Speaker 1: This is pet Life Radio. Let's talk pets. Welcome to
animal rights on pet Life Radio. I'm so glad you're
joining us. This is the host Tim Wink, of course,
and we got the wonderful doctor Kevin Lynch coming on
the show. Kevin has written the lace book Off the Leash,
tells from a lifetime of healing pets and wonder So
we're going to talk to doctor Lynch a little bit
about the book and some of the stories, and obviously
fifty years of practice in venarian medicine and care, so
we're gore talking about that, and then of course we'll
pick a brain about writing the book. How superduper easy
it was to go through fifty years of stories and
pick a handful of.
Speaker 2: Them for us to read.
Speaker 1: So I'm sure it was really easy to do. Sarcasm
attached of course, unintended. That's it.
Speaker 3: Thank you too for having me on. It's wonderful to
be with you, and I'm looking forward to the adventure absolutely.
Speaker 1: Well, we're coming back. We're have this commercial break and
we'll talk a little bit more with or more detail
with doctor Kevin Lynch for the book Off the Leash.
So everybody hanging tight we'll come back after this commercial break.
You're listening to Animal Rights on pet Life Radio.
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Speaker 5: Let's talk pets on petlifradio dot com.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Animal Rights on pet Life Radio. Joining
me now is a veterinarian superstar fifty years plus and
obviously the author of the latest book Off the Leash,
Tells from a lifetime of healing pets in Wonder, Chris.
We're talking to doctor Kevin Lynch. Doctor Lynch, welcome the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Tim, Thank you for having me. Not so
much as superstar, maybe one of the lesser saints. But
I'm not too sure about that that I go, look
fifty years, you know, you get some mantle of sophistication.
Speaker 1: I guess absolutely. I mean, that's a big kudos to you,
thanks for helping out so many different animals and taking
care of all of our beautiful creatures. Privilege. So the book.
So I'm sure you just had an epiphany one day saying, hey,
I need to take fifty years of lifetime and veterinarian
here and write a few stories down. The book's called
Off the Leash. Tell us a little bit about the
book and how it came about.
Speaker 3: You know, it's the journey for many veterinars that you
recall things that are significant in your practice life, the
poignant episodes, the sad episodes, the incredibly funny episodes, the
things that make you scratch your head. But for myself,
it was a reflection of an awareness that all of
these stories have a common thread, and that common thread
is the animal bond. The bond for myself personally not
only forms with animals, but with the families that I'm
graced with coming through my doors with their pets. And
that's a really powerful notion in my mind and my
practice has evolved to always have that sentiment of trust
and that sentiment of bonding to both ends of the leash.
Like I say in the book, is love at both
ends of the leash. And I don't know if every
veterinarian shares that, but I like to think that they do.
For me, it's super important to have that bond exist,
nurture it so that when I see a pet, it's
six weeks of age and they I'll see them at
seventeen eighteen years of age. I've been part of that
journey with them. And that's so so important in my
life as a venarian.
Speaker 1: And you know, and that's powerful too. And I love
how you said that because it's absolutely true because through
the hardships, the heartaches and all the beautiful things that
go along with it, you know, you're dealing with the
energies of both the animal and the human companion. Absolutely,
that's a juggling act and it's.
Speaker 3: You know, you're not trained when you go to ved school.
You're in there, I like to say, you come out
knowing a little bit about parts and service. You know
the anatomy, you know the drug therapy, you know what
you should do to get an extray generated, and your
rudimentary skills and surgery that develop well after you get
your diploma. But the psychology of practicing and nurturing animals
and interacting with people with kids, with parents, it's its
own science. Many times, and I've said this in the
book as well. Many times an answer will come out
of a part of the room where a little kid sit.
