Care

Board-certified behaviorist Dr. Chris Pachel returns, this time to address the all too common issue of the barking fence dogs, specifically when the two feed off each other. On this week’s episode of the Cone of Shame Veterinary Podcast, Dr. Andy Roark and Dr. Chris Pachel discuss the underlying behavior behind this bark and offer practical advice on how to reduce stimulus and modify problematic behaviors. They also provide tips for veterinary professionals on guiding client conversations about these challenges. This episode is a must-listen for insights and strategies to improve handling of similar cases in your veterinary practice. Let’s get into it!

You can also listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Soundcloud, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts!

LINKS

Dr. Chris Pachel: www.drpachel.com

Instinct Dog Behavior & Training: https://www.instinctdogtraining.com/

Dr. Andy Roark Exam Room Communication Tool Box Team Training Course: https://drandyroark.com/on-demand-staff-training/

Dr. Andy Roark Charming the Angry Client Team Training Course: https://drandyroark.com/charming-the-angry-client/

Dr. Andy Roark Swag: drandyroark.com/shop

All Links: linktr.ee/DrAndyRoark

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Dr. Chris Pachel is a board-certified veterinary behaviorist and is the owner and lead clinician at the Animal Behavior Clinic in Portland, Oregon. Dr. Pachel lectures extensively worldwide, teaches courses at multiple veterinary schools in the United States, and has authored numerous articles and book chapters for veterinarians and pet owners. He is a sought-after expert witness for legal cases and serves on the Editorial Advisory Board for dvm360. He is also a Vice-president of Veterinary Behavior for Instinct Dog Behavior and Training, as well as co-owner of Instinct Portland, which opened in the fall of 2020.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Andy Roark: Welcome everybody to the Cone of Shame veterinary podcast. I am your host, Dr. Andy Roark. Guys, I got a super fun one here. Talking all about the neighbors, talking– all who are wonderful people.

They are wonderful people. They have two dogs that have big feelings. As my guest says today, they have big feelings. They are the two dogs that rattle the doors and bark their heads off at the edge of the fence. And one of them jumps over the fence and comes out in the road sometimes. And it’s kind of a behavioral nightmare for some very nice people. And anyway, we wade into this. What do you do about multiple dogs with big feelings? and that’s what we’re working on today. So anyway, my guest today is Dr. Christopher Pachel. He is a board of vet behaviorist and we get into this case. And I love this conversation, a really good one. I, if you like behavior, you’re going to have a good time. Buckle up, let’s get into it.

Kelsey Beth Carpenter: (singing) This is your show. We’re glad you’re here. We want to help you in your veterinary career. Welcome to the Cone of Shame with Dr. Andy Roark. 

Dr. Andy Roark: Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Christopher Pachel. How are you?

Dr. Chris Pachel: I am doing fantastic. Dr. Roark, how are you?

Dr. Andy Roark: I am great. For those who don’t know you, you are a boarded veterinary behaviorist. You are a wonderful speaker. You have been on the podcast before. I just, I love having you on and getting to talk with you. I have got a case for you that I really would like to have your insight on. And I was wondering if I could run it by you.

Dr. Chris Pachel: I would love that. Bring it on.

Dr. Andy Roark: Okay, there’s, okay, these are, I have some neighbors I have some neighbors, and they have poodles, standard, you know, full size poodles, and they had two poodles, and those dogs. I don’t want to say they were bad, but they were hard to control, you know what I mean? They– it took both owners to walk the two of them, and if they saw another dog, forget it.

They lost, both of them lost their minds pulling at the leash. They have a fenced yard, but it’s a fenced front yard. So whenever you walk in front of the house, if they’re inside, the front door shakes. Like there’s a, you know, like there’s some supernatural force manifesting inside the house. Just, you know, and you hear them Just barking their heads off, and it just, it sounds like a bomb is going off when you walk past.

And if they’re outside, they are all up on the fence, just snapping, barking, just slobber flying, just the two of them together. And then, one of them died, which is sad, one of them died of old age, and they got a Poodle puppy and Chris, this poodle puppy has immediately adopted the exact same behaviors and they were back to having two of them rattling the door.

The young puppy is spry enough that it shoots over the top of the fence at the upper corner and then it’s in the road and I’ve got my bad goldendoodle and skipper who’s bad and then it’s just it’s complete pandemonium and it happens about once a week and everything and I’m looking at these people who were nice people.

But they are so overmatched by these two dogs and I am convinced because of the one going out and the other one coming in and immediately going into this that there is this, that there is this training behavior issue that is 100 percent being exacerbated by the two dogs. They are wi– they’re winding each other up.

I feel like they’re feeding back and forth between the other ones. The people haven’t asked me for advice yet. I don’t think they know I’m a vet. And I’m not telling ’em. But they have not asked for my advice yet. But I do roll around in my head as I walk past dragging my dog behind me. 

What do you think about wading into behavioral cases or things like this where you have multiple dogs and they clearly feed off of each other? Can you talk to me about advice on fighting a multi front battle to try to get those things under control?

Dr. Chris Pachel: I love this setup on this, Andy, too. Just thinking about all of these different elements and my brain is sort of piecing all of these things together. Right? Even from the standpoint, I can imagine that sort of sense of like, sadness when one passes and then maybe the, short lived optimism. Like, Oh, maybe this is, and then, no, we’re right back where we started.

Dr. Andy Roark: Optimist and then yeah, she’s

Dr. Chris Pachel: Now here’s another 14 years where we’re just destined to go down the same pathway all over again.

Dr. Andy Roark: And the young one is limber. He can get out of the fit. It has not gotten better. It’s gotten worse because now he’s in the road and I have to wrangle him.

Dr. Chris Pachel: So, a couple of things that come to mind for me here is, you know, we know that, you know, first things first. So we mentioned, you know, the fact that these are bad dogs, right? Probably not the best terminology on that, gonna call you out on that.

Dr. Andy Roark: No, they’re, yeah, they’re not.

Dr. Chris Pachel: I’m going to invite you into trialing to a different terminology.

One, I would say these are two dogs that have very big feelings about the world in find themselves.

Dr. Andy Roark: They do. Exactly! They have very big feelings. I agree with that. They manifest their presence in a large way.

