The Veterinary Machine Industry 🤑😼💰

A look at the machine Veterinary Industry: its people, its grey-areas

I worked in the Veterinary Industry in the mid-2000s for about 10 years.

The purpose of this article will be to discuss the following things I witnessed and learned while working as a veterinary technician. Nothing in this article is veterinary medical advice. Consult a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) for any veterinary medical questions.

Here are some topics:

• Starting out and sorting out some Veterinary Industry issues

• The types of DVMS I’ve met: the angry, the narcissistic, and the best

• Cat and Dog dry food: it turns out…

• Digesting the undigestible - discussing the diet transition process

• A CTSH Video recommendation for more info

Starting out and sorting out some Veterinary Industry issues

I applied to work the front desk of a pet clinic that has national locations, located inside a national chain of vendors that sells foods and things for pet animals.

I did it because I needed a job to help me move forward with my life. I like cats and dogs too, so I thought it’d be cool to do that while I figure out life stuff.

The staff, which was usually two Veterinarians and about 3 rotating vet techs, I think if I recall correctly, worked “the back”. The back is colloquially referred to as the main treatment area where clients aren’t allowed to enter. The people looked to me to be: stressed out, many were smokers, many were chronically tired, some appeared overweight, many didn’t eat the most nutritious of lunches, and people seemed to walk on egg shells whenever the female Boomer owner was working the front desk.

Money was a sensitive topic. I’ve overheard her say how the hospital was just making it and that we’re just gettin’ by, and such. But I also saw she enjoyed taking vacations to islands I’ve never heard of and then bring back little keepsakes from them by the desk.

Little did I know I was entering a world of organized chaos, with different levels of organization in how it responds to said chaos. Veterinary emergencies are a real thing and will test any staff. One time I had an interview at a place, and during my interview, an emergency occurred during a routine dental cleaning under anesthesia. I jumped into the fray and helped admin an injection while the female tech next to me froze. She was then cold to me during most of my time working there.

Management of hospital clinics were almost always a poorly run operation with the same symptoms:

• People felt underpaid and overworked

• People seemed to be chronically fatigued or tired

• People were stressed out at work

• Lots of smokers that needed their smoke break

• Significant turnover rate for veterinary techs, DVMs

• There’s an unsettling trend of suicide in the veterinary profession

The few times that management worked well included a male figure as the main director of operations. I’m just calling it like I saw it. There would be more order, more structure, and more support.

There seemed to be a lot of granting of Management positions to people based on how good of friends they are with the business owner, rather than one based on skill and leadership. A good example of this was at the last veterinary integrative practice who was granted a management role. She had known the owner-DVM for years and worked with her a lot as a tech. She was a skillful tech, but not a skillful manager of people, which, to the woeful detriment of everybody working, is an undervalued attribute in the veterinary industry.

I saw how she would easily get flustered at too many phone calls, having to help take x-rays because someone called off, having to also fill meds for the clients in Room 1, while also having to meet a woman in the lobby complaining about her Pit Bull tech appointment needing a muzzle for a nail trim. She hurried from one room and zipped to another, but on her way she knocked down some liquid dewormer making a giant mess as it spilled to the floor. But she was too busy to do anything about it—one of the hourlies can get to it even though they’re just as busy too—besides—she was the big woman boss.

She made something clear to me when, as we were holding a dog in place for chest radiographs (x-rays) she mutters a response in remarking to the business owner-Veterinarian, that her goal is to get “…as much money out of her as possible” while grinning widely. She said it in a way that was both loud enough to be talking to herself knowing I could be able to hear it, while not directly speaking to me.

Would she have said it if I wasn’t in there? Or did she want me to hear this true intention of why she wanted to be a Manager, which to her seemed to be more about getting more money first then manage later. Her kids and family were a common sight around the workplace. Since she was socially connected with the business owner-Veterinarian, it wasn’t long before her husband was granted an opportunity to come in and help manage the place. When he moved on to other stuff, she took over as manager.

