What’s that you smell?
We know that dogs’ and cats’ sense of smell if far superior to ours. What can we do to to optimize their olfactory experience? In this webinar, Fear Free Practice Certification Manager Dr. Rachel Abrams will take a closer look at Optional Facilities Standard 4.8 “Cleaning protocols to improve olfactory experience for pet are in place.”
All webinars in this series open with a brief overview of the path to practice certification and conclude with a live Q&A session.
Fear Free Facilitates Clinical Success
Dr. Ralph Harvey
Join board-certified anesthesiologist Dr. Ralph Harvey for tips and tricks to taking your Fear Free sedation efforts to the next level. This webinar will feature a case discussion as well as sedation hacks you don’t want to miss!
Do You Hear What I Hear? Noise Aversion Beyond Thunder and Fireworks
Noise aversion isn’t only about thunder and fireworks. Many of your patients are suffering daily from noise aversion to everyday environmental events.
What can the veterinary professional do? In this webinar, sponsored by Zoetis, board certified veterinary behaviorist and Fear Free Executive Council member Dr. Lisa Radosta discusses a variety of treatments that can help patients with noise aversion live happier lives.
Fear Free: Evolving to the Hospitalized, Emergent, and Sick Patient, sponsored by Zoetis
Dr. Tamara Grubb, PhD
In this webinar, board certified veterinary anesthesiologist Dr. Tamara Grubb, PhD, discusses the interconnectedness of pain with fear, anxiety, and stress, and examines therapeutic and diagnostic strategies for both. Topics covered include the relationship between FAS and pain, diagnosing and treating both pain and FAS, reducing FAS in the hospitalized patient, and FAS and pain in the emergency setting. The relationship of pain with fear, anxiety, and stress (FAS) – a relationship that works both ways – is crucial for veterinary professionals who seek to treat their patients’ physical and emotional health. How can the veterinary professional best understand, diagnose, and treat both pain and FAS?
Case Management of Fear, Anxiety, Stress, and Pain, sponsored by Zoetis
Ralph C Harvey, DVM, MS, Diplomate ACVAA, UTCVM
Pain adversely affects the fearful, anxious, and stressed patient. These clinical issues are tightly interrelated, and we best manage them together. In this webinar, Dr. Ralph C. Harvey, a specialist certified by the American College of Veterinary Anesthesia and Analgesia, presents clinical cases demonstrating effective management of this deleterious continuum so as to enhance favorable outcomes for patients, clients, veterinary personnel, and practices.
Vaccinations for the Mind: Positive Puppy Socialization
Monique Feyrecilde, CVT, VTS (Behavior)
Puppies should explore the world and the people with whom they share it. When clients bring home a puppy, they have a golden opportunity to protect their newest family member from fear and anxiety later in life. By making a positive puppy transition and socialization plan, owners can help puppies have a smooth and happy puppyhood, adolescence, and adulthood. In this Fear Free webinar, sponsored by Ceva, Monique Feyrecilde, CVT, VTS (Behavior) covers techniques, products, and client education to get puppies started off on the right paw; how early detection and intervention can help shy puppies blossom; and more. Sponsored by Ceva.
In this one-hour module, client service representatives will learn how to quickly assist pets entering with FAS, educate clients about Fear Free in person and on the phone, guide them in preparing their pets for future visits, provide resources and referrals, organize community outreach activities, and create protocols for the whole team to follow.
This module is open to all professionals that are already signed up for the certification program.
“Veterinarians should routinely ask clients about their pets’ responses to storms,” says Pamela Perry, DVM, a behavior resident at Cornell University College of Medicine in Ithaca, New York.
Ask clients what happens during a thunderstorm. Does the cat hide? The dog tremble? Those mild fears can worsen over several thunderstorm seasons. Waiting to treat them can make the problem that much more difficult to manage. Be preemptive and recommend treatment promptly, while signs are still at the subtle stage.