It's a four or five year old kid that says, yeah, Mommy,
he chewed that doll leg two weeks ago, you know,
and you develop a raid off for interaction, and it's
so important to get that right. I wish they had
emphasized more of this, and I think it's working its
way into coursework in veterinary medicine, but training people to
be aware of senses and innuendo and things that are
half said, it's important to embellish agnosta capability, incredibly important
to be an asker of questions. When I'm examining an animal,
I'm examining that animal, asking it questions with my hands,
with my sense of smell and hearing, but I'm also
engaged in a conversation with the owner. Those two conversations
are simultaneous, and you've really got to be careful to
pick up bits and pieces from each of them that
will help you ultimately help the animal. Not an easy art,
and it develops over a period of time. I think
a big dose of empathy and a big dose of
compassion is so much part of that capability. I wish
they taught that in VET school. I wish I had
that that day I left the Cornell with my diploma
because it's a real insight into how to deal with
ventory medicine. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and how things have changed over the years. You know,
not only from the venory and the science side of things.
You know, things that were not available in the twenties
and forties or even into the early two thousands are
now available from us. Absolutely science standpoint, but the compassion,
like you had mentioned how we treat our animals. You know,
in the early days, we worked on the farms and
our animals were a utility, you know, something that we
kept healthy long enough to help us do our job
and make put bread on the table. To now there
are children, you know.
Speaker 3: The family members and are absolutely correct, and you know
the evolution of who they are in our life has
just been an amazing thing for me to witness from
the time I knocked on a venarian's door when I
was thirteen and said, I'd like to work here. You
don't have to pay me it because I want to
be a veterinarian, you know, only anything. And the guy
was grasping his dethoscope in one hands, laughed a little
bit and said, come in here. We'll see about that.
And they gave me the privilege of being that kid
that hung around for six months before it was even
offered any kind of true work in the hospital. But
my god, there have been people in my life that
have just always seem to be there at the right moment,
and it's almost as if it was the pre planning
of it all was something so so important. But the bond,
the bond between pets, their owners and myself, that's the
core of what I do. We like to say on
the YouTube channel I have called a pet mindset. We
empower pet parents to protect the bond. And it's that
bond that's evolved over time as well. They have become
more and more significant in people's lives. It also it
demands that people are the best pet parents they can be,
because as medicine has gotten more and more sophisticated. It's
gotten more and more expensive to have a pet, So
that notion of prevention, that notion of protection, of daily
awareness of where your pet is as you would any
child in the family, is paramountally important. It's just become
more evident to me. And that's what the book is about.
The book is about protecting that bond. And the story
is sure they have entertainment value, they're interesting, but the
main message is protect the bond. I love it.
Speaker 1: I love that. I fully believe in that, and I
fully believe that every day that bond grows and you
have to help it grow, help it nurture and have
a great lifetime with your pets. So I agree with
that wholeheartedly. So these stories and Off the Leash obviously
is your history, your lifetime that's still still cooking along.
Pretty good tell us about how you sort through because
I can imagine when I when I first put my book,
first book out, Wagging Tails. It was right when I
started working full time with animals, and it was it
wasn't easy, but it was a process where Okay, I
had a nice collection of stories, I could put it
into a book. But you've got a huge collection and
a huge collection that's up here in your mind and
in your heart. How do you weed through that to determine, okay,
to get this message across about building that bond and
that lifetime bond. Which messages or which stories are going
to get that message pushed through.
Speaker 3: I wish I could say there was an absolute science
to it. I you know, when you start thinking about
something of this sort, the message has to follow a chronologue.
That was the simple way from my mind to do it,
Beginning with my experience as a very young child finding
my first dead animal and being so upset that the
loss of a sparrow, a small sparrow, that I ran
in my cupped hands up three flights of steps in
an apartment building in Brooklyn and asked my mom to
mike alive again. And she shook her head and held
me in that motherly embrace that only moms can give
their kids and said, Keviny's gone. And it not only
was the loss of that animal, but it was everything
around us seemed to be diminished. There was just a
reduction in the world for me, that this life was
no longer going to be part of the landscape. And
that started the journey when I that's the very first
story in the book, and I have to think chronologically
to organize my thoughts. There are as funny you should say, well,
buzzing up in your head because there are stories that
are not in a book that maybe a sequel will
be down the line. For me, I certainly think aloe
lines of how the core message of who these animals
are in our lives and why was this so important
for me as a young man to become become a
veterinarian to protect life. And my whole journey has been
that same notion that these are valuable creatures and they're important,
and I think the world needs a heavy dose, a
heavy dose of that type of compassion for things that
are valuable because they just are in the world. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I think that's a good message across the board,
especially with their animals. So today, yeah, well, I applaud
you for that. You know, most kids will either a
say they want to be a professional baseball player when
when they're me and then I realize I don't have
nearly enough talent. I did, Okay, not that great, But
you know I hear time and time again youngsters that
want to be veterinarians but they get discouraged because there's
these things. It's hard work. You have to study, you
have to learn the science behind it, and even more so,
you have to have I think people around you they
are compassionate, as the theme goes, to help you.
