Introducing: Fearless!

Jessica and Dr. Megan: Hello. Hello. And welcome to pets deserve it. Welcome. We are just getting into season two officially this week as last week we talked about the local disaster, the Spokane wildfires and our fearless calming clinics. So if you are interested in that, or if you know someone affected by the fires, Please go back and check out that episode where we go into how we can help. So this week we are officially getting into season two. Woo woo! And we are introducing our fearless initiative. Fearless standard. So like Dr. Megan said, we are introducing our fearless standard and we are very excited about this. We want to start by saying that our fear free journey has been amazing. We've been fear-free certified individuals for many years. We've also been a fear-free certified veterinary practice for several years. And we take it very serious. After all, we built the entire clinic for fear-free and for our client and patients, low stress experience and journey. But we continue to grow and evolve. And that has taken us to a place where We need more advanced help and we've needed to create more advanced trainings. And we learned that there was a need for our clients to better understand overall what was going on and what exactly did all of this mean? Not just with Fear Free and the verbiage that is used, but to the level that we were trying to do it, clients weren't understanding. some of the things, let's talk about some of those things that maybe clients weren't understanding from our perspective. And that'd be a good place to start. One thing I think the clients were struggling with is the fear, anxiety and stress levels because fear free put a lot of time and effort into making these levels. sometimes clients still struggle to understand, especially if they didn't have a base knowledge of things like, especially dogs, like dog behavior, but cats as well. especially in the middle, like everyone can see when their pet is really happy or really upset. But some of those middle levels were struggling for clients to understand. And so we have started talking about and relating it to the nervous system because dogs and cats and guinea pigs and bearded dragons, everyone has a nervous system just like we do. So being able to relate things to the human nervous system. has been really helpful for clients to understand. I know when you go into an exam room or even when you're on the phone with them and you're telling a client, well, they're FASs for here's some of the things that they've been doing. We would like to recommend medications. They stop us, especially in the exam room. Like, what do you mean? What is FAS? And we do have it on the wall. We try to explain to them what the scaling system is. It's not relatable. It's not relatable. Exactly. And so we have found these things that clients are upset about or confused by. We think it's because it's not relatable. So when we say your dog's FAS4, okay, what exactly does that mean? But if we say your dog's nervous system is dysregulated, but he's not reactive, that means something different. Not necessarily the reactive or non-reactive part relates to humans, but the idea of being dysregulated is very common verbiage for people. one thing that is helping connect that with clients as far as the nervous system goes is understanding that your pet does have mental health. And that is one of our most important messages, right? Is that pets have mental health. I think that's the important thing for our clients to know. Like our ideal client is one that understands pet have mental health, pets have mental health, and then we can help them with the rest. But we have to have that baseline understanding that they do have mental health and they do have a nervous system and they can have stress responses. So one of the other areas that we've realized clients don't understand, and this is clients, people that we've worked with for quite a while on like our branding and stuff, they don't understand what PVPs mean. Now in the veterinary field, we understand what PVPs mean, but year after year, we could talk with the same client and they'll say, what are PVPs? PVPs are Pre-Visit Pharmaceuticals, but that is... And even when we don't use the acronym, even when we say pre-visit pharmaceuticals, it's like, okay. Right, the word pharmaceutical isn't really relatable with clients. Now pre-visit, yes, we understand what that means. And we could explain it to clients, but then we just, again, trying to relate things back to people, what should we say? So we chose calming meds. It's very basic, but when we say calming meds, well, what does that mean? Medications to calm you. because also I think one of the big concerns with pre-visit pharmaceuticals, just in general with giving medication before the visit is that it's going to be too sedating, too sleepy. And we're going to do a deep dive into medications on another episode. with calming medications, it also gets to the root of what we're trying to do. We're trying to calm them down. We're not necessarily trying to sedate them. Sometimes we are, but then we're going to make something different and the client knows. But with these particular medications, we're not trying to sedate them. Right. Okay, so what we are trying to do at Latah Creek is we are trying to compliment our fear free with our new fearless standard. Again, our fear free is great and it's been an amazing foundation, but foundations are meant to be built upon. And that is what we're doing with our fearless standard. Our hope with our fearless standard before we go into any more detail is that we... want to really help educate the community, which we've been doing and we will continue to do. we want to have allies in the community. They're also advocates of pets' mental health. So we're thinking about where are pet friendly places such as hotels and restaurants and how can we help those businesses. be more aware of pets' mental health. So when they're there eating dinner, do we know what to do if dogs are staring at each other or unhappy? Do we know how to pick up on the body language of these pets? So we wanna help these other businesses learn these things so that these pets can have great experiences at these places that have opened up their businesses to pets, even though not primarily pet related businesses. And like Jessica said, we still love Fear Free, we still work with Fear Free, we still are and will continue to be Fear Free certified and a Fear Free certified practice. We're very proud of that. We still want to teach the community about at large about Fear Free, but this is something like she said, we're