The Checkup with Doctor Mike - The Truth About Pet Anti-vaxxers | Dr. Sylvalyn Hammond

Episode Date: March 25, 2026

I'll teach you how to become the media's go-to expert in your field. Enroll in The Professional's Media Academy now: https://www.professionalsmediaacademy.com/Huge thanks to Dr. Sylvalyn Hammond for coming on the show! You can follow her here:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thehonestvet.officialTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thehonestvetIG: https://www.instagram.com/thehonestvet/00:00 Intro2:21 It’s Like Pediatrics06:45 Pet Anti-vaxxers16:00 Big Pharma For Dogs24:05 Bear’s Lyme Disease28:40 Worst Pet Habits32:35 Ozempic For Cats42:55 Benefits of Pets46:30 Raw Milk52:30 What To Actually Feed Your Pets1:17:00 Evidence Based Medicine / Vet School1:30:00 Private Equity1:45:40 Animal Trust / Rabies1:55:10 Exotic Animal Ownership2:01:20 Roxy’s Amputation2:22:08 Breed Bans2:29:55 Training CatsHelp us continue the fight against medical misinformation and change the world through charity by becoming a Doctor Mike Resident on Patreon where every month I donate 100% of the proceeds to the charity, organization, or cause of your choice! Residents get access to bonus content, and many other perks for just $10 a month. Become a Resident today: https://www.patreon.com/doctormikeLet’s connect:IG: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/instagram/DMinstagramTwitter: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/twitter/DMTwitterFB: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/facebook/DMFacebookTikTok: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/tiktok/DMTikTokReddit: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/reddit/DMRedditContact Email: [e-mail] Producer: Doctor MikeProduction Director and Editor: Dan OwensManaging Editor and Producer: Sam BowersEditor and Designer: Caroline WeigumEditor: Juan Carlos Zuniga* Select photos/videos provided by Getty Images *** The information in this video is not intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. All content, including text, graphics, images, and information, contained in this video is for general information purposes only and does not replace a consultation with your own doctor/health professional **

You're my first veterinarian on the show. Yeah, your first veterinarian. Veterinarian. What's it like being on social media as one who has to take care of other species outside of humans? I'm almost out of disadvantage, especially on social media, because of my credentials. Do you think there's certain breeds of dogs that should be banned? This is so controversial. I have opinions.

How does one know how much to feed their animals? The back of the bag will kind of have a guideline. And those are accurate and valuable? Well, no, right? Oh, okay. Since we've been doing vaccines, now more pets are getting cancer. Yes, more pets are getting cancer now because not only are they living longer, we're also able to diagnose it. If your cat or dog is overweight, is it always the human's fault?

Imagine if you got a mosquito bite, and six months later, there was a worm in your heart. I'll never forget I had one dog. She was a year old. Her human loved her. He brought her in because she was ADR, right? Ain't doing right. He was crying next to me as I'm helping this dog. and relieving her suffering.

And he just kept saying, like, this is all my fault. This is all my fault. And it was, I told him, you know, after the fact, and I said, you know, don't beat yourself up too badly. In her honor, you will never ever forget to give another dog heart preventative. Right. And you will tell your friends. I'm accused of being a vaccine chill all the time.

But did you know the same allegations are being thrown at your local veterinarian? Doctors who treat humans aren't the only ones battling against misinformation. Today's guest, Dr. Silval and Hammond is known on. as the honest vet. She's amassed millions of views of the day-to-day life she has treating dogs, cats, and even the occasional cow. I assume Dr. Hammond and I would have completely different experiences in health care, given I treat creatures with two feet, and she mostly treats creatures with four. We're not surprised to learn how much we actually have in common. Ozempic cats, antivax dogs, and people who insist on the health benefits of feeding their

animals raw milk. So I invited Dr. Hammond onto the show for a deep dive into topics like pet food and banning dog breeds. We also got a bit personal when I asked her to help me figure out what exactly went wrong when my sweet girl, Roxy, lost her leg at the vet a few years ago. No matter how exotic your pet, whether it be a cat, dog, or sugar glider, I promise Dr. Hammond has some insight for you, starting with what being a veterinarian is really like. Your job is hard, not just in your day-to-day practice, but fighting on social media, all of these trends that are happening in the world of animal medicine. I'm not going to stay away from veterinarian. I'm still saying it wrong.

But in all seriousness, what's it like being on social media as one who has to take care of other species outside of humans? So I guess the best way for me to explain it to you is kind of just being a pediatrician. Right? Because. I've said that before and I've gotten some weird faces. I mean, well, it is because the animals are like the children and they don't get to consent to treatment or not. They don't get to approve or deny what you do.

And you have to have the parent or owner or pet guardian or whoever be willing to do the treatments that are necessary or the follow-ups and all those things. So I always tell doctors, like, it's like being a pediatrician because not only do you have to care for the patient, but you also need to be really, really good at communicating and educating the client or the parent. So that's like the best way to make it make sense. And it's tough in this age of social media and the internet. And I mean, it's just the Wild West out there. Anybody can get a fancy microphone. and some lighting and put together a really, really good looking piece of content and say something extremely controversial and it's going to go viral.

And that content, what's on that content could be so false and so just harmful potentially, but people don't know what to look for. They don't know what to watch out for. The person on screen looks very confident. What they're saying makes sense because the people who are. listening to it don't have a background in medicine. They don't understand. They don't, they can't see all the holes that we can see. And then it's already got, you know, millions of views and shares and clicks and the damage is done. Yeah. Right. So being a

veterinarian or a doctor on social media, it's, it's hard right now. You know, I do feel like we are kind of losing the war with misinformation a little bit. Do you feel like the vet organizations are doing a good job trying to enter this space or not really? You know, I, I think we could be doing more. Okay. There are a lot of veterinarians like myself who are really putting ourselves out there, who are making content. We are trying to bust myths and also just present information in a easily digestible way. And just trying to get in front of it a little bit.

But I do feel like most of the time we are on the back foot, right? Most of the time we are trying to reverse damage that is done. And that's so much harder than trying to get in front of it. So I do wish some of these bigger veterinarian organizations or veterinary organizations or whatever would also be more involved on social media and things. But right now it's really just what do you think they're afraid of? Because in the human side of things, the organizations have been laid to the game because they said we should be only talking at medical conferences. Yeah. Medical journals. Is that the same world there?

It is very similar. Yeah. And I can see their point. You know, there's a huge argument about it's not. not professional to be a veterinarian on social media. Is, I, it's hard, right? They say that in human land. They're just making these silly little TikToks or whatever, but I think we're doing something necessary. I really think, you know, because if we're not there on social media, trying to show people like, hey, look how much we care and look how much we know and look how much we can

do for you. And if we're not there doing that, then who's there, right? just the people who... Yeah, the bad actors. Right. The people, and these people mean well. I don't think that they have any malicious intent. You know, I, I, most of the people who are putting out potentially harmful pet information,

I think they truly love animals. Many of them have animals. But they don't know what they don't know, right? And they don't know how harmful it is because they don't have the background and the knowledge that we do. And that's why it's dangerous. Are there any specific examples you could? point too. Like in our current world, the longevity side of things is getting blown out of proportion, vaccine misinformation, what's happening on the vet side of things? Yeah. I mean, most of it mirrors

human medicine, right? A lot of it parallels, right? People, there are trends in human medicine and then people think, okay, well, if I'm doing this for me and for my health, I should do it for my pet too. Right. Right. And so we do see this kind of trickle down. So yeah, we're having a lot of the same problems. I should say a lot of the same battles. Vaccine misinformation is huge. Really? What are the claims that they make? Do they also say it causes autism?

No, it's pa autism. Oh, is that a thing? No. Oh, okay. I was going to say, I don't know. I say it as a joke. There may be people who believe that it could cause mental problems in pets. I'm not sure.

But we see a lot of people saying it causes immune system problems. So like autoimmune disorders. They link it to allergies. Any chronic disease. They're like, oh, all of these. diseases are caused by your pet having gotten the vaccine because their immune system was weakened, blah, blah, blah, blah. We see a lot of people saying it causes cancer in pets.

You know, there's the argument that, okay, it's kind of hard, right? There's some people who are saying online that pets are living shorter lives. They used to live to be 20 to 30, which isn't true. Pets are actually living longer now than they ever have before because of all of the things that we can do for them that we couldn't do before. And so on one hand, you have people saying that, they're like, oh, pets aren't living as long because of your vaccines. But then on the other hand, you have people saying, oh, the vaccines are causing cancer and making pets live shorter lives. Both of these, for some reason, very viral things on

social media. But one of the big things is that, okay, the vaccines, like since we've been doing vaccines, now more pets are getting cancer. And I'm like, yes, more pets are getting cancer now because not only are they living longer, but we're also able to diagnose it. I mean, think about 30 years ago when your pet got sick, maybe even longer than that. I mean, you know, The 50s, 60s, there was still like a lot of farm dogs, right? And what happened to those dogs when they got sick? Old Yeller? Well, we could talk about Old Yeller.

If you've never read Old Yeller and you're listening to this, please go read Old Yeller. If we're talking about the importance of vaccines, for those of you who don't know, and I don't want to ruin the book, but Old Yeller gets rabies, okay? Very sad, 100% fatal. Okay, and Old Yeller dies, and it's horrible. But Old Yeller doesn't die of rabies. I don't remember. Oh yeah. You know, yeah, behind the shed, right? And that's, yeah, that's kind of what would happen with these, these pets who were sick, you know, 50, 60 years ago. People weren't going to do diagnostics for them. I mean, they might take them to the veterinarian and the veterinarian didn't have diagnostics, right? Maybe they had an x-ray. Maybe, I don't know when we could start doing blood work on pets. I actually have no idea when that became a thing. But so diagnostics were more limited. I mean, we didn't, we couldn't test for some of these cancers. We couldn't recognize them if we saw them.

So not only were they not diagnosed, but also, you know, people, even if they were, like, weren't going to do things for them. So it was just like old age as the cause of death. Yeah. Old age was the cause of death. And also, you know, back then, you know, on the argument of pets were living longer, people weren't recording their pets' birthdays. Yeah, exactly. Right?

Now it's so cute. You see all these birthday parties or the gotcha days or whatever. People really know, people can tell you to the day how old their pets are. Right. Because their pets are family. Back then, they were like, oh, we think he's 15, but he was probably like eight. He just looked rough because he was the farm dog, you know, like nobody really knew how old their pets were. I had a woman bring me a dog once, and she told me the dog was 35 or I think it was like 32.

In spirit. She was convinced and she said, you know, she brought the dog to us. She said the dog hadn't had veterinary care in a very, very long time that it was her mother's dog and her mother had passed away and she was taking over ownership of the dog. looking at this dog, I mean, we have ways of aging pets. The rings? We can look at, yeah, we cut them open and, you know, teeth, kind of joint health, their eyes. You know, as pets age, there's changes to the eyes that you can detect. So this dog, I would have guessed was probably like four or five.

So I kindly said to this one, and, you know, I said, I really truly don't think that your dog is 32 or whatever. I really think our dog is more like five to six. And I think it's important that you know that. Maybe she said three to five. No, no, she was very sure. And she's like, no, my mom got this dog when I was in college. And I was like, well, maybe your mom's had multiple dogs, you know, and has just given them the same name because some people do that, you know.

They just have. Especially for children. Yeah. Try not to tell them that something. Right. I don't know. I don't know. But, but yeah.

So there is a lot of confusion about when the pet was born. And back then before they had annual veterinary visits and records and all of these things. I can see why people thought pets were living a really long time. You said that there's parallels in health care between animals and humans, and it's so true. Right now, we have people in the administration who are saying, we have the worst chronic health epidemic in the United States. It's because health care sucks. And all we have to do is look at how good we've gotten at helping people survive acute illnesses. Yeah. So when they get an infection, when they get a heart attack, when they get a stroke, when they otherwise would have died

with type one diabetes early on. So we've gotten so good at keeping. keeping them alive, that they are now chronic health patients, much in the same way that pets are living longer, so they develop cancer. Which is interesting in health care. There's this through line of if you solve one problem in health and then you live longer, something else breaks down and it creates a new problem. Well, you can't live forever, right? So eventually something is going to. Well, Brian Johnson would argue otherwise because he's going to live forever. Yeah, okay. Well, good for him. I don't want to, but you know, I don't want to. I also don't think it's possible. Yeah, yeah. It is really tough. And it's hard, too, when people in a position of power are putting out or fueling this information more. And, you know, I do agree with some of what's being said. Like, yeah, maybe we could focus on exercise and eating healthy and access to healthy food. But like-

Yeah, that's been said for decades. It has, right? And here's the thing. Everyone knows that. These people with some of these chronic diseases that could be linked to preventable diseases like weight, right? excess body weight. They, they know, right? But there's a reason they can't and there's a reason they're not. And, you know, it would be a disservice for us to say, you have this chronic disease, but you probably could just exercise and eat more. So I'm not going to do anything for you. Go exercise and go eat better. And then what's going to happen to that person? Right? They're not, they might not do it. That argument is hard. I was, I did an episode of this episode where I was surrounded by folks who disagreed with me and supported the administration. And there was a person who kept saying, we can solve all our problems with lifestyle changes like dietary changes, exercise.

And I said, yes, we preach it. That's the first thing I recommend, unless it's obviously emergent. But not everyone can, not everyone will, not everyone wants to. And that's their choice. It's bodily autonomy. We want to give people a choice. So how do we get people to do that thing? And they never have an answer other than be a good example. Yeah, will you ignore the disease that the person has in the meantime where you're waiting for them to lose the weight? You know, this is a conversation. Again, there's so many parallels in animal medicine. So dogs who have really, really bad inflamed like dermatitis, right?

Itchy skin disease, essentially. It's not eczema in dogs? No, we don't really go. So there's, well, you can have dogs with dry skin and I'm not really sure what causes exes. I don't know much about humans, to be honest. So eczema. What is eczema really? Dermatitis.

Atopic dermatitis. Atopic dermatitis. Yes. So we have atopic dermatitis of dogs. Super common, right? Now, are there ways that we can help reduce that dog's level of edge naturally? Yes. Right?

Removing excess body weight because we know fat is inflammatory. Yep, we can do that. We can bathe the dog more. We can brush the dog more. We can wipe the dog's paws with wipes every time it's exposed to pollen, wipe its belly, wipe it off, clean it off. There are so many things pet parents can do at home to help mitigate that. that dog's level of itch and get them to a comfortable level. Some dogs might only need that.

Some dogs, you know, that would be like maybe one in ten, I would guess. You know, maybe a few of them really could be controlled with like lifestyle changes, right? But many of them won't respond to that alone. They'll still need medications to control their itch and give them a good quality of life, right? There's dogs who literally will come into me and they have like scratched their skin off and they're red and they're naked and they look so, so sad. And we have these incredibly safe and effective treatments for atopic dermatitis now to help control a dog's level of it. And I mean, I have seen it change lives.

There are millions of dogs on these medications. But then there are groups of people who will say like, okay, well, these medications are harmful. These medications are unnecessary. Your veterinarian is prescribing these because they want to make money, right? But, you know. Is there a vet pharmacill? Do they say that to you?

So they say that, right? There's a huge thing. Veterinarians are shills for big pharma. So this is one example, right? Like prescribing this medication as opposed to having the owners do all those things. When in reality, we are prescribing the medication and saying, okay, let's start this medication to give your pet some relief because, gosh, they look miserable. They're also, they have skin infections because they're destroying their skin barrier with all this

itching and scratching and inflammation. So let's get in control of this and then see what we can control. with all these other things we've mentioned. But it's also so much work. You have a big dog. I saw you. You did a video of giving your dog a bath that I came across. Right?

What was that? That was like a two-hour process for you? More easily. Now imagine if your dog had a horrible skin disease. And I said, great, I'm going to give you this medicated shampoo. You need to give him a bath every single day. Yeah. Would you be able to do that?

No shot. Reasonably? Yeah, no, no. It's impossible. Right? Right? And so if that's the solution for a lot of these pets, I mean, that's just not realistic. right? I wish it were. You know, I wish none of us had to work and we could just give our dogs baths all days. Wouldn't it be lovely? But it's not practical, right? And so these medications can really help us help pets more than ever before. And again, yet then we're told that we're shills for Big Pharma. And we're told that we're not looking after the patient's well-being because, you know, these things can cause cancer and all this stuff, even though, again, there's no evidence to support that. We are often told that we are shills for Big Pharma for prescribing parasite prevention.

So I don't know about New York City. I'm sure there's fleas here because you have rodents. Yeah. You know, poor rats. I'm sure they have fleas. I'm sure they would love parasite prevention. But, you know, in many places in the United States, there's heavy tick population. So like in the mountains.

You have ticks here. I mean, we're right next to Lyme, Connecticut. Right, yeah, exactly. Lyme disease is huge and we see it in pets too. And we have heartworm disease, which, thank God humans don't get that. Because imagine if you got a mosquito bite. And six months later, there was a worm in your heart. Actually, humans can get it, but it's extremely uncommon.

I don't know if you know anything about it or if you learned about it in medical school. No, heartworm for humans. I am very glad. It is devastating. It is deadly. But it is easily preventable with a, you know, we have prolonged, released injections for dogs that don't tolerate oral medications well or who are very difficult to give medications to.

We have chewable, like, once a month treats that can do heartworm, please and ticks. and we are often told. I've always been curious about that because I give my dogs, I think, simperico trio. Sympirica trio? What did you?

