10 Years of CBD Dog Health: 10 Years of Supporting Pets Naturally

Whew. I can't believe we did it.

Ten years. Hundreds of animals. Thousands of cases. More than 150,000 pet parents who let us into the hardest weeks, or even years, of their pets' lives.

I did not plan any of this. I want to tell you how it actually happened.

When I Started Questioning the System

I was eight years old the first time an animal died in my hands.

His name was PeeWee. He was a Muscovy duck and he was mine, and his foot came off in my hand while I was holding him. I had done everything I was told to do. I had followed every instruction given to me by people who were supposed to know. It didn’t matter.

That was the first lesson, and it took me thirty years to understand it: following instructions is not the same thing as knowing what you are doing.

My second lesson was Lucy, my first dog. I loved her and so I did it all by the book with her. Every protocol, every recommendation, every appointment, exactly as directed. And then she died at only seven years old. The autopsy found IBS and nothing else. Nothing that should have taken a seven-year-old dog.

Standing there without a real explanation after doing everything "right" changed everything for me. What I was left with was a suspicion I could not put down: that the answers I kept being handed were not good enough, and that somebody was eventually going to have to go find better ones.

I did not go looking for a career in any of this. I had founded Miami Children's Theater and built Tampa Bay Parenting Magazine, alongside weekly television and radio segments where I talked about natural living, keeping your home non-toxic, and feeding your family real food. 

That was my work for years, but looking back, it all came down to the same question in a different costume: Is there a cleaner, safer, more natural way to keep our families, and our animals, healthy and whole?

Saying No & Finding My "Yes"

Something had been wrong with my body for a long time before anyone would put a name to it. In 2015 someone finally gave me the name I was looking for, rheumatoid arthritis, and with it came a lifetime of recommended pharmaceuticals that would manage my pain, while quietly taking other things from me.
This time I didn’t just take someone’s word for it. I said no. But that meant I had to go find out what my yes looked like.

So I did. I was already an herbalist. I knew plants, I knew what they could do, and I had used them for years. What I did not know—and what almost nobody knew in 2015—was that there is an entire regulatory system in the body built specifically to receive their benefits.

I learned about the endocannabinoid system (ECS). It governs temperature, mood, appetite, immune response, inflammatory balance, sleep, and physical comfort. It is the body's master balancing mechanism, and the best part? Hemp, mushrooms, and dozens of common plants speak to it directly.

Then I learned something interesting that ended up changing the direction of my life: every animal with a spine has this system. Us. Dogs. Cats. Horses. All of them were running the exact same internal system (one naturally hardwired to interact with plant compounds to maintain balance!) and yet almost nobody in veterinary medicine had been taught it existed, because it wasn't in the curriculum.

Before There Was a Product, There Was a Fight

Medical cannabis was not legal in Florida. Before I could do anything else, that had to change.

I worked with United for Care and Women Grow. I campaigned, I organized, and I sat in rooms with people who had been taught since childhood to be afraid of this plant, walking them through the science one person at a time. When Amendment 2 passed in November 2016, it was not just a headline to me. I had put years of my life into it.

Ten days later, before the law had even taken effect, I produced the Canna Conference—a statewide event in Tampa where doctors, veterinarians, and patients gathered across three days. More than 200 practitioners spent that weekend learning the endocannabinoid system from the ground up. Most of them had completed years of medical and veterinary education without ever once hearing the term.

That same year, I earned my professional certification in Medical Cannabis for Therapeutic Use from the University of Vermont's College of Medicine in their inaugural program. I also sold Tampa Bay Parenting Magazine, the business I had spent years building, because I knew now that my life was headed in a different direction.

The Gap No One Was Filling

After learning about the ECS in animals, I went looking for something plant-based I could give my own dogs. There was next to nothing.

What little did exist on the market was underdosed to the point of being decorative. I knew I was standing in an aisle full of products formulated by people who had never once knelt on a tile floor at midnight next to a fourteen-year-old dog who could not get her back legs under her.

There were people talking about CBD for pets by then, but what I could not find was anyone talking about the endocannabinoid system, talking about formulating specifically for animals, or running real cases, or teaching practitioners. Nobody was asking which specific plants and fungi interact with that system in a dog's body, at what dose, in what combination, and for which need.

So I decided to be that person. Not out of ambition, but because once again I had a sick dog in front of me, and this time I was going to ask those questions no one else was asking.

Odie & The Story Behind Our First Formula, EASE

Odie was my mini schnauzer. Nine pounds of pure attitude and the great love of my life. Then one day Odie was diagnosed with Degenerative Myelopathy, a diagnosis where you're handed a timeline and told there’s nothing you can do but keep them comfortable. 