These situations create the chaos of poorly run veterinary clinics. When people are given opportunity due to social credit instead of evaluation of skills necessary for the position, it becomes exploited at the expense of everyone else working there. It ends up being more of the manager and business-owner working together and everyone else is just along for the ride.

See, this industry is no exception to many other industries where it’s everyone’s goal to get as much money possible outta everyone else—from the client, to the worker, and you better believe, the Veterinarian and its machine industry too.

Oh did the family with three kids decline the $300 radiographs? Ugh, sucks for that poor cat/dog.

Why didn’t they go home with a year’s supply of Heartguard and flea/tick meds? Go back in there and tell them they need to give that to their dog every month!

They declined the Porphymonas vaccine? Remember that one? This is where we had to tell people that this vaccine would help with their dogs’ dental condition….somehow? Well, it didn’t. It ended up being just another vaccine to sell and to make money off people but who really knew at the time if it did anything it said it would do.

Years later, the Porphymonas vaccine would become another hushed black sheep of the Veterinary Industry and become this inside joke—the joke was on all the sucker pet owners that got duped into buying it. That (fake) big smile from the Vet and those lovey-dovey words about their pet was enough to cast a spell big enough to hypnotize whatever the magician in the white coat said to do. Cuz science. Cuz woman or man in white coat said so. Right?

The veterinary technician hourly pay rate at the time may have been sufficient for living in 1980s America, but in 2000s America it was sorely lacking in adjustment. This has always been frustrating because we’re the ones also responsible for your pet’s health when monitoring it under anesthesia for $15 to $18/hr. Heaven forbid something were to happen, the veterinary tech would lose that job faster than the Veterinarian would probably. I always thought we should’ve been paid more.

Years later I saw the stinking, voracious underbelly of the Veterinary Industry: the juxtaposition of contradictory information when it came to many cat and dog dry foods and commercial treats. At its core of this beast, was a belching avarice; unquenchable and driven not by care for your animals, but in gaining profits first for the owners of these machines.

DVMS

I met a lot of good doctors of veterinary medicine. I also met a lot of narcissistic, princess-y, girl-boss veterinary doctors. I met a few angry veterinary doctors where it was absolutely uncomfortable to work with them at times. The point is, these doctors of veterinary medicine, are people too, just like you and me.

The narcissistic types glammed up for work as if they working a Cosmopolitan photo shoot. They were in their early 30s, were making some money, drove a new sportscar perhaps, maybe had a boyfriend or were engaged, some pet animals at home—whew, they had it all figured out. Heh.

Some of them had this curious and unsettling satisfaction in performing neuter surgeries. They loved the idea of “cutting the balls” off a male dog or cat. These types hated children, ie when kids would come to the vet too with their family pet. They were never afraid of sharing feminist political opinions no one asked for. They were liberal and proud.

One such narcissistic DVM, at a prominent veterinary clinic in Chicago, told me one time she wanted to speak to me after work. Summoning up an impersonation of a school principal, she marched me to an exam room and had me sit where the clients sit: she was gonna lecture me like she lectured her clients.

It was weird, man. She said something about the way I had nodded my head after she said something to a client? But in her mind, I was already guilty of some made up crime she made up. I decided enough was enough, stood up to her and told her I was leaving. That was the veterinary place owned by TV News Vet Big Deal Guy, where when I interviewed, I had to give an initial client greeting spiel within five minutes—and they timed me. They were always overpriced, endlessly pretentious, and full of themselves while all being scared of each other and especially scared of the big bad owner.

The bitter DVMS were always sarcastic about stuff. I remember starting out at said prominent Chicago clinic when I was sharing information about how I learned to prepare an ear swab slide: that there’s more than one way to do it. But, I found out from this bitter short woman DVM, with short hair, that nothing would change because the hospital is run by said Owner-Veterinarian who was on the news and is a big deal, and he’s the one that dictates the way things are done.

She cackled, “Ha ha ha, this one thinks he’s gonna change things…”

That probably came from some of her own personal resentments from some failed attempt to get said big shot owner to change something. That, if she couldn’t do it, how could some hourly tech dude do it?