I don't know exactly. Say it again. Simparico? A lot of people say like simpatico. That's really cute. Yeah, Simperica trio is probably what you're giving. Yeah, it's a great product.

Okay. But. So my question about it is in thinking about flea and tick prevention, how, if I give it on September 1st, on September 5th, how is the flea not, how is the flea being impacted by what I gave by now? Yeah, like how is it still an effect? So for fleas, so this is where it gets a bad thing, right? So it like disrupts the like neurotransmitter or whatever in the fleas mind. So like the flea will basically have like a

neurological episode and die after it bites your dog. So yes, these things are in your dog system for a number of days. They're, you know, roughly 30 days to control that for fleas and ticks. And a very, very small percentage of dogs, dogs who are already prone to seizures can have seizures if they get this medication, the isoxaline drug family, that's what's in Sympirica Trio, it can cause seizure in dogs.

Again, dogs who, for some reason, already have a seizure like this order. A lower seizure threshold. Exactly. And so there now is this big thing saying these medications will give your dogs. But they're not developing epilepsy. They're developing a single seizure episode

and then stop. That's it, right? So if we give it to a dog and they have a seizure, then we say, okay, we're going to find a different acceptable product that will keep your dog safe. You might have to do like a different. Right to zinc. I got a, what's the other product? There's so many. There's so many. Yeah, there are. So isoxalines, that's going to be what's in next guard, Sampirica, credilio.

But then there's the topicals. There's, you know, revolution, which doesn't do ticks, unfortunately. But there's, you know, K-9 Advantics. There's Vectra. There are so many different medications. So if I have a pet that, you know, Sampirica is nice because it's convenient. Sampirica Trio. It's going to just do all the things you need.

You just have to give one pill once a month. You know, kind of set it in your mind, forget it. Right. But, you know, if the pet has a seizure or something, we find other things that we can do, things that are going to be safe for that patient. It's individualized care. It's very, very unlikely that even if your dog were to have a seizure

taking this medication so that they would actually succumb to that seizure. But, again, veterinarians are given. And it's a low risk, I'm assuming. It's extremely low. It's an extremely low risk. And again, if a dog already has, you know, if they come to me and they've had epilepsy for years, I'm obviously not going to put them on that medication, right?

I'm going to, you know, have a conversation with the owner about things we should do instead. Are there over-the-counter dog medicines? For fleas and ticks, yes. Okay. Not for heartworm disease. The reason being is that heartworms, we need to test for annually. Heartworms have developed resistance to ivermectin. So you can have breakthrough infections and because it's very deadly, right? You know, like if we miss that your dog has heartworms, they can have an anaphylactic reaction, taking the harbor medication. So it's not available over the counter because yeah, that could be really bad.

Got it. So yes. But yeah, we're told that we're chills for Big Pharma by prescribing parasite prevention. But then we see, right? Like I have seen dogs die from harm. Right. Right?

Horrible. And then the owners are devastated. And I'll never forget I had one dog. She was a year old. A year old pity mix. Her human loved her. He brought her in because she was ADR, right? Ain't doing right.

Is what we say in. medicine. That is a, that is a, it's, it's on your problem list. It's not a diagnosis, but they come in, the owner's like, ADR, you know, ain't doing right. That'll be on the, you know, the chart. It's like, what's my next appointment? Now she's ADR. And when I saw her, I was like, oh my gosh, this dog's in shock. And she was in what's called Cable syndrome. And what happens is that your heart fills up with so many heartworms that essentially it cannot function. And your heart, the heart was clogged the heart and then your body goes into shock and like decompensates. And the only way to treat that is to do an emergency procedure where we actually cut into

the jugular vein, you know, in surgery. And we go through and we pull the heartworms out of the dog's heart, right? So this person was your average Joe, right? That's obviously what it describes as an expensive procedure. Most people aren't going to have the funds for that, especially in an emergency basis. And so he elected humane euthanasia for his dog as opposed to letting her suffer. And he was crying next to me as I'm helping this dog pass and relieving her suffering. And he just kept saying like, this is all my fault.

This is all my fault. This is all my fault. And it was just something you don't ever want to experience again, right? Like, this is before I started my social media, you know? This is because he didn't want to give the heartworm prevention. He just didn't think it was that important. Got it. Right?

He was told about it at his puppy visits, didn't think it was that important, didn't understand. the severity of heartworm disease and how quickly it could affect his dog. And I told him, you know, after the fact, and I said, you know, don't beat yourself up too badly. Like, but use her story. Like, you will never, ever forget to give another dog heart and preventative. Right. And you will tell your friends in her honor to make sure that they do not skip their dog's

heart and preventative, right? That's really hard. It's horrible. Right? We don't ever want to see that. And so we see those things. Or we see the dogs who come in with clotting, bleeding disorders, internal bleeding from some of these tick-borne diseases, like Ehrlichian anaplasma. We see the dogs with Lyme disease.

And we see the dogs. My dog has Lyme disease. Your dog has Lyme disease? Were you not giving your preventative? No, this was, I think he was born in like a very farmy environment, upstate New York. And like with ostriches. I think they had like really a wide variety about llamas and stuff. Okay.

Maybe not ostriches. Maybe there's llamas. Sure. But it was a very wildlife exposed community. So I think that's where he came from because we were giving it to him and he was fine and all of a sudden he converted or the first time we tested in the city. He was zero positive. Did you, is he just zero positive or did they test? Okay. They did like a confirmation test or whatever it was the secondary. Because we test for our test are for antibodies. Yeah, because you have the initial screening and then you have the confirmation

Exactly. Yeah. So if we get a positive snap, we say, okay, your dog's been exposed. But whether or not they have clinical disease requires further investigation. And then afterwards, every time they test for hard work, he gets positive. I'm like, I know, I know. Yeah, he'll always be positive for a very, very long time. You know, anywhere from like three to five years, sometimes to life, just depending on how robust his response was. I was actually doing a lot of research at that time trying to figure out, this is super specific and probably the audience, like we don't care. I was trying to figure out whether or not I should treat him. with Doxy, given the fact that perhaps he had no symptoms. Yeah. Well, you said he had symptoms, though. So he should have been treated. So he ended up having joint weirdness. Yeah. So, and I wasn't sure that he, again, because it wasn't clear with a dog his size.

Yeah. Is he just having a pulled muscle? Is his joint achy? Is it Lyme disease? Yeah. Yeah. So you're like, you know what? Better safe than sorry.

Yeah. I would have treated them. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, I mean, these medications, we're not making that much money from, to be honest. Like, and these days, most people are ordering them from Chewy or 1,800 pet meds or whatever. And so your veterinarian is not making any money. In that process.

I'm not making any money. I write the script. I give it to you. You take it to the pharmacy. So people say, oh, veterinarians are in it and the money. Or there's shills for big pharma. They're pushing this product on my pet that. I'm like, I don't make any money from this.

I just do not want to see your dog die or see your pet suffer. Like, because I have to live with it. Like I said, I'll never forget that pet that died. Like I can still, I could go to that moment at any time. There's some cases that just you cannot as much as I almost wish I could forget. And I don't want to because I want to honor the memory of that pet. But it stinks. And I hate it.

And I hate that feeling. And that's ultimately what drove me to actually start my social media. I was just kind of generally pitoed. Not that case, but cases like it. You know, puppies, you hold a puppy dying from parvo. You know, I, again, I probably would relate it to being like a pediatrician. right? I don't know that I could ever do that. But I mean, yeah, right? And easily preventable disease. Now we have a monoclonal antibody treatment for parvo actually. That's expensive,

but extremely effective. So hopefully we won't have to see nearly as many puppies die from parvo. But we have a vaccine that's like 99% effective after like the second dose or something. Wow. And it's extremely safe. And people decline. it or people don't think they need it or people think that we're just pushing these unnecessary vaccines on them and then we have to be the ones in that situation and it sucks you know i don't ever want to be there so you know i had enough cases like this i think i was like two years out of veterinary school and i was just kind of p oed one day and i was on social media and i was seeing misinformation i was like well that's not right at all i'm like who the heck is this person and what are their credentials

and if they're putting all this information out there, I could do that. Yeah. You know, because in the clinic setting, I talk to maybe 20 to 30 people a day, depending on phone calls and appointments and things like that. And that's 20 to 30 people a day that I can help. But on social media, I mean, I can reach thousands of people a day.

Millions. Yeah, I have. I've had a few that I've gotten a million views, and it's, I mean, it's a blessing. You know, it's a blessing and a curse because I can help, you know, millions of people prevent, or I can, you know, help with them. avoid that situation that other owners have had to experience. And in a selfish sense, I can keep

myself from ever experiencing that again. Very true. So, given that there's so many parallels, we say one of the worst habits that someone can have is smoking a pack per day of cigarettes. What's the equivalent of smoking a pack per day for a human but for an animal? Yeah. Well, so you can have secondhand smoke exposure in pets. Is that the worst? No, it's probably not. We don't see it as a commonly anymore, thank goodness, right? Because you guys have done such a good job educating the public on, you know, the health risks of smoking. I don't know if you remember when we were in like elementary school, they would bring in like the lungs. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, and I was like, oh my God, like you saw like the black ones. That was a great. That was whatever

they were doing. I hope they're still doing that because it definitely was. Maybe for vaping. They should bring in a popcorn lung or something. I don't even know about vaping. That sounds, yeah. I'm sure that's the whole new thing. Well, because now that's the new thing. Yeah. But anyway, I have seen pets pass away, unfortunately, from second-hand smoke inhalation chronically, right? Their lungs have cancer, riddle with cancer. But that's probably not the most common thing we see. I would say, honestly, if you're looking at long-term health and kind of keeping your dog

as healthy as possible as long as possible, or a cat or whatever you have at home, but the most common thing is just weight management. Okay. You know, we love our pets. And so we tend to be pretty heavy-handed with treats, right? They're looking at you with those big eyes. and you're eating something tasty and you think, oh, just one chunk of this food won't hurt them. But let's say it's a small pet, right?

It's like a 15 pound oxen, right? And so you give them a piece of your food that you're like, oh, it's just my little leftover. I'm not going to eat. But that's like a whole meal for them. And then you're still giving them their regular meal or you're not portioning or being mindful of treats and stuff. So, I mean, the majority of dogs and cats in America now are overweight or obese.

Wow. Just like humans. Yeah, I mean, again, it all parallels. And I try to tell people a lot of times, you know, a dog and a cat, like, their love language, excuse me, their love language isn't necessarily treats. It's quality time. Like, they just want to spend time with you. Not on your phone, you know, but like take them on a walk and talk to them and let them sniff.

And if it's your cat, actually play with your cat, you know, I think a lot of house cats are really, really bored. And when you come home, it's an opportunity to give them that mental stimulation that they don't get because they're safe, right? Your house cats aren't getting squished by cars, eaten by big birds, chased by dogs. Does that happen? Big birds? Eating cats? Yeah. Wow. I have giant turkey vultures in my house. Would that get a cat? Probably, yeah. Oh my gosh. I can't get a cat. Don't get a cat unless you're going to keep it inside or you're going to like harness, you know, walking on a harness. What do I get a killer cat? Like what are those F1?

Savannah thing. He's not going to Savannah. I can imagine. I'm not saying I would, but I'm just. I feel like they would be so, unless you're setting up your house like this cool cat jungle. Okay. Which I don't think it's nice to do. I don't think it's nice to do because those cats really need so much stimulation.

But anyway, yeah, I mean, cats are, again, cats are also living much longer lives because they're kept safe inside. And but a lot of them are bored. And a lot of people free feed their cat because it's easy. And some cats will do great. I mean, I have some cats that are free fed and they maintain a. perfect body condition, usually because they have a sibling in the house who's like obese, right? Because that cat's like, I'll create all the food. Don't worry. You know, but they're bored.

So the best thing you can do instead of giving your pet more food, you know, as a symbol of your love for them, it's like spend quality time with them, you know, go on a walk. It's better for both of you. Or, you know, take your cat, you know, on a walk if they want to. You can harness train a cat or you could get a stroller for it or one of those cool little space backpack. Some cats might like, some cats may hate it. Right? If your cat is like not about it, like, don't torture your cat either. But like, you know, there are so many things you can do to show your pet that you love them as opposed to just giving them another treat. And I think sometimes people need to be reminded of that. And then when I say that, people are like, oh yeah, like that makes tons of sense, you know. Yeah. Do they

have an ozempic equivalent for cats? For cats? Yep. They are releasing it. No way. I don't actually know if it's been released yet. But the FDA is working on approval for an zimpic for cats. And it's just for cats. Just for cats so far. But I think that's better because it is a harder thing with cats. It's a behavior modification medication. Yeah. It's also, it impacts certain biochemical markers as well. Yeah.

The behavior modification for humans is the biggest benefit. Yeah. But if you're as a human in control of your cats diet, you're the behavior modification. I know. Right. So it's kind of interesting. If they're not going to eat the food that you put in the bowl, then that helps, right? Yeah.

So you can be filling up the bowl and not measuring and not being portion sizes. But now the cat's just going to actually not eat it. Got it. And again, that comes back to that conversation of, does that pet need that medication? Well, no, you could do all the other things that I've mentioned. You could cut back on portion sizes. You could increase exercise for your cat. You could, you know, there's so many things you can do.

But not everyone's going to do that. And also, have you tried to get a cat to exercise? It doesn't want to exercise? No. We tried to exercise cat, right? Actually, I have almost no cat experience. Yeah. These guys both have cats.

Okay. So I'm the cat movie. I mean, I think it depends on if you're starting when your cat is like 50% overweight, right? We have cats that are coming in 18, 20 pounds and they should weigh 10. And that cat, you know, exercising that cat might be like torture for them, right? Because the joints hurt? Maybe, I would assume so, you know, but they're also not used to it. They don't want to do it.

But once they're used to it, I think they'll enjoy it more and it'll be easier. So you got to start slow. Yeah, exactly. Same with humans, right? Again, it's so similar. The physiology is very similar. But yeah, I think the GLP ones could be great for a lot of those cats who are suffering from obesity because, you know, cats, they want to jump, they want to climb, they want to hunt, they want to

explore, and having all that excess body weight prevents them from doing that. And then cats are at super high risk of developing diabetes from being overweight or obese. If your cat or dog is overweight, is it always the human's fault? Not always. But I do think people often come to us and hope that there will be a medical problem, right? Hypothyroidism can occur if your cat has, you know, other diseases that prevent it from exercising. But there's not a sudden epidemic of hypothyroidism causing the majority of animals. No, no. Usually it is, it is us who are not, you know, being as mindful as we should with the portion sizes.

How does one know how much to feed their animal? Yeah, that's a great question. So, you know, based on what you're feeding, if you are going the traditional route of like kibble, the back of the bag will kind of have a guideline. And those are accurate and valuable? Well, no, they suck. Well, they're a great starting point, right? So I tell people, you know, look at the back of the bag. It will make a range.

And then your dog is going to have its own unique metabolism, its own unique activity level and other factors like what, you know, treats you might give, things like that. You know, so you'll want to feed your pet kind of go off that and then see how they're, you know, use your pet as the chart as a better way to say it, right? Adjust the food to the animal, not like make the animal fit the food, if that makes sense. For pets that need to lose weight or who are obese, I will actually calculate calories for for them. You know, there are mathematical formulas that we can actually do to say this is kind of roughly what your cat should eat. give or take, you know, however many calories. And, you know, obviously if you start increasing exercise, we can increase a little bit more. And then I want those pets to come in for monthly weight checks. Got it. Right. Oftentimes, people are only weighing their pet once a year when they come to

the clinic. Yeah. I have to have to do way bear. I mean, it's impossible to work. Right. Yeah. He's huge. How much is he weigh? 100 pounds? No, 130. 130? Yeah. That's like me. Oh my gosh. Yeah. He's heavy to pick up. Yes. So, you know, for medium to small dogs and cats, I'll tell people, step on your scale, weigh yourself. Step off the scale, pick up your pet, weigh yourself with your pet, and then do the math, right? Reasonable if you have a chihuahua. Yes. If not, just swing by the clinic once a month.

Just swing by the clinic once a month. And I know it's one more thing you have to do. And even if you can't do it once a month, just more often than once a year. Yeah. You know, every three months. Because that's so nice because then maybe three months in you can be like, whoa, bear just like suddenly lost 10 pounds. And I wasn't trying to get him to lose weight.

Yeah, right? Unexplained weight loss. We know how hard it is to lose weight, right? We're talking about how these things parents can do to help their pets lose weight, and it's hard, right? And we need GLP-1s for people sometimes to lose weight because it's so hard. And then so if you have sudden, unexplained weight loss

in any species, they're red-fled. Like, we want to investigate that, especially if you haven't changed their food or, like, started, you know, during COVID. Everyone was, like, taking their dogs and, like, these four-mile hikes and stuff, and we suddenly were seeing, like, a lot more lameness. And we were seeing, like, a lot of...

weight loss and stuff, but it was, you know, I would have to tell people like, okay, well, if you suddenly got up and we're running five miles every day and you never had done that before, you might be a little sore as well. So maybe we need to cut back a little bit and like modify. Ain't right. What was the ain't right? Ain't doing right. ADR. Yeah, ADR. Five miles. But yeah, any pet that's losing weight. And that's actually one of the big things for cats. Cats. Cats are so good at hiding illness. Cats actually only make up about 30% of like patients at a normal small and dog animal hospital. You have like 70% dogs. Because they just seem fine.

They just seem fine, right? There's multiple varials. Do what? Because dogs are better. No, no. No? I love them all. They're all great.

