Canine Arthritis Management

In this episode, we speak to the incredible Dr Hannah Capon, founder and head vet at Canine Arthritis Management. 

This is a real eye opener into running such a huge success as CAM, how it affects individuals, and how we need to be better at working together as an industry, and understanding that compassion is key. 

To join the CAM membership area, follow the link below:

https://caninearthritis.co.uk/member-zone/

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:03

Good afternoon, guys, or whatever time it is you're listening to this. Welcome. We're recording this afternoon. Welcome to our latest edition of Blocks, Bites, and Behaviors. Today I am joined by the amazing Hannah, founder, head of canine arthritis management. Guys, if you haven't heard of canine arthritis management, where have you been? What's been going on in your life? But Hannah, thank you so much for coming on to join me. It really is a pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

My pleasure. I'm sorry that I look like a really bad version of myself. But I think this is a podcast, not a video.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

I mean, we we get everything out there. We want to see how amazing you are, not just hear how amazing you are.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Totally. This is this is noise.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

This is but this is as silly as it sounds, this is reality.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

I think we should go back to reality. I think we live in a very, very dystopian world at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

We definitely do. But this is this is uh proof that you know you work exceptionally hard and you drive so many amazing things out there in the animal world, so it's nice to see reality, and I think that's important. So um, Hannah, let's let's get our listeners understanding a little bit more about you. Obviously, we've mentioned founder of Cam, K9 Arthritis Management, head vet there. Tell us a bit more about you. What was your journey like into the animal world?

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Um, so like right at the beginning, right, right, right, right. Let's go right back.

SPEAKER_00 1:30

Yeah, let's give him a whistle stop tour of the whole of Hannah.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

I wanted to be an air hostess, mate. No, okay. Uh, in all reality, when young, I was very drawn to animals, affinity for dogs, cats, horses, the you know, the typical domestic animals that close contact. Um, but I still have passions for like art. I really wanted to be an art teacher. I I dabbled the idea of being an air hostess because they just look really cool. Um, thought about being an accountant, quite glad I didn't do that. Um, but the vet, the draw of being a vet always pulled. And I think they've got a pretty good filtering system to becoming a vet. It's it's pretty damn tough to get into. You have to do so much um what we call like continual professional development, you know, so much work experience and stuff that it does kind of filter out those that are less keen. Um, so yeah, it was a bit of an arduous process to get into vet school, and then it's six years in vet school with exam term. So I always look from the traditional kind of exam term type structure where you do two terms and you can learn, learn, learn, party quite a lot. And then the final term was just barbaric. Um, so six years of that, and then you get into practice and you feel like you know nothing, so you spend another like three to five years just trying to find your feet, but yeah, it's uh I guess it was always on the cards.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Yeah. I think you get uh you get these aspirations quite young, and then sometimes it takes you in a different path. And I think for me growing up, I I remember about 13, 14, I had this massive aspiration to be a vet. That was that was deep ingrained in me. Um, you know, me and me in the science world at that time, we just didn't get on. We didn't even I wasn't I wasn't quite there, I wasn't ready for that six-year commitment, like you said. Um and I went off and I done some other things, and ironically, I worked in the travel industry. So where is it? I I didn't steal it directly. Um so I I worked at Thomas Cook for a period of time and then went off and did a few sort of other jobs in the travel industry. And the whole animal thing came about for me completely by mistake. I was never ever going to going back into animals, and I was working in the health and safety role, right? And yeah, long story, but my wife started a daycare business, grew really quickly, yeah, and we had to make the decision that I had to be there to support her to make that business a success a success.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:09

Eight and a half years down the line, here I am.

SPEAKER_01 4:11

Right, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

It's still going. So it's it's it's ironic that you've got those same sort of same sort of passions and that drive.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

So I think I think if you um I think if you've got an affinity with animals and you see that they're actually more important than us, I think it's hard not to have a have a role in the animal-based industry. Yeah um challenging though. I think it's very challenging. I think the more you get involved in the ethics and welfare surrounding you know animal care and animal ownership, I think it becomes more and more challenging.

unknown 4:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

Lina, stop licking. Sorry. Sorry, she's just licking the floor. Stop being a weird.

