Bring Your Questions with Dr. Marty Greer of CheckOut Veterinary

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Thirteen ten wib A and ask the experts brought to
you by Checkout Veterinary online. Checkout vet dot com. That's
checkout vet dot com. I'll be you had a chance
to check out checkout vet if you haven't done that yet.
A great thing about starting at the website, checkout vet
dot com does a really good job of kind of
laying out how checkout vet works, why it's so convenient,

(00:22):
why it's such a great design. Again, you can learn
more online at the website checkout vet dot com. That's
checkout vet dot com. Really cool thing about checkout Veterinary.
That first visit, that exam, it is going to be
free to you your pets. Bring in a one pet,
you bring in a two pet, you bring in a
whole car full of pets. Doctor Greer on the team
at checkout Vet. That first exam, that will be free

(00:43):
to you. Real convenient to get get to check out Veterinary.
They're right at twenty seven ten Prairie Lakes Drive. If
you haven't been in that area, it's right off the interstate.
If you can hear her voice this morning, you can
get into checkout Vet very very conveniently, and of course
has mentioned, Doctor Greer joins us. She is recognized as
Veterinarian of the Year by the Westminster Kennel Club. Doctor.
How you doing this week?

Speaker 2 (01:03):
I'm doing great. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
It's so good to talk to you. And we're going
to talk this week about preparing and things to you know,
be ready for when it comes to a visit to
the veterinarian. And of course first visit there's probably a
lot of anxiety, a lot of things as new pet owners,
like oh my goodness, what do I need? And those
type of things, but also kind of follow up visits
as well, and before we get to some of the

(01:24):
questions that we may want to ask and things we
want to go over with our vet. I know, one
of the big things, and we've been talking about this now,
that checkout vet. You're seven days a week from nine
am until five pm. You've got a complete staff of
doctors and a great team around them, and a great
team at checkout Veterinary. I know. One of the things
that really good vets and really good folks are good

(01:47):
at asking questions, and as a vet, that's part of
you know, a big part of your job is asking
those type of questions.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Isn't it. Yes, Yeah, we want to get a lot
of good information, whether you've seen us, for whether you're
new to us. We typically take a pretty complete history
because it's really important to myself and my doctors that
we develop a plan based on your pet's lifestyle. So
not every pet gets the same vaccine recommendations, the same

(02:14):
heartworm and plan tick recommendations, the same recommendations for spaying
and neutering. We really customize everything so we don't have
a corporate approach to everybody gets this done the same way.
We customize it based on does your cat you know,
visit with friends, does your dog go to the dog park,
do you go to the groom or do do you
travel with your pet? Where do you travel to, do

(02:36):
you leave the state? What do we need for preventives,
what do we need for vaccines? So we're really pretty
specific about that. And even spaining and utering to us
is a really important decision. It's not just everybody gets
it done at six months of age. We look at
the breed, we look at the lifestyle, we look at
a lot of different factors, and we can make better
decisions because we know delaying spang and utering for a

(02:58):
lot of pets has a health benefit in spite of
what you've historically been told. So keep in mind that
we're going to ask you a lot of questions and
that does mean it takes a few extra minutes. But
we don't want you to feel like we do cookie
cutter medicine. We want you to feel that we're doing
a different approach for everybody.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Is there is there a little education that goes on
as well as you mentioned some of some of this
traditional you know, thinking as far as spay and neutering,
for example, when that should be done. I think for
a lot of people when they hear that, they go
wait what and then and kind of explaining why why
some of the some of the guidances has changed on
that stuff.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Oh, absolutely, there's a lot of things that have changed
with spaying and utering. If you have a golden retriever,
I'm going to make a completely different different recommendation than
if you have a schnauzer. So I think that education
of the client is important. There's great material, it's out
there on the internet. We have a good bit of
information on our website at Veterinary Village that goes through