Speaker 3: Along without a doubt. And you know, the two people
I work with every day, two veterinarians came to me
and that's why I never forgot my own experience as
a young man. They came to me in the tenth
grade and volunteered shadowed me for a couple of days.
And both of them I work with them every day
of the week. They're there and they're veterinarians. They share
that in their hearts and minds. They share that same
place where compassion and being a good steward of the
animal community is so so important. And you know, good
business entails being mindful of so many things, but one
of the real tenants of a good business is to
be be that caretaker in what I do. And if
you can, if you can have a young veterinarian accomplish
that type of mindset early in their career, they can
be a superstar. I'm still a journeyman. I'm still learning
that's what I call it practice, right, that's it. You know,
I'm still in the learning phase, but that sense of
compassion is so so important.
Speaker 1: Right, And I think it's fantastic. You surround yourself with
very talented people and very compassionate people, and you identified
that early on, and I could see that you nurtured
them along.
Speaker 3: I'm blessed with that. And that's why I say, you know,
these steps almost seem to be sometimes planned out in
a way that and I don't want to wear too
much on my sleeve of my own personal beliefs, but
it's just been an incredible journey. I've always been as
a kid, I was a very geeky kid. I was
always interested in how things work. I surround myself with
machinery today that's just state of the art. The other
day I took a rug out with an endoscope on
a dog pieces of chewed up rugging that would have
had anybody else's hands, necessitated opening the dog up surgically,
and I sent a home dog home in three hours
rather than three days. That's a win. That's it. That's
you know, that's incredible benefit of the technology today. I
love to do my majority of my work with the
ultrasound machine. It's a modality that was never there. Years ago,
we had X ray's that were all well and good.
But now I can look inside an organ and see
what's its function is about. I do laser surgery. It's
like Star Wars. I can take out a tumor without bleeding,
pain swelling. And you know, I even wear the Obi
wan Kenobi hood.
Speaker 1: No I don't, you should?
Speaker 3: You should. That's the talking about the sophistication of vendor
and medicine today versus years ago that you alluded to.
It's wonderful. But if I can prevent those problems from
happening by educating people, by making them take notice early
on in the disease process, that's a real win. That's
a real win. And that's what that's what my mind
and heart are about.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I love it. I love it. Yeah, we were
just speaking last night. I've got a is Schnauzer who's
going to be fourteen this year. And when we had
her as a puppy, she tried climbing up these stairs
and when the legs missed and fractured her knee. Now
she recovered brilliantly. We had a great surgeon and everything
was good and she's good as new today. But even
things that I learned through that that I didn't know
through having other animals in my lifetime, things like cold
laser therapy after surgery for healing purposes.
Speaker 3: Therapy lasers wonderful tool. They were amazing things. There's light
therapy today. We do PRP Playlettridge plasma therapy and practice.
I do infuse stem cells derived from body fat, abdominal fat.
We take forty grands of abdominal fat, turned it into
millions of stem cells, put it back into the patient
as a graft of self and it does no harm
that they don't react to it because it's their own cells.
And you see these miracles of arthritic improvement, allergy reduction,
other thing that are not even associated with the intent
that you put it in get better reduction in the
amount of insulin, and animal gets because the pancreas is functioning.
It's remarkable today and the sophistication of veterinary medicine is
on a par with huan medicine. But I like to
believe that prevention is still the mainstay of keeping animals.
Speaker 1: Well, yep, absolutely, yep, I agree with that whole. Harley
was told a friend the other day, it's like you,
I always use the terminology. You pay for it now
or pay for it later.