I am a dog owner, lover. I have always had dogs. We've had cats. Growing up had barn cats. And then we had a couple of barn cats. Is that just like a free flowing? They're cats that lived in the barn to keep the rodents away. Oh, cool.

Okay. Yeah. And back to the point about, you know, maybe 23rd. 30 years ago. We would just have some cats that just kind of like disappeared. And we're like, what happened to Blackie? I know. And now that I know everything that I know, I'm like, oh my gosh. Like I failed. Like I was 10. You know, like what was I supposed to do? But like, we have bodega cats in New York. Like they live in the bodegas. Yeah. But that's great. They're keeping the like, like if I saw a cat in a restaurant, instead of being like itked out,

I'd be like, oh, I feel good eating there because rodents can actually smell cat urine and then they won't go there. Yeah. And that kind of cool. Is there anything that the cat can accidentally give to a human to get them sick. Rabies. Well, outside of vaccine preventable. Nah, nah, I mean, people get icked like by cats going to the litter box and then, like, walking on. Toxoplasmos and stuff.

Yeah, toxo. But toxo, I mean, you really have to, the poop has to sit there for a while. The ussites have to become active. So if I am a pregnant woman. Yes. Do I force my partner to change the litter box? Okay. So I'm not a human doctor.

I don't want to speak. But what's the advice you would give? But, yeah, when people. come and ask me, I say just practice hygiene, right? Wear gloves, if you feel more comfortable, wash your hands. But if you're changing your cat's litter box daily, like you really don't have to be

too worried about it. But yeah, I just tell people practice good hygiene. Wear gloves, wash your hands before and after. But you're more likely to get toxoplasmosis gardening than you are from changing your cat's litter box. But they don't tell pregnant women to not garden. Yeah, we don't tell them that. Right? Well, our Secretary of Health and Human Services

scares them about Tylenol also. I know, I know. I've taken Thailand all pregnant, you know, my boys are doing great. Not to say that if they had autism, they wouldn't be doing great, but I'm just saying. And also not to say that you're recommending everyone take talent and all while pregnant. Yeah. I'm not like just for fun. Just take it. Exactly. Like if being pregnant is really hard. So I've been pregnant twice as in my third pregnancy. Just being a pregnant, if you see a pregnant person in the wild, just be like so nice to them. You know, just, just, I know. Offer them a seat. Offer them a seat. They might be not want to take it.

That's fine. They might hate. you like being like, oh, you're being like misogynist or something, but still just offer them a seat. You know, even if I'm, and I'm another woman, if I see a pregnant one, I'm like, do you want to sit down? And it's usually actually women who offer me their seat when I'm pregnant because they've been there and they know. But the hard part is I think the, you feel almost the worst in your first trimester when

no one can really tell that you're pregnant, right? You just like. From like a nausea. Yeah, you're nauseous. You're dehydrated and water tastes really bad. Interesting. Why that happened? Evolution.

Like, like what? It's a fly. I do was that. But yeah, water tastes really bad. So you're like dehydrate. So I would get headaches because I'm trying to work. I can't eat anything. I can't drink anything.

You know, I just want to sleep like 16 hours. I'm like narcoleptic in my first trimester. So yeah, I'm at work. You know, you get a bad headache. You take a Tylenol, you know. And so I think it's really unfair to tell women not to take a Tylenol when they're pregnant. But again, I'm not a human doctor.

No, but that was bad advice. And they realized it was bad advice and two weeks later they changed it. Well, the damage is done. It's still out there. That's what I'm talking about. Once it's gotten all the views and the likes, I mean, it almost becomes a fact. Yeah.

Right. If you hear it often enough, it feels like a fact. Right. Yeah. And so now it's still a thing. And there are women who are scared to take Tylenol, and I feel really bad for them because it's, well,

hopefully they're seeing their doctor and having that conversation. Well, and I think, again, that comes back to that's why it's important to have people with credentials on social media, trying to also, you know, put out the other side of the story and provide an alternative narrative to keep people from kind of falling into those same. paths and that same echo chamber. I love that we got from kitty litter to... Yeah, I don't know.

I don't know where we went with that. I don't even know how we got here. Can you tell me about the worm and is written? No, I'm kidding. But anyway, you're talking about cats in the bodegas. There's not many things. Toxo is one thing that people can worry about. Yeah, I mean, there are some parasites like hookworms and roundworms.

Hookworms can infect humans. They get in our skin, which is like really yucky. But again, if you're wiping the counter down and, you know, it's not... The cat poop has to sit on the counter for like a day. those things to actually become an issue. So really from a hygiene standpoint, cats are great to have in your home. They're not going to infect you with anything. And there are very little to almost zero diseases that they can spread to you. If you're younger and you want to convince your parents to get you a cat or a dog, what would be the speech you would recommend the child gives their

parent? Oh my gosh. Well, I don't know. No one's ever asked me that before, but I know what I did. I put on my big puppy dog eyes and I promised that I would be really, really, really good. And I would do my homework. And I would, I don't know, whatever it is that you offer. You know, what, like, what is it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I will take care of the cat. I will clean the litter box. But what about the benefits? Are there benefits that we've seen? Oh, I think there are huge benefits to caring for an animal. There, I mean, here's a thing. If your chore as a child is to take out the trash and you don't take out the trash, what happens? You get in trouble. The house gets a little stinky. Right? And your parents get yelled you. But if your chores like feed the animals and the animals don't get fed what happens,

they could die, right? I mean, it's pretty drastic. I would hope that the parents are checking in to make sure these things are actually done. But I'm just saying like it, the level of responsibility is different. And caring for an animal, I think is such a wonderful way to learn that responsibility and like what it's like to have people relying or depending on you. I mean, I told you a little bit. I grew up on a farm. And my brothers and I were essentially slave labor. And the best way, you know, child labor laws. Like, we were, we were well cared for, but it was, we had a lot of chores. But that's pretty typical on a farm, right?

Yeah, the kids do a lot of the work. A hundred percent. Early in the morning wakeups. Yeah, and I'm so thankful for that childhood. Like, we were up, my brothers and I were up at 5 a.m. And before we could have breakfast, all of the animals had to be fed first. Wow. Like, that was the rule.

Same with, like, when we'd come home, we'd go to, we were in sports and stuff. So we'd go to sports practice. We'd come home. We'd take care of all the animals. And then we could have dinner. And I'm so thankful. I think that's one of the reasons I tend to work as hard as I do. I don't know.

Maybe I would be anyway. But it does, I think, instill in you such a... What animals were you taking care of at that point? So we had everything. Everything. We had, yeah, cows, horses, pigs, chickens, dogs, and the barn cats. We did not have sheep because we were in Arizona. So, woolly animals probably would not fare well.

But we did have a pygmy goat named Timmy. It was so annoying. But my family very much loved him. He was like a staple. You just got to have a goat, right? You have to have some kind of other species. But yeah, we had all those. And, you know, my brothers and I, we did like 4H and FFA.

So we raised Sears. What's that? 4H and FFA. What does that mean? Yeah. It's like a club for kids that are in agriculture. Wow. Yeah. And so you can show your horse, show your cow. I think it translates so well to becoming a veterinarian.

Like I, yeah, I mean, I was exposed to so much and learned so much. And I know a ton about animals. And I loved, I loved my childhood. Like, I wouldn't have changed it. Besides the dog and cat, what was your favorite animal? Cows. Cows. Yeah. Tell me about the cow. I just love cows. They're sweet. Are they? Yeah. How? They'll just night. They'll love on you.

Like they rub their neck. How do they show affection? They don't run away from you. They tolerate my presence. They'll lick you. They have like a like a sandpapery kind of tongue, kind of like a cat, not as rough as a cat's tongue, but like, you know, they'll lick you. They'll kind of like nudge you with their head a little bit, especially if they want to be fed and it gets a little bit more aggressive. But like, no, they're wonderful. And now I get to talk about cows in a job. different way. I talk a lot about raw milk with people. I'm sure you're seeing that too.

But again, it translates to human medicine. The beauty that is Listeria and salmonella. We get a lot of people who, you know, they themselves see that there's purported benefits of drinking raw milk. So then again, they want to give those benefits to their animals that they left. Well, that's the loophole, right? That it's sold as an animal product and then the humans just consume it too. Well, is that how it works? I don't know. That's what I thought. A lot of states banned the sale of it. But then what they do is they say, oh, this is for animal consumption only. Well, humans are animals, right? Yeah.

I mean. Well, you know, they have human-grade food. Yeah. I'm sure there's different standards. I didn't know that. So are they selling it at pet stores? I don't know where they're selling it. No, probably not any big retailers, but maybe local ones.

I went into a market. There's a little just kind of like mom and pop hardware shop. That's not a cute. Down the street from where I live and there's a USPS in the back. But it's cute. There's like a little thrift store in there and people sell like homemade products and stuff. And in the front, there's a place where these local farmers sell, like, their homemade sourdough bread and things like that. And I like to support, you know, little farms because I grew up on once.

So I'll buy their eggs and I'll buy some bread there. And I was a little disappointed. I saw they were selling raw goats milk. But I understand from a business standpoint why they're doing it. They're just taking this milk that they don't have to pasteurize, like, one less step for them. And then they can sell it for more money. But I would worry about the liability of it, I suppose. But it wasn't the human food area.

They do that. Again, every state has different restrictions. So it's going to be state dependent. As someone who grew up around cows. Yeah. As a veterinarian. Veterinarian. Veterinarian.

Okay. As someone who grew up around cows. Yeah. As a vet. Yeah. As someone who's seen this problem unfold in a variety of ways, do you recommend people give their animals raw milk? So this is exactly what I'm alluding to.

I grew up with cattle. I wanted to be, so I tracked large animal in veterinary school. So I wanted to be a cattle vet. Cows are my favorite animal. I did several beef cattle rotations. So like more like livestock and production. And then I did quite a few dairy cattle productions. There are a reason they call them cow patties.

Okay. Cow poop is very wet and it splatters. Okay. And where are the udders? Is that because they're not eating a good diet? No, no. That's just how it should be in, That's normal.

Nature. That is nature. That is the way that they're rumen. So they have four compartments of their stomach. The rumen is essentially a huge vat of fluid and it's fermentating. So their stool should be very liquidy. But where are the udders, right? The utters are right below the rectum.

Bad design. Again, this evolutionary design of the milk is not great. And so it is extremely difficult, extremely difficult to manage that on a microbial level. Right. I mean, you can get the udders very, very clean, but they dip them. There's iodine dips and stuff that they do for the udders before, but nothing's 100%. And it's not just during the collection. It's also transport, storage, all of that. But yeah, after being around cows my entire life, practicing medicine on cattle and then learning about all of the diseases because we see it affect their offspring and stuff like that. Like we need to know about the diseases that milk can transmit to treat the, the neosy. of these species, the babies of these species. So yeah, no, I would never, ever, ever. Like, you could not get me, I would probably throw up. If somebody was like, take a sip of this raw milk, I would be like, I know way too much

about what could be in there. I have been up in cows, around cows, way too close to ever drink that. And what I don't understand is, like, just heat it up. Yeah. We're just asking you to heat it up. And people are like, then it ruins the microbiome of the milk. and I'm like, well, yes, it's going to kill all the bacteria. But then you can just take a probiotic.

Like drink your milk for all the nutrients that will not be changed and take a probiotic. Get some yogurt, cellar coat. Yeah. Yeah. It's a disaster that we're even talking about this. No, I know. I don't understand. Like, I don't understand how it's happening and how it's effective.

I see the steps of how we got here because as a person, you might think natural is better because natural sounds better. Yes. And in some ways, natural could be better. but in some ways natural can be absolutely toxic. When we say we want to make America healthy again, it's like what's the again? Because before antibiotics, we would all die from stumping our toes on a sharp object.

I think about that a lot, which is weird. But like I think about diabetes before insulin. You're dead. Anaphylaxis before epinephrine. You're dead like a UTI. You get a UTI. So sorry. You're out.

You're out. Game over for you. You're 18, you're 20 years old. having a heart attack. Let me put a cold rag on your head. And we joke, but it is, yeah, it's very compelling. Do you know what they did to George Washington when he was having, who knows what he was having? Because we didn't have the diagnostic tools. They drained his humors, which meant they made him have diarrhea, forced vomited him, and caused him to bleed because they thought getting rid of the excess blood or the poisonous blood was beneficial. I recently came across, there's a new account.

on social media that I'm kind of in love with. And it's Adonis eats rocks. And I hope people follow him. They're brand new. They have like maybe 5,000 followers. But he's like, he, the dog is Adonis. Oh, it's a dog. I don't know.

It's a dog. But there's obviously a person behind it who is a they. They are taking screenshots from these natural dog health groups on Facebook and things and just kind of being like, this is happening. And they recently came across a group that is promoting fasting. fasting for pets and there was intermittent fasting no like your dog is sick your dog has a tumor you're not going to feed it until the tumor regresses and dogs are dying oh my god that is animal abuse like I and they recently just reported it they're the people that they're fighting

are trying to fight back and like get this account banned but I'm like everyone needs to follow this because this is what happens this is the consequence of misinformation dogs are dying from this. Again, it's like the bloodletting. Like, we'll just starve the illness. We'll starve the cancer. Did you watch that Netflix series, Apple Cider Vinegar? I know what you're talking about, but I didn't watch it. It was so good. It's based on a true story of that she's an Australian food blogger and she claimed that she had a brain tumor that she cured with a whole food diet and like coffee enemas or something. She lied. She made it all up. There was apparently no. Yeah, but people with cancer were taking her advice. And she was

profiting from it and they were foregoing actual medical treatments and dying. Like I, but there's, where's the accountability? That's something. There is no liability. Yes. Like that's the thing. So not only are. If they say something wrong and your pet dies, there is no accountability.

Yeah, there's no license for them to lose. If a doctor says something wrong, we lose our license. Right. Right. But they don't care about that because they use that to weaponize against us that we're afraid to tell the truth. Yeah. For fear of our license to be taking away.

Exactly. But the fear is because. we're genuinely doing something wrong. I know. I know. So in addition to the raw milk, a big one that we see in veterinary medicine is raw meat-based diets for pets.

And it's the same concept. Is that like the freeze-dried patty thing? Kind of freeze-dried is, freeze-dried is at least a little bit better. I mean, we know that listeria can survive freeze. But like it will still kill some pathogens. I forgive me if I misspeak, but I think like E-Colai and salmonella,

you can freeze them out. But like Listeria, you can't. So it does reduce some of the risks, but not completely. Yeah, there are several, you know, food-borne pathogens that are bacterial that are deadly and pets and people from consuming raw or undercooked meat.

There are also different parasites, you know, sarco-sistis, neospra, these things that pets can contract from eating meat and get seriously ill and some of these things are not treatable. And every time I bring that up on social media and I'll say, like, hey, really, you need to be cooking meat to safe temperatures

before it's served. the argument against me is always like, oh, you're just a veterinarian. You just want me to feed my dog like dehydrated Kibble to make money from big pet food. And I'm like, well, firstly, Kibble is not the only alternative to feeding your dog raw meat.

If you're already going through the efforts to create your dog's food at home and put this raw food in a dish with sardines or whatever else it is that you're putting in there, firstly I hope you're making it complete imbalance. That's a whole other thing. But just cook the meat, like broil it, bake it slowly.

right? I'm not asking you to char it down to ash. I'm just asking you to bring it to a safe temperature to eliminate the harmful pathogens and then feed it to your dog and then your dog will still have all of the same benefits of getting this fresh food diet without the risk. Without the risk. And then again, people go, oh, well, if I cook the meat, I lose all the protein and then my dog's not going to get the protein. And I go, okay, well, all my meat that I eat is cooked and I'm not protein deficient. But then they go, well, dogs aren't humans. And so like, this is an argument like we cannot win. And then again,

it's not following any logic trajectory. There's no logical trajectory. There's twists and turns. There's, I get straw manned all the time. And again, it comes back to you're just trying to make money by selling my dog kibble

because veterinarians are paid by big pet food, apparently. I have been waiting for my royalty check. I'm like eight years overdue. It's got to be like a million dollars. I can't wait for it to come in. But I don't sell pet food. And even if you did,

that doesn't negate. No. The problem. Sometimes, you know, I will make recommendations. People ask me, you know, I say I recommend this. First I ask if somebody says, hey, doc, what should I feed my pet? I say, how do you want to feed your pet? What do you have time for and what can you afford financially?

Do you want to make your pets food at home? If so, amazing. Kudos to you. The majority of us can't do that. I can't even make my own food at home. All right. I eat breakfast cereal, right? Like, I got two little kids.

I've got a full-time job. I'm tired. Like, we eat out maybe three days. the week because by the time I get home from work, we're tired. I'm not going to make dinner every night. I wish I could, but I can't. Reasonable. But we try most of the time to make our food at home. But again, you know, we're going to eat some processed stuff here and there. We're going to try our best. But if you have the means, you know, if you have the money to invest in buying all the ingredients for your dogs, if you can consult with a veterinary nutritionist to make sure it's complete

and balanced, I applaud you for doing that and for taking that up. Like, that's great. You know, that's not what you want, but you want like a medium. There are the fresh food services for pets now. So things like farmer's dog or I like just food for dogs a lot where they'll ship you frozen food and then you can defrost it and the portion sizes are based on your dog's specific lifestyle, which I really like. I've seen a lot of dogs lose weight that way because it's a little bit more nuanced to each dog individually.