(03:53):
the Spain neuter controversy. It links you to a number
of articles and some videos from people way smarter than
me that connect explain the differences. But if you do
a little bit of reading, there's Facebook pages for the
over sparing spay. I mean, whoever knew. So if you
do a little bit of reading and you're interested in
those health benefits of delaying the spaying and utering. Of course,

(04:13):
the reason we spay neuter is to prevent pregnancy, and
because Americans typically are not good at managing their pets
sexual behaviors when we're kind of we've become dependent on
that since the seventies as the way we handle our pets.
But if you're really keeping up to date with the literature,
and you're maybe in the healthcare field, or you're just

(04:35):
you're doing competitions with your dog, or you know, you're
doing performance work with your dog, and you really want
to make sure their joints stay healthy, that their body
condition stays good, that a lot of benefits can be
benefited can come from this. We know golden retrievers are
four times more likely to tear accruciate if they are
spade or neutered. Young and a cruciate rupture. Oftentimes, if

(04:56):
it happens in one leg, it follows within six to
twelve months in the opposite leg. So you may now
have a five to ten thousand dollars procedure looming at
you because you did a spey or nuter on your
golden retrurier when she was six months old or your
lab when he was you know, five months old, or
whatever it happens to be. But there's increasing numbers of
articles in the literature that are published published for veterinarians

(05:17):
but also for clients. So if somebody wants to have
a conversation with us, by all means, make that appointment.
Come on in, let's talk to the doctors about it.
Let's see what makes sense for your lifestyle, and then
move from there, because we don't do everybody fits the
same mold kind of medicine.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
That's a great thing with check out VET and getting
to know the doctors, it's a great day to start
that relationship. I can just pick up phone game a
call six soh eight three one eight sixty seven hundred.
That's six soh eight three one eight sixty seven hundred.
You can learn more online the website checkout vet dot com.
That's checkout vet dot com and talk about, you know,
questions to be asking your VET and things to bring

(05:55):
up during those appointments. Something I've always wondered is for
for people we've got like APA in those e mrs EMR,
I think is what they're the medical electronic medical records
that would make sense? Is there anything like that? Is
there like a parallel with pets or like if you
are let's say you know your your current VET as
retired or for some reason you're deciding you're gonna you're

(06:16):
going to make the change, are those records accessible at
your new VET or should you get a copy of those?
How does that? How does that process work?

Speaker 2 (06:25):
Doctor? Yeah, we don't share records with other veterinary clinics.
We don't have anything nearly as robust as EPIC. I mean,
you know, most of the country doesn't know what EPIC
is and does. But because we're in the medicine area,
we're all pretty aware of how robust and how important
they are to insurance companies to our medical records, my chart.
You know, we've become really dependent on that as customers. Now,

(06:46):
we do have portals that allow you to go into
your pets record and see when their vaccines are due.
We do have a way to do your medication online
refills so that you can order from our online store
and they ship to you. So we have some of
those pieces, but if you're leaving one veterinary clinic and
going to another, you do need to get those records,
at least the vaccine history and the high points of
what kind of medical conditions that they've had, and then

(07:08):
we can put those into our records. We've actually started
using AI for our record keeping and for transcribing information
from the exam rooms. And what that does then is
we can take somebody's medical records. Say you have, and
I see this frequently, two hundred and thirty pages of
medical records from another clinic. That's like, oh, my goodness sakes,
what am I going to do with this as a

(07:28):
veterinarian before you come in the door. Well, our AI
can take that and summarize it all into a page
or two so that we don't have to pile through
two hundred and thirty pages to understand what your pets
need to have been And if you get those to
us ahead of time, that gives our AI a chance
to do that. So I think that is a really
important piece of information. And if you know your pet's

(07:49):
historically been anxious, nervous, maybe scratches or bites or something
at a veterinary clinic visit, because sometimes they do. And
one of the advantages to ours is that it is
a little bit less likely to create that because it's
a less intense situation. It's less stressful for your pets
and for you. If you let us know ahead of time,
we can get your pet, like your cat can be
on GABA pet and your dog can be on tresidone,

