00:00:02 Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Welcome to The Houndation's podcast. I'm your host, Tony Peterson, and this show is all about finding a veterinarian or a vet clinic that is a good fit for you and your dog. There's definitely one thing for certain. When you go pick up a little eight week old fur ball and bring it home, You'll have to make several visits to a vet clinic over that pup's lifetime. There's no way around it. And if you're lucky, those visits will be for just like routine checkups and vaccinations and the across the board care we give our dogs. If you're unlucky, which happens a lot, you'll have to bring your dog in for a more serious issue. This is when a relationship with a good vet that you trust can be huge, and that's not a simple thing to come by, or at least it's not as simple as some people think. It's also what this episode is all about. When I was fresh out of and completely rudderless in life, I ended up working at this little restaurant in Rochester, Minnesota. It was kind of a high end place with live music most nights and very limited seeding. And as with any job, when you start it. I didn't really know anyone or feel much like I belonged there for a while, but as it often goes, I started to get to know the cooks, and then the bartenders, and then some of the weight staff, and many of the waitresses were how do I put this, really really hot. One was just a level above the rest, which was saying something, and she did not have a whole lot of time for us back of the house staff. So it was a surprise to me when she strolled back to chat with me one day, just for the hell of it. Now, I'm not proud of this, and I really don't even want to tell you guys this, but I was twenty four at the time, and well, it was very nice that she had warmed up to me a little bit, so much so that when she left, I did a little fist pump move over my head while congratulating myself for being the kind of guy she would casually talk to for five minutes. But above my head was a vent with galvanized steel around it, and I punched that steel just right so that before I even looked at my hand, I knew I was headed to the er. Since it was a work injury, the details of which I might have fudged just a little bit when I explained them to my boss. I went down the road to get stitched up. Two interesting things happened during that experience, the first of which was when the nurse injected the painkiller into my hand. I thought I saw it just kind of all run out of the cut. When she started stitching me up, I wasn't numb at all. And let me tell you, in the movies, when someone does that without painkillers and they remain stoic, I'm a little suspect because it hurt a lot, so much so that when she asked me what was wrong, I told her, and then she gave me an injection that actually worked. The other thing that happened there was that a doctor who looked at my chart got a very surprised look on his face and asked me if I had insurance. I didn't, so he said, i'll tell you what, I'm going to make an appointment for you, and we will just keep it between us. I didn't really understand what was going on, but my blood pressure was insanely high, and he figured it probably would kill me, or at least be real bad for me. He also knew that I couldn't afford what he wanted to do, so he essentially just snuck me in to give me a few tests. I remember returning to that hospital and walking down the hall with him, and at one point he looked at another worker and said, nothing to see here, look away. At the end of that visit, which I'll admit made me think I might actually be dying, he said, you have white coat hypertension, which is a doctor joke about people who get very nervous and stressed out when they're in their doctor's office, which raises their blood pressure a lot. Now, when they sit long enough and settle down, they tend to have a much better reading when the old cuff titens up around their bicep. I honestly think that was one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me, and I would have told him that when I went back to get those stitches out, But as it so happens to young, drunken morons like I was back then, I didn't have to go back because I blew all of the stitches out when I punched a guy at a housewarming party. Yes not a house party, a housewarming party, so I just glued and taped it shut and went on with my dumb life. But that doctor taught me something about the medical profession, and I think it applies to the world of animal medicine too. While everyone who theoretically goes through the process of becoming a doctor of veterinary medicine will be a consummate professional, that doesn't mean that every vet will be a good fit for you and your dog. And I'm going to get into that, but first I want to break down a few things about becoming a veterinarian. If you think any average person can get into VET school and finish it, you are super wrong. The academic requirements to get accepted into a program vary a lot by the school, but they really aren't taken see students in if you get my drift, GPA and gr score. Requirements to get in weed out a lot of folks who probably just don't have the mental horsepower to do the job, which is a good thing. The cost of VET school is another issue. Again, this varies a hell of a lot by school and whether you're attending an in state or out of state university, but it's very likely to graduate, wait and come away with student loan debt in the six figure territory. It generally takes eight years of education as well, which means that VET school that often puts people into real debt comes after four years of undergraduate studies, which, if you haven't been paying attention, are also rarely offered for free from universities. Now imagine studying something you know, not even for eight years, because you know, the undergraduate programs