And then again, if you want to feed a commercial kibble, like the majority of us do, my dog eats kibble. Yeah. What's, they make a lot of these claims where it's like grain free or a hundred percent meat or whatever. Yeah. So tell me about that. Are grains terrible for dogs?

No, it's just marketing. A lot of people will put their dog on a grain free diet because their dog has allergies. But really only one in 10 dogs with an allergy will be allergic to food. And the majority of the time a dog's food allergies are actually going to be to proteins. So chicken, beef and soy are the most common allergens for dogs. Which are probably the most common sources of proteins. Yeah. So people will switch their dog to grain-free, but it's still got chicken.

You know, but, you know, I never will chastise owners for trying. Where did people ideate the idea that grain is bad for dogs? Well, the keto diet. But is there any logic at all to it? Are dogs, like, not in the wild supposed to eat? So people say dogs should eat like wolves. But think about how long dogs have been with humans. Dogs are domesticated.

So people confuse. taming a feral animal for domestication. That's very different. I can go get a wolf in the wild and I can tame it. But that wolf is not domesticated. It's not the same thing. What makes it domesticated? The evolutionary process, essentially,

the years of being by our sides, right? So it's evolved differently. It's evolved. Their genome is so different. So a wolf, you wouldn't feed grain. I don't know. I'm never taking care of a wolf. I don't know what a wolf feeds, right?

As a vet, do you have to know how to take care of every animal? is they're not just eating the skeletal muscle, right? When wolves hunt, they're not just eating the skeletal muscle. Right? Yeah, they're eating the GI tract, usually first, because that's the most nutritionist, the nutritious part, right? Your small intestines are going to absorb the nutrients first, and then the liver, the kidneys.

These things are actually delicacies in other countries, but in America and pet food, they're called byproduct, and that's bad. It's very bad to give your dogs byproducts. But the thing is people just don't know what that means. People are like, that's feathers, that's hooves. sets and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. It's actually defined. You can't have like feathers and hooves and other things and like bone. Those things cannot be byproduct. Byproduct has to be like the other stuff.

So like the tongue, the trachea, like these types of things can be used as byproduct. And those are actually extremely nutritionists, pets of meat. Or I don't know if we call them meat, but that's why their byproduct, right? I actually think it's huge for sustainability. Those things would otherwise just be discarded because people don't want to eat that because it sounds icky. I was like, can I offer you this plate of small intestine? You'd be like a lot of cultures like in Russian culture, they eat beef tongue a lot. Yes. Haggis.

Tricpe and in Hispanic cultures. This really big, menudo has like the cuts of stomach in it. But yeah, in other places these are considered. Liver is a big one in some cultures. Well, even here people used to eat liver and onions. But yeah, I mean, it's those are just scary buzzwords that people use to create fear on social media, right? You know, it's the thing in humans where they say, if you can't pronounce it, don't eat it. But it's like riboflavine. You're like, okay, that's a vitamin, right?

Like that's, you need that. I love people. I love people. Like, oh, we need, that's vitamin C. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say, get the acids out of your body. They're causing cancer, but take your vitamin C. It's like, hold on. But that's because, again, these people don't, they mean well. I truly, truly, truly, and I always like to assume there's no malicious intent. I'm sure there's some people out there who are bad. I'm sure there's bad doctors and bad veterinarians. And there are bad, and there are bad, and, you know, nutritional companies for dogs that put crappy stuff in their kibble. Yes.

I'm sure that's happened. Yeah. But here's a thing like if all you can afford is to give your dog like dog chow or pedigree, which is, you know, bottom tier pet food, right? And what makes a bottom tier? Well, the ingredients are going to be lower quality so that those foods can be more affordable. Okay. So what does that mean more organ meat?

I couldn't tell you off the top of my head precisely, but like corn is. usually in those. Like a filler ingredient. Well, it's not a filler. Corn actually so you've probably heard that on social media. People say corn is a filler. Yeah. A filler has zero nutritional value. Corn has a lot of nutrients if it's processed correctly. There's vitamins, there's minerals, there's protein in corn. And but yeah, it's frowned upon to feed your dog corn, but it's cheap. So if you can't afford something else, but you want to give a dog home, you can feed it one of those ingredients that has corn and it. And it's, And honestly, some dogs are going to do better on that.

And I have seen dogs live at 15 and 16 eating that food, but were otherwise cared for really well by people who just, again, wanted to give a dog a home. And that's my biggest fear about all this push towards, like, I call it like elitist pet parenting, right? Like the people will say, well, you know, gosh, do better for your dog. I can't believe you're only feeding your dog dog child. Like you're a terrible pet parent.

But there are so many other factors that go into whether or not you're a good pet parent, right? Again, going back to do you spend quality time with your dog? Do you take your dog on a walk? Are you meeting your dog's basic needs? Does your dog have access to fresh, clean water? Does your cat have a warm, safe place to sleep at night? Do they have, are there vaccines up to date to keep them from falling sick from preventable diseases? And are they getting parasite prevention?

Because I do think that that is a huge factor in quality of life. Like, I would not want fleas crawling all over me or ticks or internal parasites. So those are the basic needs. And if you're feeding a complete and balanced diet, I will never shame you for feeding what you can afford. Because all of those things are, that's better than being a dog in the shelter, where they're probably eating that stuff anyway

because they're in a shelter, right? Or they're going to be euthanized. So if we start telling people like, you have to cook for your pet at home, which is more expensive, and you have to give them an X, Y, Z supplements, and you have to do these things or you're not a bad pet parent.

We're creating unnecessary guilt. And what's going to happen? Are people going to do all those things? no, because they can't afford to you. So less pets are going to have good homes. I've heard this question asked to wine experts. And, you know, wines can go up. Yes, it's crazy Somalia.

Very high numbers, like $1,000 bottles, $10,000 bottles. They ask them, what's a level where you're getting great wine, but you don't have to spend a fortune? And the number they say is usually like $100. And they give some examples. They say, like, once you're there, like, you're not really getting a good. anything special. Okay. What's that like for dog food?

Like what is an example of a dog food where you're getting something better than whatever the bottom is, but you don't need to go higher than this. Well, so I guess there's not a clear answer on that because it depends, again, on your dog's individual needs. So some dogs have disorders or cats. Maybe they have kidney disease. Maybe they were born with a dysplastic kidney. We talked about that earlier.

And so they might need to eat a kidney diet to keep their kidneys healthy, right? So in some of these cases, there's not really, you can't really go in a law. There's a medicated diet. Right? You need that diet to keep your cat going. So prescription diets, which I do not make any money, by the way. Again, I'm writing the prescription. I'm sending you to order it from somewhere else.

So I don't push those either. I recommend them from a medical standpoint as a treatment. But there are definitely levels of pet food. There's, you know, the prescription and there's kind of like premium and then there's kind of like the bottom, right? And so if we're talking about premium pet food, that's going to be like pure food. that's going to be like Purina Pro Plan or Hill's Science Diet or Royal Canaan. And people hate, people love to hate those brands because those are the big pet foods.

But because they're so big, they are able to invest in all the research that I love to see. They can do lifelong feeding studies on their diets that these boutique pet foods can't do. You know, all their foods are A-A-F-C-O-certified, meaning that they, you know, they meet the... Complete. Yeah, that they're complete and balanced, that they meet all these. requirements. And they also have higher quality assurance standards because they can monitor those foods. And so I always tell people like, I'm not saying that maybe the food that you're feeding is bad. I just don't know as much about it. I'm happy to look into it for you. Now, there are some

pet foods I don't recommend and I'm not going to name drop them here. I don't want to just a quality assurance isn't as good. Research isn't as good. Maybe the marketing. So what should one look for on the label of a food for their dog that is a warning? sign or perhaps, let's start with, what should people ignore on labels of dog foods? So when dog foods is like all natural or organic. That means nothing. It means nothing in terms of the nutrients. Okay.

Right? You could still have terrible nutrients that are organic, right? Or nutrients that are not bioavailability that are organic. So just because something is organic, it doesn't make it healthier. And that's the issue you were kind of alluding to earlier. Natural isn't necessarily healthier or safer. Organic isn't easier. They are just marketing terms.

There's studies in human medicine that show if they call something natural that they can sell it for like 30% more. Yeah. And it doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean anything. And even the current FDA commissioner was sitting in that chair started telling me that organic foods don't use pesticides. And to kindly remind him that you use organic pesticides, which sometimes can be more problem. Yeah. Actually, going back to my background in agriculture, that's something we learned about in 4H and FFA.

And I've had this conversation with pet parents because, like, no, there's no pesticides in organic food. I'm like, no, there's actually organic pesticides, which don't work as well. So there's actually more pesticides on organic food, which I'm not human medicine. Are not tracked interestingly enough by some. Really? Yeah. We had an expert on talk about this where they say that certain ones are not tracked because of the organizations that are tracking these things. So it's very messy. Yeah. It's scary. But I tell people, you know, if that's, and again, I always ask, again, this goes back to how do you want to feed your pet? If it is important to your moral compass, for whatever reason to feed your pet organic, I will do my best to help you find an organic food that is going to be

good for your dog or your cat or your rabbit or whatever. Well, rabbit seed hay. So like very, it's all organic. Yeah. It's all organic. Well, I mean, there's an organic hay too. Really? Synthetic hay? No, but you know what I mean? Like how it's the process. In order to be organic, it has to meet certain, you have to go through some certain hoops that not everyone wants to pay for. Even though it might be exactly the same hay, one just has a label and one doesn't. You know, but I don't think, I don't know if they have organic hay, but either way. Yeah.

All the comments are going to be like, oh, she's just an organic hay. I'm with love. I come from you. I don't mean to hurt you. You're like, I'm a 5HHHHA CCC4 certified. I'm a future farmer of America. No, it's not that. It's a national FFA.

I actually had the, I got the national FFA degree. What is it stand for? Can you tell me so? It was originally the future farmers of America. Oh, it was. But now it's the national FFA organization. Yeah, I got rebranded. But you know, to be more inclusive.

You said other acronyms. It wasn't just FFA. 4-H. Oh, what is that? Which the 4-H is it's like hands, heart, health. And I don't remember. There's a little pledge. Yeah, there's a cute little pledge that we all have to know when we're kids and we stand up.

It's like the Pledge of Allegiance. But you're like, I pledged my head to greater learning or something, my heart to greater media. I don't remember it. I love it so much. I actually, I really hope my boys when they're older might want to do something like that. But I want them to be passionate about something. I think it's so important. Okay, so ignore the all natural or organic.

What should you be, what should be present? I also tell people to not get caught up on the ingredients. I think that's a huge thing. You'll see the people who are in the pet food store and they'll flip over the back of the bag and they're like, we're going to read the ingredient label together. And I'm like, the ingredients don't tell you anything about bioavailability of the nutrients or the nutrient quality. And that's an important nuance, right?

So the nutrients can be there, but if they're not there in the right sense or the right structure, your pet can't use them. So if they say something like whole chicken versus chicken meal, does that make an impact for you? It's just like it's been ground down and cooked, right? So no. Like to me, I wouldn't lose any sleep over that. And I don't think that people should either. But again, these are buzzwords. People know that and they themselves don't understand them.

So they demonize them. Right. Anything that's easy to misconstru can be used to create fear. So recently I had a puppy that came in to see me for an acute orthopedic injury limping in its back left leg. And put the puppy just on, we did x-rays to make sure there wasn't a break or something. So the puppy got hurt at the dog park and did x-rays. The x-ray was totally fine. So I was like, you know, he might have just strained it, pulled it, whatever. You know, puppies are loose and wiggly like kids, right? there, nothing's kind of cemented down yet.

And I said, come in and we'll check it again in a week. So puppy was doing great on carprofen, which is like dog safe, ibuprofen. But I could still feel some clicking or crunching in that knee. And I was talking to the owner and she had actually come in before and had seen the associate veterinarian that I work with. And she was feeding a puppy, she wasn't feeding a puppy food. She was feeding a food that was marketed towards all life stages. But it was all organic.

it was free of synthetic vitamins and minerals and it was free of byproducts and it was whole foods only and you know I was kindly brought up to her too you know I said I know that the other doctor has spoken to you about this but have you switched your puppy to a puppy food and she said no I'm still feeding this brand and again I don't want to name drop them I don't you know create any bad press but I looked it up in the exam room with her I have computers and said let's pull it up together let's look at it and I said because I asked her if it's a puppy food And she said, no. Calcium phosphorus ratio.

Yes. And EPA and DHA. You know, think about kids, right? Like, especially young infants who are growing rapidly. They need a very structured, specific diet. And it's kind of the same with puppies. And, you know, they need to get nutrients that are very, very different from adult dogs and dogs on maintenance and dogs who are not growing.

And so whenever I tell people never feed an all-life stages diet if you can avoid it. because it's a jack of all trades and a master of none. Like maybe in a situation where you have like a huge farm and you've got like 15 dogs, right? You've got some dogs that are old and some dogs that are young or whatever and you want to do all life stages and your dogs are doing great. Like I get that. But the majority of us have maybe two to three dogs max, maybe one, you know, then don't feed all life stages. Feed a diet specific to your pet. So whether it's an adult maintenance or maybe it's a weight management or it's a puppy food or a large breed.

puppy food because if your dog is going to be big, I'm sure you fed bear large free puppy food. It's important because, yeah, and people will often give their large free puppies calcium. They're like, oh, their bones are growing any more calcium. I'm like, actually, no, I want them to have less calcium than the small dog who's growing because they're growing faster. They're going to need it quicker than your dog. And I want your dog to have less so that their bones grow more slowly and more controlled and they're less likely to have like hip dysplasia or elbow dysplasia, things like that.

So, yeah, sometimes it's counterintuitive. But just because, you know, these brands will say stuff like that, they'll say like, oh, it's free of byproducts or it's free of synthetic vitamins and minerals. And I'm like, well, that doesn't, again, mean that it's healthy. Marketers make a lot of money to convince you that you need to buy something. That's their job. I'm going to try and summarize your point. You tell me if I've absorbed your information well.

Feed your dog whatever you can that keeps a dog comfortable and happy. And the difference between a C-tier dog food and an S-tier dog food is minimal and potentially can be even risky. Yeah. Yeah. Like some of these premium pet foods can be risky. Again, the hard thing. Well, because the hard thing and also the boutiqueness of them means that maybe the quality control can't be as good because they're not feeding enough dogs or for long enough time. The sample size is smaller.

Yeah. You have to include that in the summary of all the things that I'm saying. Well, that's why when people say like, Oh, I don't use Johnson and Johnson deodorant. I don't know if they even have a deodorant. But they say, I won't use that because it definitely poisons us. In fact, that's the one I would use because so many people use it. The sample size is so small, we would have detected the smallest difference in those people.

Yes. I know people say that about the recalls on pet foods. They're like, I would never feed Purina because they have a bunch of recalls. And I go, I love that they have a bunch of recalls because that means their quality assurance is super, super high. and they are catching things and acting on them before it can be problematic to the pets that eat the food. There's a balance there. You don't want them to have recalls all the time.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like, I mean, there would definitely be a red flag if it was like every batch of pet food was getting recalled, you know, but it's not that common. It's not nearly as common as people would make it seem. Who does the recalls voluntarily or is there an agency that?

No, most of the time it's voluntary. But not all the time. I'm not entirely sure. I can't actually answer that. But we've actually seen a ton of these raw pets foods that these raw meat-based diets getting recalled. And humans get sick off of feeding their pets to raw foods because they don't wash their hands. So it is a public health risk.

That's a huge part of it. There's also belief that it is going to contribute to the antimicrobial resistance problem because these dogs are going to be shedding bacteria in the environment. But also there's no. They're going to get antibiotics more often. Yes. So in food animal producing species, like especially chickens, there's an organization called Farad, which is like the food and drug.

Oh gosh, I should know what it. It's fair. F-A-R-A-D, okay? It's an important acronym for veterinarians. When I'm prescribing antibiotics or medications for them, I actually have to every single time submit paperwork to Farad for like a withdrawal time, like, you know, which means if it's a chicken,

like you cannot eat this chicken or it's eggs for X amount of days after they've finished this medication so that the residue is not in the food. But with chicken specifically, they're really dirty and they're like pooping everywhere. So there's a lot of antibiotics I actually can't give them because then if I give them those antibiotics in, you know, the way it's believed to work like in vivo of the chicken is that the

chickens microbiome will become more resistant to the antimicrobials they've been exposed to. And then they're shedding those hardier bacteria into the environment that we are becoming in contact with. So same thing now we need to look at with dogs eating like raw meat-based diets or even consuming raw milk and stuff is like, how can that contribute to the antimicrobial resistance problem that we are facing, which I think is pretty scary, because it goes back to what are we going to do when the penicillin isn't working anymore for the UTIs and the sepsis?

Well, it already doesn't work great for the UTIs. I know, and what is it? It's something like 50, no, older than now, right? It's from the 1950s or something. I can't remember. But, I mean, I don't know. I keep thinking 2000 is like what year it is. I'm like, I was 50 years ago, 1950, and I'm like, actually that's like 76 years ago.

But it's scary. And it's something that pet parents need to be aware of. And follow-up question that I asked before in a similar way. As a scientist and someone who was a 4-H FFA member, very passionate about milk, worked on cattle, treated cattle. Yeah. Loves cows. What milk do you drink? Oh, yeah, the pasteurized stuff.

No, no, but which, like, RBST, not RBST. Do you look for hormone? Like, what, are you looking for any? I'm not worried about it. I'm truly not worried about it. My motto is evidence-based everything. So I'm actually an extremely indecisive person, which makes it sometimes hard to be a doctor.

