Interview · 11 min read
"The questions I want vets to start asking."
Dr. Sarah Vogt, DVM, is PETVITY's medical advisor and the editorial reviewer behind the species guides on this site. Trained in Bern and Zürich, in mixed practice for nine years before joining us, she sits at the boundary between conventional Swiss veterinary medicine and the longevity-aware framework we're building. We sat down in early May 2026.
On the gap between acute and preventive.
You spent nine years in practice before joining PETVITY. What drew you in?
Honestly, the same frustration that pushed Manuel to start it. Swiss veterinary medicine is excellent — among the best in the world for acute care. We can do extraordinary surgery, oncology, emergency stabilization. But a 15-minute annual exam isn't structured to catch slow decline. I'd see the same dogs come back at eight, at ten, at twelve, with the same compounding issues that nobody had thought to look for at four. The system is set up to react. I wanted to work somewhere that was set up to anticipate.
What's the single question you wish more vets asked at routine visits?
"Tell me about a typical day for this animal." Not the medical history. The day. What time do they wake up, eat, move, sleep? What's the household like? Who else lives there? It sounds soft — it's actually where 70% of preventive medicine lives. Most chronic conditions in companion animals trace back to daily-life patterns long before they become diagnosable. If I don't know what your dog's day looks like, I'm only practicing crisis medicine.
On over-diagnosing and under-tracking.
There's a critique that longevity-aware practice ends up over-medicalizing healthy animals. Fair?
It's a fair concern and I take it seriously. The answer is the difference between testing and treating. A baseline blood panel at age three for a dog isn't medicalization — it's giving you something to compare against six years later when the question of "is this a real change?" actually matters. The mistake is when you turn every minor variation into a prescription. Track widely, treat narrowly. That's the rule.
What gets under-tracked in conventional practice?
Three things. Weight trajectory — most clinics record a single weight at the annual visit. The trajectory across years is what tells you something. Mobility quality — the way an animal sits, rises, stairs, jumps. Owners notice it before vets get to see it, but we rarely give them a structured way to track it. And cognition, in animals over eight. Subtle disengagement, getting stuck in corners, loss of name response — these are early markers and we miss them constantly because the dog "looks fine" in a four-minute exam.
The Pet-Harmony Score tries to capture some of that. Be honest with us — what are its limits?
It's a tracker, not a diagnostic. It can tell you whether the changes you're making are moving the needle in the right direction. It cannot replace a vet. We've been very deliberate that the score sits next to clinical data, not over it. If your animal's Pet-Harmony Score drops sharply, that's a flag to book an appointment, not to self-diagnose. It's the same way a continuous glucose monitor is useful for a human — it shows you patterns, it doesn't perform medicine.
"Track widely. Treat narrowly. That's the rule."
On supplements.
The supplement industry is enormous and not always honest. What's your filter?
Three questions. Is there published, replicated evidence in the species I'm using it on? Not in mice, not in humans — in dogs, cats, horses, depending. Is it third-party tested for what's on the label? The independent assays still find substantial mismatches between label and contents in the unregulated end of the market. Does it solve a real problem this animal has, or am I just adding noise? A dog on a complete and balanced diet with no specific issue doesn't need eight supplements. They need maybe one or two, well-chosen.
If you had to pick the supplements with the strongest evidence across species?
Marine-source omega-3 EPA/DHA. Joint support specifically with undenatured type II collagen for dogs and senior horses. SAMe + silybin for liver-stressed animals. Targeted probiotics in the Saccharomyces and FortiFlora-class strains, when there's a reason. After that, the evidence thins fast. NAD+ precursors and senolytics are interesting and worth watching, but I'd be cautious about anyone claiming they're proven for dogs and cats today. The Dog Aging Project's TRIAD rapamycin trial is the most important large-scale longevity intervention study currently running. We'll know more.
On Switzerland and the Swiss vet community.
PETVITY is Swiss-anchored. Does that matter clinically, or is it just branding?
It matters. The Vetsuisse network — Bern and Zürich — is one of the strongest research veterinary communities in Europe. Swiss animal welfare law is among the most protective in the world. The regulatory bar for what can be sold as a pet supplement is meaningful here, not theoretical. When a Swiss-based platform tells you a product is third-party tested, the legal and reputational exposure if that's not true is real. That changes incentives.
What does the Swiss vet community make of what PETVITY is doing?
A mix. The youngest cohort, especially the ones who follow the Dog Aging Project work, are enthusiastic. Some senior practitioners are wary — and they're right to be, because the consumer pet-longevity market has had a lot of snake oil. Our job is to keep showing up with rigor: cited evidence, transparent supplement sourcing, and a tracker that's honest about its limits. The Certified Care Partner program is partly an answer to that — it's how we bring vets, sitters and trainers into the platform on terms that respect what they actually know.
On the founder's dog.
You've read Manuel's account of his Border Collie's first six years. As a clinician — was that recoverable?
Substantially, yes. The protocol he describes — anti-inflammatory diet, omega-3, weight optimization, structured movement, sleep hygiene — is unglamorous and entirely consistent with what the literature supports. The eight-month bloodwork shift he describes is plausible. We see those reversals when owners commit. The honest part of that story isn't the recovery, it's the regret. Most owners don't get that wake-up moment until much later. The whole reason we've structured PETVITY around the Pet Profile being free is so people can get the wake-up at three years old, not at twelve.
On what's next.
Where does the field go in the next five years?
Three things I'd watch. First, the rapamycin and senolytic data is going to mature, and we'll know whether targeted longevity drugs are real for companion animals. Second, the microbiome work is going to give us actionable interventions — probably species- and even breed-specific. Third, biological age testing in animals is coming, and within five years I'd expect a good owner to know their dog's epigenetic age the way they know their cholesterol number.
Last question. What's the one thing you'd tell every new pet owner?
Get a baseline. Of everything. Weight, blood panel, mobility video on your phone, a description of a normal day. Do it now, while your animal is healthy. Then do it again at the same time every year. The single biggest gift you can give them is a reference point — because most of what we want to catch is invisible until you can compare it to what they were before.
— Dr. Sarah Vogt
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