(08:11):
so when they come in as they've historically done that before,
we can do that. And it can just make your
whole visit a different experience, bringing them in on those
medications so that they're more at ease, more relaxed. Oh
my gosh, you know, I don't want to have to
fight with your dog to draw blood sample or do
a n ail trim or any of those things. I
think it's really important that we give our pets every

(08:32):
opportunity to have a pleasant experience. So the design of
the clinic, the way we handle them, the treats that
we give, the medications we can give ahead of time.
All of those things completely an important role in your
ability to be comfortable and relaxed and therefore your pets
at that visit.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
One of the things that I don't know that I
mentioned enough, and I for folks that have been over
to check out vet dot com they're aware of that
fear free certification. And as we talk about with your
pets and making sure that not only is it good
to keep them comfortable, I've got to guess it's also
good to really do a thorough exam when you're not
fighting with it with about getting that stuff done. Doctors.

(09:10):
We talked this week with doctor Mardy Greer of Checkout Veterinary,
the website checkout vet dot com talk about things kind
of getting a little bit of a breakdown of questions
to be asking your fat obviously, and this is also
appropriate a human question as well, which is how's the
way oh, weight plays a huge role, doesn't it in
an overall health of any animal, including your pets?

Speaker 2 (09:32):
It does, and so weight management is important and that
is something that we're willing to discuss with people. Now.
Some clients are a little offended, and we're not trying
to hurt anybody's feelings, but from a health perspective, it's
important that we do discuss that. We talk about what
food your pet is on. So before you come to
your vet clinic appointment, look at the bag of food.
I can't tell you how many people come in and say, yeah,

(09:52):
I get it, I get it at mounds and it's
a green bag. Okay, that doesn't help us a whole bunch.
So look at the maybe take a picture of it.
Tell us what treats your feeding because those are important things.
Look to see what you have left at home for
heartworm preventive and flee in tich medications. You should have
none from previous years, but you know, sometimes they just

(10:13):
put it in the back of the cupboard and you
forget about it. So if you have two doses left,
let us know so that we can send the right
number of doses with you at your next visit. So
all those things are really important. When we have people
that come in and we ask what they're pet is eating,
the kids always know. The children always know the name
of the food. The parents are like, I don't know.

(10:33):
So it's really pretty funny. So bring the kids along.
We're happy to have them it's a family event. We
are happy to have the kids coming in because we've
got plenty of room with the garage bays, and with
the way it's set up, it's very comfortable. The kids
can stay in the car, they can watch their videos
in the car, they can work on their homework, they
can run around the garage bay. You know, we're very
happy to have children there as well, because we are

(10:54):
a family friendly practice. We have a couple of doctors
that have new infants in their lives, so we like
that kind of family approach.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
That is great, and of course you think about our
pets and what an important part of the family they
are and getting the kiddo's and the whole family involved.
What a great what a great concept. You mentioned two
real quick doctor heartworm flee and tick. And for like
a lot of these medications, people sometimes think, oh, I'll
just order online. I know from a couple of programs
ago you had mentioned getting those prescriptions, getting those medications

(11:27):
through your vet at like checkout vet Prime example of this.
It's actually you can actually save money doing it that way.
I think a lot of people are surprised to learn that, yes.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
The companies provide us with rebates depending on how many
of each of those products you purchase. Then more you purchase,
of course, the bigger the rebate. And you can get
rebates from us that you can't get if you order
online from other services. Plus, we now have your pets
entire medical record in front of us, and we can say, oh,
this medication goes with this one, but it doesn't go
with that one. So we don't have a pharmacy that

(11:58):
oversees that. The way if you go to Walgrains or
Walmart or whatever, you've got a pharmacy that's got all
your drugs listed. But if you're peace mailing it because
you're getting some from here and some from there, we
may have pets that are on medications that they don't
need to be on if it don't play nice together.
So very important that we see that whole comprehensive medical
record and can be sure that all your meds are

(12:18):
suitable and compatible, and that they're the right size dose.
That we've weighed your pet and make sure that if
they're that forty four pound dog versus the forty five
pound dog, there's a break on medications right at that
weight range. So important that we know exactly what's going
on with your pet when we prescribe.