Dr. Chris Pachel: Um, the interesting thing about that is whether, you know, even before we get into the two dog scenario here is that when we have a dog who has really big feelings about the world that they’re in, they’re going to be motivated to behave in certain ways. So, in this case, if we have a dog who is concerned or really worked up by a passer by the goldendoodle coming down the walkway, right? So they have really big feelings about that and that creates some stress. They get really worked up about things. They do what comes naturally for a lot of dogs, especially in that scenario you described with that fenced in front yard That they rush out to the fence line and then by, you know, they carry on and we’re running the fence line. And eventually, what do you and your dog do? You go away. Yeah, you, of course, are going to go away anyway. But the dogs on the other side of the fence don’t always know that. And so what can absolutely happen, either just by the rehearsal of going through the motions, or worst case scenario, not only did they go through the motions, but it worked.

And so now we have an outlet for arousal and a reinforcement loop that the thing that was stressing them out went away, which strengthens the behavior that immediately preceded it, which means we are more likely to engage in that sort of running, barking, charging, —everything. I almost required a little bleep there, but there’s a, you know, 

Dr. Andy Roark: (laughter)

Dr. Chris Pachel: The BLEEP show that is that front yard in those moments, right, is something that is sort of being reinforced based on the circumstances they find themselves in and that could happen whether we’re talking one dogs or two with the two dog scenario where that often gets into, you know, especially when we see this kind of perpetuating of the same problem or the repeating of the same problem that either means that we have an environment that is shaping the animal’s behavior in that same direction, whether it’s this dog or the next one, the environment is more conducive to these behaviors emerging than it is anything else.

Or and we may have some social facilitation that’s happening there as well, where if you’re a naive little puppy who comes into that world and you say, I don’t really know what the lay of the land here is, but my big brother or sister seems to be really worked up about that thing when they go by. So I guess that’s what we do here.

I’ll come along for the ride and lo and behold, boom, we’re right back where we started from with that reinforcement history and we’re off to the races.

Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah that, so okay, so a hundred percent I actually you hit me like a ton of bricks because you were spot on. I and again, I’m walking my dog. It’s like– I don’t, I can’t, Chris I don’t have time to stand in front of their house until everything I got places to be I got stuff to do but to your point like I am captive and positive reinforcement and it just never dawned on me that me dragging, my own dog past their house was, supporting this.

But it totally makes sense. Can you unpack for me a little bit more what you mean when you talk about, is the environment conducive to this behavior? Give me an example of what that looks like, if you don’t

Dr. Chris Pachel: Yeah, absolutely. So it was the thing that jumped into my head when you first mentioned fenced in front yard when you need to be walking by, you know, and you’re out in the public. So you’re in the public space. You have the right to be there. You have the freedom to be there in that public space. You’re not intruding.

And yet. Having that fenced in front yard puts those dogs right up close to where that trigger would be for them, and whether that trigger is a person or a dog or vehicles going by or any other arousal stimulus, the environment allows them to position themselves right up next to it, which is really helpful.

You know, it’s going to be a more challenging situation for a lot of dogs to navigate. So in that scenario, just the freedom to put themselves there would be an example of that. I would say the same thing if we had a client who was concerned, and maybe these clients have the same reaction here that if somebody comes through the front door and the dogs are jumping all over the visitors. The environment is allowing that to happen. And again, when I say the environment, I mean all of the pieces, right? The fact that the dogs are not on a leash, that they’re not behind a baby gate, that they’ve not done proactive training. All of these things now create an environment in which the behavior that comes naturally to that dog in that moment is allowed to occur based on the lack of environmental control being exerted at that moment. 

Dr. Andy Roark: This all makes sense. When I think about this family, I, this seems like an uphill battle to me, Chris. Because, this is how their house is built. You know, like, this is where the fence is. And they’ve got the, you know, the glass, it’s not really glass. But it’s the clear door, front door that the dog’s gonna kind of see out of.

And now we’ve got these two dogs, and this sort of behavior has been established. It feels like everything is stacked against these two. And the owners, they don’t like when their dogs bark at, because we have a neighborhood where people walk their dogs. That’s what they do. And so I’m certain that their house explodes once an hour.

You know, most hours of the day. 

Hey guys, just want to hop in real quick and to let you know about my exam room communication toolkit. That’s right guys. I have team training on exam room skills. I don’t think there is a better way for you to train your team than for the people going into the exam rooms to get together as a group. Get some education and then talk about how they do it in their practice. 

Do you guys do this? What does this look like? Can we talk about a time that you saw somebody do this in the practice? What did it look like? If you want to actually get people to change what they say and how they behave, you should train them together so they can discuss it. And that is why this training is made to be done in groups. It’s made for teams. 

I have 17 different tools. That I lay down and they’re. Each module, you can break them up, you can tag them onto a staff meeting five minutes, and then they all have discussion questions that will help you get your people to talk about what they do, but you can get the door open. You can get people being honest about the experience they have in the exam room, and you can get them making changes and raising their game in a way they feel good about, and not in a way that they feel scolded or they feel like they’re not doing what they’re supposed to do. 

It is a very positive way to learn and encourage. And so anyway, that is at DrAndy Roark.com. I’ll put a link in the show notes, but it is my exam room communication toolkit. I hope you’ll check it out. 

Let’s get back into this episode. 

Dr. Andy Roark: Can you start to talk with me a little bit if you were in this situation or you were looking at these sort of environmental factors of this behavior is established and, it’s sort of probably been trained you know, early on.

And now we have two dogs in there, both exhibiting the behavior and the environment is set up the way that it is. How, give priorities for me. I, we can’t, Rome wasn’t built in a day. I don’t think we can do all the things at once. Probably these people both work. How, what are the Big rocks that you would sort of put into the bucket first and then we’ll try to fill in around

Dr. Chris Pachel: Yeah, the first thing that I typically look at in cases like that is what would be the practical way to prevent those dogs from rehearsing those patterns. And what I mean by that is like, even if the owners are away at work and the dogs are exploding 15 times throughout the day, they are still rehearsing.

They are still practicing. They’re still going through the motions, getting that negative reinforcement. By, you know, effectively driving away all of those neighborhood intruders, so just going through the motions of doing it will continue to perpetuate the behavior. So all of that to say, what would it look like to manage that problem?

Not because management. automatically fixes it, but what would it look like? And so if I was working with this client, I may say, okay, rather than allowing the dogs off leash in the front yard, could we do off leash in the backyard, but leashes in the front rather than giving access to those front windows, especially when we’re not there to be able to offer any sort of training guidance for those dogs.

