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Welcome to episode 110 of People, Pets & Vets! -we misspoke in the opening! 

Dr. Brad Miller:
Hello, you're listening to People, Pets & Vets with Dr. Brad Miller and Registered Veterinary Technician, angel, Martin.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
Hello everyone.

Dr. Brad Miller:
Each week, we bring you current events and news in the veterinary industry and share our thoughts and perspective on how they impact us in our animal hospital. We also try to give you an insight and behind the scenes glance at our clinic and the people who work in it, this episode 109 is once again, being brought to you by Georgia veteran, Veterinary Associates, a family of animal hospitals, caring for your family pet. So once again, broadcasting from beautiful, starting to become Hot Lanta like, Lawrenceville Georgia.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
It is really hot these days.

Dr. Brad Miller:
So humidity is still there approaching 90 degrees. All of a sudden, uh, summers here.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
It feels like summer. Absolutely.

Dr. Brad Miller:
When is summer officially? When does it officially began? Do you know?

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
It's usually the, at the summer solstice, like June 20th, 21st, something like that. Okay.

Dr. Brad Miller:
But yeah, it definitely feels like that starting this past weekend. So, um, I don't know lots of going on. Let's real briefly talk about, uh, GVA, Georgia, Veterinary Associates News. Um, two new graduates are going to be onboarding with us in June.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
Yes. Veterinary graduates.

Dr. Brad Miller:
Veterinarians. Yep. Two new associates. We will have join us, uh, Dr. Brian Yee who is a graduate of the University of Georgia, and Dr. Megan Siech, uh, who is a graduate of Iowa State.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
Exactly.

Dr. Brad Miller:
And so Yee and Siech, hide and seek. Her name. I, gosh, I was so embarrassed when I was speaking with her. That, that last day she visited with us. I, I misspelled it. I misspoke it. I just couldn't get it right. But it's S I E C H.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
Yeah. It's

Dr. Brad Miller:
German. She said, um, and she is originally from the Midwest has a lot of family in South Dakota, but also a family in Iowa. Uh, hence the reasons she went to vet school in Iowa State,

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
But her parents live here in, in,

Dr. Brad Miller:
Parents in the area. Yeah. And, uh, I think Norcross area. So just, uh, north of Atlanta. So anyway, we're super excited to have both of them joining us. I'm looking forward to, um, having our staff interact with them more and our clients and patients really getting to know them. So super, super cool. Um, I guess the other big piece of news is we have decided to quote unquote, open our lobby, uh, at all of our hospitals to let the general public in and masks will be optional. Uh, but we will encourage clients who well, yeah. Encourage or allow, or we're fine with people to come in, not wearing a mask. Uh, you know, as long as they're following the CDC guidelines,

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
I think we'll have a mixed bag of emotions and thoughts from both our staff and our clients, you know? Um, but just like when we close the doors, there's no way to make everybody happy. So as we did, when we decided to close the doors, we just basically lean on the guidance from the CDC and other entities, like the AVMA and other veterinary specific, I guess, avenues throughout the country.

Dr. Brad Miller:
So this is kind of weird that since the CDC came out with this, um, there have been federal thoughts. There have been state thoughts and there had been CDC guidelines.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
Yes.

Dr. Brad Miller:
Private businesses can still require you to wear a mask or they could, you know, remain curbside that that remains our option. But this is being taken almost like a federal man, not a mandate, but it is kind of on the federal level, in my opinion, because super weird locally here, I'll all of a sudden, you know, one day mask required do not enter the enter. And then the, you know, the next day completely wide open, whether that's Costco, you know, restaurants, uh, Kroger, uh, I don't know. It's weird.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
It's a lot of it is social, right? So like we had a lead meeting and one of the doctors on Friday said like, they get an like, are we going to post that we are mask, you know, encouraged or optional? Um, based on the CDC guidelines, because she found that when she and her family are out, they kind of look to the masses and see what the masses are doing. Like if they're going to a place and they wear a mask because other people are wearing a mask. So I think it's very social like that. I too was at Costco this weekend. And, uh, it was, it was probably 50/50 when I was there, um, early Saturday morning. Yeah. With people mast and not mask.