SPEAKER_00 4:55

It's it like you say, it is tough. It is tough, and you know, there's there's lots of areas of that animal industry, there's lots of things that certain people believe in with response to ethics and how we ethically manage our beliefs and things like that. And it can be tough, and it can be tough emotionally on ourselves as humans as well.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

Massively, massively. And there's a lot of people doing some really good work now regarding that. So Tamsin Durston, um, Andrew Hale, um really bringing it to people's attention that you know the whole burden of care is actually a big thing, you know. And I've I've openly talked about having compassion fatigue on a number of can occasions, and it's it's it's extremely debilitating. It catches you off guard, you start berating yourself for being weak. And it's it's it's it's a thing, you know, when you care so strongly, you eventually will hit that wall where you have to go, I've got to change the way I do things. I cannot keep taking on everybody else's everybody else's problems, and I'm not gonna fix everything, you know.

SPEAKER_00 5:57

And it's difficult because that that initial drive and that initial passion is you want to help everybody, but you do have to get to a stage where 100% right, you cannot save every dog, you cannot help every dog that's out there, and obviously, from your point of view, vet-wise, every animal that's out there it's you know, there's there's so much that we want to do, and you are right with that uh compassion fatigue, it hits you, and it hits hard, and it's it's weird because sometimes you can feel it creeping up on you and you almost know it's there, but out of the blue, it's like it hits you at 100 miles an hour, and you don't know when you're literally gonna step off that cliff into it's coming, it's coming, bang, it hits you, and it's it's so hard to recover from that at times. So I think you know, anyone that's listening out there that if you are an industry professional or if you are a just a dog owner, a pet owner, guys, give yourself some space, give yourself some time. Um, you know, allow yourself to understand those feelings are natural as well because it's really important that you care for you.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

Yeah, exactly. Really strong message.

SPEAKER_00 7:17

So obviously, becoming a vet was really, really exciting for you. You did the six years, you did absolutely everything there. Talk to us about how CAM came about, canine arthritis management.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

Um I'd been a vet for around about 10, 11 years by that point, and I'd worked in numerous roles. I'd worked up in Norfolk, Yorkshire, London, Brighton, uh, Essex, loads and loads of different places, loads and loads of different practices. And I was I was just kind of going steady, I guess. You know, I'd got uh enough skills and enough knowledge to to not fear work, to still be enthralled by work, but I think I'd got a little bit of a life work balance for once in my life. But then I guess I started questioning some of our practices, some of the things that we did. And you know, when you just step back for a moment and go, I know we normally do this, but is it right? Why is it okay? And I had a day where I put two dogs to sleep back to back in the clinic, and it was like the final catalyst of this is really not this is not right, and that both dogs were otherwise clinically well, but they couldn't walk anymore. And they'd been coming in for annual vaccines, but nothing had been detected that they were having problems with their mobility. And we all know that OAID doesn't lead to them going off their legs in 24 hours, it's a really slow, horrendous decline. And I just kind of started thinking, well, this is really weird that we worm and we flee treat and we vaccinate, and all of these are preventative healthcare plans, you know, but we can't seem to be able to prevent the onset of significant chronic pain that leads to lack of independent mobility that lacks quality of life that leads to euthanasia. So I think that was probably one of the big things of that this doesn't add up, this doesn't make any sense. Um, but there was a couple of things that happened at the same time. I ended up getting a condition where I lived with pain for about three months, and it was really like, oh my god, this is what it's like to live with this. And I had the the experience of it affecting every domain of your life. It wasn't just pain when you used it, it was pain that was always there, it affected my sleep, my work. I didn't want to go out, I didn't want to go and have fun, I didn't want to go and party, I couldn't do my sports, all of these things. And my world suddenly got really, really small. And I was like, God, is life worth living if this is what I've got to have for the rest of my life? And then also at the same time, I was really struggling with my own dog. Um, Holly's mobility was declining, and I was um ill-equipped to best manage it. And then finally, one of my dear friends who I worked with um took her own life because of pain. And it kind of cemented all of those things thoughts of we talk about quality of life for our pets, and we talk about giving them the best life possible, and we talk about them having security and they're they're well fed, and get they get their needs met, are we? Are we meeting the needs? Yeah, how many animals out there are living in pain? And that to them is their biggest problem. You know, they're saying, I hurt, I really hurt, and we're we're failing to observe that, and we're failing to do anything about it. So, yeah, it was a bit of a dark place for quite a time, I won't lie, because then it just it grows because we were talking before we went live. At that point, I'd been dabbling with you know being plant-based, and that kind of tipped me into being plant-based, and my wish to really protect the environment and protect the animals in the environment grew dramatically, and then I kind of started realising humans are quite important too. So, my love of caregivers and the fact that they're doing the best that they can, so it can become quite intense, and that whole compassion fatigue is something that I guess I have to try and be really mindful of because otherwise it's hugely overwhelming.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Yeah, it's uh it's a big thing, it is a big thing, but I think from I certainly know from an industry professional point of view, canine arthritis management is just so incredible in what you guys, what you guys and the team put out there is absolutely amazing. Thank you. So obviously, I'm aware, lots of other people are aware, but Hannah, just tell us about what the end user benefits are, what can end users have a look at for CAM and also professionals that might be starting their journey into the dog training world. Tell us some of the highlights of the little unique points of Cam.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