What would it look like to put up opaque window blinds, or is it possible to put up a baby gate across the door that allows them into the living room and give them comfy places to rest on the backside of the house where they can still find a sunbeam, they can still entertain themselves, but they’re not going to be triggered and react. So I’m looking for some of those easy wins right off the bat to say, you know what, you don’t love your dogs exploding 15 times an hour. I don’t either. And I’m worried that every time they do, it’s perpetuating this learning cycle for them. So let’s just kind of nip that in the bud as the case may be.

Let’s rather than going down the pathway of corrections and saying no, Why don’t we take them out of this situation at least temporarily? And let’s start onboarding some skills. What do we want them to do or how do we want them to feel when those triggers happen? Let’s avoid it when we’re not training, let’s train those foundations.

And then we can progressively make it more and more challenging until we’re able to reintroduce them to the windows, to the front yard. And for some of our dogs that we’re working with here, you know, some dogs can make that much progress in a weekend. Other times it takes a lifetime, you know, and they never quite know, depending on how that’s all going to come together.

But allowing them to continue practicing despite what you’re trying to do from, a training standpoint, it’s not gonna give you the results you’re looking for.

Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah. No, I love this. I’m, you’re, saying things to me that in retrospect seems so obvious and just one of the things I’m always amazed of in behavior is how rarely people think about just removing their pets from the situation. And I don’t know why that comes so slowly. To us, but now that you say this, I’m like, well, of course the solution is we’ve got to, we’ve got to, we’ve got to turn the, volume down here.

Like just continuing to let them look out the windows and do these things that just, it doesn’t make sense. And everything will get easier if we can just cut off 75 percent of the stimulus behavior. That, that, all makes sense.

Dr. Chris Pachel: so many people say in that moment who it’s like, no, but, my tongue really loves that. They really love.

Oh, they do love it!

Dr. Chris Pachel: It’s their entertainment. I’m like, you know what, I love some things that are probably not the best for thing for me to be doing too. so if the goal behavior change, we probably need to, you know, figure something out

Dr. Andy Roark: That. That makes sense. I, like to run after cars as well. It’s a super exciting thing, but my wife has

ended 

Dr. Chris Pachel: activity. 

Dr. Andy Roark: Exactly, right. The kids just, nobody wants to be around me when I do it. So, anyway, that totally makes sense. But you are right, it is. I think you’re, I think you’re I think you put your finger right on the human element where it sounds ridiculous where people get so frustrated, but they also recognize their dog loves this.

And so it’s like, well, I hate it, but boy, it gives him joy when he barks his head off and jumps over the fence.

Dr. Chris Pachel: Well, and for a lot of people, too, especially with a youngster who comes into the household, they may say, well, if he’s charging around the front yard or in the living room 15 times a day, I don’t have to walk him. I don’t have to do those other things. And so it kind of actually scratches an itch that a lot of owners have too.

And it’s not until we put those pieces back together and say, Hey, wait a minute. I’m not sure that your dog loves this particular activity as much as perhaps they might really enjoy. I don’t know, not being frantic or flying out into traffic and potentially causing some injuries to themselves or others in the process of doing all that they do.

So I think we can probably do better.

Dr. Andy Roark: yeah, I think you’re spot on. I think there’s also the conversation about the damage to the relationship and go, well, he loves it. But how do you feel about this? And do you think you have the healthiest relationship or a relationship that you, could your relationship be better if you did not have these problematic behaviors once an hour?

I think that all makes sense

Dr. Chris Pachel: I love that piece with it within it. Oh, sorry within that relationship piece. I wanted to see that one little detail there too, because. What oftentimes owners do when they’re experiencing frustration in those moments, and you may hear the dogs explode, and then the people explode right after them. And, you know, it almost becomes this sort of dance routine where there’s a trigger, a reaction, and then the, you know, the yelling or the intended reprimand.

And the thing that I get a little bit concerned about when we’re talking about relationships, and even. If I could go all the way to the point of a welfare concern for some animals is that if we have something that an owner is doing, and whether this is verbally reprimanding or giving a leash correction or using any sort of aversive, if they’re going down that pathway, but if the timing or the consistency isn’t spot on for that animal to actually change their behavior, ultimately, the takeaway is the animal is experiencing unpleasant situations.

In an unpredictable, uncontrollable way. And that’s actually a recipe for situational or generalized anxiety. And so I actually worry that in addition to a relationship breakdown, we actually increase the likelihood that animals who are experiencing some of those frustrated reprimands. Are actually going to have other issues that emerge because of the unpredictability or the aversiveness of the environment They’re living in and that’s not what anybody’s looking for their dogs So we can try some other strategies

Dr. Andy Roark: So, so, are you saying, Chris, that, okay, in this scenario, we’ve got the, so we’ve got the two dogs and they’re in the front yard and they’re just absolutely going nuts and the owner of the dogs comes out the front door and she’s like, hey, and she’s clapping, you know, and she’s doing exactly what you expect to try to get them to calm down, which of course is not working, has never worked, there’s nothing about the history of these dogs should indicate that this is going to be a successful strategy.

Yeah, every morning, we’re doing it. So she’s out there, and she’s grabbing the dogs by the collar. And again, I’m not trying to paint this person a bad light at all. I’m just This is hypothetical. It’s generally a picture of kind of what happens. I think everybody’s seen this exact scenario. So she’s coming out, and she’s grabbing the dogs, and she’s kind of yanking them back into the house.

Are you saying that because these dogs are out and they’re in a hyper aroused state and then Sometimes the owner shows up and sometimes she doesn’t because sometimes she’s not there or she’s in another part So sometimes she busts out the door and sometimes she doesn’t and sometimes she grabs them by the collar and sometimes she doesn’t that I’m more likely to see possibly generalized anxiety in these dogs because they’re having Situations like that.

Is that what you’re saying?

Dr. Chris Pachel: that is what i’m saying That’s exactly what i’m saying andy and it’s something that’s that I think is really misunderstood by a lot of owners And especially if I were working with that particular owner and if I was really trying to tease this out A response that I get very often is an owner who says, Oh, but I only do those things when the quote unquote bad behavior is happening.

So I am being super consistent about what I’m doing. I’m only squirting the cat with a squirt bottle. I’m only grabbing for the collar when that particular behavior is happening. And in those scenarios, I usually try to flip the conversation a little bit and say, Okay, I love the fact that you’re being mindful.

Of when you do that particular thing as an intervention if I were to ask your dog Whether you do that thing each and every time the behavior occurs How do you think they would answer me?

Dr. Andy Roark: That’s great.