Dr. Brad Miller:
Well, he knows, nobody knows the exact right thing to do. And we did have to have somebody giving us, evidently, we have to have somebody giving us guidelines because we can't think for ourselves. Um,

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
Well we can think for ourselves, but we, we hopefully attribute that they have more knowledge than we do in regards to the disease, the contagious factor, all of that. Yeah.

Dr. Brad Miller:
I definitely get that different levels of thought and education and understanding of what's going on. But, um, who determined, if you can answer this question, then I will, I will quit, uh, belaboring the point I will anyway, but who determined that six feet is the proper social distancing? Uh, that, that it can't be 6.1 or five, you know, five foot, 11 inches. It doesn't, it's not eight feet. It's not seven feet who determined six feet is the absolute distance that we should socially distance.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
So I would assume it was the coronavirus task force back early March, April

Dr. Brad Miller:
Fauci and Burkes. And with the help of the CDC rep Redmond was the CDC director then. So my point is, we don't know. We, we do make assumptions. We try to use our knowledge base to, you know, make these recommendations, but you know, whatever the date was, may the 14th or they're about 13, you know, we're all wearing mask. Well, a week prior to that, it was, it was recommended if you're an outside event and you're vaccinated, then you don't need to wear a mask. And then roughly a week later, now, if you're inside and vaccinated same thing. So bam wide open, which is good. It's a better way for us to kind of get back to normal. That's what we had decided as well. Um, I'm sitting here like hammering these decisions, but we've decided the same thing. We're not going to transition necessarily back. We're going to try to open our lobby. And, uh, some staff may be wearing masks some may not some clients are going to wear a mask. Some are not, but we're going to go back to normal otherwise, although we will still offer curbside care for those who are concerned about coronavirus, or it's just more convenient for them to come up and have us come get their pet, whether they wait on them or not. So

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
Sure. And certainly, I think we'll also start to see a little bit more of the traditional drop off appointments, where people don't wait in their car for their pet. They actually just drop it off. We work it in between our other tasks that day and then give them a call when it's ready.

Dr. Brad Miller:
Yeah. That's been kind of an amazing thing. I noticed. Um, our staff would get really upset when a client would come for a curbside appointment and would leave. And I'm not really sure why

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
Originally I always attributed to like when they've left, we usually have them sign a drop-off form. Right. Basically just indicating that the pet is left in our care and they give us a valid phone number to reach them at.

Dr. Brad Miller:
But not they are dropping off with a valid phone number because we have to call, contact them.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
At some points they weren't though. Um, so I think that's where the frustration kind of came from.

Dr. Brad Miller:
We were doing video chats, you know, we're doing those virtual visits as well. So now we've come a long way in 14 months. Um, this is going to obviously history is history, everything's historical, but this is going to be talked about for a long, long time. And I just wonder, you know, what's next, what's the next crazy thing that's going to happen? Going back. You and I talk about COVID-19 back in December and January. No, before that, I mean, it was, it was 19. We were, yeah, we were talking about it and I don't even remember when it started. I feel like October, November, December, We're starting.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
Yeah. Are we, I definitely recall like bringing up some Chinese stories about how they were culling dogs, you know, and all this kind of thing over in China due to this rare disease that they thought came from bats and all of that. And then suddenly, yeah, it's skipped over the ocean and it's in our front door.

Dr. Brad Miller:
Yeah. Wonder what's happened with the meat population, you know, that was, uh, uh, in the, in the news, quite a bit, many, many mink farms were depopulated to try to control the disease, uh, because they were affected, but I've not heard anything about that.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
I know they were doing some vaccination testing and that kind of thing as well,

Dr. Brad Miller:
Vaccinating the mink,

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
I don't know about mink.

Dr. Brad Miller:
What do you call a group of Minx Monks meet Mount Meeks?

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
Well, you just call them Minx.

Dr. Brad Miller:
Minx, I guess. Okay. All right. Um, before we jump into news stories or I pick three pretty good ones, I thought, um, Healthy Pet, Happy Life. So we, I feel like we've talked about this in many, many times before, but we are going to kind of make a push, um, for we're going to continue to push our clients to make the right decision for them and their pet. Um, by getting their annual exams, their annual recommended vaccines based on their and their pet's lifestyle. Um, we've always recommended in the south, you know, year round heartworm prevention in a year round flea and tick prevention. And so we're going to continue to do that. And then the last kind of thing we are adding, um, is, uh, cuddles and love and hugs. Right? So love your pet, your pet will love you the happier they are, the happier you are. And one of the tools we're going to be rolling out, hopefully relatively soon is going to be a, a t-shirt, um, that we're going to give our compliant clients, uh, for them to wear. Right

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
Right. So that whole happy, Healthy Pet, Happy Life, right? Like it's, it's a happy life for, for both the owner and the pet. And so you were saying that as you are, it was coming to my brain, as you were saying it, the, I guess the house and the Senate just passed like a pause for veterans act as well, um, where they are trying to mitigate suicide or kind of lowered the suicide rate of veterans by offering them pets. Um, so to your point, pets do make you happy.

