When a 14-year-old rescue named Miss Daisie began standing over her water bowl and forgetting how to drink, Angela Ardolino knew something was wrong. The dog wasn’t sick—she was slipping away. “She’d get up and go to the water bowl and just stand there,” Ardolino recalled. “My partner said, ‘I think she’s got Alzheimer’s.’ He said that it makes you forget how to eat and drink. And I was like, what? You’re still thirsty, but you don’t remember how to drink?”
Daisie was one of dozens of senior dogs Ardolino has treated for canine cognitive dysfunction (CCD)—the pet-world equivalent of Alzheimer’s. But instead of turning to pharmaceuticals, she reached for Lion’s mane, bacopa, and full-spectrum hemp extract (FSHE). Within a week, Daisy’s fog began to lift. “She was making eye contact again,” Ardolino said. “Giving me kisses. I was like, why isn’t everybody reporting this?”
Where It Began
Ardolino’s journey into plant and fungi medicine didn’t begin with animals—it began with herself. In 2015, she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disease that left her in pain despite living a clean, “toxin-free” lifestyle.
“I kept wondering, how did I get this?” she said. “The doctor prescribed Humira—that was the only thing I was told or offered. That drug had already been linked to lymphoma. It literally went against everything I had preached.”
So she searched for alternatives. “That’s where I found cannabis. I took the dropper and immediately could feel the pain leave my body. I was instantly questioning why the hell is this illegal?”
At the time, she was in Florida, where cannabis was still prohibited. Outraged, she sold her media company and dove headfirst into the plant medicine world. She trained under one of the first dispensary founders in Boulder, Colorado, then enrolled in the University of Vermont’s School of Medicine Cannabis Program. There, she discovered something that changed everything: every mammal has an endocannabinoid system.
“I’m a diehard animal lover,” she said. “When I learned that, I knew what I was supposed to do.”
The Farm That Became a Laboratory
After graduating, Ardolino launched a rescue farm for senior dogs, pigs, and chickens. It became her laboratory for healing. “I’d take dogs the vets were ready to put down—lame, covered in tumors, cancer, seizures—and every single time I was able to change their diet, wean them off pharmaceuticals, and put them on a full-spectrum hemp extract,” she said.
Some got a touch of THC; others received only CBD and adaptogens like turmeric, frankincense, and medicinal mushrooms. The results were staggering. “I was literally watching the body do what it’s supposed to do when it’s helped with just plants and adaptogens,” she said.
When her own Doberman, Nina, was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a deadly bone cancer, Ardolino went further. “She’s the dog that I gave 10 milligrams of THC every single night,” she said. “It did not kill her and it was not toxic. It saved her life. It prevented cancer from metastasizing.”
The Queen of Adaptogens
Today, Ardolino calls cannabis “the queen of adaptogens.”
“Anything I pair with her becomes more powerful,” she said. “Cannabis alone has been proven already to interact with eight of the twelve signaling pathways of cancer.”
She paired cannabis with mushrooms like Lion’s mane, cordyceps, reishi, chaga, maitake, shiitake, and red-belted conk, studying how dual extraction techniques—both hot-water and alcohol—preserve key bioactive compounds. “Once you know how to extract all those medicinal compounds without damaging them, if you can get them in us, hit the bloodstream the moment they hit the mouth, you can feel them.”
Her passion led to MycoDog, a mushroom-based pet wellness company, and later to her first formal research project: the Clarity Trial.
The Study That Changed Everything
In 2024, Ardolino’s team launched a year-long clinical study through Veterinary Health Research Centers (VHRC), testing her formulation, Clarity, on senior dogs diagnosed with CCD.
Over 84 days, 30 dogs were evaluated using cognitive scoring, activity-tracking collars, and biomarkers such as C-reactive protein (CRP) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF).
The results were stunning:
- 81% of dogs showed measurable improvement in cognition scores.
- Zero adverse events were reported.
- Biomarkers confirmed reductions in inflammation and increases in neurotrophic growth
CCD.
“We had dogs that were mild, moderate, and severe,” she said. “And we saw improvement across the board. Even the ones that didn’t improve stabilized. That’s a win.”