I refused to accept that there was nothing to do. That’s when I first formulated a blend of hemp extract, turmeric, and frankincense, my three plant powerhouses for supporting inflammatory balance, as well as his mobility and joint comfort, all of them used across Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda, and Western herbalism for centuries. That blend eventually became our EASE formula, and it was the first formula I ever created.

My Odie was able to live a full, comfortable life with me for years after his diagnosis. I don’t share this to say that gets to be the case for every dog, but it’s my dog’s story, our story, and it was enough to make me devote the next decade of my life to this mission, and to helping other pets like Odie.

Fire Flake Farm: Where the Real Education Happened

If you want to know where most of our formulas originated, it wasn't a lab. It was a farm in Florida full of animals nobody else wanted.

I opened Fire Flake Farm to do just that, to take in the old ones and the sick ones. Hospice cases. Dogs with heavy diagnoses, prescription lists as long as your arm, and families who had given up after being told by their vets that there was nothing left to try.

Watching these animals, it became clear to me that the current standard of care wasn’t enough, and that no one was looking at the whole animal, we seemed to be stuck in a cycle of managing symptoms with more meds instead of supporting our pets with real nutrition and whole plant and fungi medicine.

As word spread about the whole-plant support and fresh food protocols I used at the rescue, holistic veterinarians and pet parents began reaching out. Vets wanted to collaborate, to see how plant-based nutrition, hemp and fungi could help support these senior dogs' everyday comfort.

I documented everything: dietary changes, botanical routines, energy levels. Here I learned what no textbook could teach: how whole-food nutrition, plant extracts, and clean living could help bring an animal's system back into natural balance.

I shared my formulations, and my experience with them, with holistic veterinarians who wanted better options for their patients, and together we helped more than just my dogs. We built a foundation of whole-plant wellness at a time when the blueprint didn't exist yet, and we built it one dog at a time. Those vets took a chance on a new approach, believing that we could change pets’ lives, and I have never forgotten it.

The Real Dogs on our Labels & Behind our Formulas

My core philosophy, and the mission behind every one of our products, comes directly from those years running my rescue: Don't just chase symptoms. Work to bring the whole animal back toward systemic balance, and let the body do what it was built to do.

Our products weren’t made for profit, they were made for real pets, mine and yours. Every time we encountered a dog needing natural holistic support that we couldn’t find on the market, I formulated the natural support what we were looking for:

• Ceasar, who we lost before he could get the stress support he needed, and Nina, who always needed support during our FL thunderstorms, were the inspiration behind CALM.
• Odie, whose story I shared above, was the inspiration for EASE, to support his mobility and comfort.
• Rico, Daisy and Potato, senior rescues needing serious immune and neurological support, inspired HEAL.
• Princess, Kyro, and Norman inspired REMEDY, SOOTHE, and NOURISH when they needed targeted topical and skin care.
• Jolene and Rhemi needed natural grooming products to support their skin microbiomes, the inspiration behind REPLENISH and RESTORE.
  

This is not a marketing gimmick, and I want to be completely clear about it: Every dog on every label we make is a real dog that formula was inspired by and created for.

If you look at our brand logo, as well as our CALM bottle, you will see Ceasar, a French Bulldog. He’s not just the face of the company because he’s cute. He’s there because we lost him, and what took him wasn't a disease, but extreme, overwhelming panic. I wished he had been able to get the natural calming support he needed, and that’s why CALM exists, and why his face is on everything we make.

Sourcing the Ingredients: Seed-to-Bottle Integrity

While all of this was happening, hemp was still federally illegal, which meant I spent two years building a supply chain with no guarantee it would ever be allowed to pay off.

I traveled to Colorado, where growing was legal, and I found real farmers. Not brokers. Farmers working regeneratively and biodynamically who would let me walk their fields. I learned how to source clean seeds and select specific plant strains that naturally suited a dog's needs and physiology. I found extractors who used supercritical CO2 on the flower only, no butane, hexane, isopropyl, or harsh solvents.

I wanted to trace every finished tincture back to a specific organic field, and I built our entire company around that requirement, from seed to bottle. 

In December 2018, the Farm Bill passed, hemp became legal across the country, and everything I had spent the past years quietly assembling was finally allowed to exist publicly.

Our First Years

To take this dream further, I needed a team I could count on. I asked my best friend, Hernando Umana, if he would build this with me, and he said yes. Ten years later, he is our CEO. In 2019, my partner joined to lead operations, and soon after, Carter Easler and Sam Gordon joined our core team to lead education and marketing. Small but mighty, off we went.

