Speaker 1: Is Pet Life Radio. Let's talk pets. Welcome to Animal
Rights on vet Life Radio. So excited that you're joining
me today. You got a super show, really interesting take
on things. We're gonna be talking to doctor Phillips shot
DVM about his latest book Hill the Beasts, a jount
through the curious history of the veterinarian arts. So it's
a fascinating tale, fascinating insight to days gone by, all
kinds of unique things that we probably looked back on
now on treating animals that we think what were they thinking?
And the other ones get you to think, hmmm, that's interesting.
So a lot of good intakes and insights going through
a history of veterinarian medicine and how we take care
of our furry, feathered, fin and sometimes skilled friends. So
it's gonna be a great tale tonight. So everybody hang tight,
we'll come back right for this commercial break. You're listening
to Animal It's on Pet Life Radio.
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Speaker 3: Let's talk pets on petlife Radio dot com.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Animal Writes on pet Life Radio. Joining
me now is veterinarian and author doulpe Shot and we're
talking to him about his lace book, Kill thee Beasts. Philip,
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're super excited about it and the book is
fascinating it to say the least. And I love the subtitle,
A Jaunt through the curious history of the veterinarian arts.
So it's more than a history, it's sort of a
walk through the park interesting techniques and things going on
veterinary medicine. So tell us a little bit about the
book and how came to be.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you know that subtitle you point out, each
of those words is deliberate, So a jaunt. It's a
light take, as light as the subject matter permits, right,
So there's some things that are just not light about
ill animals, but I want to be accessible. There's really
there's nothing on the market anywhere in the English speaking
world that addresses the history of veterary medicine for the
general reader. There's some academic works, but I want this
to be the general open and inviting to the general reader.
The curious history. It's bizarre, like there are strange, amusing, interesting,
fascinating things. Even me, as a veterinarian and as somebody
who's also passionate about history, I just didn't researching it.
It was just one thing after another that I on Earth.
I thought, Wow, that's incredible. So so yeah, jaunt and
it's curious, and it's the veteran arts. So it's a
science of course, modern veterarian medicine, but it was much
more an art in the past. There's still a little
bit of art to it if you do it right right.
It's not just the cold science. It's the art and
the science. But it's just over the years there's poslay
the arts, to be honest, which is not always again
such a bad thing. So yeah, I came to write
it because I saw that there wasn't anything out there
like that, and as I said, veterinarian thirty five years
obviously passionate about that. Otherwise we're just stuck with it
for thirty five years and passionate about history. And it
was an opportunity for those two streams to meet. I
never thought I'd combine those two passions, and so there
we are.
Speaker 1: Right right. Yeah, Now, you know, there's so many fascinating
takes within the books. You're absolutely right, obviously did your
research that. A lot of times when we're talking about
you know, veterinarian medicine and reading books and things about it,
it's either you know, it's very analytical for us common folks,
very scientific minded for us, or we're talking about a
particular topic, you know, a book about cancer, for instance,
and that's very important. But the fascinating thing I loved
about the book is, you know, how do we get
to where we are today? And then sort of you know,
getting the reader to think a little bit about where
are we going? Because because I even reflect back, I mean,
I've had animals all my life, and I remember those
early days not knowing what to do and even going
to my veterinarian it was you know, for domestic animals,
it was the basics, you know, it was a shot
here or there, a pill here or there, and even
some of those medications and treatments are still around today,
tried and true, but then looking back on it now
years later, totally different from everything from nutrition to animals,
to how we treat them and what we treat them for,
and some of the things that we treat them ways
we treat them in the past where seem really free
a story, gaussay.