Speaker 1 (12:35):
Dog this morning with doctor Murdy Greer of Checkout Veterinary.
The website checkout vet dot com. That's checkout vet dot com.
Well you have a chance and get a chance and
take the opportunity to other stop on in learn more online.
They'd love to see you as well at Checkout Veterinary
twenty seven to ten Prairie Lakes Drive. They'd love to
see your pet as well. Don't forget that first visit
that exam. It is free against great data. Start that

(12:56):
relationship at checkout vet. All the details online checkout vet
dot com. Pick a phone, give a call six so
eight three one eight sixty seven hundred. That's three one
eight sixty seven hundred. Doctor. I know if if somebody's
got you know, maybe they got a dog from the pound,
or maybe they've got a dog where they know they
know specifically what type of breed it is. I know
things like DNA testing can be helpful for those dogs

(13:18):
that you may have a question mark about. But is
that also something as far as that that conversation with
your vet. Obviously, as you were talking earlier about about
different breeds, specifically with dogs, for example, having different needs.
You really want to talk about breed specific things that
folks dizzy, common diseases, and other things based on a
pet's breed or a pet's age. Those are important conversations

(13:38):
they have as well, aren't they.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
They are. So if you have that DNA profile that
you've done from when you purchase the dog, or you
you know you got it for a Christmas present, or
the breeder that you purchased the dog from has already
done it on either your puppy or the parents of
that puppy, if you can share that information with us,
it's again really valuable. Some of the panels now help
to have up to three hundred and fifty DNA tests

(14:01):
on them and that can help us direct your pets needs.
It tells us a lot about traits, It tells us,
of course about breed, it tells us about parentage. So
there's a lot of value in DNA and the more
information we have about your pets, the more accurately we
can medically manage them. If we know you have a
dog that's prone to bladderstones, we're going to you know,
get ahead of that. If you know your dog has

(14:24):
a history of the parents maybe didn't have great hips.
We're going to be monitoring those things, and new medications
are on the market. I just went to another meeting
last night about Librella and celensia, the arthritis injections that
we have for dogs and cats. There's some really amazing
things that we can do for your pets. So be
sure that you're sharing everything that you have with us.
If you have X rays from an emergency clinic, or

(14:45):
you have any information, all the medical records can be
put into your file electronically and then we, like I
said before, can with AI consolidate all those down into
a nice, neat little package so that we've got a
medical problem list. If you've you know, if you've been
you moved to Madison because you're a student or because
you've got a job here, and you have records from

(15:06):
where you did undergrad and then you have records from
when your dog was you know, when you were a kid.
We can put all that together and it's really helpful
for us to have that information just for a more
comprehensive approach to your pet's care.

Speaker 1 (15:18):
Do those do those DNA tests and other things, and
obviously knowing about if you know who the the you know,
the lineage of your of your pet as well help
a diet and nutrition. Kind of going back to when
we were talking about that, are there areas like breed
specific things that you want to think about when it
comes to setting a diet for your pet.

Speaker 2 (15:36):
There's actually a company that's going to be coming out
with pet food that matches your dog's DNA. It's called
helix Is the company that does the DNA and Bixby
is going to make the food. So there will be
DNA driven breed specific dietary recommendations for pets in the
next probably a year or two. So hang on to

(15:57):
your hats man. This is going to be really very cool,
like really sci fi cool.