Dr. Brad Miller:
Oh, they do. I mean, look at the pandemic right. I mean, look at the huge numbers of new pets that people acquired when they were staying at home. Um, maybe they were stressed, maybe they were bored. They were probably a little bit of both, but that, that just really goes to show you what that human animal bond means to many, many people. And how important pets are we, again, talked many, many episodes ago about, uh, pets used to be working animals. They weren't even, I don't even know what they were called, companion animals, which is what we call our, our field and the pets that we see. Um, I mean, honestly, maybe a dog was a dog.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
Yeah. Working,

Dr. Brad Miller:
Working dog. And then they eventually evolved, um, into more of a family pet or maybe a one-person pet. Yeah. And so maybe now it's fair to say they had become a family pet. They are a member of the family. So, you know, maybe they, they were a family pet. And now, now they are looked at as members of the family good and bad. Right. It's also, they get clothes bought for them. They get all these, you know, supposedly good foods bought for them. That aren't always the best. Um, and then maybe on a negative aspect, sometimes they're over humanized to where they're treated more like people than they should be. Um, and sometimes they act like people who shouldn't be acting like that. Right?

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
Sure. Yeah. We start to see some behavior issues when they are not necessarily, I guess, so

Dr. Brad Miller:
Story I, on my way into work this past week, uh, at 7:15, 7:30, I'm pulling it out of my neighborhood and I see this lady walking her, uh, doodle, must've been a golden doodle and it's about a 45 pound dog, probably six, seven, eight months of age. And what catches my eye is, you know, that little strip of grass between the curb and the sidewalk and most subdivisions. Yeah. This dog is planted on that strip of gas, grass, sitting down, head up leashed height. It is looking at her and refusing to get up or do anything. Oh my gosh, she's looking at the dog and she's gently tugging, come on, come on. You can just almost see her lips saying, come on. And the dog is just looking at her. Um, I don't know if it's, you know, giving her the middle finger. I don't know the silent treatment. I'm not sure what, but I just I'm like, oh my gosh, we've said this before, too. We are going to really be in for the behavioral challenges. Um, post-pandemic are going to be huge. So, uh, again, maybe we're treating this pet a little bit too much like a human, like it has an option to sit there versus no, I want you to go ahead and leash walk with me. Um, so I don't know. It was, it was weird.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
I told you about the little dog in my neighborhood as well, and I've passed it a couple of times in the morning. Uh, usually these people are out walking 7, 7:15 in the morning when I'm, when I'm leaving my house. So, um, they have like a little, I don't know, shiatsu, lhasa apso, like mixed. So probably a 12 to 15 pound dog. Um, it's a husband and wife that walk the dog. And the first time I saw it, it was actually, you know, I kind of giggled a little bit. Then I thought about it a little bit more and it's actually pretty sad, but I drove by and the dog like flattened out, like it was terrified of the car. Um, and so I don't know if they were walking it because they thought it would be fun. Or if they were walking at trying to socialize it or kind of get it like that,

Dr. Brad Miller:
But. it obviously was startled.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
It was so terrified by the car. And so, uh, I've passed it a couple other times. And so it is not necessarily like flattening out super submissive anymore when I drive by. Uh, but it definitely does stop dead in its tracks, uh, so much so that it actually stops the people. Right. So, um, I would hope that they are trying to desensitize the dog, but I don't know that that's necessarily their goal, but yeah, the first time I saw it, I was so sad for the dog in the sense that it had no idea.

Dr. Brad Miller:
Anxious or afraid and try to get as small as it could by just like just hitting the ground. So, uh, real quick. Okay. I didn't physically talk, I've texted you remember our former study group member, Todd Hughes from Kaneohe Valley Hospital. So he listened, I don't know if I told you this or not. He listened to our podcast. Um, maybe the last episode and he, he shot me a text the other day and it's like, oh, I listen to your and Angel's podcast. That was really cool. And then we went on to, to chat about a couple of other things, so,

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
oh, that's cool.

