Dan Buettner and Get Joy Extend Partnership

Last updated: May 2026

Most Affected Breeds: All breeds; every dog benefits from better nutrition.

We're Doing It Again

Some partnerships just click — not because the timing was perfect or the strategy was airtight, but because both sides are chasing the same thing.

That's how I'd describe our relationship with Dan Buettner, the researcher and author behind the Blue Zones movement. When we first approached Dan about collaborating, we weren't looking for a celebrity endorsement. We were looking for a partner who genuinely believed what we believe: that the way you feed a body — any body — determines the quality and length of the life it gets to live.

Dan believed it. And together, we made something we're proud of.

Today, I'm excited to tell you that we're extending that partnership. Get Joy and Dan Buettner are teaming up again to keep pushing the conversation about dog longevity forward — because we're not done yet, and frankly, neither are our dogs.

Why Dan Buettner?

For those who don't know Dan's work: he spent years traveling to the corners of the world where people routinely live past 100 — Okinawa, Sardinia, Nicoya, Ikaria, Loma Linda. He called these places Blue Zones. And then he got obsessive about figuring out why.

What he found wasn't a single secret. It was a set of overlapping patterns he named the Power 9 — movement built into daily life, a sense of purpose, the ability to downshift stress, a plant-rich diet, strong community bonds, belonging to something larger than yourself. Together, these factors didn't just add years. They changed the texture of the years people had.

What struck me about the Blue Zones research — and what makes Dan the right partner for Get Joy — is how central the gut is to all of it. The longest-lived communities in the world eat fermented foods, fiber-rich plants, and whole-ingredient diets that nourish the microbiome. Their guts are healthy. And because their guts are healthy, everything else downstream tends to follow: their immune systems, their energy, their cognitive sharpness, their emotional resilience.

Gut health isn't a chapter in the longevity story. It's the first chapter.

We've believed that about dogs for years. Having Dan as a partner gave us the scientific language and the broader cultural context to say it more clearly, and to more people.

What Aging on Paws Accomplished

Our first collaboration produced Aging on Paws — a video series that asked a simple but underexplored question: what would it look like to apply Blue Zones thinking to dogs?

We explored how the same principles that extend human lives — diet quality, daily movement, purpose and play, strong social bonds — show up, or fail to show up, in how we care for our pets. We asked what it would mean to optimize not just for a longer dog life, but for a better one. More energy. More joy. More good years together.

The series won a Telly Award. That recognition mattered to us — not because we were chasing hardware, but because it told us the conversation resonated. People were ready to think about dog longevity differently. They weren't satisfied with "just feed them and hope for the best." They wanted more information, more intention, and more confidence that what they were doing was actually working.

Aging on Paws raised questions we couldn't fully answer in one series. This extended partnership is our chance to keep going.

What the Next Chapter Looks Like

This isn't a sequel for the sake of a sequel. We have more to say, and more to build.

In this next chapter with Dan, we're going deeper on the science of dog longevity — specifically on the role the gut microbiome plays in how dogs age. We know from human Blue Zones research that a healthy gut isn't just about digestion. It's connected to immune function, inflammation, brain health, and the subtle day-to-day energy that determines whether a life feels vital or diminished.

We believe the same is true for dogs. And we're building Get Joy products around that belief.

Our Freeze Dried Raw Meals are designed from the inside out. The whole-food ingredients matter. The sourcing matters. But so does what we call Belly Biotics™ — our proprietary blend of prebiotics, probiotics, and postbiotics that is structurally built into every meal. Not added on top. Not an optional supplement. Baked into the foundation of how we feed.

Because if gut health is the connective tissue between what your dog eats and how long and well they live, then gut support shouldn't be an afterthought. It should be the starting point.

Dan's work gives us the research framework to articulate this more powerfully. Get Joy's products give that framework somewhere to live — in your dog's bowl, every single day.

The Belief We Share

I've spent a lot of time talking with Dan about what joy actually is. Not the greeting card version — the biological one.

In the Blue Zones, the communities that live longest aren't grim health optimizers. They're not counting macros or restricting themselves into misery. They're cooking food they love with people they care about, moving because it feels good, and waking up with a reason to get out of bed. Joy, in those communities, isn't a reward you get at the end of a healthy life. It's a mechanism of the healthy life itself.

That's exactly what Get Joy was built on. Joy isn't just emotional. It's biological. It starts with how you feed the body — human or dog. A dog with a thriving gut is a dog with more energy, better immunity, clearer eyes, and the kind of presence that makes every walk better and every morning feel like a gift.

We named this company Get Joy because we believed that. Partnering with Dan is our way of putting real science behind the belief — and holding ourselves accountable to it.

What This Means for You and Your Dog

Here's the thing I most want you to take from this announcement: you're already part of this.

Every bowl you fill is a longevity decision. Every meal is a small vote for what kind of life your dog gets to have — how long, how vital, how full of the good stuff. That's not hyperbole. That's what the research shows. And it's what Dan has spent his career proving in the human context.

We're extending this partnership because we think dogs deserve the same quality of thinking that's gone into understanding human longevity. And because we think the people who love their dogs — the people reading this right now — deserve a brand that takes that seriously.

More is coming. More content, more science, more tools to help you make the best choices for your dog's long game. We're glad you're here for it.

— Tom Arrix, Get Joy