Yet, as soon as she enters that mark client room, she turns on the show: a beaming (and fake) smile, says that your pet cat or dog is the sweetest thing, and blah blah blah. But I remember the cynicism in her speech and in her voice when the exam room doors closed.

The angry DVMS were something else. These were rare, as just two come to mind. Typically, I would see their anger build up from having to restrain a dog or cat in some manner for some form of treatment, but in particular, the worst I’ve seen was due to nail trims on big dogs.

Both were male, prob late 20s to early mid 30s. See, sometimes, we would have to come up with creative ways to restrain or limit an aggressive’s dog ability to move, in order to treat its medical condition.

In cases that needed it, we would gain the clients approval for chemical sedation, using Telazol, an intramuscular injectable. But it still stings, so the trick is to do it fast, restrain the pet responsibly and effectively, administer the injection, and then we’d be done as moments later the pet would become sedated. This process can be stressful and expletives have been uttered and shouted. The most sensible and reasonable of DVMs would call off a nail trim if they determined it was too much of a deal for the dog. It just wasn’t worth it. Or they would refer them to a local pet grooming place to have them do it.

But there are places and have been times where we must do nail trims if requested. Chemical sedation or otherwise, if that’s what the client wants, that’s what they get. These are the worst situations where things can go wrong more often:

• When nail trims are forced on dogs and cats that don’t want their nails trimmed they’ll often stress defecate, urinate, or expel the liquid contents of their anal glands.

• I’ve seen a senior cat with underlying cardiac conditions get dropped off for a Cushings test and later on the owner requested a nail trim. The cat was already stressed due to the loud barking dogs we kept in the same treatment area with the cats, the smells of other cats/dogs, the smells of urine/feces in the air, the smells of anal gland fluid in the air and on the unscrubbed nearby walls—cat passed away shortly after bringing it out of its kennel with mild restraint as the nail trim was being done.

The Big-Dog-Nail-Trim-Hating Angry Doctor, was a case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

We worked together at a local affluent neighborhood veterinary clinic in Chicago. He was regarded as being so handsome by many of the staff and clients. He had a beard and this brown long hair that went past his eyes, so often, he had to brush it past his ears to keep his vision unobscured.

In exam rooms, having to listen to clients started a ticking time bomb within this angry man. He seemed to come in to work already exhausted from his personal life already too encroached upon by the demands of DVM work. He spoke briefly, matter-of- factly, and on good days, entertained many a question from clients. On bad days, the ticking time bomb would tick with every question from clients.

The bomb would finally explode on days where we had to do a nail trim on a big dog, let’s say over 50lbs.

“UGGHHH JUST STAY STILL….f—-!” growled the disheveled man in a white coat , wearing khakis. The rest of us pretended not to hear it and wouldn’t make eye contact. But I was witnessing this transformation from exam room with the client, to the back, the treatment area where no one but us…had…to see him.

I knew what I was looking at when I saw it. The physical restraint led to feral grunting from the man in the white coat, who was now locked in a battle of Who Can Outgrunt Who? The Dog or the Man? Who was the bigger animal?

The aftermath of the explosion was visible: sweaty foreheads, all kinds of shedded hair from the dog, the foamy saliva all around the discarded muzzle—whipped away from the snap of the dog’s head as we unbuckled it, the dog taking a big sigh of relief, the smell of anti-stink cleaning fluid from cleaning the dog’s rectum if it had pooped or expressed its anal glands from stress, taking said cleaning fluid and spraying yourself in case some of that stuff got on your scrubs or change them out entirely, everyone washing their hands and dabbing their foreheads dry, taking those sticky lint rollers papers and rolling the dog hair off your scrubs—all this is done without ever talking about the angry outbursts from this DVM.

It was back to Prince Charming mode when we strolled back to the exam room.

“Yayy, he’s back! OMG, how did he do??” asks the gleeful owner.

“Oh, pssht, he did just fine” feigns the bashful Prince Charming DVM.