All right, well, Cam was an accident. Cam wasn't supposed to happen. Um and um Cam should be dead. Cam's CAM struggles all the time trying to just kind of feed the financial kind of burden that we have running multiple platforms and stuff. We're a team of um, but we've got four or five full-time employees. It's about five part-time employees, got about 50 um volunteers, so it's quite huge now, so it's a bit of a beast. But um, it started off as a Facebook page. Um, it was a really just like an organic, more altruistic move where I'd been doing um a mobile service. So I did it, I did it on the Sly for a year. I didn't tell my boss that after work I was going to people's homes and doing consultations. And at first I didn't charge because I didn't really know what I was doing. But um then I started kind of structuring a consultation, and that's when the hashtag your dog more years came from, because by giving clients more time, actually understanding the real context in which they live, understanding what their wishes, their wants, what their dogs' needs were, being able to see the true presentation of pain in their own environment, not in the stressful kind of vet clinic, very quickly, a kind of construct came together of a better chronic pain approach. And then that led, as I say, to this result where these people's dogs were living years longer, not months, years, you know, once you were actually really tailoring a pain management plan to their problem. And then um, I was really mindful though that this was taking me, you know, an hour to get there, I'd be there for an hour and a half, an hour to get home, then I'd write the reports another hour, and I was like looking at this time investment, going, you know, this is like five hours a case. What can I do with that? Could I could I take the case and put it online and I could vicariously help other people? Is that a way to do it? So then I got permission from the caregivers to take photos and videos and summarize. And that's how Cam started. It was a Facebook page. And um, from there, because it went nuts, and I was really surprised actually. I was serving the Brighton area, and I just thought that I might support some people in the Brighton area, it just went nuts, and suddenly it was like 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, 30,000, 50,000 people watching. You're like, oh god. So um we built the website. Well, me and Holly built the website, and then it's kind of just kept expanding, expanding, expanding. So the take home is kind of going full circle is that there is something for everybody in there, and that's what we've been trying to do for years, is that being a first opinion practitioner, I meet a very broad array of people that have a one common factor. They love their pets, but I hope they do. But I can get people like I was at work yesterday, and you can have OAPs that are literally struggling on their pension, and their dog is frail, it's wearing a little woolly jumper, they kind of struggle to bring it in, its teeth are going in all directions, it's coats falling out, but that person loves that dog. So, what can I do to help them with that dog? But then you get people that are very high income, their dog's really well insured, it's two years old, it's a sporting dog, then they're gonna they're gonna throw five, ten grand at them, you know. So you have a really broad audience with one common uh you know, overriding theme. They love their dogs. So we wanted to create a resource that we could support that huge audience, and that's probably been our biggest failing is that when you don't target your market, you you probably don't secure yourself and grow. But I didn't want to do that because we were talking earlier about what is success, and success isn't uh necessary finances to me. Success is actually reaching the mission that I set out to achieve, which was to help people look after their pets that they love. And that doesn't mean I can exclude anybody. So if you've got a short attention span and you know it, go and look at our social media. If you've got an average attention span, uh dip into the member zone and start watching some of the expert interviews, look at the downloads and the resources. If you want to be spoon-fed because you really can't make any decisions for yourself and you're a bit worried about everything, then maybe use the pain vet service, which is a one-on-one consult. If you're intrigued to learn more because it's in your profession, then join the chronic pain symposium and listen to 30 hours of lectures. So it's kind of hard to pin down a resource that everybody should go to. I think if you said, I've got a gun to your head, what one resource do you think will change the world? The suspicion of chronic pain diagram. I think that is a really unifying tool. I think we can all live by that, in that we all be you a dog trainer, uh a veterinary professional, the caregiver, our mutual goal is to try and identify pain in our pets so that we can attend to it and make their life a what life worth living. And by using this tool where you're looking for indicators, be them behavioural indicators, postural indicators, physical indicators, or capability and gait indicators, we can all learn and we can all speak that language, and we can go, oh yeah, he does do that, and it does that, and it does that, and I notice that. Mmm, great pain to be under this. Let's let's look further, let's see what we can do. And I think it's a unifying tool. So that would be the one if you had a gun to my head.