You have to make a decision, right? Like, I have to come to you. I'm sick. I need help now. And you need to, like, pick an option. And it wasn't a problem. I didn't even anticipate it being a problem when I was in veterinary school,

but it became a problem when I graduated. I was like, oh my gosh, like I need to get better at making decisions because I was so afraid of making the wrong choice. And that's when I started leaning into like, okay, well, what does the evidence say? What does the data say? One question I always ask myself is, could I be wrong? So when I graduated veterinary school, I actually did ask myself, you know, what is my own bias around raw foods? People are asking me about it in the exam room. And I knew what

I learned in school. That was not great, that there were no proven benefits to feeding raw meat-based diets to dogs versus creating a home-cooked meal. And so I said, okay, well, I want to make sure I'm doing the right thing for my patients and my clients who trust me and I want to make sure I'm not misleading them. So because so many people were adamant that it's great, I'm going to sit down. I'm going to look at the data and the research. And I did. And when I do these things, I always check my own bias. I think that's super important. So I knew I was going to be biased against raw food. So I checked that. And I thought, okay, I know that. So now I can go in mindful of that and try to leave that at the door. Because why am I biased? Right. Well, that's what a good scientist does.

They try and present their biases or have people call out their biases and then work off. Or you have to call off your own, right? Like at the end of every single research paper, it's like, here's the problems with my research because I'm biased, right? Or I did it at this institution and they're paying me. So I did. I sat down and I looked at it. And I came to the same conclusion that the American Veterinary Medical Association and

the American Animal Hospital Association has come to, that again, there are no proven benefits to feeding raw and that the risks do not out, or the benefits do not outweigh the risks. And so I'm like, great, cool. Now I know. And I can sit there with certainty and I'm not just regurgitating something. Right. Because I do genuinely care about every single patient that comes to see me. And I respect every single client that is giving me their money.

So if you're paying me to give you my advice, it had better be good because that's what I would expect from my doctor. Yeah. Right. And it stinks. I feel like right now I'm almost out of disadvantage, especially on social media, because of my credentials. Right? For some reason, for some reason, our credentials have made us not credible. Like the people are going to say, I don't trust you because you're a veterinarian. So I don't trust you with my pet health because you're in it for the money because you're a veterinarian.

Or there's the other conspiracy theories that I'm just brainwashed. I got brainwashed when I went to veterinary school. Or veterinary school, this is a fun one. Veterinary schools are actually funded by big pet food. I'm like, you really think that they're going to teach me how to do surgery to sell pet food? Like, you really think that? I actually had to take a nutrition class in undergrad to even get into veterinary school. So my question for the conspiracy theorists is, did they fund that nutrition class as well?

Like, some of these conspiracies are so outlandish. But what it comes down to is when people say veterinarians are in it for the money, I can sit down with them and I can go over the number with them. And this is why data is so powerful. So do you know how many veterinary schools there are in the United States? there's 30. There's only 30. 30 accredited veterinary schools in the United States. Do you know how many medical schools there are?

375. In the United States. Yeah. There's 375. Isn't that crazy? No, there's not. There's less. Oh, there are?

It's like 180. Oh, okay. It's like 180. I just guess. So I have no idea. It's 180. Okay. 30 to 180.

What is that six? There's six times as many medical schools. Do you know how many applicants get into veterinary school? 15, less than 15%. Wow. Do you know the average cost of veterinary school? No idea. It's like 260K.

Do you know the average cost of medical school? Similar? Yeah, it's like $290K. And then... How long is vet school? Four years. Four years also. Or they're like, you have to know these four.

So is there a track? Like, oh, I'm going to know what the big surgeon. So we all start out on the same track. Like the first two years are the same. And then you can kind of diversify or like differentiate. I should say you can differentiate. But then are your boards always on four animals? The boards are on everything.

Oh my gosh. The chicken questions on the board. They'd be like, here's a picture of a chicken about to die. And here's a picture of a healthy chicken. And it's the same chicken. And you're like, oh, no. Like, they look exactly the same. How valuable is that for a New York City vet?

Well, here's the thing is that some of us jump tracks. So I'm of the opinion. And this is the fun thing about opinions is that they can never be right or wrong. They just are. I think it is valuable that veterinarians learn about every species because I went to veterinary school. I tracked large. I was adamant that I was going to be the cattle veterinarian.

But here's the thing, right? I'm graduating. You realize that cows aren't as lovely as you thought. They're amazing, but their farmers don't pay well. Oh. Right? Because here's the thing. The cost of that cow, that cow has a commercial.

value, right? As much as the farmer loves that cow, the cow is not his pet. So he can only afford to pay you up to as much as that cow can produce throughout its lifespan. Right. So that cat, there's like a, you know, a curve. It's like a curve. Right. Exactly. But Fifi the Chihuahua, whose owner has had her for 15 years and she is, you know, maybe that's the only child that that person has ever had. They will spend as much as 30K on cancer treatment. Right. So small animal veterinarians actually. make a lot more money than large animal vets. So when I was graduating veterinary school with my, I had $186,000 in student debt.

My very first large animal job, I was a mixed animal practice, they offered to pay me $65,000 a year, which for a veterinarian, unfortunately, entry level, like large animal, that was pretty good. Is it what large animal is cattle? Like livestock. Like livestock. Yeah, yeah. Equine veterinarians typically specialize just horses. They get paid the least amount of money, unfortunately.

I feel like they need to like hold out and like strong harm and get paid more. I think starting salary like an equine bed is like like, was like 50 or something which is like crazy. Yeah, like you're a whole doctor. Now I might be wrong on that value now. It might have changed. But this is like back in 2018. So I got offered 65K. Whereas the small animal job that I applied for offered me 80 and no on call weekends and like no after hours.

And I was like, eh, I'm going to go do that for a little while. And then once my loans are paid down, I can go back to large animal. Right. I didn't. I go back to large animal. Because you fall in love with little animals? I just, I liked it. I was having a lot of fun. I always still thought I would do large animal and maybe some dogs and cats. But then I ended up actually, I found myself at a practice in Charleston where the doctor would see everything.

And I loved it. Okay. I loved it. And it actually reminded me. Yeah. Like, your vet for every pet. Okay. And it took a little minute to get into you because there's obviously a little bit of, lot of stuff I had to go back and relearn. Like the physiology of species can be very different. Some

medications that you can give a cat will kill a bunny and vice versa. You know, like crazy. You have to know, you know, cats are not small dogs. Dogs are not small people. And then same with all these other creatures. And birds and reptiles are so completely unique. I never ever in a million years thought I would be like a bird and reptile vet. I actually used to be like super squeamish around like snakes. But now that's what I'm doing. And it's fun because people even bring me. like pygmy goats and like little pot belly like micro pigs and stuff. So if I hadn't learned about all of these things in veterinary school, I wouldn't have because I would have thought I'm never going to do that. Wow. Okay. I'm never going to need that. But here I am now. Jokes on me.

I do need to know about those reptiles. And I do need to know about this chicken that looks like it's about to die in the healthy chicken because chickens are hard. Yeah, they don't have. There's no facial expression. Well, they can like when they're really sick, they kind of close their eyes and they like put their head down. But like, you know, it's, it's,

so it's, it's good that they make us learn all the things. But back to that point. Yeah, yeah. So, 30 veterinary schools in the United States.

15% get in. $2,000. $2,000. Average starting, or average salary, not even starting salary, average salary of veterinarian is $140,000.

What's the average salary for a doctor? So, so I don't know. It is. It's such a why. I mean, primary care is 200-something-th thousand.

Okay. Yeah. So if you Google, Google it, it says it's between three and 400, but it says, again, that that's skewed because some, like, neurosurgeon. If you're an orthopedic surgeon or ophthalmology. A hundred percent. But the point I'm trying to make is that it is much harder to get into veterinary school than it is to get into medical school. I'm not trying to say that, you know, there's the old eight old, just like, who's better, vets or doctors. I think it's amazing. I think you're caring for people,

you're saving lives. I think it's a very selfless career either way. But if I were in it for the money. I would have gone to medical school. Like, I just want to scream that. Well, if you cared about the money, you'd go into business world or something. I don't know. Like, yeah, business. Business, right? Finance. Yes. I, yeah. Like, I'd be a hedge fund manager. I don't know what that means, but like, they make way more money than I'll ever make. And they're not, they don't have to like live with life and death decisions. They don't have to go home and cry because they lost a patient today. Because there was a. bad medical outcome. You know, it's, it's crazy. And so every time I hear people say

veterinarians are in it for the many, I'm like, you don't know like what you're talking about. If I just were to give you those numbers, you're like, oh, okay, that makes sense. Is this why vets are burning out at such high rates? Yeah, burnout amongst veterinarians is, like mental health issues are pretty high. Yeah, so veterinarians have the highest rate. Right now, we pass dentists. Like, woohoo. Yeah, what, what's driving? Well, I think a big part of it is that we're blamed a lot for things that go wrong, even though, you know, we offer diagnostics and people to decline them and then the pet dies and it's our fault or, you know, people don't take our advice because they don't trust us and, um, or we're overworked and understaffed.

And yeah, it's hard to, um, have a good team in veterinary medicine that sticks around. I, at my current clinic, I have an awesome team. Like I love, that's all girls because, VetMed is mostly girls, but I love these girls. Well, now, because that wasn't the case. Yeah. In the 1960s, 98% now. It's like 80%, 85% I think of veterinary technicians and assistants are female. And I think like 80 to 90% of veterinary students are female.

And right now, veterinarians are the majority of, excuse me, females are the majority of veterinarians. But I don't know the number. It's probably like 60%. But in the future, I mean, it's just going to be more and more female, I think. And, yeah. But I love the girls that I have now. But the issue is we are asking our veterinary nurses to do very hard things that require a lot of training.

And they're getting like $25 an hour. They're doing like everything like an RN is doing. And I'm not, again, I do not want people to think that I am. There was a huge argument online, I think about a year ago about our veterinary nurses nurses. And I said, heck, yes, they are. Like they're phlebotomists. They're radiation detects. They're doing the x-rays.

They're inducing anesthesia. They're monitoring anesthesia. They're drawing the blood. They're giving the fluids. They're monitoring vitals. They're doing all of these incredible things for me. And then they're making like peanuts. And my husband has a saying where he says, you know, pay peanuts, get monkeys. And a lot of them get burnt out and leave. So then that, you know, makes. Because, you know, of course, they're like, well, I can make more money being a nanny. And I'm tired of getting scratched by cats and bitten by dogs and yelled at by owners. So I'm going to take a break from this. And I'm going to go make more money. me doing something else. So that happens with a lot of our really great techs. So I think, you know, that I'm not trying to blame the text for the burnout, but I'm just saying that's, you know, one thing is it's hard to have a good team or you're short staffed because your team is turning over all the time. In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees earn an average of over $24.50 an hour. Employees also have the opportunity to grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields like software development and information technology. Learn more at aboutamazon.ca. And people like, we'll just pay the vet techs more.

And I'm like, yeah, but then we have to raise the prices of veterinary medicine. And every time we raise prices, there's so much pushback from the general public. Because they think every time we raise prices, we're just increasing our profit margin. But we're not, right? It's like maintaining the same profit margin, but prices are going up from inflation or we want to pay our team more because they deserve it. It's so nuanced and there's so much that goes into that people don't realize. Is private equity coming in and ruining the practice yet? Because it's happening in health care. I'm curious. So again, I have opinions and my opinions are just that. There are my opinions. They are not right or wrong. Well, it's hard to have an evidence-based take on this. This is not a

widely studied topic. So I do have so much of a hard. for a private practice. And I do think there is so much value and benefit to the patient care side of having the person who owns the clinic on the floor with you because they don't want to be short staff. So they're probably going to pay their staff a little bit better. If there's more staff in the clinic to help care for your pet, you're probably going to have a better experience there, right, if that doctor is willing to pay. I do see there being issues with private equity. The clinic that I work from is owned by a private equity group. And they bought it from, So the man I started practicing with retired and moved to New York and then like unretired.

So he's actually here in the city. Some were practicing. He's great Dr. Doug, Dr. Doug Berger. If you live in New York, she goes see him with your pets. Is he was Duck Burger?

Oh, I was like, Doug Burger. But he founded the practice. But yeah, I mean, just as most practice owners do, he was tired.

He was done with it. He wanted to move on to other things. And he sold his practice to a private equity group. And they've been really great. They've been pretty hands off. in terms of, like, they don't tell us how we can practice. But, you know, there are some issues like they don't want to pay, you know, we have trouble getting raises for staff when I think that they deserve it because,

you know, again, they're looking at those numbers. They're doing it very formally, probably. Yeah, it is all very. And there are times when I'm speaking with my regional manager who's fantastic and she does a great job, but she's never worked in a veterinary clinic. And it shows sometimes. Like I'll bring something up to her. was what does that matter?

And I'm like, okay. And one time we were talking about seeing the small creatures, right? Like the guinea pigs and the hamsters. And she was like, well, you probably don't make really much money seeing those creatures, do you? Like, no one wants to pay for those things. And I'm like, well, I just did an $800 surgery on a guinea pig last week. And I did a $1,200 workup on a rabbit the day before that who had like some dental

issues going on. And like, so no. But I also was kind of like, don't look at it that way. Like, don't look at it as like the value of the pet that we're seeing because that That's where it starts to sound like veterinarians are in it for the money. And I do think that creates problems, though, because, again, if you're not going to pay staff or, you know, there's short staff, there's burnout, veterinarians are tired. They leave.

Yeah. Then there's less veterinarians. Then there's more burnout. It becomes like a snowball problem. I don't know the solution to it. I do think there are a lot of initiatives to improve it. I feel like it's been improving just from a... What initiatives?

Just like resources for mental health and wellness and a better acceptance of like understanding that. You know, I feel like, you know, if you had gone to your medical director like 10 years ago and you're like, I need a break. Like I'm feeling burnt out. They'd be like suck it up and get over it. Like we're running a business. Like you got to work. Right. But I feel like now the conversation people can be like, oh my gosh, take the time you need.

Like there's an acknowledgement that it's serious and that it's a problem and that people aren't just trying to like shirk out of work or something. I think people are more open and understanding and acknowledging that burnout is a real problem. Yeah. Again, I don't have the solution, but I do think it's getting better. Yeah. What's this, what's a general sentiment from your industry of people saying, oh, every time I go to the vet, it feels like they're just patting the bill with excess test that I don't need because it raises income.

Is there any truth to that? Is there ever been any truth to that? Is that just totally a myth? Yeah. So we'll never recommend anything unnecessary, right? Even in a sick pet, I'll tell people like, I'm not going to order this test for a pet unless I think it's going to make a difference in what we decide to do. Like, truly, like, that's how I practice.

And I think the majority of veterinarians would agree. People don't always see the value in things maybe because it's not explained well. And that's actually a big passion of mine. Veterinarians are not always great communicators. Many people become veterinarians because they don't really necessarily want to work with people, right? but pets can't bring themselves to the vet. Every pet comes attached to a person.

And it's the person, kind of like I went back to the pediatrician, you know, the parent. It's the person that we have to get on board with our plan. And veterinarians aren't great at always communicating the importance of these things because we understand them. So we just say, okay, here's the things you should do for your pet because they're five. And it's like maybe annual vaccines that need to be updated, you know, the heartworm test, the Lyme test. the Lyme test, a fecal screening, an annual lab work. But if you're not explaining the importance of that, of course you're going to be like, well, my pet doesn't need this.

They're perfectly fine. But the amount of times that we actually see flags or markers, abnormal markers on lab work on perfectly healthy animals is a lot. Like we can see early markers of kidney problems. You know, there's protein in the urine or something like that that we can actually work up and intervene on before your dog presents two years later and like full. bone kidney failure. And then what can you do? Not a lot. So there is value in this, but I don't think vets as a whole are great at communicating that. I do think recently there's been a push to improve

the communication skills of veterinarians. I tell other vets all the time that communication is our number one procedure, right? We do it all day long. It's the most common procedure we perform. But we don't get trained on it. There's no training in veterans school. No. Maybe there is no. You don't have simulated pet parents or something? Mm-mm. No. I feel like that's important. It is so important. Because it feels like it's your number one job. It is, right? Like it's what you probably spend the most time doing. Yeah, they give us surgery training, right, so that we can go out and surgeryize, right? They train us how to interpret the lab work. They train us how to do the physical exams and everything. But that's the, that's the missing link, I think, and that's where a lot of these rumors have come from. My friend,

actually asked me. A few months ago, she's like, hey, do you think our dog Shay is overweight? And I was like, yeah, he is. She asked me nicely. I don't normally, out of the exam room, I try not to ever comment on people's pets. If they ask me, I will.

But, you know, like unsolicited advice, right? It's a great way not to make friends. And I try not to tell people I'm a vet if they don't know. Like, I'll be at the dog park and I'll just hear people talking and they're giving each other like the worst pet advice ever. And I'm just sitting there like, what's the worst advice? Oh, I just, oh, I got to hear, like, don't spay your dog.

you know because orthopedic issues and everything and I'm sitting there like pyometra a memory cancer like but I'm like I'm not on the clock I'm not getting into the weeds of this just don't say anything I was getting my nails done the other day and there were these two girls talking about nutrition for pets or something and I was like don't say anything don't say anything but it's like it's like clenching your jaw you know um you're like my TMJ but yeah I don't remember what I was even saying now I got distracted what was I talking about um you were talking about got a I'm on the spaying and neutering because my mind started going there. Yeah, but we were saying, I was saying some of communication.