building on. Yes, we're building upon Fear Free, but we are also trying to make it more local. Like for us, our fearless standard, is more local. We'll very much be talking about fear free on webinars and on a larger scale. But our fearless standard is something that's going to be focused more local. Again, our local businesses, some local vet clinics that they want to participate, just really trying to help get the word out that pets have mental health. That is the goal. Okay, so just to recap, we talked a little bit about we now are using the verbiage calming medications instead of PVPs. We also have changed a little bit about our medications because people at large aren't relating well to trazodone, but seem to be more relating to Xanax because that is a medication that is more commonly used in human medicine. We also noticed that it has a better effect on the dogs. Trazodone is fine and is safe for 99 % of dogs, but we noticed that in a lot of dogs, again, we're doing this on quite a large scale. So we do have the population to support our informal study that they are either getting what the client would consider too sleepy, or they are almost having a paradoxical effect to where the feeling that they get from trazoderm makes them almost more anxious, like they don't like the feeling of being out of control or just whatever feeling that they're getting from it. that feeling of maybe being a little bit ataxic or a little bit sleepy was actually almost making them more paranoid. So if your dog has been on Fresno and it's working, awesome. But we have started, like Jessica said, using Xanax and it's been great. It's been very nice and calming for the dog. So it doesn't make them extremely sleepy. It doesn't seem to have a paradoxical effect on most, although it can make some. very rarely a little bit more excited, but still not quite the same effect. And clients relate much better to it. Yeah. And then the other change is yes, we are still scoring our patients on the FAS scale. That is part of our fear free certification. So we keep that in mind, but now we are also putting them on the nervous system level. And again, we feel this is more relatable because this has five different levels and it goes from regulated to dysregulated. But another important factor is it shows that they can escalate and it shows that they can deescalate. so we really wanted to show how things that we do, like calming medications and everything we do for fearless and fear free with pheromones, calming music, gentle handling. et cetera, all of the above can also help bring your nervous system back down to regulated. We also wanted it to be clear that once you get dysregulated, you are going to have to then come back down through those levels because we talk a lot about how the calming vents also help after your appointments and how your dog may actually go home and then take a really, really long, nap. after your appointment and that that is a good thing. Let's talk about that. Yeah, let's talk about that. I know that's one thing you feel quite passionate about. That was one of the things I think that started us relating things back to people. And so what I the thought that I had that we started sharing is clients upset that their pet is quite sleepy afterwards, whether that's from the stress or the medications, and then they go home and they want to sleep the rest of the night that that causes clients a lot of stress, but we all know if we had a child or a significant other that had a rough doctor's appointment or stressful appointment or the doctor had them take medications and they went home and slept the rest of the night, our mindset would be don't bother them for any reason, we need to let them get their rest. And so we very much are trying to shine a light on we should feel the same way about our pet. and let our pet get the sleep that they so desperately need. And also like we were talking about Xanax being more relatable to the clients. I mean, we hear that a lot to where you can almost visibly see the clients relax when we use a medication that they're comfortable with as well. know, Trazodone, clients have potentially had bad experiences with it. That doesn't mean your dog is, but that makes you naturally more hesitant, which I understand. And the dosing for Trazodone is wildly different to dogs versus people, whereas we might take, I don't know, 50 milligrams. A dog could take up to 500 depending on the dog size. And that can be difficult considering that even the biggest dog is probably smaller or closer to the same size as us. And that can be a really difficult hurdle. But then when we talk about Xanax, you can almost see the clients relax like, I'm comfortable with this medication. I, you know, it's yes, the dosing for dogs and humans is different, but not as wildly. So it's still within the same tablet sizes that we're pretty used to. Right. To the point where it's almost become a joke with clients, not about them that, what is Danny? yes. I would take that over and offer some pointed to. Well, so what we were finding with the trazodone is clients would take it home, but oftentimes it was several pills. And then we're finding that they weren't giving them all. So then the pet is coming to the clinic, not on full medications and still having a quite stressful experience. for several reasons, we switched to Xanax and that has been. probably one of the best changes we've made. And yes, and seeing how much calmer the pets are, and I am not averse to them being a sleepy animal. However, they seem to be in a state where they can even learn better and even more so decrease their stress over time because being sleepy at the vet is not a thing. But with some of the pets, especially in the middle zones, I'd either beginning of dysregulation or what we consider FAS 3, they are the ones that really have a good chance at actually working with you and learning if you can decrease their stress a little bit. And that's what we've been seeing. We've had multiple people tell us, this is the best visit my pets ever had, or we've noticed it and pointed it out to the client like, Hey, he's actually been working with us and doing some basic cooperative care type stuff. He's playing the treat games. He's actually wanting to learn that this is safe and it's really been a huge, huge success. Okay. So when we think about, you know, some stories about our clients and patients that have either been more accepting or understanding, I think the first thing that I'll say is just overall, the consensus on our phone calls is that clients understand what calming meds are. right away. There's no question. There's no, what is