The good DVMS I’ve worked with

The best doctors I worked with were the ones that were genuinely still full of life and living. Yeah, clients and the work can be stressful, but—God bless them; these DVMS truly loved to help people and their pets.

The best ones I had the pleasure to work with were always professional, human in their approach to veterinary medicine, worked with clients well, worked and respected us as veterinary techs, were skillful AF—we’re talking masters of their craft and depth of knowledge and if they didn’t know something right away, they knew exactly in which tome to gaze upon to gain the right information. These people were the best of the best.

Some of these good ones could get squirrelly too though. At the last clinic I worked at, the integrative one, the owner was also a big deal having been in a movie about dog/cat food and being interviewed by talk show hosts. One night as we closed up the clinic and went our separate ways home, I hopped on my bicycle and started to pedal home. As I was cycling I gazed at my boss, the owner-veterinarian of this prominent integrative clinic in Chicago, as she drove past—only to see her flicking me off while holding a mischievous grin and directly making eye contact with me. She wanted to see my shock at her, my rich and entitled boss, flicking me off, as one of her hourly workers.

That was weird. I was a good employee, a good tech, was always respectful towards her—-why did she flick me off? And were the rumors true that she drives around in expensive cars in her affluent neighborhood but travels to work in an old caravan to hide her family’s wealth?

We never talked about it and I never brought it up. Getting a decent discussion about a competitive raise was met with empty promises of it coming in due time because of made up reasons regarding this, that, and the other. Some of these people can be good as bosses at times, and good DVMs at times, but then they also seem to serve another master first and foremost—and that master is money and making more of it.

And then it comes out in weird ways like that; the mask slips off when no one is looking. But I saw what was under it: another greedy, wealthy, business owner running an operation paying the hourlies the least amount of dollars per hour since the budget appears to go to other associate DVMs and costs of running the business.

But the veterinary tech is the backbone of the business. Not a lot of pet owners realize we often do the injecting, collect the test samples, read the test samples (they’re verified as needed by the DVM), fill the Rx meds, watch your pet and record its vitals every minute your pet is under anesthesia, collect fecal and urine samples, position your pet properly for good quality x-rays, are the ones that have to safely restrain your aggressive dog and pretend like it’s fine they’re trying to bite your face off while trimming its nails, calling clients about their pets, fielding client questions, making sure clients understand and have their medical notes. It’s long overdue that veterinary technicians get paid more because words of merit like “Good job!” at the annual review doesn’t help pay the rent.

On Cat and Dog dry food: the good, the bad, the ugly

When I first started working in The Veterinary Machine Industry, I thought the thing to do to feed a pet dog or cat is to give it dry food from the store. Typically, it’ll look like something like this:

Seems legit—because it says “Science” so it must be good, right?

Yeah everyone’s been hip to that dogma for, shoot, what? Decades now? But for how long? Were people always feeding their pet dog or cat dry food? When did it start to become a thing?

Turns out that dry food wasn’t always around. People used to feed their cats/dogs table scraps: meat, leftover potatoes perhaps. But there was lots of money to be made by making some sort of food for cats and dogs to be available for everyone who has one…

Well, here’s what I learned while working my last years as a veterinary technician. I was working at an integrative veterinary clinic where the owner-veterinarian preached something different: feeding your cat or dog raw food.

Huh?

The dry details about dry food for cats and dogs

So in working at this integrative clinic, I had to learn what I was going to be talking about to clients and I did this by sitting in the exam room taking notes while listening to the integrative doctor speak. By “integrative” I mean, a DVM that not only uses typical Western-style approaches to Veterinary Medicine, but may include holistic practice, innovative physical therapy, food and diet consultation, limited surgery, using herbs and plant-based medicine, using essential oils and Aromatherapy, allergies and dermatology, Traditional Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture.

Yep that’s right, I’ve seen many cats and dogs come in to get their acupuncture treatment and I was the guy that came in to remove the needles afterward.