Dr. Chris Pachel: Because that’s the learner’s perspective. That’s ultimately the one that matters It’s not whether I think i’m justified in punishing or reprimand.

It’s Does the animal have a clear correlation between a behavior that I do and a consequence that’s positive or negative? If I can’t make a one to one connection between those things, it is inherently unpredictable to me as the learner. And it’s the unpredictability that leads to confusion. And if the outcome is something that causes pain or distress or any sort of emotional conflict, now it’s something that is unpredictable.

And unpleasant. And that’s where anxiety comes from.

Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah. All right. I love that. You know, you are so great at validating pet owners when you’re talking to them. It’s just something you do so well. And I love, the way you phrase that and you flip that sort of question over. I think you make the point of what is consistent. I think you make it really clearly.

I also really love this, conversation because you’re, sort of validating one of the beliefs I’ve sort of acquired in my life and practice. When I was a young doctor, I had this idea that sometimes chaos happens, like rodeos sort of happen sometimes, and as I’ve gotten older, I have come to believe again and again, if you ever find yourself in a rodeo, meaning a chaotic situation you need to stop.

You need to stop and you need to step back and you need to get your people out of there because somebody’s gonna get bit, but you need to stop and you step back and we need to look at this and say, wait a second now, what’s going on here? and this in the, exam room, this sometimes is this is a overly stimulated patient.

This is an anxious, this is a afraid patient. And we just have back. Or, maybe working with an inexperienced assistant, maybe our, handling skills are not where they need to be. It should not have this chaos, and, I’ve just, I, it’s not even a conscious thought, but I feel chaos, and I go, this is, what are we doing here guys?

Let’s step back. And so, when I see this front yard scenario, and the dogs are barking, and one of them’s trying to jump over the fence, and the neighbor’s running out, and she’s yelling, I get that same feeling of, This chaos can’t be good. It just it can’t be good and you have validated that is as what you said everything fits with that of We’ve got to turn the volume down on this.

We have got to let’s step away from this Let’s get let’s get some baby gates in place Let’s just reduce and let’s start to work through this. Oh, man. This has been such a great conversation chris I really appreciate you being here Where can people find you online? Where can they learn more?

Where could they hear about your speaking engagements? Things like that. I’m sure people are gonna want to learn more from you. I do.

Dr. Chris Pachel: I love that, Andy. So the easiest place to find what I’m up to and what I put out there for, consumption, so to speak, is on the website, drPachel. com. So www. drpachel. com. And that’s where any podcasts like this one, or webinars that I’ve recorded, or articles that I’ve written, all of those get linked to the media pages there.

You can also find what we’ve been up to at the Animal Behavior Clinic or through Instinct Dog Behavior and Training, which I’m also a co owner of. So we’ve got all of these different ways. All of it’s all of it’s curated right through that website. So it’s a one stop shop. That’s where you want to go.

Dr. Andy Roark: That’s great. I’ll put a link in the show notes down to the website. Thanks so much for being here, Chris. Thanks for listening to everybody. Take care of yourselves.

​Dr. Andy Roark: And that’s it. That’s what I got for you guys. I hope you enjoyed this. I did. This is a real fun one I love it. I have pages of notes from my conversation with Chris. Anyway, thanks to him for being here Thanks to you for being here Take care of yourselves everybody. I’ll talk to you later on. Bye.

Aaron Massecar, Executive Director of the Veterinary Innovation Council, joins Dr. Andy Roark to discuss a recent article on technology turning pet owner homes into the first touchpoint for diagnostics and screening of veterinary cases.

You can also listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Soundcloud, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts!

LINKS

Aaron Massecar on LinkedIn

Article: Home is the Emerging Care Site

Veterinary Innovation Council

My Dog Is A Robot

Healthcare and Information Management Systems Society

Consumer Electronics Show

Dr. Andy Roark Resources 

Dr. Andy Roark Exam Room Communication Tool Box Team Training Course

Dr. Andy Roark Charming the Angry Client Team Training Course

Dr. Andy Roark Swag

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Aaron Massecar, currently serving as the Executive Director of the Veterinary Innovation Council, brings a diverse expertise to this episode. Previously, he held roles as the Vice President of Education at VEG, Assistant Director of Continuing Education at Colorado State University, and served as an Adjunct Instructor at Texas A&M. Aaron played a pivotal role in establishing the Veterinary Innovation Summit and Veterinary Entrepreneurship Academy, leaving a lasting mark in the field.

Outside his professional commitments, Aaron thrives on physical challenges. Recently completing a demanding 127-mile gravel bike race in Iceland, he continues to embrace new feats. Notably, he tackled a 200-mile gravel race from Moab UT to Fruita CO, showcasing his enduring passion for adventure.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Andy Roark (00:07):
Welcome everybody to the Cone of Shame Veterinary Podcast. I am your host, Dr. Andy Roark. Guys, I’m here with my buddy Dr. Aaron Massecar. We are talking about innovation in vet space. We start off talking about innovations in veterinary care that is going to move diagnostic and screening into the pet owner’s home. And so if you are interested in how technology is going to make pet owners more savvy and also put diagnostic and screening tools into their hands and how this changes the way that we’re going to work with them in the future, this is a great episode. We start off talking about that. We kind of use that talk about innovation in general. I ask Aaron about what he’s most excited about with innovation in the vet space. He’s really neat. He’s the executive director of the Vet Innovation Council, so he thinks a lot about this.

(00:57):
He sees a ton of startup companies and people having ideas about innovation and where that medicine might go. And so he’s got this really neat perspective on the bleeding edge of technology and innovation in VE medicine and where it might go. So anyway, is a really neat thought provoking episode. Guys. I hope you’ll enjoy it. I really enjoyed making it. As you’ll hear on this, I like Aaron a lot. I like to give him a hard time and just sort of push him and make him try to commit to what he thinks is going to happen. And so anyway, we do that. It’s really fun. Let’s get into it.

Kelsey Beth Carpenter (01:32):
This is your show. We’re glad you’re here. We want to help you in your veterinary career. Welcome to the Cone of Shame with Dr. Andy Roark.

Dr. Andy Roark (01:49):
Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Aaron Massecar. How are you?

Dr. Aaron Massecar (01:52):
I’m fantastic, Andy. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Andy Roark (01:54):
Man, it’s good to have you here. This has been too long coming. I love when we get to sit down and talk. For those who do not know you, man, you are an interesting person. You’ve had a lot of different titles doing a lot of different things. You are currently the Executive Director of the Veterinary Innovation Council. Why don’t you talk a little bit about what the Veterinary Innovation Council is? It sounds like a group of people like robed, people who meet in a secret location to discuss what will happen in vet medicine in the future.