SPEAKER_00 17:28

Excellent. I love, love that answer. There's so so much honesty, so much truth. And I think just being open, being honest with our listeners, and and really, really driving that. We don't always get things right in our business plans and how we want to attack it, and how we want to achieve things, and what are we doing to get to that end goal? There are lots of diversions, there's lots of moments we'll put that car into reverse and we'll have to take a step back. So, you know, guys, if you're listening to this and you're thinking, well, we're going really, really well, but we might have to change path with our animals, don't be afraid to do that because ultimately you're still advocating for your dog or your animal, whichever animal it is you've got, um, you know, making this a bit more generic because we've got Hannah Rasvet on. But advocate for your animal, be that person, but don't panic if it doesn't look like plain sailing.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

You know, well, that's chronic pain to a tea. Yeah. I think um I think if us to be really honest about it, it it's not everybody's cup of tea because it's it's it's very grey, it's very, it's um, it's hard to navigate. Nothing comes with a promise. It requires a lot of teamwork, it requires a lot of communication, it requires a lot of like trial and error. And that's not just the animal world, you know. Look at human chronic pain management. I'll use my my mother as an example. She's just gone through a period of quite intense back pain, so um L5, nerve root, compression, and she's tried gamma pentin, horrible, made her eat loads. Ametriptin made her feel really sad. Um, she's tried different like sleep remedies, none of them have worked. She's you know, she's been to the doctor, she's been to the physio, and what's worked for her is walking up and down the swimming pool, walking up and down. We go five times a week to get her moving, and she's now standing upright, she's not using sticks, she's sleeping through the night. But that is her story and that's her journey. Somebody else may be very different, and so chronic pain isn't prescriptive. And I think if you're you know, if you're that professional where you like protocols and prescriptions, it's probably not probably not for you. Um, and if you're a caregiver expecting that professional to give you a prescription, sorry, loves, it's not, it's not, it doesn't work like that. But chronic pain, you have to, you're you're always changing direction.