Dr. Brad Miller:
I wonder how I didn't ask him how he found that, but hopefully, you know, we continue to kind of spread our wings. Yeah,

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
I would hope so. So do you remember one of the veterinarians that worked at his practice or actually still works at, can I hope that is Dr. Evan. And so he has like a animal planet show. Now he's writing books. He's, um, very much like an animal advocate, both for wildlife and companion animals. Um, so also was, I think people's like sexiest veterinarian alive or something like that. It's

Dr. Brad Miller:
Been a few, but, but yeah, I mean, I'm not going to lie. He's a good looking man. So, uh, whatever that means, but, uh, it it's in our industry. There are so few people that put themselves out there, you know, as he has done or as the, you know, air quotes, industry leaders, uh, the speakers on the circuits, uh,

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
There's a difference in my opinion, between the Evan Antin and like quote unquote industry leaders. Right. So I think he's focused on animal welfare and educating the public more so than the industry itself. Does that make sense?

Dr. Brad Miller:
I agree. I'm just saying though, to get up in front of the camera.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
Oh, for sure.

Dr. Brad Miller:
A room full of 200 people or 2000 people, or, yeah. That's not really the style of most veterinarians. Right. So, uh, anyway, just wanted to shout out to Todd and, uh, maybe Todd, Charlie and Andrew and I are going to try to get together in October.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
So, um, real quick though, speaking about like quote unquote industry leaders in that. So I listened to a podcast myself this morning. Um, so I'm a member of a ton of different groups on Facebook for veterinary managers or RVTS, um, veterinary support staff, you name it. I just try to keep involved in like, what's going on? And who's saying what, but I'm in one of the management groups, there was this, like you have to listen to this onboarding staff, onboarding podcasts. Like if you do nothing else, you've got to listen to this. So Debbie hill is the, is a CVPM she's from someplace in Florida.

Dr. Brad Miller:
Yep. Three manages three practices.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
Yeah. It's multi practice, uh, or multi location practice as well. So I definitely think that she has a lot of information to offer, but it was just so disappointing listening to the podcast that like, they swore that you needed to listen to, like before you hired your next staff member. And then it was basically like common sense.

Dr. Brad Miller:
Let me, let me okay. So we're not bashing her.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
No, not at all or that podcast, but I sure let's.

Dr. Brad Miller:
Yeah, let's put that disclaimer or that claim out there. Um, But a lot of, so we could talk about behavior, we can talk about practice management, HR. A lot of this is using your common sense. Right. And maybe you don't know it until you hear it, then you're like, oh yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense. Um, so hire for your needs, hire for personality, not experience, you can, you can train the right person to do anything, mentor and have a formal training program and give them time, give them time to grow and hold them accountable and coach them up.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
I mean, basically yes, basically. That was it. So make sure that you are your staff obviously doesn't mean girl them out

Dr. Brad Miller:
Also. Yes. I forgot. Have your staff be involved in the interview?

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
Yes. Not necessarily interview process, but like the onboarding of the new staff member. Right. So I guess my point with all of this is that this whole quote unquote industry leadership, it's truly just those people that are willing to put themselves out there because not that I know everything or I'm all knowing I'm certainly not. But a lot of times when I've listened to things like that, to your point, it is very common sense, but they've put it in a pattern. Yep. And so it's, it's nothing groundbreaking. It's nothing like, you know, earth shattering. It doesn't change your life by listening to it, but it does patronize it a little bit and make it repeatable, which I think is pretty genius. But I don't know, to your point with the whole industry leader thing, I was just, I listened to that podcast this morning and I thought it was great. Um, but I thought it was also nothing like,

Dr. Brad Miller:
No, but it is in the presentation. Right. So, you know, recently I was at a meeting, I had a great idea to present and I thought it was just brilliant, but I did such a horrible job in presenting it and nobody could follow me.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
Of course, you know?