Speaker 4: At times, No, absolutely, in my career I've seen an
enormous change. Obviously, the technology rapidly closing the gap with
human medicine and in fact, in some cases maybe surpassing
what's done in humans. Just because we're a little more nimble,
we can do things a little faster, the proof of
process is quicker. So there's that. But more to the
point of the book, our relationship to animals has changed
my time. You know, in the nineteen nineties, it was
still the case, at least up here, that if people
refer to themselves as the dogs or cat's mom or dad,
it was with a little bit of an idle, ironic flare, right,
a little tongue in cheek, a little little chuckle. Now
it's absolutely rapeface. This is how they feel, right, this
is the normal language. And then that tells us something
about you know, how pets have moved into the family
in a really central way, and that was the case historically.
We think that we're really advanced. We are in some ways,
but you go far enough back to skip past the
Industrial Revolution, go further back and go to early medieval Europe.
You find peasants are living with their livestock, right, so
their cattle. For sure, the cow is the their livelihood,
but they have to have a really strong bond with
that animal to depend so heavily on it and live
so closely with it. You go to pagan times then,
and people had a spiritual connection with their animals in
a way that we have as modern kind of Westerners
we did. That seems kind of weird to us in
a way, but I see it coming back as well,
So in some ways.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, I mean the Eastern tradition in the philosophies
are slowly but surely getting into that. And our animals
obviously play a key hard in our whole spirituality. And
I did enjoy that fact that you know, oftentimes you
thought back before the Industrial Revolution and where you needed
your beasts will say, according to the book, to as
you're likely you had to keep them happy and healthy
and we're not happy, but you had to keep them
healthy as long as you could, because you can't just
go out and you know, get another ox, or you
couldn't get another plow horse or whatever it may be
that you need to do. And now it's more of
a combination. If you have a working animal, you've got
to keep them healthy, but it's also you're looking for
their happiness and you know, doing different techniques that you know,
massaging your your your horse, these type of things are
your cow. You wouldn't have thought of before, you know,
you know, doing a little bit of comfort for your
goat because then it will produce more milk, these type
of things.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah, it's moving more to the forefront. It
was always there, but people felt a little self conscious
about having expressing those sorts of feelings and ideas.
Speaker 1: Right. So, doing the research on the book and going
back through history, was there a sort of a threshold
you originally set You said, okay, I'm just going to
do industrial revolution on and then as you dug into
it's like, well I got to get some you know,
it keeps going back and then back thousands of years
into this. Did you originally come into this with the
idea of, okay, i'll treat it from a certain decades,
multi decades standpoint, or was it you're wide open to anything.
It was fascinating, and I.
Speaker 4: Was super ambitious that wanted to do it all, and
in fact, part of it was driven by the fact
that one of the very first things I encountered is
the first story in there. So the structure of the book,
there's twenty two chapters. Each one features a historical veterinarian
or animal healer, most of them real people, some of
them if you go far back enough, we don't know
who the individual was. So I make someone up and
there's a little story, like a fictionalized vignette, but plausible
fiction that leads the reader into that chapter. So the
first one is twelve thousand BC in prehistoric Rhine Valley
and what's now in Germany. They've archaeologists found a couple
two humans men and a woman and a puppy buried together,
and not just random bones jumble together, but clearly they
were buried on purpose and in a ritual fashion. It
was clear this was deliberate Moreover, we know from the
teeth the puppy that it had several bouts of distemper.
So distemper affects the enamel in a very characteristic way.
So we know this puppy lived with distemper for a
little while. And I can tell you, with all my
modern veterinary technology and medicine, distemper fullb bal on distemper
is really challenging to get them to survive. It's a
really serious disease. So this puppy survived a little while,
so it was getting some kind of care. Number one.
Number two, they buried this puppy with them. You know,
people in those days they buried grave goods that they
thought would be useful in the afterlife, you know, favorite
sword or whatever. Right, a sick puppy not useful in
the afterlife, I'm thinking so, So there must have been
a bond of a faction there as well as this
evidence that there was some kind of treatment, you know,
herbal whatever it was that they remembered. People were smart
as we are fourteen thousand years ago, but they didn't
have all the hundred distractions that we have. They didn't
have to figure out how to pay their taxes or
where the gas was the cheapest, or all that kind
of stuff. They just had to focus on the things
immediately in front of them, so they could be very
smart about that. So that led it off. And if
I'm going to start a twelve thousand BC fourteen thousand
years ago, then I'm going to go all the way through.