SPEAKER_00 19:55

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I think my sympathy goes to your mum as well, because I've I've gone through massive back issues myself over the past three years, major spinal surgery, diagnosis of a lifelong spinal issue now. Um, and I've I've tried, you know, gabapentin, been there, done that, amatryptalin, lots of different drugs. And I'm still on my journey. And that started three years ago now, with or two and a half years ago with surgery, and I'm still on my journey to finding what works for me. And it is very, very different, and it's very fluid because what works for me at one point might not work a month down the line.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

So, yeah, it's it's you know, sympathies to your mum and no, and that's the thing, is that I think um like the more I learn about chronic pain, the more we we're called canine arthritis management for a region, a a reason you can't fix it, it's m we manage it, and we we can't call ourselves canine arthritis treatment because treatment almost gives the impression that it's gonna be resolved, it's gonna go away. It really is about management, and chronic pain is about management, be you human, animal, or animal. Um, so one of the things that we're trying to really work on at the moment is to grow that community in CAM because none of you are gonna step off the train until the bitter end. You're always gonna be trying to find your path, and you've got the added issue that your beloved friend can't verbalize, they can't describe what they're feeling, they can't tell you, oh yeah, actually that dose was much better than that dose, or yeah, actually in the park when I ran around this dog and I played silly buggers, you know, I feel a lot stiffer. I shouldn't have done that. When you manage your own pain, you can really fine-tune and you can learn to pace and you can do like trigger avoidance. We don't have that. So if we can't get it right in humans and you've been, you know, following your path for three years, we've got to be really kind of like mindful of what we're what we're doing with animals. And I think you know that's It's not all doom and gloom, it's just about managing people's expectations and then really encouraging this like team approach. So that's what Cam's trying to do as well is try try and create a community so that caregivers don't fall into caregiver burden and they don't fall into caregiver distress. Because when you've got the animal that you love more than life in front of you and you can't work out what's working and what's not working, what to invest your energy in, etc. Having other people around you that are going through the same, I think is really important. So we've got Holly's Army, which is a community group. It's about 19,000 caregivers in there at the moment. We're transferring everybody into our member zone. We're trying to get everybody to drift into the member zone because we can then really support them with digital tools and different learning journeys and different support measures. But I think that's what's really important, and I'm learning that a lot in doing a master's in human pain management, which is what I'm looking like death. Um because the human world in pain management is far in advance of where we are with the vet sector, and they haven't solved it. They're far from solving it. They're just unearthing more and more categories of pain, they're unearthing more and more variables that influence your pain. But what they are also doing is coming up with constructs to manage. And one of the big things that they're realizing is that our medical support services are really just one dimension of support. We've got to look at peer-to-peer support, we've got to look at community care, we've got to look at self-efficacy, because all of them, together with the lead physician, will help you on your pain journey. And it's fascinating, and they're getting evidence, you know, they're actually doing large-scale studies, looking at a big data of how does being socially supported influence your pain over the long term? And they're getting big data going, it's really important, it's really effective. So just imagine if we can harness that. How can we harness making the caregiver feel supported, feel competent, feel capable? And that will then have a knock-on effect on how they manage their pets, how they handle their pet, how they view their pet, what they do with their pet, which will then affect their pet's pain state. So I'm I'm in deep into that that bigger picture view rather than what can I do in that joint at that time. Yeah, I have to have an understanding of that as well with what I'm doing. But that global effect is I think where I'm I'm being pulled, really.

SPEAKER_00 24:39

Yeah. And I think that's huge. And I think that we've we've touched upon in that little bit there, Hannah, about the groups, what you've got, and how you're trying to centralise it and make that easier. And I think the animal industry as a whole has been overtaken by social media, and there's Facebook groups, there's online TikTok videos, there's so much out there, guys. And you know, I'll hold my hands up that when I got diagnosed with my issues, I did do Doctor Google, and that was probably the worst mistake I have ever made in my life because it just sent me down so many little windy roads of what if this, what if that, oh my goodness, it could be worse. So I think for for me, the the clear takeaway of that little bit of our of our conversation so far, Hannah, to get to our our listeners and our viewers, go to expert pages. Go to the expert pages. You know, Hannah has spent so much of her life working on various different elements of learning structure and and really creating these great communities. So, guys, if you are listening, head to an expert. Okay, that's what we're here to do. As I say, Doctor Google and vet Google is definitely not the place to start looking at things, especially in the world of AI at the moment. Oh god, it's you know, my my dog is limping, and AI comes back. Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_01 26:08