“They might be coming in for something totally unrelated to storm phobia, but they mention that the dog is fearful during storms or that their other dog at home has storm phobia,” says veterinary behaviorist Lore Haug, who practices in Sugar Land, Texas. “I’m like, ‘You need to get on top of that right away.’”
Suggestions can be as simple as suggesting setting up a safe room or getting the pet a snug-fitting wearable that may have a calming effect.
Know how to advise clients on setting up a safe room. It can be a small guest bath or closet with no windows, a basement, or something as simple as a crate with a cover thrown over it. Their pet may choose his own safe space, such as inside the bathtub. Wherever it is, it should be ready and available at any time.
Clients should encourage pets to go there by placing a stuffed Kong or treat-filled puzzle toy in the room daily so the animal knows that good things happen in that room. Remind clients never to close the pet in the room or crate, which can create a feeling of being trapped. If owners know a storm is expected during a time they won’t be home, they should prepare the room by putting a long-lasting treat or favorite toy in it, turning on a white noise machine or other noise blocker, and plugging in a pheromone diffuser.
Be familiar with product options for pets fearful of storms. Calming clothing includes Thundershirts, Storm Defender Capes, Anxiety Wraps, Mutt Muffs, and Calming Caps. Depending on the product, they fit snugly on the body, providing soothing pressure; reduce storm-related static charges; or limit the pet’s exposure to scary storm-related sights and sounds such as lightning and thunder. Recommend drowning out storm sounds with white noise machines, the whirr of a box fan, or relaxing music such as Through A Dog’s Ear or Through A Cat’s Ear. Certain nutraceuticals and pet foods contain soothing ingredients such as l-theanine, caseins, L-tryptophan, and B vitamins and are marketed for pets with storm-related fears.
“Resources like that are easy for owners to implement and don’t require a huge behavior modification program,” Dr. Haug says.
Finally, be familiar with the client’s lifestyle and environment. If medication is needed, that information will help you determine the best choice for that particular animal.
“Make a choice about the effect you want to have happen, what medication fits with that, and how it can work in the owner’s lifestyle,” says veterinary behaviorist Lisa Radosta, who practices in West Palm Beach, Florida.
For instance, some owners are in and out but have a flexible schedule that allows them to premedicate a pet if a storm is in the forecast. For that owner, Radosta says, “I’m going to send her home with Sileo because that works fast and she’s generally going to be home to administer it.” For owners who are gone all day, she might suggest long-lasting clonazepam or gabapentin.
“Make a choice,” she says. “Don’t just throw a drug at it because you like it.”
This article was reviewed/edited by board-certified veterinary behaviorist Dr. Kenneth Martin and/or veterinary technician specialist in behavior Debbie Martin, LVT.
The Fear Free Veterinary Certification Program Level 3 teaches veterinary healthcare professionals Advanced animal handling techniques, and Feline & canine development.
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As Thanksgiving and the holiday season draw near, I can’t help but think of all of us in veterinary medicine who are feeling anything but thankful, and are overwhelmed not with feelings of good cheer, but of darkest depression.
My personal journey to becoming a veterinarian began when I was 7 years old, growing up on a dairy farm. The family vet came out to treat a fallen cow who, after one injection, rose up.
Even though my desire to be a veterinarian was sparked by that happy recovery, that memory and many like it are frequently overwhelmed by memories of death, terrible suffering, and the mistakes that we see happen in our profession every single day, year-in, year-out.
My experience of practicing veterinary medicine ranged from getting the Twin Falls, Idaho, City Shelter to shut down their gas chamber by agreeing to euthanize the animals myself; fighting to keep some kind of barrier between me and the pain of seeing animals I cared about suffer, or die–and seeing the devastating grief of their human families at their loss; the steady drumbeat of “suck it up” and “don’t think about it” and “don’t focus on all this emotional stuff” I heard so often from my bosses and colleagues.
I got the message loud and clear: Unlike physical suffering and illness, their mental and emotional counterparts were shameful, trivial, and unworthy even of acknowledgement, let alone treatment.