Speaker 3: That's life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's very true. You know, keep it maintain and
it's gonna last a lot longer and you're not gonna
fay as much in the end. So I like it.
I like that for sure. We're going to come to
a commercial break real quick. We'll come back and chat
a little bit further with doctor Kevin Lynch and talk
to him about his book Off the Leash, Tills from
a Lifetime of Healing Pets and wonder So everybody hang tight,
well beack. After this commercial break. You're listening to Animal
Rights on Pet Life Radio, Real people, real stories.
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Speaker 1: Now, welcome back to animal rights on pet Life Radio.
I'm telling you our conversation with author and doctor Kevin
lynch vetinaran practice, fifty years in service and all the
wonderful things that he's learned throughout the years, and he's
put all the best stories, or at least phase one
of the best stories in the book Off the Leash Now,
Doctor Lynch, we talked a little about veterinary medicine and
what it takes today. One thing that popped in my
mind my for good or bad, my dogs in particular.
Cats have been included in this too, but dogs in particular.
We have had a series of specialists, everything from neurological
to skeletal, to gi track to you name it. We
have our main general practice titioner. Early on, we had
a vet that just did the shots because he's right
around the corner. He's really good, but he was right
around the corner. So we had this whole host of
veterinarians and they were all fantastic in their own right,
but they also had their own personalities, their own way
of going about doing that, and their own way of
having compassion as we talked about, or maybe not as
great a compassion. How would you say a novice, a
first time pet owner, or one that is having some
challenges with their animals, How did they swort through all that?
How do they know, Okay, what is the best specialist
to go to and when should I do that? Fear
to what my general practitioner can do.
Speaker 3: You know, you just described the whole evolution of venary
medicine quite aptly. I always hope people if you're going
to get a PET, and I've spoken to people not
in my immediate area but well out of the area,
or former clients that move out of state, I think
the best thing to do is word of mouth in
the neighborhood. Who's got that quality, who understands you, who
seems to listen the best. Many veterinarians are trained on
a level today that is just excellent. Vetering colleges are
so adaptive to producing a great product at the end.
But I still always tell people, if you're going to
get a PET, if I have the privilege of seeing
you myself, I'm going to be every bit as much
doctor Lynch as I can. But talk to people in
your neighborhood first and see who's doing the most credible job,
and you'll get It's almost like taking a poll. And
I don't think that's unfair. I think that's very wise,
because there's more to medicine than just an injection or
a scalpel blade or a pill off the shelf. There's
a lot of intuition, there's a lot of listening, and
people that have that talent. I think are more adept
at the craft and more adept veterinarians are. The instance
of going to specialists. That is something today that we
lived with and it was never available years ago. In
my own practice life. The first few years, I can
remember getting up in the middle of the night and
doing a cesarean section with nothing more than the owner's
help and delivering puppies and getting them into the world
because there were no specialty clinics around, or emergency clinics
around the area was just so isolated on the eastern
end of Long Island. The nearest center for venory medicine
was the Animal Medical Center in New York City, sixty
five miles away. Many times people couldn't even make that journey,
So I kind of bit my teeth on the raw
end of veterinary medicine in those days. But today it's
a whole different world. There were specialties for everything, and
God bless it that these people are good at what
they do. I'm a forever student. When I speak to
a specialist, I'm going to talk about that case, but
if I could get another minute and a half out
of them on something else that I need to know,
you bet. I'm going to ask a question, and it's
remarkable how people love to be teachers at every level.
Design so always humans, but these specialists are just so
gracious and imparting knowledge, even when the case is not
something that they're addressing that I might have referred them to.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't call it a struggle for my thought pattern,
but it seems like as the years gone by, and
as we said, more and more specialists have gotten into play.
And this is for human menaces as well, but in
veterinarian care in particular, everybody seems to be focused on
specialty more so, maybe even than general care. But trying
to find that right person in how to sort through
all that that is, it's a lot like sorting through
animal nutrition.
Speaker 3: You know you want to get you want to get
really confused. Go down throad today. You know pipple's bad,
this is good. Make them make him a homemade dies. No,
don't do that. Don't add fats. You're in too much fat.