Dr. Aaron Massecar (02:28):
You’re probably like 66%. So the locations are secret and we do talk about the future of veterinary medicine, but nobody wears robes or tassels or anything like that. So it’s a sponsor driven organization. It’s a 501 C6, and we look at the future of veterinary medicine. We have one conference every year, the Veterinary Innovation Summit. And then when we’re not focusing on that, we’re focusing on some of the trends. So we’ve looked at things like telemedicine, nurse practitioners or mid-level providers. Right now we’re focusing on access to care and we’re looking at a couple of other things like super sexy topic, interoperability. Everyone wants to know about that, AI…

Dr. Andy Roark (03:14):
I don’t know what that is, what is interoperability?

Dr. Aaron Massecar (03:17):
So you know how pimm systems, they do not communicate with each other at all.

Dr. Andy Roark (03:22):
Oh yeah.

Dr. Aaron Massecar (03:23):
So it’s basically trying to create the framework so that those systems can communicate with each other.

Dr. Andy Roark (03:29):
And you call that interoperability, that’s not a word at all. You just made that up. That’s not even a thing.

Dr. Aaron Massecar (03:35):
Just a messenger. Just a messenger.

Dr. Andy Roark (03:38):
I don’t think that’s a real word for making PIMS systems talk to each other. That seems ridiculous. All right. Okay. What else do you got besides PIMS systems talking to each other?

Dr. Aaron Massecar (03:51):
Big focus right now is on artificial intelligence, so what’s happening with radiology in particular, but then how’s that spilling over into all sorts of other areas? Everything from endoscopy to decision support to just about everything that’s affecting the clinic. We’re looking at companies who are using AI for inventory management, everything that you can imagine. Companies are starting to use AI for that.

Dr. Andy Roark (04:18):
Everything where a human being looks at information and then makes a decision. I could a hundred percent see that. Yeah, totally. Yep. That’s fascinating. Alright, I reached out to you. You have an article that I saw recently that I really liked. It’s called Home is the Emerging Care Site. It was in the last Today’s Veterinary Business magazine that came out. And I like that because I always thinking about business models for vet medicine and I like thinking about where opportunities are and I’m seeing a real increase in home care providers, so veterinary house called vets, things like that. And there seems to be demand from the public. I see a lot more doctors shifting over to this.

(04:59):
I think that there’s real opportunity for entrepreneurship here. So if you’re a general practice doctor and you want to work for yourself, this is probably the fastest way to get up and get going on your own. And so I’m looking at that and I’m sort of thinking about the way that we’re working and what that looks like and the demand that I see for those home services. And then I see your article on Home is the Emerging Care Site, and I’m sort of looking through it and you’ve had a number of ideas about what sort of home-based treatments look like and home-based medical opportunities look like. And so with an innovation sort of lens, I’d like to look at the practice of medicine in the pattern’s home. And where do you see that now and where do you see that going?

Dr. Aaron Massecar (05:41):
Yeah, so this actually goes back a long time ago to the first veterinary innovation summit that we had where John Ayres was there and he was talking about preventative wellness is a major shift, and this is back in 2017. And you can see that being the case. There’s more and more companies who are starting to focus on that and early screening and that sort of thing. And then at the same time, you see companies like Whistle hitting the market and they were primarily a wearable device for GPS tracking and some activity tracking, and then they start launching some of the algorithms that they have. So this was probably in 2018 maybe, where they were presenting on the algorithms that they were using to look at two things in particular. So one was how often is the animal itching and scratching so they could find the hotspot before the hotspot emerged?

(06:38):
So that was interesting. Another thing that they found was when does activity levels return to normal? So most people were thinking within two weeks your animal’s going to be back to normal. What they found through their algorithms was that it was closer to a month. So this goes back a ways, but then you start looking at all the direct to consumer products that are out there in the market now. So we have a litter robot by whisker. We also have some other things in the house just to kind of help manage the animals, but there’s all these devices that are starting to collect information and yet they don’t have any real access to veterinarians. So I talked with some of these companies and I said, okay, what are you doing with this information? Right, because I’m not a veterinarian, but I’ve talked to a few and they said that it’d be really helpful to know if your cat has increased urination, if the frequency with which your cat is urinating is going up, if your cat’s weight is going down.

(07:37):
These are important things to know for early screening. And yet a lot of the times we’re relying on the animal owner in order to figure out what’s normal and what’s not normal. And the animal owner is just not around enough. So there’s all these devices that are collecting data that can inform future protocols when it comes to taking care of that animal, and yet nobody’s really bridging that gap. So you want to talk about business opportunities. How are you consolidating all this data into a platform and serving that up for veterinarians in a way that it’s easy to access long-term? Is it possible that some veterinarians are basically going to look like air traffic controllers where they’re sitting there with multiple monitors and they’re just monitoring things? Well, that’s already existing on the human side. If somebody’s in ICU, they just see all the data that the human they’re collecting from the human. But all of this exists in the home now, and yet nobody’s really capitalizing on it. So that’s the kind of stuff that I think is really fascinating. It’s hard to tell where it’s going to go in the future, but there’s definitely an opportunity there.

Dr. Andy Roark (08:41):
Alright, cool. So why do you think, I have a theory on this, but why do you think that this is an opportunity that’s not being capitalized on now when you start to look at these products and you look at what’s there, why do you think there’s a hole in the market? I have my qualms with modern capitalism, however, I do think that it’s pretty generally good at looking at where there’s opportunities to generate revenue and going, yeah, let’s do that. And there’s a reason that we don’t see this going. I think. What do you think?

Dr. Aaron Massecar (09:15):
Well, the primary reason why any startup fails is bad product market fit. The second reason is timing What this requires as a veterinarian’s eyeballs to be on this information and every veterinarian that I talked to today is just overwhelmed with the amount of work that they have to do. And so asking for that to come in and say, yeah, can you look at this? Can you pay attention to this? And it’s like, look, I’m dealing with this dog that is currently dying. I don’t have time to look at screening. Which is, I think another reason why AI is going to be hitting the market in a really big way over the next little while is because if they are collecting all of the data and they can standardize that data and provide understanding of normalcy and deviance from the normalcy, then you don’t need a veterinarian to look at it in a lot of ways because you can find out pretty quickly, hey, this is abnormal behavior.

