.
Chef Scot Hill
And I would my advice to anyone that wants to start raw feeding, or even gently cooked, is just, you know, number one, follow your heart, follow your gut in and especially if you you had the opportunity to raise kids, you know, you didn't, hopefully break them and
Chef Scot Hill 56:12
you learned how to feed them. I do get worried When? When? When people you know say, Yeah, I feed my dog raw, you know, I give them chicken and rice every day, you know. And I'm like, You're I try so hard, you know. And I'm like, you're on a great start. Let's, let's think about,
Dr. Judy Morgan
you're putting real food in the bowl. So that's better. I used to get clients that would come in and they'd say, Oh, I feed raw to my dog, and they very proudly. And I'm like, Ah, that's amazing. What do you what do you use? I go to the grocery store and I buy packs of hamburger, and I feed them raw hamburger, and I'm like, Whoa, we have a long way to go. Yeah. So, you know, for anybody who is just starting out, there's tons of resources out there. Obviously, you've found a lot of resources to be able to do this for your dogs. You know, there's a lot of courses out there. We have Homemade Food for Dogs 101,
Chef Scot Hill
your course is fantastic. It really is. Lisa just finished your course, and we've, man, she's, we talk about all the courses that we take.
Chef Scot Hill 57:14
I'm almost through your course, and I love it. There's, there's information in there that that that is,
Chef Scot Hill 57:22
it's vital that people understand, like you just said you can't just throw beef and I know in your heart, it feels like you're doing so well. And, gosh, it was expensive, you know, but, yeah, just bone calcium alone is
Dr. Judy Morgan
right, yeah, yeah, there. I mean, there's, there are certain vitamins and minerals that we're just not going to get from meat, and so we've got to get that vitamin D and the trace minerals with because if we look at a whole prey diet that they would eat in the wild, they're going like I my Barn Cats, they catch a bird, they eat the entire bird. They're eating the brains, they're eating the feathers, they're eating the eyeballs, they're eating what the bird ate. Yeah, they're eating what the bird ate, because they eat the intestines. So if we looked at what a dog would would get in the wild. It's, you know, they're eating everything, and that's where a lot of those trace minerals are. And like you said, we don't really have access to fur and feathers. I mean, we could buy them, I suppose.
Dr. Judy Morgan 58:14
But anyway, Scot, this is amazing, and so I now I can give you the bio for Scot. He actually is a certified professional canine nutritionist, devoted dog dad, and provides holistic wellness products and guidance for his fur family and for pet parents worldwide. And he co founded Woof Creek Pet Wellness in 2020 and continues to formulate clean, sustainable and pivotal health pivotal. It's like minimally health blends for the best health span of our beloved dogs and cats. And so we will tag all of your social media sites. website. We have your products at DrJudyMorgan.com
Dr. Judy Morgan 58:57
so thank you. We are proud to have them. They are amazing, and we thank you for all the work that you're doing. It is, it's very important, and I'm so glad that you're passionate about helping our dogs and cats, and you're you're going to be focusing more on kitty cats in the future, right?
Chef Scot Hill
Yeah, we're really excited about a lot of new projects that we have coming around the corner. And one of that is, I feel there's a void out there for for wellness in cats. And it's, it's our whole mission is to expand that health span. And that's, that's not necessarily expanding the lifespan. It's does make the good years even longer. Exactly right? We want to be good all the way to the end, exactly. And we want cats to enjoy that too,
Dr. Judy Morgan
exactly. Everybody go hug your pets. Thanks for listening.
OUTRO/DISCLAIMER 1:00:00
The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. It is no substitute for professional care by a veterinarian, licensed nutritionist or other qualified professional. You're encouraged to do your own research, and should not rely on this information as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Dr Judy and her guests express their own views, experience and conclusions. Dr Judy Morgan's Naturally Healthy Pets neither endorses or opposes any particular view discussed here.
