Speaker 1: You were listening to Petlifradio dot com.
Speaker 2: Well, hello and welcome to doctor Jeff Werber here and
ask the bets with doctor Jeff here on pet Life Radio.
And I'm here for you. I'm here to answer your questions.
I'm here to talkin pets, especially dogs and cats my favorite.
But we'll get you information on anything you need to know.
You need to just give us a call at eight
seven seven three eight five eight eight eight two once
again three eight five eight eight eight two, and that
is area code eight seven seven And you can also
just send me a quick little note to Dr Jeff.
That's doctor Jeff at petlifradio dot com. We are one
of the few live shows here on pet Life Radio
and we're just filed to be here. Of course, we
want to thank our sponsors, pro Sense Pet Products, and
they are are partner retailers like Target like Walmart where
you can get some great products for your pets. By
the way, speaking of Prosens, if anyone dares to call
us with a question or sends us an email, we
will as a gift from pro Sense send you out
a free pro Sense Pet Products so you can't lose
get some free advice, takes a few minutes of your
time and you get a pro sens pet product gift
right after they send to you directly.
Speaker 3: How cool is that?
Speaker 2: And also want to welcome another one of our hopefully
soon to be sponsors. They're testing the waters. We're testing
the waters, and that is the Pet Health Network. You
can go and reach them at pet HealthNetwork dot com
and I am one of their many bloggers.
Speaker 3: Fantastic stuff.
Speaker 2: In fact, I think one of my blogs is being
posted on Monday, so if you want to go on
and check out pet Health Network. A great team of veterinarians,
some of whom will actually be guests on my show
here with you, so you can give a call and
actually get the opinions of two veterinarians, which is really cool.
Speaker 3: So you know.
Speaker 2: Interestingly, one of the blogs and I wrote, I was
at the North American Veterinary Conference last week and the
great conference. By the way, in a couple of weeks
I'm heading to Las Vegas for the Western Veterinary Conference.
And interestingly, one of the big topics and one of
the big challenges that we have in veterinari medicine obviously,
is the high cost of quality medicine. Drugs have gone
up in price, the equipment has gone up in price, rent, payroll,
I mean, all of this stuff has gone up, which
means that if you will have a well staffed, well
stocked facility, that you take your pets to a facility
that is either open twenty four hours or at least
has the equipment that you want your pet to have,
and at the very least a technician available at the
hospital to be with hospitalized pets twenty four hours.
Speaker 3: It costs.
Speaker 2: And what we found so interesting at this seminar, this
one particular seminar that I attended, was that in Sweden
almost sixty percent of pet owners have pet insurance for
their pets. In the United Kingdom it's about forty percent,
a little under forty percent, which is still amazing. What
makes it even more amazing when you think about those numbers,
I mean sixty percent, forty percent, that in the United
States probably arguably the craziest nation in the world when
it comes to pets and pet care and how we
view our pets part of the family and what we
would do for them, less than one percent of you,
and we say it one more time, less than one
percent of you pet parents pet owners, call yourselves what
you like, actually have insurance for your pets. Now what
drives me nuts is I understand that quality care is
expensive to run. A practice is very expensive. Owners complain
all the time about fees and about the cost and
have come to no payment plans and this and that
and the other. They're always looking for excuses and not
to pay or try to negotiate. Meanwhile, ask them if
they have pet insurance for their pets, and their answers no.
So you really need to speak with your veterinarian. And
there are really a number of good companies out there.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Hopefully you can listen to this again and again online
on pet Life Radio, but I'll name just a handful.
But you need to go out and do your homework
and check into what you want, what kind of plan
you want, what the kind of plan you can afford.
But you absolutely need to have your pets insured. Or
the alternative is set up an account in their name
and contribute to it every month like you would the
premium for your pet insurance policy. And you basically we
call that self insuring where you don't use it or
on little things, but if you build it up every month,
every quarter or whoever often you want to make your
contributions to the account. You open up a savings account
in Buffy's name or in Bowser's name or whatever, and
like clockwork, no excuses, you make your deposit, and at
the end of a couple of years, I have a
few thousand dollars sitting around which you can use as needed.
But either way, you need to do something to plan
for the future. And what I often tell my clients
simply is that you're gonna find you're gonna need it
the most when you don't have it, and that's the crime.
So look into companies like True Panion, Embrace, pet Plan, Pets, Best,
ASPCA Pet Care VPI. These are all companies that have
insurance policies. I cannot make a blanket statement and tell
you what's best for your pet. But you know what's
best for your pet. You know what you want. You
know whether you want wellness care, you know if you're
worried about cancer care, you know. You know if you
have a dog that has a lot of familial or
congenital issues that different companies will cover familial or congenital
issues as long as they weren't present when you start
the policy. Other companies will actually have writers for cancer treatment.