(10:13):
Most companies don’t want to dip into this realm. But if you think about just the amount of labor that’s required, so if you have tons of data that’s being served up to multiple veterinarians in multiple different locations, that’s going to be really challenging. But if you have actionable insights from a veterinarian team who has built the product and built the algorithm, then you can modify a behavior at the home and you don’t actually need to serve that up to the veterinarian anymore, which is not where we want to go. We want to keep a veterinarian in the center of that care cycle. But in a lot of cases, if veterinarians don’t have time for it, and this is an issue we probably shouldn’t wade into, but if there actually is a care shortage, then that kind of stuff is not going to be happening very soon. Veterinarians just don’t have time for it.

Dr. Andy Roark (11:04):
I think that that’s spot on. I do see that as a real opportunity for AI. We’ve had products try to come to market before that are activity monitors and others that do things as far as tracking heart rate and stuff like that. And generally what happens is that people find out their dog sleeps a lot more than they thought they did. You know what I mean? And that boy, he really doesn’t do much when I’m not here. And that’s the big takeaway. And so it’s just been kind of interesting. There’s two parts of it is they’re generating this data, but you’re right, veterinarians are not excited to wade into a pool of data and do data analysis, and there’s really no model for compensation for that. You’ve got a 25 minute appointment and we’re supposed to do significant data analysis in order to do that. And you go, none of this fits into the model of $65 physical exam in a 20 to 30 minute block.

(12:02):
Where does this interface in a way that actually works? And so I think a lot of people struggle with that. I also think that pet owners have struggled a little bit with the return on investment in these sorts of things. It’s a good idea. It’s like buying multivitamins. You get fired up and you buy a bottle of multivitamins and then you go back and you’re like, man, this stuff is expensive. And I didn’t see significant results from the first bottle of multivitamins that I bought, and I don’t know that I want to continue to pay for multivitamins for the rest of my life. And that’s the headspace that young Andy had when I was like, God, these stuff costs a lot. And I don’t know that it’s actually not seeing them any return. And so when you’ve got a healthy pet and you’re monitoring them and what’s, how motivated are people to keep going with that?

(12:50):
It’s funny. I think people, I’ve thought a lot about this, Aaron, with how people are in their pets. Because I see veterinarians all the time going, man, pet spending is soaring. People are spending so much money on their pets. And I’m like, yeah, they’re spending money on costumes and they are their buying football jerseys and sunglasses and strollers, but they’re not like, oh buddy, give me this thing that’s going to actually help my pet lose weight. They’re like, no, I want more fatty stuff that my pet’s going to love. And yeah, he’s going to pack on five more pounds, but he’s going to be happy. And they don’t want to think about mortality in their pets. They just want to suck the joy out of it. And I get it. I really do. And I’m not trying to be critical, but it’s always been interesting to me.

(13:38):
I think for these things to work there has the wellness healthcare part has to be wrapped into a happy package. It’s like your own Apple watch. It’s like, I didn’t get an Apple watch to remind me of my mortality. We’re going to look at this Andy and make sure you’re sleeping well. As you get older, your sleep’s not as good and we’re going to check your heart health. And I’m like, Ooh, this. This doesn’t sound as fun and sexy as I had originally thought about. It’s like, no, we’re going to get you a watch. You can play games on and text photos to your friends and also in the background it’s going to be watching your health. But I do think there’s some of that. And the other part is actually taking this and turning it into something that’s usable. And so I think you make a really interesting point with AI.

(14:25):
And also I think your point about most businesses fail on timing. I think that’s a fun way to kind of think about business failure. But I think that there were probably a crop of products that were five to ten years too early that will probably, we’ll see something similar that will work much more easily going forward. Alright, I am so proud to unveil the biggest project I have ever worked on. This is a partnership with NAVC’s VetFolio and Uncharted, which is the veterinary conference that I started and run for fifteen years. I have worked with people on being effective as communicators and making their practice better places to be. Now I am so thrilled to be launching the Leadership Essentials certificate with Uncharted and VetFolio guys. These are the seven courses that I believe really believe anyone who’s leading other people in vet medicine should have.

(15:19):
This is vision and value setting. This is basic strategic planning. It is understanding different communication styles. And I have my friend Stephanie Goss helping teach that session. It is getting the team to buy in to new ideas and initiatives. It is how to coach and give feedback. It is how to set priorities. It is how to delegate effectively. It is how to do time management. It is the talks and the stories that I am probably most well known for giving. My red.talk is in here and my GPA talk is in here. Everything about the North stars, everything that I lay out where I’m like, this is just so essential to managing people. It’s the trust game. It is everything about building and maintaining trust with your team. I think that this is something that I would recommend for anyone who is a practice owner. It’s anyone definitely who’s becoming a new practice owner.

(16:13):
It’s for anybody who has especially gotten promoted up into management. It is huge for our team leads. We take people who are CSRs, we take people who are technicians and we make them lead techs or lead CSRs, and we give them zero leadership or management training. There’s no excuse for that anymore. This is on demand whenever you want. It’s broken up. It’s eight hours. It’s got RACE ce, it has the Uncharted VetFolio certificate with it. It is there. It is accessible. I really hope that people will take this and put it to work. I went really hard on this. It has been years in the making and refining to get this content down. So it is really for everybody who is leading and managing other people in vet medicine. I hope you’ll check it out. I’m so proud of it. I’m so glad to be partnering with NAVC on it. Anyway, guys, I’ll put links in this show note. I hope you’ll have a look. Let’s get back into this episode. So yeah, how do you think this progresses from here? So when we’re talking about care at home, how do we get to there from where we are? What are the next things that you think are going to happen?

Dr. Aaron Massecar (17:18):
There’s some really interesting technologies that are starting to come in computer vision and being able to analyze the gate of an animal in kind of an ambient device. So there’s some interesting stuff like that. Usually when I talk with veterinarians about it, there’s a certain level of skepticism like, well, I don’t really know if that’s actually real or what that, and it’s like, well, it’s not meant to be a diagnostic device. It’s meant to be a screening device. So I think part of it is finding the positioning that is going to be effective both from a company perspective and from a veterinarian perspective in order to bridge that divide. And that’s where I really do encourage those companies to talk about it as screening and not as diagnostics because the moment we say diagnostics and you’ve got some definitiveness rather than it being an early detection device.