That same year, we launched the Healing Naturally Tour, traveling across the country to educate veterinarians and pet parents in city after city. Later, I toured alongside Dr. Judy Morgan, speaking on conference stages, in veterinary continuing education classrooms, and in countless rooms and auditoriums full of pet parents who had been told there was nothing left to try. 

I eventually started my podcast, Your Natural Dog, to reach more pet parents and pet professionals. My mission has never been just to sell something. I want to share education, share access, empower pet parents. You cannot make an empowered decision about a natural path if nobody has ever taught you that the path exists.

Over the years, our CBD formulas have won industry awards, which I’m proud of but which mattered to me less for the trophies and more for what it signaled: the pet industry was finally looking for the same answers I was, and many pet parents were no longer willing to settle for cheap defaults.

Expanding into Mushrooms: The Next Frontier

Even after creating CBD Dog Health and finally having a CBD product for pets I could trust, my search for better answers wasn’t over.

When my dog Nina was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, I knew I wanted a high-potency, therapeutic-grade functional mushroom extract to pair alongside her CBD regimen for deep immune and cellular support.

Once again, I found a familiar hole in the market. While the aisles were full of imported mushroom powders, most were grown on oats and grain substrates, some were extracted poorly or not extracted at all, or filled with synthetic additives. Nobody was making clean, dual-extracted, wild harvested or naturally cultivated, liquid mushroom extracts, formulated specifically for pets.

So, once again, I built what was missing. I partnered with myco-alchemist Jason Scott to create my formulas and launched MycoDog in 2023, creating triple-extracted, wild-harvested liquid mushroom extract formulas specifically for pets. 

Our very first formula, VITALITY, was born directly out of my love for Nina and my refusal to settle when she needed deep cellular support most.

Backing It Up With Data: Our First Study

As my senior rescue Miss Daisy aged into her golden years, watching her spark fade as she experienced cognitive decline inspired our next mushroom formula, CLARITY, a synergistic blend of functional mushrooms and adaptogens built to support brain health and nervous system function.

After seeing Clarity help hundreds of senior dogs, we decided to take a massive step forward in our journey, one that almost nobody in the pet supplement industry is willing to take: we studied it.

We launched our Senior Dog Study, a formal clinical trial directed by veterinary researcher Dr. Joel Ehrenzweig, DVM. It combined in-clinic veterinary evaluations and blood biomarker tracking with smart collar data and real-world home monitoring by the families who knew these dogs best.

The results were remarkable: roughly 81% of dogs held steady or showed marked improvement in their cognitive scores, with nearly 59% showing direct cognitive improvement.

We published the data because proof matters. It was a proud milestone in our 10-year history, making MycoDog the only pet mushroom brand backed by real published research.

Ten Years In

We’re ten years in, with more than 150,000 pet parents who have trusted us with their animals. Hundreds of veterinarians now reach for these formulas in their practices, a reality that still stops me cold considering that when I started, most vets wouldn't even say the word cannabis out loud to a client.

Ten years later, our commitment hasn't shifted. We remain independently owned, small-batch, and uncompromising in our standards. Our hemp is still grown organically on clean American farms without pesticides, extracted using pure CO2 from flower only. Our functional mushrooms are still naturally cultivated and sustainably sourced from the Pacific Northwest, and every single batch is third-party lab tested for absolute purity.

Thank you for trusting us with your family. Thank you for your stories, your comments and your reviews and your emails about your dog having more pep in their step, or getting one more great summer with your fourteen-year-old Lab, or the new rescue who finally slept peacefully through a thunderstorm. 

We built this company one dog at a time—it may have started with my dogs, but we are still here ten years later because of yours. Thank you, and here’s to the next ten.

 

 

 

 

Angela Ardolino

Angela Ardolino, a certified cannabis and fungi clinician, brings over 20 years of expertise to the field of holistic pet wellness. As a graduate of the inaugural Medical Cannabis for Therapeutic Use program at the University of Vermont School of Medicine, she is a passionate advocate for safe, natural, and ethically-grown whole plant and fungi medicine tailored for pets.

Angela is the founder and formulator behind CBD Dog Health and MycoDog, two pioneering brands that prioritize pet health through carefully crafted Full Spectrum Hemp Extract CBD for dogs, cats, and horses, as well as wild-harvested, dual-extracted mushrooms and adaptogens.

Committed to the highest standards, Angela continues to educate and inspire pet parents through her popular podcast, Your Natural Dog, where she hosts experts to discuss holistic pet care, natural remedies, nutrition, and training. Follow Angela Ardolino on her website, Facebook,