Other companies will have wellness care plans. So if you
take your pet in just for vaccines or just for
the routine dentistry or the routine annual blood test without
a proper problem or others, you can opt for just
major accident or illness insurance, which is gonna be a
littless expensive.
Speaker 3: So the key is it all depends.
Speaker 2: You can custom tailor a plan that's best for you,
but it is so critical that you have pet insurance.
Speaker 3: The worst thing.
Speaker 2: There is something a term that for those of you
who haven't heard this term, it's going to blow your mind,
and we unfortunately have to refer to it often in
verny medicine, especially in certain parts of the country, and
that is called economic euthanasia.
Speaker 3: And basically what that means is.
Speaker 2: That people are willing to put a pet to sleep
simply because they either can't afford to or don't want
to spend the money, even if they had it on
a dog, on a cat, or on a bird or
pocket pet. And though they opt for euthanasia rather than
spending the money to either get a diagnosis or to treat.
Economic euthanasia pretty frightening. Of course, our listeners here at
pet Life Radio ask the that's with doctor Jeff, aren't
thinking about economic euthanasia. I know you want to do
the best for your pets, but in order to do so,
it is really important to make sure that you are
prepared for that major illness, for that accident, and get
yourself signed up to a pet insurance policy.
Speaker 3: Let me know what you think. I want to know.
Speaker 2: I'd love to know. And hey, free pro sense pet product.
Give us a call at eight seven seven three eight
five eight eight eight two once again eight seven seven
three eight five eight eight eight two, and let me
know if you have pet insurance, if you've talked about it.
I also want to know. And this is, you know,
a kind of a one of my pet peeves part
in the pun. How many veterinarians, how many veterinarian hospitals
don't mention anything about pet insurance when clients come in.
I mean, I train my staff not to ask do
you have a pet insurance policy? I train them to
ask which pet insurance policy do you have, the assumption being,
of course, that you do have one, even though we
know they don't. But that way it really stresses the
importance of when you go in and they ask you
which pet insurance company are you with? If you knew
nothing about pet and ssurns, if you didn't even know
that pet and shirts existed, that the option is there,
then you might say, oh, what pet and shirts. There's
pet and shirts. It's the same thing with micro chipping.
Every pet should be microchipped, and it's important to make
sure when you check into your vets office that they
are asking you is your pet microchip? Or which microchip
company does your pet have a microchip with? So again
I hate hearing when someone says, oh, I didn't know
there's pet and churns for pets. I didn't know a
microchip you can actually put a chip into your dog.
I mean, guys, this is amazing stuff and it's and
every every single pet should have a microchip. So that's
something that we want to make sure that you start doing,
like right away, because it's very important. So give me
a holler, send me a note here at pet Life Radio.
Just you can either if you're listening online right now,
down at the bottom of the pet Life Radio you
see that box and you can join the conversation and
you can, you know, let us know right away if
you have any questions, well, we'd love to hear your questions.
Speaker 3: And then if you want to give us a.
Speaker 2: Call eight seven seven three eight five eight eight eight two,
or of course you can always send me a quick
email to Dr Jeff doctor Jeff at Drjeff dot com.
And I just also would love to know how you
guys are doing in the winter. I was just at,
as I mentioned, at the North American Veterinary Conference, talking
to a number of veterinarians like everywhere in the in
the country and hearing still some of these insanely cold
temperatures is just is it's frightening how your pets varying
this winter. All I can tell you is it's too
warm here right now. And I went up to the
mountains a couple of weeks ago to Mammoth Mammoth Lakes, California,
where typically has amazing snow in this Sierras, and it
is really not that good. The snowboarding or skiing is
extremely suspect. And I'm sure hoping that at some point
during the season we're going to have some better snowfall,
because I'm anxious to be out there and do some
real boarding. Anyway, I wanted to take our first quick
break here at pet Life Radio, Ass Thevats with Doctor Jeff.
When we come back, we are going to answer a
question that I received from one of our listeners about
the etiquette if you will, for lack of a better term,
of asking your veterinarian for a second opinion. Under what circumstances,
who should you go to? Is it appropriate to ask?
Should it be offered before you ask? These are all
the things we're going to talk about when we come back.
Stay tuned. Here we're with Ask the Bats with Doctor Jeff.