It's it's confusing for us.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: One of the areas I will say to you that
really has become important in my life in so far
as prevention, is dental care for animals and course of that,
I actually was so frustrated with seeing repetitive animals coming
in with severe dental disease over the years. I actually
and it was the intent to solve a problem, not
invent the product. But I invented a product called a
plaquegone device, which is a microfiber system to remove plaque
from teeth before it hardens into tatter, pain free, Very
good at what it does, fear free for the animal.
But the reason why I bring that up is that's
to me a step ahead of having to refer an
animal to a specialist for severe advanced periodental disease, or
even having an animal that necessitates anesthesia to have teeth pulled,
when teeth cleaned, If we can produce a system and
a daily cleaning and our daily awareness of oral health,
you better believe people will look at everything else down
the line. I called dental disease the tip of the
iceberg medical iceberg, But so many other organs are targets
because of dental disease. But when you're examining a pet's mouth,
dog cap, you're also looking at the rest of their body.
You're looking for changes, and it's those changes that can
represent illness in some cases it's amazing. I get people
in the office. I happen to be looking in his
mouth dock and I fell this lump in his neck,
or he was whining on the back leg when I
steadied him to look at in his mouth to see
what his teeth were about teaching people that awareness and
this is also in the book the home health exam
that I described in the book, how does an owner
do a home health exam? Not to train them as veterinarians,
but to make them the better pet parent by inculcating
awareness where that pets body is. That's so important, and
that we'll talk about specialists. We talk about the incredible
sophistication of medicine. If we can bring it back, dial
it back down to a simple examine of your examination
of your animal at home, you can oftentimes avoid very
difficult problems.
Speaker 6: Nice.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 1: Quick exam. Spend more time with your animal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what I say. And you know, petting them
is all well and good, but look at their body
like you would a child. That's important. That's fulfilling that
circle of them being family members. Okay, we're going to
look at you on a daily basis, as if you
know we're examining the troops where we're going to send
you off into the art, into your world, knowing that
everything is working. There's no pain in your ears, there's
no discharge in your eyes, your skin and hair coat
are fine, there's no swellings that weren't there yesterday. You're
not whimpering because I touched you in a way that
I've done a thousand times before, but it's producing pain.
All of that, all of that is an awareness factor,
and to me, that's so important to teach people right
from the get go. When that puppy or kid in
is six or eight weeks of age, they've got to
start looking, they've got to start becoming aware of who
these other family members are. Love it.
Speaker 1: I love a good message. Well, doctor Lynch, where can
people find out more about you and the book off
the leash and learn as much as they can.
Speaker 3: While we have the two answers there? The pet Mindset
channel on YouTube is a discussion forum for a lot
of people in the world and I love doing it. Also,
you can find out about the book or the dental
device at doctor Kevin Lynch dot com. And we just
try to do things that are helpful for families and hopefully,
hopefully that's the message I'm bringing to the table.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, we're doing a great job. We'll definitely get those
avenues posted so people can continue to learn and continue
to build that great bond with their animals.
Speaker 3: Thank you for that, everybody.
Speaker 1: Make sure you pick up a copy of the book
Off the Leash Tells from a Lifetime of Healing Pets
and wonder by doctor Kevin Lynch. So thanks for coming
on the show today. We appreciate learning a lot as always,
these stories are fantastic and always continuing to learn right.
Speaker 3: This has been a total privilege and a pleasure tonight.
Thank you very much, my pleasure.
Speaker 1: Well, we're coming in the show today. I want to
thank everyone for listening to Animal Rights on pet Life Radio.
I want to thank the producers and sponsors for making
this show possible. If you have any questions, comments ideas
for the show, drop us a line. You can go
to pet life radio dot com. We'll be glad to
answer your questions, entertain your comments, and bring on the
people you want to hear from most And while you're there,
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dot com. So until next time, write a great story
about the animals in your life, and who knows, you
may be the next guest and animal rights pet Life
Radio have a great day.
Speaker 5: Let's talk pets every week on demand only on pet
life Radio dot com.
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