(18:10):
So I think part of it is just developing the appropriate language around it. Another part of it is that there’s a major challenge for a lot of these companies because they want to work with veterinarians, but they don’t really know how to access. So they’re going to Dr. Jones down the street. And Dr. Jones is like, I don’t have time for this. Why would you bother me with it? So the development of something like a community of early adopters, this happens in large corporations all the time where they find these pilot sites. But for community members to self-identify as like, I’m really interested in solving a problem related to cardiology. Show me the companies that are doing something in cardiology. I want to know more about that. So there’s a certain level of matchmaker-ness that has to happen in that area that currently doesn’t really exist. Yeah and I think through those two things, there’s going to be the perception, at least the perception of more value for some of these companies. But for the most part, most of these companies, they’ll try to work with a veterinarian and the veterinarians like, Matt, I don’t have time. And then they’ll be like, all right, direct to consumer, right?

(19:25):
I’m going to bypass it.

Dr. Andy Roark (19:26):
Sure. Well, the veterans don’t know about bringing technology products to market. It’s not their thing. And yeah, I could definitely see that sort of failure to failure to launch. I like your idea, and I think you’re probably right about a lot of this getting rolled up into the term screening over being something that is marketed to veterinarians as diagnostic. Because I just started thinking about it. I’m like, okay, we’ll be the driver for this because usually there needs to be a driver. I can a hundred percent imagine Amazon pets coming up with an app where you record your pet walking and running and it gets crunched by AI and it comes back and says, Hey, I’m worried about your pet’s hips. I think you should go to the veterinarian and get checked out. The hope being that the veterinarian will say, yes, you’ve got some arthritis in these hips, some osteoarthritis, maybe some early hip dysplasia, and we need to get you onto a joint supplement or osteoarthritis medications or something that you would want to get on autoship that the company that had the app could help you do.

(20:40):
If you’ve already got our app, you’re probably buying from us. And so I can a hundred percent see drivers like that pushing those screening tools, and again, going to the pet editor and saying, do this, do this video. We’ll raise some flags and then you can go and ask your vet specific questions and it’s good for your pet, it’s good for you to know what’s going on. And also it’s probably going to be good for me because you’re going to come back and buy products from me based on the information you get. And so all of that stuff kind of makes sense. I got to note, so as are the head of the Veterinary Innovation Council, do people ever come to you with ideas and you’re just like, that’s a terrible idea. You don’t have to tell me who don’t want no examples. But again, I’m a little bit cynical about innovation in general. We also say innovation, and then people are like, look, I’ve got a water bottle that screams when it’s empty. And I’m like, that’s a terrible, who wants that? There’s people who love babies. I don’t know.

Dr. Aaron Massecar (21:42):
There’s water bottles… just peeking into your brain a little bit…Just going to close that door back down.

Dr. Andy Roark (21:52):
Exactly. Yeah, I’ve got million dollar ideas. I’ll tell you what, I’ve got a lot of ideas.

Dr. Aaron Massecar (21:59):
It happens all the time. And some of them are interesting and some of ’em are like, there might be some sort of medical application for what you’re talking about, but I cannot provide you with any guidance. Right? And then some of ’em are just like, it’s just not innovation, right? So I try to help people understand that there’s a difference between true innovation, which is disruptive innovation, which people use that term all the time, and what that actually means in a genuine sense. And then there’s stuff that’s solving a problem, but maybe it’s not super innovative, but it actually does solve a problem and nobody else is solving that problem. And that’s okay, but don’t pitch a product that you think just a bunch of examples that are rolling around in the back of my head, but that you think is really innovative and you want to call it innovation when it just, it’s solves a problem, contextualize it appropriately.

(22:58):
So yeah, people come forward all the time. For the most part, I’m able to help them because we’re a nonprofit, we’re not investing in any of these companies or anything like that. My currency is information more than it is dollars. And so just trying to figure out who’s doing what and where and how can I help them? Because yeah, some put together a pitch for the innovation summit and they want to exhibit there and they’re like, this is really innovative. I’m like, this isn’t really the place for you going to a VMX startup circles, that’s the place for you because you’re solving a real problem for real veterinarians and sell the product that way, but don’t talk about it as though it’s revolutionary.

Dr. Andy Roark (23:39):
Yeah. So in your mind, when you talk about innovation, is there always a significant technology component to it? Is that kind of the line is for you? I hear it totally what you’re saying, and there’s a lot of things that I really like and impressed with that they’re super simple, and I’m trying to think of an example off the cuff, but basically are ways to solve problems that don’t involve radical new technology. They’re just, oh, this person has thought about this in a different way and blah, blah, blah. I mean, I’ll give you an example. So the company that I run is called Uncharted. And so we do boutique conferences and they’re very much workshop based in a way that when we launched six years ago was you did not see that other places. And again, you’re not going to hurt my feelings. In your mind, is that innovation or would you say No, that’s a very real, it is a great solution to a problem that people had about different ways that we learn and things like that. So yeah, would you classify that as innovation? And if not, where does it differ what is required to be innovation?

Dr. Aaron Massecar (24:43):
Yeah, I don’t necessarily think of it as kind of an on off switch, but in that case, I would say you’re offering an innovative take on a preexisting model. And so is it true innovation in the sense that you are matrix plugging into people’s brains and offering them new skills? But that would be an unrealistic expectation for anything but saying it’s an innovative take on something that pre-exists. Yeah. Is it true innovation? Is it true disruption? It’s not disruption, right? Disruption would be a fundamental change in the way in which people experience these things, but it’s innovative, right? Yeah,

Dr. Andy Roark (25:26):
No, that makes sense. Okay. And that totally fits. I was just trying to figure out where the line is in innovative ideas versus an innovation, and that does make sense. Alright, I like all of that. When we start to look around and we are looking, we’ve talked a lot about products that would come to market and what that looks like and where consumers interface with that. Is there anything that you are super excited about when you think about innovation? You’re like, oh man, this is the thing that I hope happens or this is the thing when I get out of bed in the morning, I’m like, oh man, maybe today somebody will come with this idea. This is going to be huge. Is there anything that gets you fired up?

Dr. Aaron Massecar (26:09):
So there’s two things. So one exists, and then the other one I want to exist, and I’m not really sure if it’s going to exist, but the one that exists already, there’s a lot of people who are providing innovative PIMS. And so there’s companies out there who have ambient listening devices where they will just listen to the conversation that you have with the client and turn that into the medical record and use decision support in order to provide you with a possible treatment plan. And so you just go in and you’re like, yep, yep, yep, nope, nope. Done. And your record is done. So there’s that kind of stuff that I think is absolutely needed when I would watch it. So my wife is a vet and when I would watch her come home from work and just sit down and be like, yeah, I’ll be with you in an hour.