She’s quick to remind skeptics that CCD mirrors human dementia—same biomarkers, same neurological decline. “This is a translational model for Alzheimer’s,” she said. “We usually test on mice, then dogs, then people. This time, the dogs got to go first.”
Why the Vet System Is Broken
Despite her credentials, Ardolino doesn’t mince words about the state of veterinary medicine. “Animals are considered property,” she said. “So every bad player comes over to this industry. I thought I’d be surrounded by hippie animal lovers, but instead I’m surrounded by people taking advantage of us—because they know we’ll do anything for our pets.”
For pet parents who simply want to do right by their companions, it can be tough to cut through the garbage and know where to start with independent research. She’s deeply critical of allergy and arthritis drugs like Apoquel, Cytopoint, and Librela, calling them “awful” and “having intense adverse side effects.”
“They don’t fix the problem,” she said. “They turn off the immune system so it no longer reacts. When you stop them, the immune system comes back online—and sometimes the body freaks out.”
Her advice? “Turn to hemp first.”
Ardolino believes that misinformation—not lack of compassion—is the real barrier for most pet owners. “You can’t kill your dog with a pure product,” she said. “Dogs are sensitive to THC, but it’s not toxic. We’ve got research proving you can’t hurt them with a pure extract. You just start low and go slow.”
She stresses that every senior dog—every senior person, too—should be on a full-spectrum hemp extract daily. “It supports your endocannabinoid system and immune system,” she said. “Large breed dogs are senior citizens at seven. Medium at eight. Small at ten. You’ve got a 60-year-old walking around your house and you don’t even know it.”
For cognition, she recommends combining full-spectrum hemp extract with targeted adaptogens. “We know they’re synergistic and powerful,” she said. “I pair lavender with FSHE for calming and stress, turmeric and frankincense for pain, inflammation, and allergies—and for cognition, I pair FSHE with Clarity, which has all the nootropics. It’s not magic. It’s science.”
Beyond the Paw Print
Her frustration with “greenwashed” pet products is palpable. “Most of the so-called natural stuff out there is bullshit,” she said. “Eighty-five percent of supplements on the market—human and pet—don’t do anything. They’re filled with additives and isolates that cause harm, ” a claim aligned with ongoing concerns about inconsistent regulation and mislabeling across the supplement industry.
That’s why she insists on Certificates of Analysis (COAs) and ingredient transparency. “If you can’t find the COA or the full ingredient list, they’ve got something to hide,” she said. “Even if your vet prescribed it.”
She also raises alarms about the use of chemical flea and tick preventatives. “They’re not meds—they’re pesticides,” she said flatly. In the UK, lawmakers have recently called for tighter restrictions on pet products containing neonicotinoids, after the same chemicals were banned in agriculture for harming fish and birds. Ardolino says it all stems from the same problem:
“Every pharmaceutical started as a plant, but you can’t patent food and mushrooms and make a billion dollars off them.”
Ardolino’s work has healed thousands of animals—and arguably, herself. She now lives among the redwoods in Northern California with her rescue dogs, mushroom tinctures, and jars of hemp extract curing on her counter.
“I was able to heal myself, and I can do it again and again,” she said. “Plants and mushrooms can help. They’re the original medicine. The body recognizes them because we’re made of the same stuff.”
A New Model of Healing
In a world where half of U.S. pets are now seniors, Ardolino’s work points to something larger than the pet aisle. It’s a One Health vision—bridging human and animal wellness through nature’s pharmacy.
“What cannabis and mushrooms do is teach the body how to heal itself,” she said. “They turn our regular cells into natural killer cells, which find and destroy anything rogue. That’s not a miracle. That’s biology.”
And yet, what she’s doing feels revolutionary. The Clarity Trial reframes what “pet medicine” can mean, suggesting that the same compounds reshaping human wellness—cannabinoids, beta-glucans, neurotrophic adaptogens—could hold the key to aging with dignity, whether you walk on two legs or four.
In Ardolino’s world, there’s no separation between healing animals and healing ourselves. The plants that calm our nerves can also calm theirs; the mushrooms that protect our neurons can protect theirs, too. Maybe, in the end, what her research proves most clearly is something we’ve always known: the closer we live to nature, the more whole we all become.
Photos courtesy of Angela Ardolino.