It was in this setting, with these types of integrative DVMS that I learned about why they did not recommend feeding dry food for dogs or cats. Here are some things I remember:

• That moisture is essential for digestion and if one needs to feed a dry food diet to their dog or cat, to add some water to it without turning it into a soup, necessarily

• The lack of moisture in dry food as a diet for cats, particularly with male cats, was especially concerning and they connected this to increased frequencies of male cats coming in for urinary blockage which was an emergency concern

• They were concerned about the way the dry food was processed; that such a process by consequence led to carcinogenic byproducts within it

• They were concerned with the level of nutrition with dry foods, most always considering it to be substandard and negotiable

• They were concerned with dry foods that had a form of omega fatty acids as a component to it as it was known there were cases of unaware owners feeding rotten food due to poor handling/storage of the dry food

• They were concerned with the quality of the nutrition offered by an already poorly considered diet in dry food

• They were concerned with seeing so many skin issues, like skin rashes, lick granulomas, alopecia, skin allergies, chronic itching—that too much of the time seemed to be connected with a dry food diet, including noting the protein used

• They were concerned with musculoskeletal nutrition in feeding a dog/cat dry food and its sufficiency

I could go on, but chew on those for awhile.

But my dog/cat ate dry food for 25 years of its life and it was fine

The integrative doctors would always note that a dog or cat may live, indeed, survive on feeding a dry diet, but that it may not thrive, in health.

See, for these select integrative doctors of vet med, they were on a mission to do what’s best for the animal with the financial means available from the client. And these doctors took diet seriously as a fundamental approach to vet med. And these doctors claim to have seen the difference between dogs/cats that eat dry food and those that eat more wet food—although there was also concern with digestion from the carrageenan commonly used with canned foods—and more raw food instead.

They believed commercial raw food was superior to dry food in nutrition and that they would rather people budget feeding a raw food diet and by virtue of its health benefits, spend less at the vet for veterinary medical issues, that theoretically, should be less frequent compared to feeding a dry food diet.

Digesting the undigestible

Sounds like feeding some commercial raw food should be easy though, right? Well, it depends. Suddenly I was getting into the world of digestion and epigenetics—we would discuss such topics because we were a clinic offering things like fecal transfers. Yes, in addition to taking diet seriously, they also took dog poop seriously because it contains valuable information about the nature of the dog or cat’s gut flora.

I’ve learned about dogs being unable to tolerate the raw food at first and that a dietary transition to it was recommended. Coming off a dry food, that was considered “dead” in nutrition, to a commercial raw food—a diet robust with nutrition—tended to result in gastrointestinal concerns like diarrhea. Many times, people had to buy digestive enzyme supplements for their pets, including gut healing herbs and probiotics to support the diet transition. It was a thing and often could take weeks of navigating and troubleshooting. Quite a few did not have the time, money, and patience to see it through, and even then, nothing’s really guaranteed because of various factors.

Earlier I mentioned about noting the protein in the type of food being offered, ie chicken, beef, bison, etc. These integrative doctors had deeper understanding of their influence on the gut because they would also pay attention to the source of such a protein: a highly processed version or something farm raised?

The problem for many people is that they can’t afford feeding a commercial raw food diet all the time. The heavier the dog, the more one has to feed, and so the costs per pound goes up. They would advocate for offering it as often as financially possible.

As such, many people would still feed a dry food to their cat/dog as part of their diet. Things would get fuzzy there because one is trying to manage a poor situation without completely removing what may be driving that poor situation in the first place, which is all at the mercy of finances of the owner.

How much of that chronic diarrhea was due to the diet when half of it is dry, some canned, some raw food?

Maybe a two week course of Metronidazole will clear it up. Then it may go away for a month. But then it comes back, now with blood in the stool. What’s going on? I can’t afford to feed just raw food.

It just is what it is.

Woof.

I’m going to wrap things up here and recommend a video I made on this subject. If there’s more stuff in particular you’d like to know about the veterinary industry, let me know in the comments.

If this SS piece gets 10 likes, I’ll write more about the Veterinary Industry sooner. It helps me gauge if people actually want to know more about this stuff from my perspective and experiences as a veterinary technician.