It was the Thanksgiving season that followed the horror of 9/11 when I first became seriously depressed. I was in my late 40s, and had just finished working on my book The Healing Power of Pets. I was sad and wanted nothing more than to sleep all the time. I was in darkness that no amount of awareness of my family history, or will power, or stern self-lectures, or prayer could lighten. That took the care of a physician and the prescription of an anti-depressant. Five years later, I needed an additional medication to keep the darkness at bay.
While clearly my family background contributed to the likelihood I’d suffer from depression, so did my profession. A recent commentary in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (JAVMA) cited a CDC survey of more than 10,000 practicing veterinarians that found we are more likely to be depressed, to suffer serious mental illness, and to attempt suicide than the general public.
In fact, frighteningly, 14.4 percent of male and 19.1 percent of female veterinarians have considered suicide, nearly three times the national average for the general population. And these numbers are consistent with those in studies of veterinary professionals around the globe, not just in the United States.
I did not found Fear Free to address the epidemic of depression and suicide in our profession; I did it to help animals. But what I found is that it also has the power to help us.
Consider these words written by the authors of that same JAVMA article I mentioned above:
Some of the reasons for the high rates of mental disorders in veterinarians include work-related stress, a lack of early detection of mental problems, access to lethal drugs associated with euthanasia, and the adverse effects of performing euthanasia.
A qualitative, interview-based study of veterinarians who had attempted suicide revealed contributing factors to be adverse relationships at work, concerns about career, issues related to patients, long hours, and heavy work-load. A cross-sectional study of work conditions for veterinarians found that the number of hours worked and professional mistakes were the chief stressors that accounted for anxiety and depression.
How much of the soul-killing stress that afflicts veterinarians and veterinary nurses is caused by working all day on patients who fear us, even hate us? How much is the result of seeing the animals we love and feel such compassion for shiver, drool, even lose control of bladder and bowels, as we try to help and heal them?
I know I became a veterinarian because I felt so connected to the soul of animals. I thought I was doing what was best for them, and it was not until the fateful day when Dr. Karen Overall ripped the bandage off the wound of my compassion that I realized I was in fact harming all the animals I thought I was helping. That horrifying realization sharpened my senses, opened my heart, and inspired the creation of Fear Free.
And it was in hearing from so many of the almost 25,000 of you who have so far enrolled in certification that I realized it isn’t just our patients who need healing through the practice of Fear Free veterinary medicine; it’s us, too.
Of course, Fear Free is not a form of therapy or medical care. Depression and suicidal ideation are real medical issues and require the care of qualified professionals. But as the JAVMA article pointed out, work stress is a massive risk factor for mental health problems and suicide in veterinarians.
Look at it this way: If I think of myself as a cup, I’m half-full–maybe even three-quarters full in my case–of risk factors related to genetics and my upbringing.
Why fill that cup the rest of the way with insufficient sleep, a lack of connectedness to my family and community, guilt, unwillingness to face my problems, and stewing every day in the fear, anxiety, and stress of the pets, pet owners, and staff I interact with professionally? Why crank up the already dangerous pressure I feel by burying feelings of burnout, compassion fatigue, depression, or worse?
After almost 40 years of veterinary practice, I still feel blessed to be part of the greatest profession on earth. I am endlessly grateful for the opportunities I have to lecture to veterinarians, veterinary nurses, and veterinary students, and to speak on behalf of the veterinary profession through the media.
But this Thanksgiving, I also know tremendous gratitude that I’m able to share this gift with each of you: That the practice of the medicine we love on the animals we love can be a healing gift to us both, and not a source of fear or suffering. That we’re part of the largest transformational initiative in the history of companion animal practice, part of healing animals, the people who love them, and ourselves.
God bless you, and have a Happy Thanksgiving, my friends.
Author’s note: If you’re experiencing depression or are contemplating suicide, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (800-273-TALK; 800-273-8255; suicidepreventionlifeline.org). It’s available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Whatever darkness you are facing, the good people who staff these phone lines care and will help you.