The um there's good and bad to it, and it it's it's interesting that you talked about this social media because Cam's been around since like 2014, 2015 now, and social media's just gone bang, you know, and everybody is trying to create their audience, everybody's trying to create their their followers, and more commonly because it's their business and they they're looking to you know create a stable income. Don't blame anybody, but it's becoming really tough, isn't it? And the marketing is becoming more and more out there, and people's promises and people's approaches are becoming more outlandish and uh misleading, and it's it is, I must admit, a bit worried about the way the world is going. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think and I think that's one of the reasons that the chronic pain symposium, which is an offsheet off-cam, where we get to step away from just talking about arthritis, but we talk about uh dental pain, you know, ocular pain and visceral pain. For me, it's really important that the chronic pain symposium remains interdisciplinary so that we have a community between the different um like uh well disciplines. So vets, veterinary nurses, physiotherapists, behaviorists, dog trainers, dog walkers, dog kennel owners, you know, all of us come together and learn together. Because I don't want us to become siloed like we are, you know. The one of the biggest problems that we have in medical care is that you get taught you know looked after by your cardiology team who don't talk to your back team, who don't talk to your urinary team. And that's obviously a quite a big issue. So if we can stop becoming siloed and work together, I think that's better for the animals in our care.

SPEAKER_00 28:00

Yeah, absolutely. I think that that's a critical point is build a support team around you. I think you know, if you if you've got a great trainer and behaviorist, wonderful. If you've got a great vet, great, amazing stuff. Don't be afraid to bring those two people together. It will genuinely help. So yeah, put pull on the resources what you've got, even if you've got them individual in your animal's life at the moment, do not be afraid to ask them to speak to one another. Give permission to speak to you know, conversations between your trainer behaviourist and your vet. Those conversations will only help.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

Yeah, I will I will manage people's expectations because I'm I'm locuming, so I'm working in clinics in around the UK, and vet's time at the moment is just so short. You know, so yesterday I was at work at half eight and I left at eight. Um, 15-minute consults, worked through the majority of my lunch break, um, worked through any break time, had a euthanasia with a cat that just didn't go well, so that actually was not 20 minutes, that was an hour and 20 minutes. You know, fets are tired. So when we're asking more of them, we've just got to make it really accessible, and we've got to make it um approachable and uh kind. So think about how you request from them. Think about the report that you write, make it bullet point, make it to the point. Um, be kind, don't be impatient, and and vice versa. I'm not saying that vets should um not do the same back, but I do see a lot of bad mouthing, bi-directional bad mouthing, and it's it's it's we're all having a bit of a tough time at the moment, aren't we? We're all working really, really hard, and we've got to give each other space and bring kindness and work in that kind of empathetic, interdisciplinary manner.

SPEAKER_00 29:59

Yeah, absolutely. That support has got to be there because you know, ultimately what the owner wants for their animal is the very best, and ultimately vets want that. Trains and behaviorists want that, but it is about going about that approach in the right manner. It's it's it's not about shouting, it's not about demanding initially, it's about looking at it constructively and you know how would that caregiver feel if the professional was very blunt, very precise, but not really taking into account their emotions either. Because at the end of the day, it's a very emotive subject in the animal, isn't it? They're there for a short part of your life, give you a load of happy days, they give you the odd sad day with my dog. They give me a lot of grey hair days. He's been a he's been a challenge blessing, but that emotion does build up on us as human beings, and we are only human beings, nobody in this world is perfect, and as we've said, there is a lot going on in the world right now which sits on top of one another with bad news stories, with various different things happening. So I think you know, a real strong message is be kind, be be considerate, be compassionate, and you've talked about it very openly today, Hannah. And you know, I think I really, really appreciate that and I really respect it.