Oh, my friend, yeah, sorry, my friend, she said, do you think Shay's overweight? She's her mom's dog. And I said, yes, she probably needs to lose five pounds. You know, he is. And she goes, you know, my mom told me that she went to the vet recently and they charged her $500 and they didn't do anything. And I was like, ah, because that is, that is what most people see.

Because she probably went to the vet. They came in, they took the history. They probably said, we're going to take shade of the back now and do everything in the back. And then the doctor will come talk to you and we're done. That's the way it's been done for a really, really long time. And I think that if veterinarians want to get ahead of this trust issue, because a study in 2024 in the Journal of American Veterinary Medicine, it showed that only about 60% of pet parents trust their veterinarian. Now, you might be a glass, half full kind of person. You might say 60% like that's great.

But that means that four out of ten people don't trust us. And how do we fix that? We need to be as transparent as possible. So I think doing everything in front of the pet parent is going to be one of the best ways that we can fix that. So I'm sure that when they took shade of the back, he probably got a full physical exam from the veterinarian. He probably got his annual vaccines. He probably got his annual blood work and probably went home with some parasite preventative. And of course, that probably all costs like $5 to $600. That's probably pretty average for those things. That's a pretty reasonable price for all those stuff that she's. got, but she didn't see any of it, right? So she's leaving and she's like, they didn't do do anything. I also think a lot of veterinarians do have a hard time discussing the weight of pets. I do think, you know, I don't know what happened. Maybe they did talk about it. Maybe it was a lot going on and she didn't hear. I don't know. I wasn't there. But, you know, Shea does need to lose some weight. And I think that. Or she getting, catching strays on my podcast. I know.

I have to send his mom. He's like a shelter dog. He looks like he's got like some lab, maybe some husky in him or something. He's like 50 pounds, like 55. Sweet dog. Really good dog. But yeah, I mean, you know, his human is older. So he probably doesn't get quite as much exercise. And again, he probably gets too much food. But not terrible. It's just easier to stay on top of it, right? So, so easier to modify when he's five pounds overweight than when he's 10 pounds overweight, et cetera. But the fact is, she still thought nothing happened. She still was like, I went to the vet. They should be $500 and they didn't do. anything. And that makes me want to scream. So there's a new push in the veterinary medical world

towards open concept veterinary clinics. And I love it. I practice what's called fear-free veterinary medicine, which is where we try to have the most, you know, considerate and gentle approach to every pet. Most of the time, that means doing as much as we can with the pet parent because they feel scared when suddenly their person is gone. Now, some pets are actually worse with their people. But I always, like defensive of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, pets who or pets who like use them as like a security blanket. So like I can't do anything for your dog if it's trying to climb inside of you, right? Like they're like climbing up their people or underneath them. So I'm like, maybe try stepping outside of the door for a minute and let me see. And sometimes that

helps. But I always try first with the pet parent. And I'll ask them. I'll say, are you squeamish around blood or needles? You know, is it going to bother you if I draw Fluffy's blood in here with you? And if they say no, then I'll try to do that in the room. And I, you know, people, I think, worry, like, well, what if the dog reacts badly to the blood drawer or the cat? And I say, well, the owners should see that because then they'll see what we need to do to safely get the blood, right? Or maybe we can't because of how scared the pet is. And they'll see you try. Yeah, they'll see that we tried. And then they'll understand why we need to send home some calming medications so that they can come back with those medications on board and try again. Because we also have to protect

their mental well-being. You know, in the olden days, we're just like, just holding down and do it, you know? And now we're realizing, well, that just continues to make it worse. Because it's like a snowball effect. Every time your dog comes into the veterinary clinic

and has a horrible experience, then the next time they come in, they're going to be primed to it. Like, they're expecting it to be horrible. Isn't every vet experience for a dog or a cat terrible? No. Like they're getting a needle and they don't know. Like, to a human, you could say,

hey, you need this needle for X, Y, and Z. They can rationalize it. Exactly. But this dog's like, oh, my God, I'm getting stabbed. What world is that going to be a pleasant experience? People always apologize if their dog is, you know, fear reactive or their cat is like hissing or swatting. I'm like, I'm so sorry they're not like this at home.

And I'm like, of course they're not. I would be like this though. Like I would be the dog that has to be sitting. If the aliens like took you to space. Right. Yeah. I would be fighting tooth and nail. Like I would be like poke me and you'll die.

Like I would be the dog with the muzzle on. I would need the calming medications. I'm already like super. I have like a needle phobia for me, which is I can't watch human stuff. Okay. Like I have a hard time watching Gray's Anatomy. I don't know. I don't know.

It's like compartmentalized or something. Is there a medical drama for vets? No, but there should be. Yeah, I know. Like the pit spin off. Yeah. We need that. That would be amazing.

But yeah, I mean, pets don't understand why we're doing all these horrible things. I don't want to say horrible things. Horrible to them, but necessary, right? Like your pet is really sick. And I tell people, I'm like, honestly, sometimes, you know, cats would rather die than accept my help. Right? So they need to be fully sedated so that I can do the things that they need and not torture them. Because I do think it's torture, right?

If I were to hold you down, stick a needle in you, while you're like screaming, that in my mind is torture. So I'm not going to torture you. And I'll tell pet parents that. I'm like, I'm not going to torture your pet unless it's like, right? Like, now let's say your pet is like super, super, super ill. But usually in those cases, they're not fighting. They're like. But then, you know, if I can't, if I don't have the option to send them home with some

pre-appointment calming medications, I will probably give them an injectable sedative in the clinic setting. Like if I really need diagnostics, like something safe, like we'll use like bupherphernal or something. I don't know. We don't use that. You don't use that in people? Weird. Madazelam. Sure. Yeah, but we usually I give medazolam with an opioid, which is like butorfernal. It's a good sedative. It's not great for pain relief. But it's nice to take the edge off and it works pretty quickly and it has minimal cardiovascular effects, right? Or cardiorespiratory effects. So I don't have to worry like if your cat budding them out. Has heart failure and I need an x-ray, but your cat is panicking.

I can't help your panicking cat. And I'm not going to try to take an x-ray of a cat who's panicking if I think they're in heart failure, right? Because then their heart will just implode. And then nobody's helped. So in those cases, I'll do an injectable. But that's fear-free veterinary medicine. And I think that that blends so nicely now for us to transition from old-school veterinary

medicine. We've kind of gone into this fear-free space and then take it into an open concept space where, you know, degree pet parents can you know as long as it's not a health hazard right like I can't have you in the x-ray room yeah I get it you know um I can't have you in the surgery suite things like that but you can be as involved as reasonably possible and I think that's gonna I think if veterinarians embrace that that will help so much with the veterinarians are in it for the money and veterinarians trust us yeah and they charged me they patted the bill yeah for all these things I didn't need they'll see why we

needed them. And I love to show people everything we did too. So like if I did an x-ray, I don't just come back and tell them what I saw in the x-ray. We pull it up in the computer in the exam room and I walk them through it, even if it's normal. I'm like, let's look at this nice, like that they see it, that the value is there. If I take a sample for cytology, so like maybe there's a growth and we've aspirated it or there's a, you know, we did like an impression cytology of a what looks like a skin infection to see if there's yeast or bacteria or whatever. I take pictures of what we saw under the microscope because I can't take them to the microscope, but I can take the images to that. I can be like, here's what we saw. So they're seeing why we did that test, that that test paid

off and now that we can base our next steps off of that test. Yeah. No, it's very logical. Yeah. I'm actually curious how animals get so trusting. Like Bear, when he was younger, he cut his paw, literally paw pad. So it was a really crappy location. Yeah. And I took him to the vet and they, I don't know exactly what they did. but then they wrapped it up really nice. And then when it was time to clean it, look at it, I unwrapped it and saw that they put staples in. And they obviously gave you a date of when to come back to get the staples removed.

And I'm very capable of taking out the staples myself. And it healed well. The only issue was they put the staples in in a way. Like, you know how they have a unique angle to them in the way that they capture skin? So when you do the staple remover, the way it best. bends them, it naturally takes it out. So they did it in a way where that wasn't going to work. It wasn't working out.

This was not going to be nice for bear. Oh, no. And while he's crying and licking my hand, he's totally tolerating me taking out this table. So, like, how is, what is he thinking that I'm doing? I don't know. I think it's amazing, though. I do. I think it goes back to the domestication we talked about, right?

We have bred them to trust us. And we have selected over centuries for, dogs who are more docile and more trusting and more obedient, right? We've bred obedience into dogs. Because, yeah, I mean, even if you had like tamed a wolf, I think a wolf would probably still bite you, even if, you know, and then I'm like, when dogs, see, if I'm doing that kind of thing and the dogs are reacting aggressively or whatever, I'm like, I would totally bite me too.

I get it, right? Maybe those staples did get twisted or something if bear was walking on it too. I want to say, like, you know, because it is, I can't imagine them putting staples in in a way. It was a bad area for the staple, to be honest. Yeah. The location of it. So whether it was they put it in wrong or it ended up wrong. Yeah.

It sucks for better. Isn't that crazy that he would let you? I had rescued a German Shepherd when I was in veterinary school. He was a retired military working dog. Not a great pet. Yeah, terrible. Yeah. Lots of energy.

The best dog ever owned in my life. He was my sole dog, right? Because he went through veterinary school with me. It was my first time living by myself and he was with me and, you know, went through some some breakups and some relationships met my husband. husband. He bit my husband in the face and he still, the only reason I agreed to adopt this dog was that he didn't have any teeth. So does that count? Couldn't hurt. But he could leave a gnarly bruise. So he got my husband like right here. And my husband and I had been dating for a while at this point. And he just, he came over to my house before I was back from the library. I was studying. We were in. I was still in veterinary school at the time. And he led himself in to my little duplex that I've been living in. And he'd been around Hugo before. And Hugo was sleeping.

and he like bent down to pet him and he just broke up and was like right in the face, you know? So I had to be very mindful of this dog. But anyway, I had to sedate this dog every single time. I took him into the clinic for anything. I could do as much as possible at home.

I could draw his blood, but I would just bring home with a little tourniquet. We have like little tourniquets. You can kind of squeeze over, you know, right above the elbow in a dog. I could draw his blood by myself. I could give him all his vaccines. But if I needed to take him in for anything more,

I had to have my husband bring him and meet me in the parking lot and I would sedate him. So I tell this. story to people all the time. Like, do not apologize to me. Like, if your dog is being bad or your cat is swatting at me or trying to run away or climbing up, like, I will never be offended. It does not mean that your pet is bad. And it does not mean that you're a bad pet parent. I think a lot of people think it's like an embarrassment on them, like a lack of training. But like that dog was, again, trained like world class, like military working like he. Well, there's different level.

There's pet training. Yeah. So he wasn't bred for obedience. He was bred to work, right? But he would be so obedient and he was so trusting of me. But like once other people were in the mix, he was like, anyone touched me and I will like, you know. So that having that story relating that to people I think does make them more bored when I'm like, look, like the Trasinone and Gabapentin

I've given your dog isn't enough and they're still very reactive and I don't want to make them worse and I don't want to torture them so I do need to give them some injectable sedation and usually people are pretty hesitant the first time we do it and then I do it and I'm able to do it. I'm able to do a full

physical exam. I can, you know, draw labs and we can trim nails and analines and everything. And they're like, this is the best vet visit I've ever had. And I tell people, I'm like, yes. Like, everyone's stress is way low. Like, I have the dog fall asleep with them. I'll usually have them hold the dog when I give the injection and then they can stay as the dog's waking up. So like, they don't experience anything horrible. Like, the worst thing that they'll feel is the poke in the booty when they get their injection. Have you ever gotten attacked? I've been bitten a few times. Yeah. Mostly it's like just look like if I can't get my hands back fast enough. Luckily I've never gotten.

Do you get a rabies vaccine? Yeah. Oh, so you're extra vaccinated. I am extra vaccinated against rabies. And unfortunately, so we get tiders checked routinely. My tithers are always low. I've had like four rabies vaccines. My body's like, you don't need this.

Like, no. But some of my classmates, we have to get the rabies vaccine before we go into clinics. Like when we start handling pets. Sure. They've never had to get a booster. And like 10 years. Because their tiders are good. Their tiders are fine.

my attention is like, nah. I'm like, what the heck? Like, why do I have to keep getting poked? I hate needles. And it does make you pretty sore. I get pretty sore after the rabies vaccine. So, yes. Fortunately, I've never had a rabies exposure.

Because that post-exposure prophylaxis regimen is tough. Well, I don't know how it is for you because you already are vaccinated. You still get the three. You still get the series of three. Yeah. And I heard it wipes you out. But I haven't fortunately had it. But that is a real fear of mine.

I mean, we are seeing... Yeah. We're seeing resurgence of diseases in humans that we were told we're eradicated. We still have rabies. People love to say, you know, a lot of these online health platforms for pets love to say, well, the rabies, the canine strain of rabies has been eliminated in the United States. And it has. And that's great.

But bats can still infect your dog. I mean, just because one strain is gone, rabies isn't. species specific. Right. Not like, you know, like the flu, right? Like,

and it can jump ship, but like, with rabies, you can get bit by any animal carrying any strain, and then you will get rabies. And we still have a ton of rabies in bats, rats, fox,

mm-hmm. Cats even. Raccoons. In New Jersey, there was the, in my area, because I had a patient that was bitten by a loose cat, and I had to look it up,

my local disease spread. And there was, like, the majority of domesticated rabies transmissions happens through cats. Yeah, well, because cats, curiosity killed the cat. And then also, you know, like the rabies gets in your house from, like, bats or rats. And then who goes to check that out first? Your cat, because your cat's like, woohoo, I get to hunt. Like, this is the best. And then they get the rabies.

And again, we talked a little bit before about cats are, you know, more stoic than dogs. They make up a smaller portion of veterinary patients because they're better at hiding illness. so you might not even notice they've been bitten until suddenly they kind of start acting weird. People don't know how to even recognize the symptoms of rabies anymore because it's not necessarily that foaming at the mouth. Like that doesn't happen until like the very end.

Like they just, it's neurological ataxic or they're attacking water. Like they're just ADR ain't doing right. So there was a dog who had rabies in Chicago, I think it was last month or the month before. So rabies is still a huge risk and herd health. matters. I mean, because of herd immunity of rabies, we were able to eradicate the canine and serene of rabies, but that doesn't mean it won't come back. We're seeing a resurgence of distemper

in dogs along the southern border because it was never fully eliminated like in Mexico. And now that, you know, vaccines are falling out of favor amongst pets as well, we're seeing that kind of come back. Luckily, we're not seeing hepatitis. That's the other really common one that used to kill a lot of dogs. That's part of that distemper parvo combination vaccine. that pets will get. We're not seeing that, at least as far as I am aware. But I'm like, God forbid we see rabies make it come back. Fingers crossed.

I mean, it still kills thousands of people in India. Yeah, and because they don't have the rabies laws like we have. And I mean, I get it. People are afraid they're made to fear this rabies vaccine. And there are side effects, right? But I think the risk of side effects from a rabies vaccine, It's like one in 100,000 or something. It's extremely low.

People often say, well, what about titers? Can't we just do tighter checks for rabies every year for your dog? But the problem is, as you know, tiders are a snapshot in time. So just because your dog's tiders are positive and high right now, yeah, what about next week? Even if it's super high, we don't know next month. And because rabies is 100% fatal, that is why tiders are not. So like if you want to do tighter sort of Stemper Parvo, I think that's perfectly reasonable, something like that that's not as extreme or severe. But for something 100% fatal, because again, those are treatable diseases.

Yeah. You can't take a chance. For sure. You know, we don't. And it's scary. It's very scary. Yeah. Is there an explosion in the United States, at least what I'm saying on social media, of exotic animal ownership?

Like, are you talking about Tiger King? Like that kind of exotic animal? But I've even seen like sugar gliders and monkeys like little monkeys. You know, I'm not sure about the statistics. I mean, people have always had those pets. Oh, maybe I just see them more because of social media. Maybe because of social media. Yeah, but those are some of the things, you know, I'll see some sugar gliders.

You see them in your practice? I've seen sugar gliders in practice. Yeah, I saw the last one I saw was a little sugar glider who got his arm like twisted around and bent backwards. He got his nails stuck in his net. They love like little hammocks and stuff. and he twisted his arm up and around. And I told mom, I wasn't sure it was stuck like that for a few days.

So by the time she brought him into me, I was able to give him a mild sedative and get it back in place. And I was like, look, I don't know if he's going to have function in his arm. The problem with the sugar glider is you can't really, you don't want to amputate because then they can't glide. Right. So I said, let's put him on some anti-inflammatories and see if he regains some function in the limb. but if he's dragging it around or if he's chewing on it, we're going to have to amputate. But he made a full recovery.

Wow. Go sugar glider. Yeah. It's pretty cool. Yeah, I get a lot of rabbits are the third most common pet. They're considered exotics because, you know, just a lot of mainstream veterinarians won't see them.

That's all I got in. We don't fortunately see a lot of tularemia, but rabbits actually carry more diseases that can affect humans than I think a dog or cat. Tularemia is a big one. But rabbits are the third most common, just domestic pets. after dogs and cats. So lots of rabbits,

a lot of guinea pigs and hamsters are pretty common. My mom, when I was a child, would always say, never open your mouth around a hamster or guinea pig. I don't know what she was referencing because they jump in your mouth.