can have you in interpretive dance classes in badminton, but for at least you know beyond the non major related courses. Four dedicated years of study. Add in the reality that you can't be a dummy and get there, and the standards for your performance are going to be real high. The amount of time studying has to be insane, and the amount of knowledge that they have to cram into their brains is a heavy heavy lift. Now imagine going through that stress for years and years, working your way through some tough shit. And then you start your job and someone who hasn't spent a single second learning the things you've dedicated your life to learning tells you they know better about their dog. That's something I want to drive home here with this podcast. You don't want to find a vet who gives up and tells you what you want to hear. You want to find one that you trust who will give it to you straight about how to best care for your dog. Let me frame this up another way. Recently, my mother in law, who is probably about twenty five percent totally nuts by my non scientific calculations, took our local YMCA up on a recruitment offer. They were selling memberships for like a dollar a month to the end of the year or something like that, which was music to her ears. They also threw in a free personal trainer consultation. Now, when I asked her how it went, she said she didn't really like the guy. Now, keep in mind, I know that trainer fairly well because I work out there a lot. He's a good trainer, a good dude in general. But I don't think my mother in law was interested in getting actual advice on how to get into shape. And I think the trainer knew that the moment she walked in. Essentially they were a bad match because she wasn't interested in his expertise. She knew what she wanted out of the deal, and that was that when it comes to taking your dog in You have to be able to trust the professionals. There's no way around it. They care about your dog cells and they need to be able to communicate with you. How best to go about that. Now, this is where things get a little wonky. We often look at vet clinics like they are all the same, and so we shop around for the cheapest option or the option that will allow us to get in on short notice, because most clinics are very, very busy. The COVID boom of pets is still going strong, even if it might have died down some, but there's also just a shortage of veterinarians out there. It's a supply and demand situation going on here, and the reality is that not only is it expensive to become a vet, it's crazy expensive to fill up a clinic with the tools and the machines and staff necessary to meet the needs of a variety of clients. There's no dollar general type of vet clinics out there, and if there were, you probably wouldn't want to bring your dog to them. Now. While vet visits aren't cheap, you're just likely to pay the going market rate for everything from routine checkups to dental cleanings to wound treatment to emergency surgery. If cost is an issue, and it likely is for most of us, the best way to keep them down is to keep our dogs healthy and active and at a good weight. Prevention really is the best medicine. This goes for keeping your dog generally healthy, but also even before that, when you're shopping around for a litter of pups and the health checks that go into certain bloodlines, the less you do on that end, the more likely you are to spend on the back end with allergy tests and blood work and anything and everything related to genetic issues that slip into so so breeding. That's why when folks complain about how expensive some puppies are, I cringe a little, because with certain bloodlines, you're paying up at the front end, so you won't have to pay more through the dog's life and potentially suffer through some issues that could have been avoided on the back end. Okay, so now all that is out of the way, I want to talk about how you know you've found the right vet for you. First, make sure they don't hate you as a person. I joke about that kind of but honestly, we had a clinic in our area that I used to take my Golden Retriever to that we often saw. Seemed to really dislike hunting and hunters, and she wasn't overly shy about it. When I got my next puppy, which was a female black lab, one of the first things that Vet did was lecture me on how it's not fair to a dog to only have one dog, since they are social pack animals and they do much better with at least another four legged companion. I was like, Lady, I have of twin babies at home. Are you really suggesting? I doubled down on puppies too, and she was she didn't understand my lifestyle, what my dogs really live for, and it just wasn't a good fit. I shopped around and ended up at another clinic, where the very first conversation I had with Vet was about how much her labs love to hunt and how much she loves to hunt with them. Now, on the surface, that seems like a great match, but maybe the reality of why isn't fully evident. Yes, it's nice to work with someone who doesn't hate what you do for your hobbies, but having access to a professional who understands what your dogs go through on any given year is super important. Think about it like this, I live in an area with insane ticks. I mean just ridiculous amounts of ticks, to the point where there isn't a treatment out there yet that will one hundred percent for sure keep my dogs from getting some kind of tickborn disease. It's just a numbers game, and high exposure is the reality for us here, even when you try your best to mitigate it. A veterinarian who is familiar with that will be able to cater care to a dog that is going to be exposed to a lot of ticks. They'll understand what that means, and that's important. They'll also be able to recommend I don't know, food choices you know better considering at least they know what hardcore sporting dogs