SPEAKER_01 31:26

But the anything I've done to be all basic, isn't it? When you look at the world, like I I I bridge so many different kinds of um domains in in the animal world now. So I'm a vet, but I kind of dabble with the the world as the specialists and the referral centres. I'm not one, and I'm I'm not an expert, I'm not a specialist, but I know their world and I know the first opinion world, but I also know some of the behavior world, I know the rehab world, I know the dog training world. And oh my god, if you it can be really lonely because you're always comparing yourself and and what you don't know. And I I spend a lot of time in my head going, I just don't know enough. I just, oh my god, am I ever going to be comfortable in my own skin because I just don't know enough? And then I think you go, it's not possible. It's not gonna be possible. So all you can do is be authentic. All you can do is be authentic and kind, and if you can do that, you're doing blinking well. Yeah, and I think in the world that we're living in at the moment where we've got so much misinformation, people are are fraught with fear and worry and anxiety of what direction are we going? I think we've got to learn that the only thing that we can control is ourselves, and the only things that you know are really gonna shape the world we live in is if we make these little microcosms of kindness authenticity. And if you get those little cosms, they're like alveola in a lung, and that lung is gonna get bigger. So everybody looking after their little pockets of kindness and coalesce them, we're gonna get a bigger and bigger structure. So that's my mindset.

SPEAKER_00 32:58

Love it, absolutely love it. So, listeners, if you're taking one thing away, take that kindness as well. That would be a really big thing. Um, just want to touch on one more thing because obviously, you know, we've known each other for a while now, and you know, we we follow your story a lot with canine arthritis management. You have been traveling to some amazing parts of the world, and I think I saw you off to Poland very soon. Did I see? Is that on news?

SPEAKER_01 33:28

Yeah, yeah. So I get to I um I get to travel and and speak, which is really lovely because um all due respect to my peers. I'm a bit, I guess I'm a bit of a rogue, a rogue guess, because I'm not a specialist. Um, a specialist in the veterinary sector means that you've generally left veterinary education, you've gone into practice, or you've gone into like a university setting and you've decided, right, I want to go down an academic-y, kind of more high devoted pathway. So you then end up doing maybe one or two years of an internship, then you do say three or four years of residency, and then you go in to being a European or uh you know American diploma holder, blah blah blah. I haven't served my time. So to be invited to speak at these big events is a is a is a real kind of like, ooh, thanks. It does give me a really gives me a real opportunity to be real though, you know, because uh probably, you know, five percent of animals go to referral setting, whereas 95% are seen in first opinion, and first opinion is very different to a textbook. It's very, very different to how a case will pan out if it is guided by you know an expert clinician that's got all those dedicated resources. So I do I do get an opportunity to go, this is what's happening on the ground. Um but yeah, I've where have I been? I've been I think last year I went to China about three times, America a few times, Europe's quite a lot. Um going to where am I going next? Going to Poland, then we're going to Berlin, possibly popping over to Portugal. Um I've got loads of plans. If anybody wants to invite me anywhere, I'm happy. Yeah, love it, love a bit of travelling.

SPEAKER_00 35:14

I think it's interesting because again, with with like the podcast, and again, we we look at that data that we get as as you know, podcast producers, and I think you know, I've I've got clients listening in all over the world at the moment, you know, Latin America, South America, Asia. So for me, yeah, 100%. If you want Hannah to travel somewhere, get it up to Hammer because not only does Hannah get to go to some amazing places, you guys get so much good from Hanner.

SPEAKER_01 35:47

I've got quite a few lectures now. I've been doing it for quite a while.

SPEAKER_00 35:52

And it's it's great to see. It is so good to see. If there's one place you could say, so I'm gonna ask this two questions, Hannah. One place you've been, which was just categorically the most amazing place for you, not not specifically, maybe just for the work that you did out there, but one thing that you really, really loved, because again, that passion of being an air hostess in your earlier days will be great, and then one place you haven't been yet, that you are desperate for someone to jump in and say, please let me come and speak.