Speaker 1: You're Goulda easily had like four novels out of this
for sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I didn't want to load it up with
too much again technical mumbo jumble, so I tried to
keep things moving fairly briskly, so would jump ahead buying
hundreds thousands of years in some cases, try to hit
the highlights along the way, right.
Speaker 1: And I love the fact of that part of it,
how you structured the book, because as we said, from
the get it could have very easily been very scientific
or even I can imagine. I'm not a veterinarian, nor
if I played one on TV, but I can imagine
the fascination behind him, because you're in that story. The
first story right off the get go is okay, So
they bury their puppy. We know they had distemper, but
what did they treat how did they treat that you know,
been very easy to dig into that, which is still fascinating.
I would love to know what herb they use back then.
We know, you know that we could used today possibly,
or maybe it is still used today. You never know, maybe,
but yeah, you kept it more of a sort of
it's historical, it's a factual based on what we know.
But yet it's a storyline. You know, when each one
of them holds true, you know, you can go from
one to the other and pick up a nice, interesting, intriguing,
historical story without it being too deep, we'll say, hope.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, and a man is a storytelling animal, right,
This is how we communicate. This is the most, in
my mind, the most effective way of communicating with stories.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, So, if you had to go back and
look through it all, is there a one that sort
of give you an aha, or you thought, oh, man,
I love this, or you know, oh, the readers you're
going to love this particular one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that's my favorite, the favorite child question I
can't always explain by any book beaver And yeah, so
you know the one that jumps to mind just because
it's kind of funny in a way, and it it
kind of piques my sense of humor is the in
England and what we know what we used to call
the Dark Age, just the early medieval period after the
Romans left, so year six hundred seven hundred around there,
the farmers would be turning up as a plowing the
fields and better plows plow a little deeper, and they
were turning up little stone arrowheads. And they had no
idea of any sense of history that there had been
people's there thousands of years ago that might have had
stone arrow stone arrowheads. They thought it was invisible elves,
and they blamed the invisible elves for their life stop being.
So when the horse was ill and the cow was ill,
they'd say, ah, it's been elf shot. That was the
term in old English that they used. It had been
elf shot. We must get in the cow leach or
the horse leach, because the veterinarian was the leech, right right,
so dog leach for dogs, horse leach, horse, cow leach,
cows apparently they were specialized that way. And he would
come around and it's app you know, mister horseleach, my
horse has been elf shot. So he would go through
this ritual. It was quite this elaborate thing he had
a special knife that had to have the handle had
to be from the horn of a cow that had
never given birth to a calf, and had to be
fixed with three brass nails the metal part the cutting
part of the knife to the handle. And then he
had to write the name of Christ theo Christian at
that time on the side of the animal, but not
scratch it. It was invisible, but the elves could see
it and they would run away in terror. And then
he would be able to heal the animal through some
more mumbo jumbo and then have to give a special stick.
The farmer would be put to work to go get
the special stick. We find a stick and it was
just the right stick. Cool, smack the animal on the
hind end and presto, it would get better or it wouldn't.
So these guys were a tinerant. They didn't have a
fixed clinic, so they go from village to village. There's
no Internet, there's no five star reputation or anything like
that to uphold. They would just disappear. So I think
they often get practical advice too. You know, Dan was bloated.
They'd say, oh, by the way, you might want to
take them off the fresh grass or something like that.
Speaker 1: Right, no, right, but it is fascinating when you go
back through that, you know, and we sort of get
a good chuckle out of oh my god, these people,
what were they thinking? You know? But that was the norm,
that was the way you treated them, you know it.