Speaker 1 (16:02):
Oh that is very very exciting and really that's really
cool to hear as we talk this morning with doctor
Marty Greer. Of course, of checkout vet Drenaia. You can
learn more online checkout vet dot com. That's checkout vet
dot com. Great day to make an appointment, become a patient,
bring your pet in for a patience. Of course, I
start that relationship at checkout Veterinary. Sometimes I feel like that, Yeah,

(16:24):
sometimes it feels like we are though doctor. Hey, guys,
do a little bit of it all at checkout vetter.
It's a great day to get on in see the
folks at check out VET. I know they'd love to
see you in your pet that first visit, that exam,
it is free. You're not gonna beat that. Their twelphone
number six O eight three one eight sixty seven hundred.
That's three one eight sixty seven hundred. We're goingna continue
our conversation with doctor Marty Greer of checkout Vet. We'll

(16:45):
do that next as Ask the Experts continues right here
on thirteen ten double u ib A. This is Asked
the Experts here on thirteen ten IBA talking this morning
with doctor Mardy Greer. Of course, doctor Greer comes to
us from checkout Veterinaria mentioned that website. I really hope

(17:07):
you get a chance to check them out online, checkout
vet dot com. That's checkout vet dot com. Even better,
it is a great day to make an appointment at
checkout vet. They're telephone number six oh eight three one
eight sixty seven hundred. That's three one eight sixty seven
hundred telephone number. And all that great information available to
you at checkout vet dot com. Don't forget seven days
a week. They are there for you. They are there
for your pets when you need them, every day of

(17:28):
the week, nine am until five pm. And that first visit,
that exam, it is free. You're not going to beat
that either. Doctor. We're talking this week about about questions
to be asking when you visit with your with your vet.
And I know we started this conversation off talking about
you had mentioned injuries five to ten thousand dollars repair
on on ligament damage and other things like that. Is

(17:51):
pet insurance something that that might be a necessity. Is
that something that that you generally recommend to folks if
it's if it's within their budget.

Speaker 2 (18:01):
Pet insurance is really valuable. I have a client who
yesterday she's traveling, was out of state, and her dog
swallowed a dog toy and she ended up at the
emergency clinic having endoscopy done to remove the toy. If
she'd had insurance, it would have been really nice. She
wouldn't have had to say how much is that going
to cost? What do I do with that? The same

(18:21):
with the injuries, the same with cancer, with all kinds
of things. So yes, pet insurance is absolutely recommended. The
challenge is to figure out which company, because there's many
of them out there now and it can be a
little bit tricky to try to figure out which one
you want to go with. So talk to your veterinary clinics,
see who they recommend. Our preferences are going to be nationwide,
Trupanion and Rainwalk, so those are some to take a

(18:44):
look at. I'm not sure quite exactly how they come
up with those names because they don't make a lot
of sense to me. But okay, I mean, I'm you know,
Veterinary Pet Insurance VPI makes sense to me, but whatever,
So there's some good ones out there, so give them
a call. I mean, there's comparison. You can go to
a website and do the comparisons, but give them a
call and talk to them and say, so, I have

(19:04):
this breed and it is this stage, and these are
the concerns I have. Do you cover this? Because there's
going to be certain things that you may have had
a previous pet that had and you're going to want
to know that that's a trigger for you and that
you need to know if that insurance is going to
cover the kinds of things that you're concerned about. So
give them a call, talk to them see how they
handle their claim. True Panion, for instance, will pay the

(19:26):
veterinary clinic before you leave your appointment. Most of the
other ones are out of pocket. You have to pay
for it and then the insurance company reimburses you. One
of our doctors that works one week and a month
for US works for nationwide, so of course he's going
to be a pretty big fan of that. So True
Panion pays on the spot. Rainwalk covers some things that
other companies don't like breeding things. So just depending on