Is that like a Russian? Yeah. Yeah. Is that crazy? That's really scary. Is that a thing? No. I'll go to the next time

I have a hamster patient. I'm going to bend over the exam table with my mouth and I'll send you a video and we'll find out what happens. If it jumps in and something bad happens that's a result of the story. I think maybe that's because they, They like to burrow. They like little tunnels and burrowing. Oh, it guess it reminds me of ferrets. Ferrets are another common. Do you know it's illegal to own ferrets in California? Only California? That's the only state that I'm aware of, but it's illegal to own a ferret as a pet in California. Are they pet friendly? Yeah. They do great. Or are they like more wild? No, they do great. They do. They steal your stuff. They steal all your stuff and they make little nests of treasure. That's cool. Little treasure nest. Well, do beavers steal your stuff? I don't know. Don't. Don't

beavers, like collect stuff to create dams? Well, they collect like sticks or branches. Oh, okay. To get, for dams. The birds in my area, they like to make nests out of weird things. Okay. They like will carry. Because they're New York City birds.

Yeah, exactly. They'll take like a little smoking packet and put it into their nest. Maybe it smells good to them. I would think not though. Actually, birds are extremely sensitive to stunts. So I don't know. Either way, they take unique pieces to make nests out of. Yeah, I don't know.

We see, we see fair. but not as commonly as like rabbit skinny pigs. Would you recommend a ferret as a pet? Not like as a starter pet, probably. I think if you aren't sure like what kind of pet. What's the best starter pet? Honestly, if you just want something, I would say a cat. Honestly, I feel like cats are, people kill fish a lot.

Oh. People kill their fish a lot. By accident. Yeah. And it's hard to find veterinary care for a fish too. So, yeah, maybe not changing. I mean, yeah, you can. take your fish to a veterinarian who will see aquatic.

See, I don't see fish. I don't see aquatic. Yeah, that's like a bridge. Maybe someday. Again, like I said, I used to say I would never see the reptiles, but now I regularly see bearded dragons. Leopard geckos are so cute and they've got these like little cute hands. We've ever seen, just Google like leopard gecko hands for me.

They're like the cutest. We get some ball pythons. And then in terms of birds, it's like the canaries and the parakeets. And then I see a lot of chickens. And they live a really long time birds. Yeah, yeah. Those small like budgies, I think it's about 10, 15 years typically that we'll see them live. There's like parrots and stuff. Parrots like 40 years or something. I don't, you know, we, I could see a parrot. We have a specialist, like an actual exotic specialist in Mount Pleasant and you kind of need some special equipment to do like the big parrots and stuff. So I tell, like not just for a physical exam. Yeah. Yes. They do. Yeah. Terrible. Dirty. Dirty birds.

Ew, what are they up to? No, it's different. It's a different. Different strain. Yeah, different strain. But, yeah, I haven't seen any in practice. I've had some African gray parrots come in. So it's probably the biggest bird.

And then chickens, of course. I get a lot of chickens. I really like the chickens. They're very sweet. They're very docile patients. They're really good. I was thinking about getting a chicken. I would love to have chickens, but I have an HOA.

And they say no chickens because they will kind of destroy, like, your backyard. Got it. What if you keep them in the? pen. They need freedom. They should have some supervised time outside of the coop. Because we have coyotes, so it would be problematic. Again, yeah, supervised, right? Yeah, because the, the, the, the coop isn't actually necessary to keep your chickens in. Chickens will typically stay close to home. The coop is more to keep the predators out. Yeah. Like raccoons can really mess up some chickens. Coyotes can really mess up chickens. We have a fox that runs around. Foxes will mess up chickens. We had a

mangy looking fox running around. Oh, maybe he had a mange. They do get it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was. And they can get a, and they can get, heartworm disease. I know. And can they spread that to bear? So heartworm disease spreads through mosquito bites. It's a vector-borne disease. So, I mean, if that fox had heartworm and a mosquito bit the fox.

Which could easily happen. And then bit bear, then bear could get heartworms. Yeah. And then there's some people who say, like, well, bear's too hairy to get heartworm. To some degree, having more hair can help, but they can still get mosquito bites. And we shave his belly as much as we can for genital cleaning. Yeah. I've seen huskies with heartburn disease, so it doesn't matter how thick that coat is.

Speaking of huskies, I got into some hot water with vets. I don't know if you saw my video that I did about my husky. Yeah. She unfortunately passed not too long ago. We made the decision to put her down because she had this situation where she developed a cancer, needed a leg amputated, lived for a decent amount of time as a three-legged tripod. How long after she had the amputation? She was 12, right?

So then she was 14? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's incredible. Yeah. So she did, really, really great. Huskies, you know, they're like super resilient and she was happy hopping around. Yeah, she didn't care. She could care less.

Yeah, yeah. Dogs usually don't. Yeah, right. They bounce back. I think there's such an emotional part of having an amputation as a human, right? Like you feel different. You have to adjust differently. The dogs just wake up.

They're like, okay. They'll stick them up for a dog. Yeah. They're like, this is my life. Now, same with the nucleations. You know, I have to have that comment. If we have to take out a pet's eye for some reason, people are like, oh my gosh, or even their teeth, if they have, you know, dental disease and I need to extract some teeth, people are very worried about removing a tooth. And I'm like, look, your dog's got 40 other teeth in there.

Like, he's not going to miss this one. And this tooth is broken and it's painful and it's dead. And like, it's not doing him any favors, you know, but people have more of it. But you were saying, sorry, so she lived two more years. So she lived two more years. But to give people a backstory in case they haven't heard it, the elevator. summary of it is Siberian Husky grew up with me mostly, my dad a little bit. Then when I moved out, my dad was really lonely because my mom passed away. And I said, okay, you can be

Roxy's caretaker. And that's how I ended up getting bare for myself. As he was taking care of her, he noticed that she had a growth at age 12, which we knew of. It was there for a while. It didn't really change much. Yeah. And he had it examined. They said, you know what? We tested it. They did a biopsy. It's some form of cancer. I don't remember off the top of my head now. I think it's sarcoma. And they said, we should remove it.

And when they removed it, my dad, before they removed it, my dad called me and asked what he should do. I said, well, ask these questions. He kind of maybe didn't ask the best questions. And they ended up removing the tumor. And then in healing, because they removed so much tissue, perhaps circulation distally, was impacted. There was a theory that the baby.

Bandage might have been a little bit tight that impeded circulation. And she ended up needing to have the limb amputated. Yeah. So it was a tough story, but the purpose of sharing it was to show people that it's very important to have a shared decision-making approach with your vet. Yeah. Yeah. Never to blame the vet that that's what happened in that scenario.

But just to show that, look, a 12-year-old dog has a cancer. Maybe it's not the best approach to remove the cancer. And if you think it's not, ask if we don't remove it. What are the possibilities? Just so you have the entire situation kind of going into it, eyes wide open. Curious, your take since you saw the video. I'm really sorry personally that that happened. Yeah, sure.

Okay, cancer sucks. She was 12. So am I surprised that she got cancer? No. Because that's a golden year. Yeah, yeah. The fact that she lived two more years after that is incredible. So you obviously took great care of her.

Yeah, she was great. So 14 years is fantastic for husky. So starting with just, I'm sorry. And losing a pet, especially one that was through. through so much with you. I mean, that makes me think of my Hugo. You know, that's, that's, that's your sole dog. As much as bear is great, you went through a lot more with, with Roxy. So there you go. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm sorry. That goes kind of back to what I said a while ago where I tell people, I'm not going to test or do anything unless it's going to

change what we're going to do. So if I have a senior pet that comes in and it's grown a tumor, the first thing I would tell people is we can test this, but I'm only going to test this if you think that you're going to want to do surgery for it, or sometimes knowledge is power. So if we think it's something that might ulcerate and like rupture open, you can know what to watch for. But if you don't think you want to do anything about it and maybe you'd prefer not to know, we can just monitor it and that's fair because, again, 12 years old.

Yeah, yeah. Especially a growth on a limb. And people say that's heartless to say, I don't think it's realistic. Yeah. Because there's healing that's involved, that stress on the, dog that's involved, risk, benefit changes. I don't think your veterinarian would have gone into that conversation. Should your dog have needed the leg amputated for that tumor from the beginning?

Well, the tumor was removed first. No, that's what I'm saying. So maybe they wouldn't have recommended even doing it if they had thought the leg would have needed to be amputated, right? Because amputating the dog on a 12 year old, excuse me, amputating the limb on a 12-year-old dog is a very different conversation than amputating the limb on a 6-year-old dog. Because if it's a 6-year-old dog, I'm like, look, we're going to amputate the limb, and then your dog could have 6 to 8 more years to live.

and so I think in my mind that's probably very worth putting your dog through all of that stress and the recovery and the adaptation versus a 12 year old dog but again I always tell people it is your pet and there is no right or wrong answer as long as the animal's welfare

is being kept in mind like you're not putting your dog through something terrible for your own benefit of keeping them around right? Like is it going to benefit your pet? So that's a that's a conversation I have to. make the decision based on what makes them happy as opposed to what's for the pet. Not always, but I always remind people to be mindful of that. Because in flipping into the medical side of things, we spend the most money health care wise

on the last few days of life. Yeah, isn't that crazy? And sometimes at the expense of the person. I know. Because we want them to be around longer. In reality, I'm sometimes telling loved ones, hey, this is going to cause more harm. The benefit here, forget it is limited. It's not existent.

You guys don't, I mean, I got humane euthanasia, you know. Well, no, we have hospice. So we focus on comfort as opposed to saying that let's act, even like a D&R order saying, well, let's not do chest compressions because baseline, their quality of life is terrible and they're really sick. Their heart stopped. Now if we bring them back, quality of life drops significantly, even in someone who's healthy after their heart stops.

So like, what are we getting for them? So we try and have those conversations. But that's similar. And so there has been a shift in veterinary medicine, I would say, in the last like 20 years to, we are in an era that we've never been in before in terms of access to specialty care. Veterinary specialists that has boomed, right? More veterinarians have specialized. Access to veterinary specialists is therefore also more common.

So there's been like in veterinary. schools, now everyone teaching in veterinary school is a specialist. They've all specialized. And there's something in veterinary medicine known as the gold standard of care. Right. So your dog comes in with a growth. The growth should be tested. It should be removed if possible and like gotten rid of it. But it doesn't take into account the complexities of the situation. Right. So in veterinary school, a lot of these students are being taught, okay, you have to practice the gold standard so you're not like sued, right? But then you get into practice. CYA medicine. Yeah. And you get into pregnant. You get into practice and you quickly realize that that's not how the world works,

right? Firstly, more than half of my clients cannot afford specialty care or do not wish to pursue specialty care for whatever reason it may be and it is never my place to judge. And I will never judge somebody again as long as your pet is not suffering and the welfare of your animal is looked out for. I will not judge you for not pursuing chemotherapy or surgery or whatever, right? Like as long as your pet is comfortable and happy and you are being mindful of their comfort, then I'm with you and I will support you in that. And so now veterinarians are like, whoa, we went way too hard to that gold standard extreme. And we're shifting down to what's called a spectrum of care approach, which I love.

And it's actually kind of what I was doing all this time without having a name for. It was where I was reasonably meeting people where they are at and taking, you know, being a partner in the decision making process for their pet, kind of like we said share decision. That's our term for it. Yeah. It's, but I'm loving it. It's spectrum of care, right? So it's saying like, yeah, the gold standard test the lump, remove the lump under all circumstances,

like get the cancer gone, right? Right. That's the best thing we could do for that pet. And then chemotherapy, radiation afterwards, whatever it may need, right? But in the real world, again, it's not always practical. people can't, you know, always afford to do all those things. And it might not be right for the animal. It might not be right for the animal. Or think about, too, some of the aftercare that was involved. Like some people aren't able physically or mentally maybe to do some of the tasks we might need.

Right. Right. Like you have to give all these medications or do all these special baths or do all these wound checks or whatever or come back every single day. Well, what if you don't have transportation or what if you are handicapped or disabled for whatever reason and you can't get back to the veterinary office every day? Or what if you have a 130 pound dog who's hard to get across town? So I love this shift towards spectrum of care approach because I think it's let veterinarians remember that like you don't have to do all of the things or you don't have to push for all the things 100% of the time. I would just always have a conversation with the client. I'm like, hey, this could be really bad.

This could not be bad. If we don't test it, we won't know. We're not going to test it if you're not going to want to do anything. But I would test it if you think you might want to do something, then let's test it and let's find out. and let's go from there. So, you know, you do the aspirate of the growth. You figure out what it is.

Is it cancerous? Is it benign? And then if it's cancerous, you have to take into consideration location, right? How much tissue can we close it? I'm guessing there was a bandage on Roxy. So maybe they weren't able to close the wound. I didn't get to see it because it was like bandaged and wrapped with that extra. So I heard horror stories in veterinary school of bandaging.

I'm afraid to banish anything because I have actually seen a German Shepherd who had to get their limb amputated after a simple, they had like a laceration that was bandaged. And then the owner didn't come back for the bandage change for like three days or something. And then by the time they came back, like it was had to go. And I saw that in practice. I heard about in vetted school. Like you, I am hard pressed to put a bandage on anything. Like I will be like, we're going to leave it open. And it's going to ooze all over your house and I'm sorry. But I'm afraid to put a bandage on it because your pet can't tell me if their fingers feel tingly and they can't tell you. And if I have to put a bandage, I'm going to. And if I have to put a bandage,

I always leave the toes exposed and I tell the owners to check for swelling, to send me a picture every day. Like I'm, I'm paranoid of bandages for that reason. And, you know, I don't want to say that your dog's bandage was too tight. We don't know. There are so many things we don't know. But it's scary to put a bandage on a pet. I'm, like, worried.

But she was going back every day for checks. So it's like, not every day. Not every day. But it was, the issue was more in my mind of thinking, okay, this is 12-year-old Siberian Husky. If you're a surgeon, this is my. mindset and correct me if I'm wrong for assuming any of this because I'm making a lot of assumptions. If you're, let's say you're going in for the procedure and you see the tumor is quite invasive

in that it's surrounding blood vessels. It's surrounding a lot of tissue. At some point you have to then say, oh man, me going in here is going to put really high risk for an amputation. Do we discuss that with the owner? Because this seems higher risk than initially discussed. Is that something that would happen? I think normally.

I know it's tough to, we don't know. know, you know, your dad was being communicated with, right? Sure. But I'm sure he divulged to you what was said. But it's hard to it's all third party. Once you send them for the surgery, it feels like they're going to get the surgery. Yeah. Well, you can go consult with the surgeon and see what they say.

You know, it's hard talking about a growth that I didn't see. And I think the veterinarian who went to surgery probably felt very confident that they could remove it or they probably wouldn't have. Yeah. Right. I know most people, even if the plan is surgery, you get in. I've had this happen before where I, I saw the dog a month before.

They weren't sure if they wanted to do anything. They called back last week and we're like, hey, we want to go ahead and do the surgery and they come in and the tumor's like three times bigger. And I'm like, okay. I need to call the owners, right? And then I'll call the owners. And I'm like, things have changed. We need to have a different conversation.

I can still do it or I cannot do it. And here's why. Or here's why I wouldn't recommend or here's why I actually need to send you to a specialist now. So I think if the surgeon, the veterinarian, had a suspicion that the surgery would have resulted in death to the rest of the limb, I think they most likely would have stopped and talked about it. So I'm sure it was an outcome that no one expected. And that's another thing that happens. You know, and that's where we talked about burnout coming from, right? It's so easy for people to then turn around and blame the veterinarian and be like, that surgeon messed up and blah, blah, blah.

But, you know, I'm going to share a story. My brother and sister-in-law just lost their, like, I think, 14-year-old Boston Terrier socks. And he was her sole dog. My, um, I'm going to share a dog. Um, brother and her got her, got socks right before his first appointment and they had moved across the country from Arizona to Virginia. They had just gotten married, got this puppy. They had like,

he had two more deployments. They had two kids. They relocated like five times. Sox was with them the whole time. Then they had like a third kid. And he was just the staple of the family. Great, great, great dog. Lived for Ball. Ball was life. So that's also very important to the story.

He was like, that dog would play fetch until his little legs fell off. He was like a potato. he would like play fetch until he couldn't breathe and we'd be like we have to stop or he's gonna die like he will die for the ball like yeah like he's just gonna yeah he's going so hard so he grew a lump on his butt and my sister-in-law texts me and she's like well socks has this like weird lump right kind of like on his hip um just above where his um like back leg starts kind of like on that lower rump area so kind of the back leg if as a person you'd probably say like hamstring

area, but in a dog, you'd say like the bud kind of. The glute. The glute area, exactly. Grew a big lump. And I said, she went to her regular veterinarian and came back and she's like, well, they said we're not going to do anything about it because he's too old. And so we're just going to keep an eye on it. And I was like, well, what if it's an abscess or something very simple?

Well, I was, usually if it's an abscess you can feel and you can tell, right? Absences are going to feel squishy. They're going to feel warm. There's going to be inflammation, right? It's going to be P-Oed versus a tumor usually. You're saying it was examined. It was examined but not tested. And so, you know, and she told me, she's like, well, socks is old?

And they said, we're probably not going to do anything about it anyway. So, and I said, well, is that what you want? Do you want to not do anything about it? Because, like, some of these things can get really gnarly and, like, what's this conversation happened with you? And she's like, oh, my gosh, you know, I didn't think about it because he's just older. So, like, would we even be able to put him under anesthesia? And I was like, no, you would 100% put this dog under anesthesia.