And I don't know for sure. I'm not going to
knock veterinarian medicine because I love veterinarians all over and
I've got plenty of that I pay for. But that
being said, can you imagine, you know, ten years, one
hundred years from now, some of the things we're doing
and they look back and they think, what what were
these folks thinking? Or perhaps they uncover something that says,
you know that we can't explain it, but that worked
in the olden days. So perhaps we need to brush
that up a little bit.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, No, absolutely, I think there's always an arrogance
with modernity, however you define it. They were, you know,
in the eighteen nineties, they thought they were the cat's pajamas.
They had steam my god, you know what, so you
will always think that we're it's some kind of you know,
kind of kind of apagy. But it's ever you know,
it's ever evolving, right, it's ever moving forward. And for
sure there's stuff like there's some really odd things in
medicine and that are in medicine that we can't properly
explain right now that I'm sure they'll be Like if
I live long enough, I'll have like forehead smacking moments
down the road, like how did we miss that? Yeah,
we do not understand that exactly. And you're right, like
some old treatments that come back. I mean, I've been
in practice long enough to see things come full. Stuff
that we did in the early nineties that then was
poot pooed in the early two thousands, Well it's back
now exactly. That happens as well. Some of it is
look all that way.
Speaker 1: That's the fascinating thing about it is uncovering those old gems,
those old remedies, the the granny clamp and it licks
her if you know that reference from the Beverly Hillbillies.
I don't, Oh yeah, yeah yeah, but some of those
things work, so I don't know. So that's interesting.
Speaker 4: And some of it's just logical. There's a story in
there about it, Kitch, just a little briefing about it.
Canaries that canaries were popular pets nearly eighteen hundreds, and
they would get this wind disease as basically air sack disease.
The air sacks would swell up and burst, and then
they get subcutaneous and physimus, they get air under their skin,
they'd be bloated. Well, yes, stick a pin in it. Actually,
that's all you do, and let the air out, and
you know you gonna hold on to it so it doesn't.
Speaker 1: Take off the that's right, that's right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sterilize a pin and stick a pin in and yeah,
that's pretty much what we would do today too, if
that's right.
Speaker 1: But it has to be a special pin with a
special feather on the end. And yeah, there you go.
All right, we're gonna take a quick commercial break. Then
we'll come back and talk to uh doctor Phillips Shott
about his book Hell the Beasts and pick his brain
a little bit more about writing writing styles, because obviously
this is not the first and I'm sure it won't
be the last, so we want to hear from the experts. Everybody,
hang tight, we'll get back right for this commercial break.
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Speaker 1: Welcome back to Animal Rights on pet Life Radio. Tenure
our conversation with Philip shot DVM and author Extraordinary and
as Ley's book Hill the Beasts ant through the curious
history of the veterinarian arts. So, Philip, after writing a book,
putting it together, is there a certain message or something
you're looking for when reader reads through it? Did you
have an original goal of what you hope they gained
from it? And did that change from when you first
started writing it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a good question. I mean some of it
was just to open up this world to people. I
think what veterinarians do sometimes there's a certain people have
an image, they have an idea, and I want to
pull the curtain back. That's my first book a number
of years ago, The Accidental Veterinarian was all about that,
just on modern practice. Pull the curtain back. This is
what it's actually all about. Pull the curtain back on
this history. But the message is about the human animal
bond and how it's been forever and it's changed somewhat,
you know. So really there are three reasons to primary
and then a secondary reason for people to treat animals.
One is emotional. We have a bond with them, and
that as I you know, as we talked about in
the last segment that was right there from prehistoric times.
We have good evidence of that. Second is practical, right,
so you know this is these are sources of meat,
sorts of eggs, milk, sources of power for plowing and
that sort of thing back in the day. And then
the third one we touched on is spiritual. You may
view the animal as a as a relative in a way, right,
so people believe in reincarnation or those sorts of spiritual connections.