need in their diet and specifically what kind of dog you have and what it might need in its diet. They can recommend supplements, you know, treatments for minor injuries, joint issues, recovery issues, whatever. Having access to a vet that understands your life and your dog's life better is a huge plus. They can not only help you better when something goes wrong, but help you look into the crystal ball and generally anticipate what might go wrong, and that's huge. This also helps with the right dialogue. We want to be able to ask questions without feeling like an idiot and talk through issues with your dog without fear of justjudg A good vet will facilitate that every step of the way. But again, that doesn't mean you won't hear something you don't like about how you handle your dog, especially if you're honest about everything, which you should be. We look at our dogs as a reflection of ourselves, but they are individuals that deserve good treatment, and sometimes we think we give them that, but we really don't. This is probably most easily understood in the food department. We all love to give our dogs treats, sometimes table scraps, but just because it makes us feel good for a few seconds, and our dogs clearly want that, it's often not a great idea. Now, if you like to do that, but your vet says your dog could stand to lose five or ten pounds, then the extra calories have to stop, even if you don't want to hear that. And honesty flowing both ways is huge, and it becomes an even bigger issue when you notice something is wrong with your dog. Remember it doesn't do you or your dog any good to lie to the vet, and they don't want you to. So if you love to eat edibles and watch sci fi movies at night while drinking chocolate milk and eating cheetos, and then one morning you realize that your dog ate your whole stash, don't make up some story or hide the details from your vet. Or maybe you suspect that your golden retriever ate another pair of your wife's underwear and you were just hoping that Jesus would take the wheel and push that chunk of fabric through your dog's digestive track, so it ends up in a steaming pile in your yard instead of getting caught somewhere between its mouth and its ass, which requires you to go in and explain that you have a dog that is just really drawn to that sort of thing and maybe might have ingested your bride's grundy undies and now you're not sure, so please help. Or maybe your dog has been just a little off for three days and you're not sure why, but you also just didn't think it was serious enough to bring him in right away don't lie and say the symptoms just started. They need all the information you can give them to make the best choices for your dog. Hell, maybe you weren't paying attention and you were tossing a dummy off the dock at the lake and you threw it in such a way that your dog jumped right onto a big boulder or something. We do dumb stuff. We make mistakes with our pets, and sometimes they get injuries because of it. But you gotta be honest about it because it'll help your vet make better treatment decisions. Now, another thing I want to say about this before I wrap this podcast up is that you should know whether your chosen vet clinic has emergency hours or not. I've talked about this before, but it's really important to understand where you can take your dog when the shit hits the fan and it's midnight on a Tuesday. This goes for when you're at home and just notice that something is way off about your dog, but is also a must for over the road trips where things can happen a long ways from your home ground. Hell, you might just realize that over the road trip stress this is too much for your dog to handle and that's super common, and maybe that leads to a volume of diarrhea that would have to be measured in buckets. Some reason you needed to measure it at all. Tell your vet about that, because they might have a good recommendation for a treatment or some advice on how to mitigate that stress and keep your dogs just a little bit more healthy in those situations. They are a resource to help you help your dog, not just someone who gives them expensive shots once a year and is there at your beck and call when things go wrong. It should be a team effort, it really should, and that might require you to find a vet who understands your situation really well, and it will definitely require you to be open and honest with them. That's hard sometimes, but it's for your dog, and when something goes really wrong, you're going to want it to go right as quickly as possible. So think about that, and then think about coming back next week, because I'm going to talk about something that a lot of us deal with our dogs, which is just how to get them safely to handle cold weather, cold water, snow, whatever, ice. It's all about winter and dogs on next week's show. That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been The Houndation's podcast as always. Thank you so much for listening and for all your support. If you need some more hunting content you just haven't got your fill out of this show or cal shows, you can head to the mediater dot com and you can find a whole bunch of podcasts. There's several on the meat Eater main feed. Now you can check out the Media to Radio podcast. You can check out trivia. Or maybe you need something a little bit different and you're just interested in some history, or you're interested in some really really good storytelling. You can check out Clay's Bear Grease podcast, which is great, or Brent Reeves This Country Life, which is just done so well. That guy can tell a story like no one can. So maybe you need to go check those out. Maybe you just need an article, a recipe, want to watch a film with yours truly, or somebody else hunting something. The mediater dot com has you covered. Again. Thank you so much for your support.