(26:56):
I’ve got to finish my notes. And I’m like, and she would pull up her little post-it notes and then turn those into the record. And I’m like, that’s insane. So changing that model, anything that provides veterinarians with more time and is less of like a, well, if you just did this, then you could have this other service, right? No more boltons, save veterinarians time in the clinic. Anything that does that I’m really excited about. But the thing that I would really love to see is a fundamental new model of education. The way in which we educate people is based on a 15th century model of scarcity of information and not at all in line with contemporary research on learning. We don’t even teach people how to learn. We teach learning incidental to the process itself. And so some of the AI models that are coming out utilizing veterinary education as kind of the background are super interesting and they’re way more engaging than lecture format.

(27:58):
Lecture is not the fact that you were using workshops already points to you recognize that there is a need in the market for engagement with people that wasn’t just like, listen to me lecture at you for an hour at a time. And that’s called the Generation Effect. So you’re listening the generation effect in the individuals. And so the retention of that is much longer, and yet we don’t focus on these things. So there’s like 10 to 12 facts that we have about learning that are not being deployed currently. And that needs to change because I genuinely believe that that is actually the root of the majority of the issues that we have in Vet Med. Everything from wellness and burnout and all of that. If we taught people appropriately and taught people how to teach people appropriately, I think a lot of those issues would just be gone.

Dr. Andy Roark (28:49):
I heard recently one of the brand new vet schools that open up, it may be Arizona, they don’t quote me on that. Their students will not have any lectures. They don’t have lecture, and that’s not how they’re trained at all in vet school. Everything is case-based and sort of workshop-based. And I had to sit down and think about that for a minute because again, I have my own beliefs about the lecture is as someone who does a lot of lectures and I enjoy lectures and I can tell a good story and I have a lot of fun, but I did start Uncharted because I do think that when we get into types of learning people, they want to work on their own stuff and they want to talk about their own things and they need to process it, they need to talk it through, they need to reflect back on lessons learned and things they’ve tried.

(29:42):
And there’s all of those sorts of things that don’t tend to happen when we just sort of sit in a lesson lecture and maybe jot some notes down. But for the most part, we’re just kind of taking this information. We know that people retain about 10% of what you tell ’em, but if you give ’em a project, I make ’em work on it. They retain a lot more. And so I’m totally with you on that. I think that that’s exciting. That’s what we’ve bought into in Uncharted. I think the idea of using artificial intelligence stuff to come up with new ways to learn. I think that’s super fascinating. Aaron, I could talk to you all day, man. I really appreciate your time. I appreciate you being here. If somebody is like, man, this whole veterinary innovation thing space is just new to me and I would like to know more about, I geek out on technology and medicine and how do I even learn about what’s going on? How do I know more about this area? Where would you point ’em?

Dr. Aaron Massecar (30:36):
Number one place, not to compete with your conference, but the Veterinary Innovation Summit, that’s where a lot of that stuff gets shared. I’m going to be publishing more of this on LinkedIn, so recommend that you follow me on LinkedIn. The Veterinary Innovation Council, our website, we just did a refresh, and so we’re starting to develop more content that we’re going to be putting on there. But there’s fun places. Like mydogisarobot.com. Oh really? Okay. Check on it. Yeah. So my dog is a robot.com and the guy puts up all sorts of directing consumer products. So it’s interesting to see what he’s got in there. Yeah, those are some of the main spaces that I would look at. There’s so much out there. If you are a conference junkie, the two of us definitely go to the Consumer Electronic Show, CES. It’s unbelievable the amount of stuff that exists at that conference that has applications to that med, but most people don’t know. And then the Healthcare Information Management System Society.

Dr. Andy Roark (31:46):
That sounds like a party.

Dr. Aaron Massecar (31:48):
Oh yeah.

Dr. Andy Roark (31:49):
The Healthcare Management Information Systems Summit

Dr. Aaron Massecar (31:52):
Healthcare Information Management Systems Society. They really have to do some rebranding,

Dr. Andy Roark (32:00):
Some Healthcare Information Management Systems Society.

Dr. Aaron Massecar (32:04):
That’s it.

Dr. Andy Roark (32:05):
No? Okay. Is it really? Okay, alright.

Dr. Aaron Massecar (32:09):
Everything digital health on the human side is there. And so when you go to a conference like that and you start talking to companies like GE or Zimmer Biomet, like Zimmer Biome has this implantable knee that has wifi capability that will measure stride length and all of these other parameters. And you’re like, have you ever thought about VetNet? And they’re like, no, no I haven’t. So if you’re a budding entrepreneur, you just go these conferences, talk to people and say, look, I could launch your vet med division. Or a lot of companies will say, we’ve wanted to get into it. We know that it would be a really good proving ground and all of this stuff. We just don’t have the resources to do it. Going to these places and saying, I’m interested in talking with you about it, it’s unbelievable how quickly you get some traction.

Dr. Andy Roark (32:59):
Yeah, I’m still, I’m sorry, I didn’t hear what you just said. I was thinking about my dog’s knee attaching to the wifi and I was like, I don’t even know what that means. My knee attaches to the wifi. How does that even

Dr. Aaron Massecar (33:14):
Magic!

Dr. Andy Roark (33:15):
I’ll be like, “Look, kids, you’re bogging down the network. Unplug the dog’s knee.” Okay. Alright. That’s enough of that. Aaron, thank you so much for being here, buddy. I really, I thoroughly enjoy you. Thanks for doing Let’s do this again. For sure. I’ll put links, I’ll put links to all the events that you mentioned and the Vet Innovation Council and my dog is a robot and you on LinkedIn so people can see what you’re writing about.

Dr. Aaron Massecar (33:40):
That’s awesome. Thanks for the opportunity, Andy.

Dr. Andy Roark (33:42):
Oh man, I love it guys, thanks for being here and listening to everybody take care of yourselves. And that’s our show. That’s what I got for you guys. I hope you enjoy it. I hope you got some the out of it. Thanks to Aaron for being here. Check out the Veterinary Innovation Council. Consider going to the Vet Innovation Summit. If you haven’t been to it, it is a neat little gathering. I have not been, I want to go, it always lands on a concept for me. One day I’m going to go and I’m going to check it out. So anyway, but I continue to hear great things about it. So alright team, I will see you guys later on. Take yourselves.