I'm your host, Doctor Jeff Weber, and we'll be back
in just a minute.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back right after these messages. Stay tuned.
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Speaker 2: Hello and welcome back. Here you are live with doctor
Jeff Borber. I'm your host of a Vets with Doctor
Jeff here on the one and only pet Life Radio,
part of the iHeart Radio Network, which is very impressive anyway.
Speaker 3: So just before the break, I had.
Speaker 2: An interesting question from one of our listeners, and they
were concerned that they had an issue going on with
their pet, their dog and the veterinarian, and things were,
for lack of a better term, stale, I mean, and
that means nothing was really wrong, but both the veterinarian
and of course the owner were becoming maybe a bit
frustrated that they weren't getting the answers they needed. Our
listener asked, is it okay to ask for a second opinion?
And you're gonna hurt the veterinarians feelings? And you know
a good veterinarian and totally love the vet. And here
were my suggestions. I think it's a good thing just
to talk about because it's not uncommon. And first of all,
when you know or you think that a problem is
going on and the answers just aren't coming, or they're coming.
The answers are there, but the treatment's not coming. There
are a number of sayings that I live by, and
one of my favorite is this, And even though you
don't live here in southern California, I think you can
guess the answer, and that is the following. You're running
along the beach in Malibu and you hear the hoof
beats chasing you from behind. What are you thinking horses
are zebras, and of course that most of the cases
we deal with are horses, meaning the obvious things, the
more likely things. But that's the biggest problem. On on
a side note that we see with young graduates and
students is because they are learning clinical medicine from the
veterinary teaching hospitals, and the teaching hospitals are the ones
that do end up with a lot of the zebras
because of referrals from the GPS, the general practitioners that
are these are cases bizarre once in a lifetime, twice
in a lifetime, cases that are way beyond the means
of a GP, and they end up with all the
specialists at the university.
Speaker 3: So these graduates get out thinking that every case is
a zebra.
Speaker 2: Every case are these odd, bizarre cases, and they're ready
to start looking for those weird things and never thinking
wait a second, time out, time out, we have to
rule out the obvious things. So the approach that most
of us take to a case is we're not thinking zebras,
We're thinking horses.
Speaker 3: We're thinking what could this be.
Speaker 2: Let's test for the things that are most likely and
rule them out first, and once we do that, we
can then approach or start looking for some stranger, weirder,
more esoteric problems that, as I call the zebras. So
when you have a case that is sort of stumping
the doc, either from a diagnostic standpoint or a therapeutic standpoint,
when that happens to me, and trust me, it does.
And as I joke, I'm very happy being a GP,
a general practitioner. As I call myself, I am the
quintessential jack of all trades, master of none. I mean,
I certainly have certain interests. I may do things a
little bit more frequently than some of my GP colleagues
may do. And then again they do other disciplines that
they sort of enjoy working on more than I do.
But we all have our limitations as gps. The beauty
of the specialist is that they have honed in on
one discipline, whether it's internal medicine, whether it's cardiology, whether
it's dermatology, whether it's oncology, whether it's dentisty, whether it's
behavior right. And that's what they do, and they do
it very well. So when I see I refer for
a number of reasons. Number one is the obvious, this
is a really tough case. I am not getting it,
and I need some specialized diagnostic help that I just
don't have the right equipment for. Be it that half
a million dollar ultrasund machine, be it the endoscope, the bronchoscope.
I know it needs to be done, I just don't
have the equipment.
Speaker 3: To do it.
Speaker 2: Number two is a case that I am doing all
the right tests and everything is pointing to nothing, and
yet clearly the pet is having a problem. I need
to call in the expert. I need to call in
my one of my friends, an internal medicine specialist who
can help get the diagnosis. Number three is I got
my diagnosis, and the dog has often a typical response
to the treatment that we should be using, and I
have the right dose and I have the correct treatment,
but nothing is helping this dog or cat is not responding. Basically,
the dog or the cat did not read the textbook,
so they don't know that on this dose at this time,
given this way, they are supposed to be responding, and
they don't. And therefore I call in a specialist. If
it's a surgery, that's just a surgeon I just don't do.
I'm going to call it in a specialist. The last
reason so those are all obvious, and basically it's not
an ego thing. It's basically saying, look, I don't have
the equipment, the animal is not responding the way it should,
and I'm kind of stuck. And I have to tell
you that there's a certain strategic reason that your veterinarian,
your general practitioner should be referring.
Speaker 3: And that's the following.