I talk a little bit, just a couple of pages
about the idea of familiars in the Middle Ages. You
know how with witchcraft there was this idea of a familiar,
this evil connotations, but it was actually considered largely a
positive thing that people would have that kind of connection
with an animal want of people that think about that
or these reasons, these copons that we've had animals and
that it's it's all cultures, it's throughout the world. It's
not just a Western thing. It's not a modern thing.
It's a human thing, you know, from the Inuit to
the Australian Aborigines and everybody in between, and from prehistory
to right today.
Speaker 1: Nice, I love that. I love that tag and I
want to steal that one from you. For sure. It's
a human thing, and it's it's absolutely true. You know,
we try to pigeonhole how we do things here in
North America compared to how we're doing them in you know,
Eastern cultures, these type of things. And what I see
is it, you know a lot of blending of what's
going on, a lot of you know, as we become
a more blended society, we learn from this, we learn
how to treat the animals, and we learn, you know,
different methods of not only treating them physically, but emotionally
and from a spiritual standpoint. And I love the aspect.
I've always been open to. You know, I'm a very
spiritual person and obviously do a lot know the animals
are spiritual beings, but learning from other cultures and how
they go out doing things has always been fascinating to me.
And I think you did a great job in the
book here because it brings up these different aspects, you know.
And I think there are people that will read the
book and say, oh wow, I didn't you know. I
wasn't expecting to talk about, you know, the relationship and
the spirituality and how that blends into what we talk
about veterinarian medicine.
Speaker 4: Yes, thank you.
Speaker 1: So the writing side of things, I get to pick
your brain about that. Are you the up at five
point thirty every morning to write five thousand words a
day type writer? Or you like me? And I've got
one week till deadline, I gotta throw something out there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm more of the former than the ladder. The
rest of my family's the ladder. They're all kind of
deadline ering people. Now, I'm a bit of an ethnic cliche.
I'm a German Canadian and the Germans of a very
organized So I'm yeah, I said a word target and
I hate it. I just do it. I just sit
down and I do it. In the basic advice is
always just right and then edit afterwards. Don't redecide what's
garbage and what isn't just just get it out there
and then go back and get rid.
Speaker 1: Of the garbage.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I'm and I'm a morning person, so I
do write, not necessarily five point thirty. That's when I'm
out walking my dog by the writing is, yeah, it
is in the morning. That's when I'm most productive. I'm
still part time in practice, so blending those two things
is can be tricky, but I am. In twenty fifteen,
I just very deliberately again, Johnman, I turned fifteen twenty fifteen,
and my fiftieth birthday present to myself is to take
a day off a week to write. And that's why
I started writing. And that's when the started as a blog,
and the blog became the first book, and then it
kind of evolved from there.
Speaker 1: How about you, I love that. I love I give
yourself a gift or a gift of a day and
your case is for writing, but for me, it's uh,
and it could be more than napping as definitely walking
the dog multiple times, that's always good. Well, I love
that was As far as the structure is concerned, arey
do you do a whiteboard or a computer outline to
get an idea of what you're doing or said more
of here's my topic, I'm on, delve into it, and
then sort of sort through it to see what sticks
after that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I just I kind of write straight, kind of
from the head or from the heart. I don't you know.
You think that I'm very organized. I've got lots of
list and so on, But when it comes to writing,
I just write. And you know I think I pre write. Well,
I know, I pre write in my head, so I
do a lot of walking and then win across country
skiing and so on. And that's not an earbuds kind
of person. I'm just in my head then, so I'm
just thinking and that it comes then and then I
get it out on paper. So yeah, it's not even
all the books. I've all been different, you know. I've
written a novel, some memoirs, this, write a whole mystery
series with the veterinarian as the protagonist. And there I
really should storyboard that, because boy, I get myself into trouble.
But three quarters the way through a thing, oh no,
I've left all these loose threads.
Speaker 1: I canna try and come up and I am up.
Some are.
Speaker 4: It helps have a good editor, Savior Bakon, I tell you.