that? Can you explain that to me? Why do I need that? Immediately the feedback from the front desk is that clients understand what calming meds are. And then from shadowing the exam rooms and hearing what you guys say when you come out of the exam rooms, saying to a client, even with some education about the scale in general and what it means, still when you look at a client and say, your dog is an FAS3, and here's what that means, you can see just like not understanding on their face. Like, yes, they're listening, but maybe humoring us a little bit because they don't quite understand. But when you go in there and say their nervous system is alert right now and here's why, you can also just sense that they understand that more. Yes, and I also think there was some... just internal barriers on the client side, which I feel like no one could have predicted that they had an aversion to being at a higher number. And, you know, well, he's, well, he's a four out of five. Well, he wouldn't hurt anyone. And, you know, he's a good dog and just kind of feeling that judgment that we feel about our past sometimes, even though on our side, there's none. In fact, we love working with those patients. Just all of that. you know, pressure. Whereas I think being in a red zone on a curve is a little bit less of that feeling for them for clients and also seeing I think seeing that they'll come down feels a little bit less like you're five. Whoa, you're a bad dog. Yeah. Which again, it was not our intent or fear freeze. We love working with those patients. But you know, we don't exist in a vacuum and society's judgmental and clients see a five out of five and think, my gosh. Yeah. And when they see a five out of five, it's almost like there's no hope of de-escalation. But we know there is because we proved that with most of our visits. I just think of all these conversations I have with clients. And this will happen. It was happening on almost a daily to weekly basis where a client would come in not having given the medications or not having given all of the medications and not really either wanting to admit why or maybe not sure themselves. Why? Until we started asking additional questions and almost always it was something about the trazodone. Either I didn't like how it made him feel last year or I didn't, I personally didn't like how sleepy it made him, which we can work through that if it's just the sleepiness after, but them not liking how it makes them feel while they're taking it. You know, I hear you. I don't want them to feel worse. That's obviously not the goal or just internal mental barriers. It's so many pills and that's just really, really hard to educate through these big barriers, which some of which are that we don't, we also don't want your dog to be standing looking like he's braced for something, you know, feeling just weird is probably the best word for it. And then when we ask them additional questions to find that out and then they try Xanax and then they come back and it's the best visit they've ever had. That's just really been the next step in our evolution. is finding something else that can be used instead. And Trazo has just been such a mainstay and I still use it and we still love it. And for some dogs, it works great. And for some dogs, you need them to be sleepy. They have so much trauma. They have so much stress. They're not going to learn anything. They just need to relax. But for a lot of dogs, it has been really, really great. Good. Okay, so to wrap up, this is going to be a little bit shorter of a podcast, but that's okay. It was short and sweet. So we will be talking more and more about this for all the season two. So we are on a very large scale, fear-free certified practice. We preach it to anybody who will listen and even to those who won't, just in case it piques someone's interest. want, like fear-free, we want more and more clinics to be on board with this idea of low stress visits for pets because it doesn't have to be scary when you come to the vet. And if it is scary for you, there are medications that are very safe for your pet to take if we can get through those barriers. So we are fear free. We stand behind that always. On a more local level, we are starting our fearless standard so that our local community can really understand what it is we're trying to do. When we get new clients, they understand how we are. categorizing their pet stress and what we are going to do about it. And it is very easy to understand. And that is our goal for our local community. So yes, we're kind of doing two things, but for us, Fear Free will always be our foundation. And our fearless standard is just the advancements that we have made on our own that we feel have been very beneficial to our very specific clientele and to the very specific client that we are looking for who we would consider our ideal client. Well, and also so clients can understand how we're doing some things differently, even than other Fear Free Certified practices, which I think was a little bit hard for them to understand because we're doing all of Fear Free and some of these things that we've built on from Fear Free. And so I think this also helps maybe make it clear that some of the things we're doing are things that we have built on. Yeah. And I think it's important when you're looking for a fear-free certified practice, that is amazing, good job, but you're not always comparing apples to apples. And that I think is also part of our point because we don't want to be compared with the other ones. But when you look on, say, a directory, They're all listed, which is great. We love the Fear-Free Certified Practices. We love clinics that are doing even just a few things to help their patients experience be lower stress. We are advocates of that. we have community events to really get the word out to the community, but we also have events for local veterinary clinics to really try to help those that maybe aren't doing it and how they can start very slowly and consistently. But at the end of the day, we also want to show that we are doing things differently. And that is our goal. And that is that we are focused on the pet's mental health. All right, so that about wraps it up with our reproduction to Fearless, a theme that you will continue to see throughout season two and your visits to our clinic and beyond. Check out our show notes for some helpful links. For example, our air system scale and our link to the Wildfire Calming Clinics, as well as links to our Instagram. Please follow us. In the meantime, put your little pause on that like and subscribe button and we'll see you next month. Bye. Thank you.