Speaker 2: If I see sometimes that a client and a good
doctor should be able to read their clients, and when
that client is starting to become a little bit dissatisfied,
they're thinking, you're just great having and tests, You're spending
too much money, even though you know that you are
doing it right, even though you may have already spoken
to one of your referring docs on the phone for
a little guidance and they've told you what to do,
and yet you still see the client ain't buying it.
You know what, refer Absolutely your doctor should be referring.
You never want to get the client. You never want
to be upset with your veterinarian. So if that starts
to happen, I refer. Now, if with all those things,
the doctor still hasn't referred, there's nothing wrong with you asking,
you know what, Doc, I just would feel more comfortable
getting a second opinion. But here is the etiquette. Here's
the only thing that I recommend. When a client tells me, well,
their friend how this problem, and they're vetted so and so,
I don't want to hear it when you are going
to get a referral or ask for a referral, it
should be, in my humble opinion, to a specialist. There's
not necessarily brainy sense in going from one.
Speaker 3: GP a good GP.
Speaker 2: Hopefully you're you love your VET, you've been going for
a long time, you trust them. From one GP to
another GP, that's what we call a lateral move, all right.
If you really want to get the bang for your buck,
you have all the stuff, all the tests, the results,
the treatments copied, and go to a specialist, because what's
happening is there you're sort of moving up the expert
ladder from your extremely competent, great veterinarian general practitioner to
a specialist. So that would be my recommendation. The only
time I take a little bit offense and I tell
a client you're not going to get any better, I mean,
I trust me, I'm okay, with going to getting the
second opinion. But if you're going to get the second opinion,
at least get it from someone who's way better than
I am. And I don't know that that GP down
the street is better than I am. I'm not saying
they're worse, they're the same.
Speaker 3: They're good, but you need even better than good.
Speaker 2: Therefore, if you're going to do it, you want to ask, now,
why don't I mind? And why you should think that
your veterinarian should never mind when you ask, is that
one of two things are going to happen? And which is,
by the way, why I don't like to wait until
I'm asked.
Speaker 3: I want to do it before.
Speaker 2: If I send to a specialist and that specialist gets
an answer that I couldn't get, you're still gonna love
me because I admitted, you know, we need some extra equipment,
we need some extra help here. Let's send it to
the specialist. If that specialist agrees with me completely and
everything I've done, and it's just going to continue doing
what I'm doing, I look fantastic.
Speaker 3: I look is go as a specialist.
Speaker 2: So either way, when you're a veterinarian, sends before you ask.
Speaker 3: It's a win win, win, win win.
Speaker 2: Everybody's gonna win, and you're gonna come away usually thinking great.
What you don't want is to go to that specialist
because they asked, not because you were sent And that
specialist takes one look at the blood work, one look,
it doesn't even do an extra test and just says,
wait a second, this is so and so and starts
putting on the right treatment. Then you're gonna feel a
little bit suspect with your your veterinarian.
Speaker 3: Anyway, we have a caller on the line. Hello, can
you can you hear me?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 5: Hi?
Speaker 3: Hello, how are you? What's your name?
Speaker 6: I'm doing good. My name is Laura.
Speaker 3: Hello, Laura, Okay, to do it for you.
Speaker 6: I have a question about nutrition. I have a we
have two cats, okay, one is thin, one is hugely open, okay,
all right, and we just we give them some you know,
dry food in the morning and some in the evening, right,
and I don't give him that much. And I'm just
trying to figure out how can I get this one cat.
You know, maybe I'm not feeding him right, or may
have to feed them separate. I don't know the cat door,
so they go in and out go in and out right.
Speaker 3: So here's here's the thing.
Speaker 2: Well, it could be that the thin cat is just
more active outside. I have eight cats. We have meal
time in the morning where I feed them all some
canned food, and then when they're done, and that is
literally I'm standing over them. Each one has their own
separate bowl and I can monitor what each one is eating.
Two of my cats, embarrassingly so are all actually three
are rather.
Speaker 3: Large, and I'm talking over twenty pounds. Yeah, the big cats.
Two of them are really big cats.
Speaker 2: One is a main Co Norwegian forest cat cross and
one is just he's just a huge bone cat. But look,
I'm not gonna butter up. They're pretty overweight and they
love to eat. So after they've eaten their meal meal,
which I monitor, I know how much to give each one,
I will leave a little dry food in their bowls
free choice. So you basically have two challenges here. Number
one is that you want to make sure the cat
that's not eating, or the thin cat, really is able
to eat without being disturbed by the other cat to
the point where the ration that you give him or
her is finished. Okay, now the big cat should start
being given less food and be very careful, especially with
the dry food, and especially with a big cat, an
overweight cat, because type two diabetes is very common in cats,
especially if they're overweight, and especially if they're eating diets
primarily of dry food, because that dry food has a
lot of carbs. So I'm a big fan for cats
that are obligate carnivores. They need animal based protein that
we give them more of the maybe canned food, whether
it's salmon or or meat or beef or chicken or poultry.