Speaker 1: It's always good to know who you killed off last time,
and make sure it's not a fan favorite. You never
want to kill off the fan fait and never the animal.
The dogs always live, no No.
Speaker 4: I learned first mystery book was fifty seven pigs. It
was called It's an explosion a swine barn that and
there's a human body hidden in there. And anyway, all
the pigs died like on the first page, and people
were really not happy the.
Speaker 1: Pigs when they're in the title what's.
Speaker 3: Going on here?
Speaker 4: Exactly? I learned my lesson that's fast. No other animal
to die in any of my books.
Speaker 1: I love that. I love that, and I love the
fact that I talk a lot about it, you know,
in public, and I've written about it, and with my clients.
I talk a lot about this thing called meditation. And
to me, meditation is anything that allows your conscious mind
to shut off, allows your subconscious to open up. And
so oftentimes with meditation you would think of formal mantras.
Guided I mean, I've got professionally recorded guided meditation albums
out there if you want to buy one. But if
that's what gets you to that state, and that's great.
But meditation is those walks in nature, doing the cross
country scheme, the things allows you to forget about life,
opens up those channels and allows that the flow. And
I love how you do that for yourself, and then
you turn that into manifesting. You know, a great book
and in multiple different genres. So kudos to you. Learn
a lot. We're gonna put you up on the store
on my own personal storyboard. Say, hey, look what this
guy's doing is what I've been talking about all these years.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I do meditate as well, the you know,
a pretty light formal practice, kind of like flossing it.
Speaker 1: I've had the pleasure of going through deep meditations with
the Tibetan monks and yeah, which was fantastic experience. But
you know, their meditations last for hours, if not.
Speaker 4: Days, and wow, yeah, that's something else being a human.
Speaker 1: I got about an hour into it and I'm like, okay,
my butt is no, I can't do this anymore. But
it was a great experience, no doubt. But meditation, yeah,
it's just stealing some time and it doesn't have to
be at a set time every day though, you can
do that and it doesn't have to be hours upon end.
It could be five minutes here or there. And I
love how you channel that opportunity. So tell us a
little bit about where people can find out where to
get the book, and where they can find out about
your activities, all your writings and keep up on what
is happening in your world.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I said, I'm a modern person. I am,
and it's on social media. I'm pretty open. My email
address is easy to find so and my name, my
spelling is relatively unique. There's two or three other people
with my spelling in Germany. You won't confuse them. They're
one of them is like a physics prof. There's a photographer,
so yeah, phillipshot dot com. You can find me there,
or my publisher in Toronto, ECW press dot com. They've
got all my books listed. And I'm again modern Person's
on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, I know carries them over here, Chapters,
Indigo carries them. There's e book, all of them coming
ebook and audiobook format, you know, and often that's great
for the mysteries, you know, for Heal the Beasts, I
would kind of recommend the hard copy because it's actually
my first book that has a photographic insert. So there's
I don't know, maybe twenty pages of illustrations in the middle,
and I'm quite proud of the illustrations I write. From
the Egyptian tombes on up to modern Uganda. They've got
pictures in there that illustrate the book.
Speaker 1: So absolutely, that's fantastical. Everybody pick up a copy of
the book Heal the Beasts Joint Through the Curious History
of the Veterinarian Arts by Philip Shott d V. Philip,
thank you so much for coming on the show. That
congratulations on the book. It's a fantastic read, very insightful,
interesting and it confirms a lot of what I know
and what I don't know about veterinary mess and then
animals around us. So congratulations on all that.
Speaker 4: No, thank you, thank you, er appreciate the opportunity. Thanks
for having me on.
Speaker 1: You're welcome. Well, we're coming to end the show today.
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hosts and shows. It's a corncopy of barking and meowing fun.
Put it that way. So until next time, write a
great story about the animals in your life, and who knows,
you may be the next guest on animal rights on
pet Life Radio. Everybody, have a great day.
Speaker 3: Let's talk pets every week on demand only on petlife
radio dot com.