SPEAKER_01 36:23

That's the impossible question. Like, okay, so just literally the first thing that popped into my mind was Chengdu Bear Rescue, um, which I went to about a couple of years ago, um, on courtesy of Animals Asia, which was really fab. And they were doing a pain symposium where they brought key opinion leaders from around China to one place for a number of pain people, experts, specialists and me, to to come and do an hour presentation. And it was just phenomenal, you know. But it wasn't just the the presentations, it was the being present in a place where people completely wrecked their lives for what they believed in, you know. So the vets and the the nurses and the assistants that live at the rescue, and they're they're quite often there for three, four, five years serving the needs of these bears. They've completely given up everything important to them, but you know, the the kind of material world in which we live in to devote attention to that. So that was that was phenomenal. And sticking by the ethics, you know, it was a vegan centre. So everything, you know, I I just found it just phenomenal that they were putting into practice what their mission and their beliefs were, and I met amazing people, amazing people. And Heather Bacon actually said that I did a good lecture, and that always made me feel really, really bad because I loved that. Um, where would I like to go? I'm desperate to go back to New Zealand, Australia again. I like I I like it over there, but then there are so many places at the moment. I'm trying to navigate, getting over to see Dr. Jau Alves in Portugal. I love Portugal, and he's um he's an amazing vet. Um, quite often I tie in going and working with vets in different countries. So um I went over to Texas to see Dr. Michelle Broadhurst and work with her for a week down in, as I say, you know, Texas. Then I know I popped up to Toronto to go work with my friend Um Danny, um, and then I went to see my pain friend Connie. So I I like traveling and seeing friends and seeing how they work and learning from what they're doing. You know, it's always a learning journey, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 38:25

Absolutely, yeah. Every every day is a school day still.

SPEAKER_01 38:28

Yeah, it really is.

SPEAKER_00 38:29

We learn something new every day, and I think I think that's amazing. Um, yeah, Hannah, it has been such a genuine pleasure to chat with you to have you on the channel. Um guys, if you're not following canine arthritis management, we will pop some links down. We'll make sure we pop the right links to drive you to the right areas of canine arthritis management. We'll put the website link in. Um just finally from me, um, before we finish this latest episode, huge thank you again. Um, I know you are super, super busy, Hannah. So appreciate your time. Wishing you all the best for all your future travels, all your future endeavours and things that you've got coming up. Uh, because I know there's a lot that you are doing at the moment. So thank you for taking the time to speak to me. Really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 39:17

No worries, my pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 39:18

And I'm sure our listeners will get a lot from this from this episode.

SPEAKER_01 39:22

Head to the member zone, guys. Like anybody that's a professional who's trying to do um further development, further education. We've interviewed experts pretty much on a weekly basis since 2017, when we started. And there is over 600 interviews with specialists and experts from around the world in the member zone. It's 35 quid for the year to join. So for a whole year. A whole year, not month, year. 35 pounds. And then you can go and root around in there and you can find all the resources that you go. God, I wish my clients had access to this. I will also encourage them to join the member zone so that they can tap into this, this, and this. Because that's that's that was the model. That was the original model. Well, no, that was the halfway model when I realized that I had huge bills to pay. Huge bills that I had to independently find the money for. But the idea is that we encourage you guys to advocate for your clients that advocate for their pets, and for a very small sum, put them in a place where they can access all of these tools that have been created over the years to make the right decisions. So um, rather than going on to Google and seeing what they think about what supplement, go and listen to some lectures by experts. Instead of going to Google and saying, How should I exercise my dog with arthritis? Go into the CARE member zone and listen to some expert lectures. They're all there for the taking.

SPEAKER_00 40:52

Brilliant. That's fantastic. And for £35, that's literally seven or eight coffees in a year now, isn't it? With where we are. That's one night out for a meal that you might have to scrap to get expert advice from lots of specialists. Um, guys, that's it. We're gonna wrap this one up today because Hannah is super busy, lots of work on the go. Uh, so for this episode of Barks, Bites and Behaviors, thank you so much for tuning in. As always, our final message: if you're listening on Spotify, Apple, please give us a follow, please give us a like. If you're watching us on YouTube, please hit that subscribe button. Share the message what we're trying to get out to everyone. And again, thank you so much for your support. Thank you so much for me. Thank you so much. Take care, everyone, and we will catch up with you very soon on another episode. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.