Speaker 3: Something like that.
Speaker 2: They need to eat a little bit more canned food.
There are some some special foods out there for diets maintenance,
for diet management, dietary management, giving them low calories and
yet the same amount of nutrients and protein they should
be eating. I would think of that for the bigger cat.
And then whatever you can do, come up with something
around the house, because you know that when they get
out that kiddy door, your big cat is not over exercising,
because if he were, he wouldn't be huge.
Speaker 3: So we come up with the way.
Speaker 2: I don't know, like one of my cats loves to
chase laser lights, you know, the light, so why sit
and I get that thing on the wall and I'm
playing and I'm getting him to run and to jump,
and you know, that seems to help, but one hundred percent,
And I know it is much more difficult to get
a cat to lose weight than a dog to lose weight,
because rarely do you throw that leash or the harness
on the cat and go out for a run. So
that's something that they have to do on their own.
But so what I would do is dietary food for
the big cat. Monitor them carefully when you're feeding the
main course, if you will. A little bit of you know,
leaving food out and let them kind of free choice
feed during the day is okay. And but I'm just
I want you to see to beef up the food
for the little guy and decrease the amount of calories
for the big.
Speaker 6: Guy, right right.
Speaker 3: And whatever you can rig up to make exercise fun,
do it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, our bulldog likes to play with them.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, a bulldog too. Yeah, well I have I have.
Speaker 6: Five dogs a cat.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2: I always joke I said, you want to see your
cat running around, you know, get yourself a cat eating
dog and you'll see them move pretty quickly.
Speaker 6: But no, you're just wants to play with the cat.
Speaker 3: That's good dog, I.
Speaker 6: Have to do.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: Two of my many my many dogs as well, are
Frenchies and they also just love to.
Speaker 6: Play with the cats.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 6: Try. I'll try the cans food in the morning and
then that's only gets right and at night I'll give
them a little bit of dry go in and out
at night.
Speaker 2: Right, not very much, and make sure to watch the carbs.
Cut back on the.
Speaker 3: Cars, all right, right, all right, okay, Laura.
Speaker 2: When you hang up, either called Mark back at the
studio and leave your information, will send you out a
kiddy product for your cats or something for your dog. Okay,
courtesy of Prosents. Thanks a lot, have a great day.
Speaker 3: You're welcome. So how easy was that? Everybody?
Speaker 2: Eight seven seven three eight five eight eight eight two.
You can just call about anything. We'd love to hear
from you. Free choice of a free process pet product
out there. We'll talk about your dogs, your cats, whatever.
Speaker 3: And anyway.
Speaker 2: I hope our little discussion we just had on the
when to refer went to ask for referral, getting you
that second opinion. I hope it helps you, gives you
a little guideline because I really do want you to
know that it is perfectly okay. And as they said,
we do it all the time. I usually like to
beat my client to the punch. I personally take it,
you know, I do take it personally when the client
has to ask me. I'm usually pretty good at knowing
when we're on the right track. Everything is working perfectly.
I'm totally comfortable. So let's just keep it up versus God.
Speaker 3: You know, I did expect that answer.
Speaker 2: I'd then not get any response I should be getting
or or I can't believe I ran all these tests
I'm not getting nothing pointed to a problem. In that case,
we are going to work a little harder and we'll
get that patient over to a specialist to help us out. Anyway,
our looks like our time is up.
Speaker 3: It goes fast, it goes really fast.
Speaker 2: So once again, thanks for joining me here on Ask
the Bets with Doctor Jeff. I'm your host, Doctor Jeff Weerbert.
Want to thank pro Sens, I want to thank pet
Health Network and are my retail partners Target and Walmart.
And don't be bashful next week when we're on Ask
the Bets with Doctor Jeff one pm the Pacific time,
four pm Eastern Zone. Here on pet Life Radio. You
can reach us at eight seven seven three eight five
eight eight A two. If you send me an email
during the week to doctor Jeff Dr Jeff at petlife
radio dot com and I use your question or comments
on the air, you too will get a.
Speaker 3: Free pro sens pet product, So don't be shy. Thanks
for joining me. We'll see you next week.
Speaker 1: Let's talk pets every week on demand only on petlive
radio dot com.