Like, age is not a disease. Like, we're doing anesthetic events on 15 and 16-year-old dogs more commonly than ever now. because they're living longer than ever before. And we're doing dentals and mass removals and these things to extend their quality of life. And she was like, oh my gosh. I didn't even think it was an option because she just made it sound like he's old.

We're not going to do anything about it. So we're not going to test it. And I was like, no, that's your choice. And if that's the choice that you want to make, that is okay. He is at this point he was like 12. I was like, that is okay. He is same age.

I was like, he's older. If you don't want to test it, if it is something bad, we don't have to do anything about it. And then that's okay. You're just going to keep an eye on it. and if it gets really big or if he seems painful or whatever, make another decision.

And I did tell her, I said, you know, if that is something bad, it would be difficult to remove because of the location and amputation and all that. But she goes, no, I think you're right. I want to have it tested. So they went back and they got it tested and it came back as a soft tissue sarcoma.

And then so, you know, they were like, well, what do we do? You know, we're worried about we'd have to amputate. And I said, here's the thing. Ball is life for socks. I do not think socks would do well transitioning to an amput. at 12. And I said, you can always go in and see if they can remove it because, hey, maybe they can

get full margins. And when it comes back, or clean margins. And when it comes back, you know, the histopathology will show that we got clean cuts and it's low grade and it's not going to spread. And then, hey, you've cured him. So if you're willing to at least take the chance and do that initial surgery, I think that is worth a try. And I said, but again, it's also okay if you're like, I don't want to do the surgery. I don't want to do the radiation. I definitely don't want to do the surgery if they're not sure they can get clean margins. they elected to go ahead and do the surgery. Surgery was great, but unfortunately

came back with dirty margins. Because, again, if they in order to get full margins, they would have needed to amputate. Like, that was known going into it. They're like, we're probably, we're going to try our best. We'll see if we can get clean margins and if we can't, we can't. But that's as far as we're willing to go.

And I said, you need to have an end in sight. Because it's easy to say, well, we'll just do this. But then you get there and like, well, and do one more thing. And then, yeah. So, like, go in with that mindset of like, this is all we're going to do. We're going to give it a go.

At least we can say then that we tried because I think that made her feel a lot better. I don't think she would have slept well thinking that she did nothing and just like watched it turn into something. So they sent me the histopath result and it did say that like you could see like broad, you know, what's the word I'm before? Like yeah, yeah, there was tumor cells. It was dirty, all over. Not like a little dirty, but like dirty. And I said, well, we're just going to have to monitor for him from here. And it was a low grade tumor.

And I think, I don't know if you shared that with the audience today. I did watch your video and hers was low grade too. Six months later, though, he did have metastasis to his liver. So even though, you know, we never know how these things are going to react. So I do think if we can get the tumor off and keep it from spreading, that's great. And that is something to maybe try. But, you know, do you want to do chemo? Do you want to do radiation?

Do you want to do amputation? That's totally different. So, like, if I was your veterinarian and you brought Roxy into me and I was like, how far do you want to go? Do you want to try, you know, step A? Like I said, I think if I had come to you and said, we're going to need to amputate her leg to get this tumor off. You might not have wanted to do that to start, right? But if we had said, we can try to get it off, you know, reasonably by just removing it, I think that would have been worth pursuing. And I think that was really reasonable choice.

And then, of course, there was an unexpected outcome. And she did not having to get an amputation. And that super sucks. And I'm sure the surgeon probably was also very disappointed that that happened. Negative medical outcomes are like all of our worst nightmares. We're all perfectionists. We all went to medical school or veterinary school because we're overachievers. Right.

So, like, they're probably beating themselves up way more than anyone else in this scenario, unfortunately, because I've been there. But yes, anyway, Sox's tumor ended up spreading to his liver. And then he lived a while after that, too. But then eventually he passed because they decided to know that, like, we're not going to go back in and do an amputation. He's, we're just not doing that for him. And I think that was extremely reasonable. So he actually just ended up passing away, like, last month.

So that was two years after. Like it was more like, I think like eight. Like it was like over a year after the original surgery, but not a full two years. But yeah. Yeah, I guess I've just seen so much medical intervention that was unnecessary at the end of life in human health care. Yeah. Very aware. A very aware of it.

Yeah. And saying that like, okay, a 12 year old dog who has a tumor that has been pretty stable, if she dies in two years, that's probably what would happen anyway if we amputate and remove the thing. Or if I'm buying three months, but then her quality of life is worse. It's hard. And there's no right or wrong answer. Everyone has their own. You know, it's hard to find that balance between what could be done and what should be done.

And it's going to be different for every single person. There's some people who are like, I absolutely cannot stand the thought of my pet, like, dying from this thing. So we're going to imitate. Like, we're just going to not worry about it and everything's going to be fine, you know. And that's fair. But there are some people who are like, I'd rather do nothing. And again, that is fair. And then if it starts to become a problem where the pet starts to be in pain,

we act on that, you know, so keeping the welfare of the pet at the forefront of the decision-making process. Do you think there's certain breeze of dogs that should be banned? This is so controversial. I have opinions, again, I don't ever think, I don't like to ban things. Does that make sense? I feel like the worst way to get people to agree to do what you want is to force them to do it, right? I don't think anything should ever be forced on you. And I feel like banning is kind of that way. Like you make something like forbidden. fruit right now it's more tempting yeah you should wear your seatbelt please wear your seatbelt I can't force you to wear your seatbelt but like you can ban drinking and drive you can ban drinking yeah again okay

still I'm just predicting the comments for you I think that yeah yes yeah of course people are gonna be like no you should have said I would like to see more initiatives to breed away from some of these bad health standards that we have selected for so like a common breed that is targeted is Bulldogs, they do have a lot of health problems. Have you ever seen an MRI of a French Bulldogs back? They are born... Oh, it's the back. I thought you're going to say the snout.

Yeah, so intravertible disc disease has been a classic for doxins. You think of a slip disc, you think of a doxon's back. French Bulldogs are now more likely to slip a disc or have back disease. But it's different in French Bulldogs because they're deformed. Their spines are deformed. statistically, like they are born, not right. And then of course, then you have all, you've got all the same.

Do you have a deformed back? Not born right. Okay. I was like, whoa, what happened to you? Am I right? Yeah, and then they've got all the face stuff too. Like, they're way more likely to have eye problems because their eyes are bulging out.

They're way more likely to overheat. They can't breathe. You know, but we have seen a shift. People are now breeding towards that longer snout so they can breathe better. And so great, we're fixing that problem. Are we going to be able to breed towards like slightly longer backs and correct that problem too?

I hope so. I don't know. I know that takes time. But I don't like to say like, oh, we need to ban French bulldogs because they are so sweet. They have, they're so, they're full of character and they're full of life and they're so cute. And there are people who love them. And I think a lot of the people who really love the breed are open to trying to breed away from those things. It's hard though.

There's that there's that welfare question. And like French bulldogs can't have their own babies. So they have to have a C-section. So like that in and of itself is a kind of a welfare concern, right? Like you have to put a dog through a surgery. And like that dog's not electing to get pregnant. So she's not electing to have to have surgery and recover from surgery. Like walking that line is really hard.

You know? But again, there's people who love French bulldogs. I have incredible French bulldog owners. Another breed that we see a lot of issues is Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. Really? Yeah. They can have brain issues where, like, their brain will, like, bulge out, like, their cerebellum.

Yes. They're so, like, herniates out of the, yeah. They also have heart disease and dental disease. Wow. Very commonly. So they don't have as many issues as French bulldogs, but they're banned in certain countries as breeds because of that, because of their health risks. But I love them.

Cavies are just pure, like, sugar. Like, they're just sweet. today to the interview for a free checkup. You should have. I would have loved to meet them. But yeah, they're great. So I would hate to say like we need to ban them. And then the pit bulls, right?

People want to ban them because of the, you know, genetic predisposition for aggression that is debatable. And I don't know. But my dog, Frank, we did a DNA test on him. He was like 17 different things, 10% of which was other. And I was like, what are you, a cat? Which I think he might be he hates water, like hates water. So, but he had like, I say 30% lab and 30% retriever, but it was like, I'm sorry, 30% pit and 30%

retriever because the pit bull was like, it was like 30% of 10 different types of like, it was like American Staffordshire Terrier and American Pit Bull like all these different things. And then there was like the other 30% was like Labrador Retriever, Chesapeake Bay Retriever and like golden retriever. Like he's literally like a real dog. Everything. Yeah. People ask me what he is. I'm like, he's a South Carolina Street special, you know. But he would be like technically banned, right? Because he's got like that pity. He's got like a wider face.

I don't know that he'd be banned because he doesn't have like the bully look to him really. But like some of those dogs that I see are like the sweetest, kindest, like most docile. Like I could like roll them over and slice them open and they'd be like so happy to be in my clinic. Right. And it's terrible to say that. But like the trust and the love and the obedience. And then I've seen golden retrievers that have tried to bite me. So like I don't think it's fair to kind of blanket ban a breed.

But some veterinarians would disagree with me and some animal welfare advocates would probably disagree with me. Again, for the French bulldogs and the things like that. Like the German shepherds were bred for a while to have that really sloped back and they were all having hip problems. And we've turned away from that. But those are easier to fix because it's like one thing. But we could have easily been like, okay, we're banning German shepherds now.

And like German shepherds bite people, you know, if you go, go bit people. So like, they're sometimes. It's messy. Yeah. German Shepers are big biters in the veterinary clinic because they're too smart, I think, right? Like they're like, I'm not going to lay here and let you do this to me. I'm going to eat you. Like, you know. Sure.

Yeah. I think that's a really loaded question. I'm probably going to get hate for that. But I think you should share it because I think it's important that people know about the health issues. There's different reasons why people get dogs. Well, I do think, though, that comes back to people need to research if they want a specific breed. Like, if you don't want to go to the shelter and pick up a dog. which I think you should if you don't have like a specific attachment or you want something specific

or you have a specific family scenario or whatever go adopt or rescue or something if you can because there are so many deserving dogs in the shelter but if your heart is set on a breed and you grew up with one you just have a love for one I I would hate to see you know some people say like breeding in general should be banned but I would really hate to see a lot of these breeds gone right like I would be sad if I never saw like another new fee or another golden retriever or I would be sad if I never saw another cavalier because I love that variation in the breed. I see where they're coming from. I do think maybe it should be more regulated like a certain amount of litters a year or things like that or like maybe breeders should have to get some kind of certification like certification

or whatever to prove like I don't know. There's some more right. I think I would like more regulation of it. But you know research the breed before you. you buy a dog. Is it the same for cats? Are there cat breeds that you're like, don't get? There are cat breeds. Um, like so Scottish folds will have a lot of problems. Yeah. They have the little folded down ears. Aren't they banned in some countries? Yeah, they have heart problems and some other stuff. Um, there are, you know, there are brachycephalic cat breeds, like the Persians and everything that can have a little squishy. Oh, and the hairless ones, aren't they? The hairless ones actually are pretty healthy. Oh, they are. Generally. Generally,

I don't, I don't, I, I, I have several that I haven't had any, maybe there is something I'm getting sphinxes, yeah. But there are many breeds of cats as well. I couldn't name all the breeds. I couldn't name all the breeds of dogs. I posted a reel recently. I was doing an exam on a chicken. And I was like, I don't even know what breed of chicken this is. And people were like, wow, what a horrible chicken veterinarian you must be because you don't know all the breeds of chicken. I'm like, I don't know all the breeds of dogs. There's a lot. Right? Especially once you get into like the regional dogs in England. I think it's important to know the more common and popular ones are the ones that you see regularly.

I mean, it's like the same when people say you don't know this medication. I know. like, are you joking? Do you know how many new medications are per day? And the names of them? Yeah. I mean, there's so many breeds of dogs. There's so many breeds of cats. But cats, I feel like.

Do cats and dogs generally get along? If introduced early, you're probably saying. I think so. I mean, I have some people who have both and they get along great. I definitely have some that avoid, like, clients who say, like, they have nothing to do with each other. Newfis get cats as friends? I would recommend a very supervised and controlled introduction and see how it goes. maybe start with a kitten, you know, so that like, because kittens are.

But it has to be a giant one. So it's on, like a main coon. You could get a main coon. Yeah. So they can keep each other. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, I think they'd have fun. Maine Coons are very dog-like.

Like, they have a very, like outgoing personality as far as cats can be. So a lot of people will like, like, a lot of dog people can step into cats with a Maine Coon. But you can't train a cat the same way you can train a dog. You can train a cat. One of my friends is. Well, not like sit, stay, but in terms of like, don't destroy this couch. If they want to destroy the couch

If the cat is destroying the couch It's because the cat needs somewhere to stretch And to do its claws And you're not giving it the right thing Most of the time If I give it the right thing It won't destroy the restoration hardware couch Well, depends

So Right If the restoration hardware couch is the right height And the perfect texture For that deep stretch And your cat's back Like it But usually that's what happens

To people like Well I got my cat a cat tower And it's like not Firstly it's like this high And the cats like, stands up and it's taller. You can say like, don't do this to the cat. They might listen. So, yeah, cats are usually trying to tell you what they need.

So people are like, my cat peed outside of the litter box because it's mad at me. And I'm like, well, maybe the litter box is in the wrong place. Maybe you don't have enough litter boxes. Maybe you have the right, the wrong kind of litter. Maybe your litter box. Like people want to put the litter box where it's convenient for us, right? But maybe the cat doesn't like where that is. And so it's not going to use it in there.

The cat might use your couch because it wants to be in the living room wherever. else is and it wants to hang out with you and you're on the couch. So your cat's going to stretch its back on your couch, right? Because your cat tree might be in a spot that is convenient and aesthetically pleasing for you. Right? So sometimes I'll tell people like get a leather, get a post, wrap it in the same as close of texture as you can get to your couch and put that right there. I thought it would be the opposite. No. Because then aren't you training it to like love scratching this type of fabric? If you train it to use the other thing instead, then it'll use that, right? Because it likes the texture.

So, and then you can, in the meantime, get fabric guards. Like, they make guards for couches to keep your cat from scratching it. Yeah. So you got to think like a cat. But cats are actually very trainable. My friend is a dog trainer in Texas and he taught his cat to ride the Roomba. Yeah. Like just the same exact way. Yeah, it rides the Roomba, which I don't know what the purpose of that is other than it brings everyone joy and the cat's happy because it gets treats. So like you can, you know, I've got people who've trained their cat to like spin in a circle and all these things cats are extremely smart. Now the problem is cats are also too smart. Sometimes I'm like, why would I do that for you?

You said the birds can sometimes kidnap cats. Can vultures steal a main coon or is that too big? I mean, I don't know. I don't know the dexterity of a vulture. It's never been studied. I would need a research paper on that. You know, evidence-based everything. I can't give you a an answer unless I will go see I don't think that's been tested I wanted to ask you like what's the airspeed velocity of a sparrow like that just made me think of like if if you grisp it by the husk do you know what I'm talking about yeah okay no it's kind of a age that's funny all right so maybe we'll leave that as they open any question for people sure if anyone can answer because I did a really bad thing in one of my videos I said if I get a certain number of likes on a video I'd get bear a friend of a cat and I think about getting a cat I think it got enough likes and people are really mad

that I didn't get the cat yet. You need to, well, if you said you're going to do it, you have to be a man of your word, and you need to get the cat. It's important. But like I have to make sure bear consents. Yeah. Because he needs,

100%. Well, if you're looking into like a main coon, you could look into like a maincune rescue and maybe they have some that are already dog friendly. Oh, okay. You know, but understand if you want a kitten

and especially around dogs, you know, you want to make sure it's going to work out. But I will always advocate for me. Can I bring my dogs to the shelter to play with the cat and see if they get along? You can ask the shelter. You'd have to ask them.

I think so. I mean, most shelters have like greeting rooms. So like when I went to the shelter to meet Frank, you know, they put us in a room with me and my family. And, you know, my son was 12 months old at the time. And he was like, get this puppy away from me. Because the puppy's like sniffing all up on him. But it was really cute. We like played in there for a little while just to make sure it was a good fit.

And I think people will usually bring their other pets. And then they'll maybe, you know, if you have other pets, you might take the dog home to foster for a while to make sure that that works out. because it's different in a home setting where there's territory and boundaries and stuff already kind of set up. So you can always ask. Never hurts to ask. Well, I could say that you truly do live up to the handle. You are the honest vet. I try. Thank you for answering all our questions today. Where can people follow along your journey? Yeah. So you can find me on Instagram mainly as the honest vet. You can also find find me on TikTok and YouTube with that username as well. Cool. Any projects on the horizon you want to get people excited about?

You know, I, this is a day by day thing for me. It's truly, I go online and I talk about stuff that I saw that day or things that are relevant to me. Maybe I need to be more, do bigger, greater things with it, but I'm happy with the size it is now. And do you want people to know where you're working case they want to seek you out? Yeah, I'm in Charleston, South Carolina. So if you have pets in Charleston and if you're looking for a vet, please come see me at all creatures veterinary clinic. Oh, thank you. Yeah, thank you.

That was fun, right? Yeah. Huge thanks to Dr. Hammond for coming up to New York City for this interview. If you enjoyed this convo, you might enjoy my convo with another animal expert. Shark Tank's own Barbara Corcoran. Very fascinating conversation. If you enjoyed this one, please don't hesitate to give the show a five-star review. Leave a comment if you like.

It's the best way for us to find new listeners. And as always, stay happy and healthy.