Dr. Brad Miller:
And I'm just like, yeah. So anyway, um, okay. Evidently this is going to be a long podcast because we were 20 minutes in. Maybe we can shorten the stories a little bit. So first story, uh, Laguardia is a new oral treatment for canine lymphoma or lymphoma sarcoma, a very common type of cancer. We see in dogs primarily we can see it in cats, but, uh, not the systemic form involving all the nodes, but, uh, MWI has, I guess there, I was going to say, they have come up. They are not, they're vending the product, uh, which is, uh, supposedly very targeted to the cancer cells, kind of a new, uh, methodology, if you will, and supposedly safe, effective. It's two doses, I believe given a week at home. I don't really know how, you know, how long you do that, but I'm excited to learn more about that. It is a conditional treatment. So kind of like the COVID vaccine, the coronavirus vaccine that is technically conditional because the need for the vaccine was so great that before they could get a ton of data to prove the effectiveness, they came out with a product. And so we've had that historically in veterinary medicine, we had a dental disease vaccine that came out, uh, by Pfizer. And, uh, again, I'm not going to say the coronavirus vaccines, very similar. Uh, but this would be, I'd be very interested to, uh, to learn more about this. If we can line somebody up to come speak to our doctor's group, I'm certain that we could see when it's going to be available.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
Yeah. So the one thing, I guess, for me specifically that sticks out as this Laguardia-CA1. So is that similar to our, like our Atopy, to your point, you said that this is like a different approach. Is this going to be like, um,

Dr. Brad Miller:
I'm going to say, I don't know is the real answer, but CA1, CA probably stands for canine. Uh, one is maybe, you know, in case there's a two, three or four. I don't, I don't know though. Um, again, I think we need to learn, I clicked on the, when I was kind of pulling this to talk about, I clicked on the, learn more about the, they're calling it S I N E technology. Um, and it didn't really go into more information, so very new product, very similar. So Jen James boyfriend, Brad, you know, their dog is being treated by us for osteosarcoma with kind of a new, uh, still kind of in the clinical trial, uh, protocol, a new osteosarcoma treatment. So, uh, I don't know. It's just exciting times that things continue to evolve and be available and tried for us to try to, um, improve our patient care.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
Yeah. Super crazy.

Dr. Brad Miller:
Um, sniffer dogs learning to smell coronavirus. We talked about this probably.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
At the Heat game, Is it Miami heat?

Dr. Brad Miller:
Oh yeah. We talked about it for sports events. Um, and so before coronavirus, we had talked about, uh, bomb, sniffing dogs, drug, sniffing dogs, uh, seizure detecting dogs. And I've always wondered how they really train these dogs to do this. I think, I think that would be fascinating to kind of see that process in dogs in different stages of learning this. But, uh, this article put out by national geographic. Um, it's basically about a group of five dogs at, uh, the university of Pennsylvania. Is that right? Yes, that's right. Um, they had been training these dogs to sniff out coronavirus and the dog's names are Tuka, Griz, Toby, Rico, and Roxy. And they all are at different levels and they all, um, they do things a little bit differently in different speeds, but, uh, the cool thing is they have trained dogs. I'm not sure if it's these particular dogs, do they have trained dogs in the past to detect the Corona virus in urine? And what were the three. The dogs finding coronavirus because of the volatile organic compounds within it. And so there was urine, one other bodily fluid, and then now they are working on sweat because most, if not all people are going to sweat and if they are infected and the dogs can detect the coronavirus in sweat, then they don't have to get a sample from the people. Right. They can just kind of walk by and try to detect it.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
Yeah. That's so crazy. So did they put people through like sweat tests? You know, like, uh,

Dr. Brad Miller:
I don't know how they got the sample. Well, yeah, I'm not really sure how they got the samples. That's a really good question. I guess, people who are known infected, uh, they would take something and scrape or collect a little sweat and then they would put it on cloth. And so the process, where's it at,

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
It says they collected t-shirts from the study for the study, from volunteers,

Dr. Brad Miller:
Volunteers who evidently had coronavirus. And then they basically, it's just a positive reinforcement. They would put out like five samples of different products. One would be alcohol and be coronavirus three might be chocolate, four would be, you know, who knows cheese, crackers, whatever. And then when the dogs would pick the Corona virus sample, they would get a positive reward. And so to me, that's totally random, right. If they go, if coronavirus is in container three, do you just let them sniff one to, you know, point on it, whatever. And then ultimately when they find Corona, you reward them and then you just keep repetitively doing that over and over again, is it called Pavlovian theory or something along those lines, but I don't know. I think that would be fascinating, but, um, urine, saliva and sweat. And so the study goes on to say that in an April study, 96% accuracy in urine and saliva, I'm not quite that accurate on the sweaty t-shirts, but that's what they're working towards. And so, yeah, the hopes are at a sporting event, at an airport, like you would have a bomb sniffing, you'd have a Corona sniffing dog. My hope is that in three to six months, we don't have to worry about this anymore. And it kind of goes away.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
Yeah. But the science is still there. Right. So it's pretty cool. I think in that article, they were talking about how they have dogs that are sniffing out, like Parkinson's. Parkinson's disease and diabetes, and some of these other things about dogs

Dr. Brad Miller:
We talked about dogs that can sense a seizure coming on that predictable phase. And so, um, yeah, very, very, very cool. Um, we knew it was happening, but yeah, just to kind of read a little bit more about that.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
So you brought up the national geographic, so I wanted to bring up something as well in regards to national geographic. Right. So I don't know if you know, but a year ago or so maybe two years ago I signed up for magazines because I wanted to stay relevant and I wanted to understand like, what was happening in the world. But, um, apparently May 20th was national bee day. Did you know that like worldwide day? Not national, but world. Yeah. Like buzzing bees. So apparently Angelina Jolie covered herself in bees to raise awareness to world Bee day, uh, for the national geographic magazine. So you can find that on her Twitter or national Geographic's Twitter and that kind of thing, she was wearing clothes, but she was like, definitely

Dr. Brad Miller:
I've seen those pictures of people. They say that they're super heavy whenever like they swarm, like on your head, your neck lump, was she wearing a mask? No,

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
No, no. This is just like her. And she's letting these bees, I don't think that they're going to like sting her or whatnot. She's just letting them kind of like stand on her and crawl over her. No, that's not very attractive. She's not completely covered. Like you're talking about when you're in a beekeeper suit.

Dr. Brad Miller:
That's so heavy. Evidently. Yeah.

Dr. Brad Miller:
So this is world Bee day and basically she is raising awareness. They want to build 2,500 beehives and restock 125 million bees by 2020, 2025

Dr. Brad Miller:
Bee are extremely, extremely important to our ecosystem. Yes. They really, really are. So, uh, that's one of those modern, it's kind of like a cruciate ligament and ACL or cranial cruciate ligament, little bitty thing, part of a, the big organism, but extremely important. Yeah. So, um, all right. Last story is going to be the, uh, oh, the pandemic pet poisonings. So I found this brief article pretty enlightening, but it all makes sense.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
Yeah, I would agree. I thought, you know, definitely there, there, number one is not at all. What I expected it to be

Dr. Brad Miller:
What would you have guessed the number one, uh, pet poisoning to be over the past 12 months, had you not read the article?

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
I would have thought food of some sort like chocolates, candy, something like that, you know, because people are you, we eat to feel better. Yeah. It's just who we are.

Dr. Brad Miller:
Uh, I think I would have thought food as well. Uh, plants would have entered my mind, but not taught, you know, probably food and chocolate would be.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
Yeah, I would've, I would've thought for sure, like chocolates, that kind of thing.

Dr. Brad Miller:
So, but the reality is, um, it is related to the pandemic pretty heavily and foods, as we're saying, but not the foods we thought. Okay. And then what were people doing during the pandemic? Right. So if you, if you think along those lines, what happened during the pandemic? Um, I shared the fact that my coffee habit is like completely out of control. Uh, coffee is not on the list.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
It is actually number two.

Dr. Brad Miller:
Oh, it is. It is. Yeah. I miss that. So brewed coffee is number two.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
Yep.

Dr. Brad Miller:
Um, coffee's primarily a GI stimulant or a neuro stimulant. Um, and we're not going to go into the whole, you know what these mean? Basically, if you, if your pet has ingested, uh, being exposed, anything you think is toxic, you need to call your veterinarian. So we're going to leave that at that. But number one, yeast.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
I know I would've never ever thought.

Dr. Brad Miller:
Yes. Um, you know, how sweet that rising dough is. Um, so I can see, so all over the place, I feel like things that we did during the pandemic, we stayed, many of us were not essential. And so we stayed home for whatever reason. And so when we stayed home, what we do, we cooked, we, drank-

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
I feel like the whole bread making thing, like went viral for a minute though. Like also, yeah, I'm pretty sure there was like a bread making deal.

Dr. Brad Miller:
So we ate, we baked, we drank, uh, evidently some people smoked a little more than they used to. We had art projects, uh, we cleaned, um, and

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
Number nine is interesting

Dr. Brad Miller:
Rat Poisoning. Yeah, basically that was number nine. So were people at home seeing rodents more or were there more rodents for, because they were home barbecuing and you know, outside, I don't know, but so number one was yeast

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
222% increase, 223%

Dr. Brad Miller:
Increase, brewed coffee, 207% increase, I'm assuming year over year. Um, so ye what's the difference between yeast bread dough?

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
So I would think the yeast before

Dr. Brad Miller:
Bakers Yeast and bread dough are in our top three,

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
I would think the yeast would be before it actually made it to the dough

Dr. Brad Miller:
Before they cooked it and made the bread. Okay. Um, and the yeast part of that, whether it's the bread being baked in the dog's stomach, or, you know, the, the yeast itself, uh, is broken down into alcohol. So it causing or will cause can cause alcohol poisoning, um,

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
And bloat, apparently.

Dr. Brad Miller:
Bloat Yeah. If they, because the stomach kind of acts like an oven and it expands. Yeah. That made sense, but I've not ever, ever thought about that. So I thought that was kind of cool.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
Yeah. So what's interesting to me is like, granted, I know that obviously you should be concerned anytime your pet eats something that you're unsure if it's safe or not, but for people like brewed coffee, like how much coffee does the dog have to drink, or the cat have to drink for someone to call poison control, helpline,

Dr. Brad Miller:
Um, you know, uh, grapes, it's the same thing. Chocolate people are always going to call us, you know, even if it's a half a piece of milk chocolate,

Dr. Brad Miller:
It's just interesting. The whole cleaning products. Yeah. I could see that, like, if you have a bucket of mop water and your dog starts to lick from it. Yeah.

Dr. Brad Miller:
Art supplies was 4, marijuana usage was up 102%

Dr. Brad Miller:
Not the usage, per say

Dr. Brad Miller:
Not the dog usage or cat usage. Um, paint wouldn't have really thought that, but maybe they're kind of like kids with markers, they sniff eat. I don't know. They being pets, cleaning products was number seven. Cocktails was number eight, vitamin D3 cola calciferol um, was number nine and then wine because of the sweetness, I guess whether it's white or red, um, was number 10. So I don't know. It was just kind of interesting.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
I think it's super interesting for sure.

Dr. Brad Miller:
I wonder if the, uh, Lance would know this or you would know this gaming all the PlayStation and all that gaming. Was that up down or the same during this? I would think it would have been up, but I've not heard anything about that.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
I would think it'd be up as well, especially because like last year they had the whole like release of the new XBox and the new PlayStation and they were like really difficult to get. Um, so I don't know, I'm guessing, but I would think that they were up for sure.

Dr. Brad Miller:
Do you think those games are as popular as they once were or less popular with the iPhone or the Samsung phone and everything that you can get on your phone? I would think they're much less popular. I've never, I've never played a PlayStation game period.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
I definitely don't think that your phone has anything to do with your game console.

Dr. Brad Miller:
You can't game or do anything you can't,

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
You can, but like people who game, they, they game on systems because of the quality and the, whatever that you're not going to get on your phone.

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
Okay. All right. Obviously, that's all.

Dr. Brad Miller:
Yeah. It's definitely not my thing for sure. But I do know that your, if you're a gamer, like your cell phone is not going to replace your console.

Dr. Brad Miller:
Okay. All right. Well, are you ready to sign us out of episode 109?

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
Yeah. Did you, um, I totally don't think we mentioned it, but obviously, we skipped last week. Right. So for those listening,

Dr. Brad Miller:
I wasn't going to mention it, but he just did. So

Angel Martin, RVT, CVPM:
We did, we skipped it. We took a quote-unquote bi-week, it's been a while since done that, but we definitely did do that. Um, so thank you for checking in this week, but make sure to check in next week, as we discuss more in the news and in our industry, follow us on Instagram at people, pets in vets, all of our clinics on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and check out our blogs on our website at mygavet.com. And remember, without people, pets are simply animals,

Speaker 5:
Bye guys.

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