(19:48):
what kind of needs you have, you can really tailor
that insurance. And a lot of people are like, well,
you know, I'll just put fifty dollars a month or
one hundred dollars a month into a savings account, and
then it's something terrible happens to my dog, I've got
that money side. Well, reality is, we rarely do that,
and if something truly catastrophic happens. I've had clients coming
out of emergency clinics with bills of twenty and twenty
five thousand dollars And if you have insurance, you know,

(20:11):
you pay a fraction of that and you don't have
to look at the veterinarian materiarsy in your eyes and
say I think use in Asia might have to be
our conversation here. You can just say, yeah, I got this. Look,
here's my insurance company. Let's go. So, you know, those
are always things that happen when you're in a crisis.
It's never the routine stuff that you're covering. You're not
cover vaccines and HeartWare, mentally and tick. You're covering the

(20:32):
things that are really requiring catastrophic kind of care. Your
dog falls down the stairs, your dog jumps out of
the car window. Terrible things that happen. You need to
be covered and don't ever have to think twice about
the coverage that you have and whether you can afford it.
So just do it. You know, I'm just going to
say that's the safest thing to do.

Speaker 1 (20:50):
And one of the great things as we're talking this
morning with doctor Greer, we talk about starting that relationship
and having that conversation with your bed you got questions
about this stuff. That's one of those those great things
when you get into get into check out VET talk
with your veterinarian kind of work through some of this stuff.
They are more than more than happy to talk with
you about these things and really make sure you've got

(21:10):
the best set up for your pet. And as we
talk about financial considerations, doctor, obviously insurance is huge, but
I mean all things, you know, whether it's whether it's
tests or treatments, all that prescription meds, that stuff that's
there is costs associated with that, and I think it's
and I know we're kind of trained as humans, and

(21:31):
I think especially as Americans, and we don't like to
talk about money, but financially costs and those type of things,
asking about cost estimates and other things are really important
conversations to have, aren't they.

Speaker 2 (21:42):
They are, and veterinarians are happy to talk to you
about it. We just need to know what your boundaries are.
And if you tell us I can do this or that,
we again try to cover a number of different options
for clients so that it gives you the choices of
I can afford to do this, but I'm not going
to go that way. For instance, if a dog comes
in with something really serious and I say to them, well,

(22:05):
if we do an MRI or a ct scant, is
that going to change your opinion? If we tell you
that your dog has a brain tumor. Would you take
your dog to surgery to remove it? And they say no, Well,
then what's the point of doing the CT or the MRI.
I mean, it doesn't have any real logic to it.
But if it does, I can look at a dog
or a cat an X ray or blood work and say, Okay,

(22:26):
if it's this, it could have a good outcome. And
if it's this, it doesn't have a good outcome. But
if your dog has fluid in its chest, your cat
has flewed in its chest, there's nothing good that comes
of that. So I'm going to universally tell you. I'm
just going to tell you right now that the prognosis
isn't good. But if it comes down to, well, it
could be this or it could be that, and this
is a good disease, and this is not a good disease.
And of course you're going to go forward with those diagnostics.

(22:48):
Do you need to ask your veterinarian, what's the prognosis?
What kind of things are we looking for? How can
you help me? Is there somebody in Wisconsin? If I
go to a referral center, the vet school or one
of the referral centers, can they man this case? Those
are all really important things to ask because many times
that your local veterinarian doesn't have all the options that
a referral center does. So ask if you can go

(23:09):
to a tertiary center that has additional options. If that's
something you a are interested in doing, be have the
money for and see have insurance for. So we have
lots of options. I mean, you've all seen cool things
on TV with an animal planet and things, and veterinary
medicine is very advanced, but every clinic doesn't offer every
single service.

Speaker 1 (23:28):
It's a really great data start. As we talk about
having a great conversation with the vet, it's always a
great data start that relationship at checkout Veterinary. Whether you
got a new pet, maybe you're looking for a new
VET clinic something open seven days week. Looking to start
that relationship. You can learn more online at checkout vet
dot com. That's checkout vet dot com even better great data.
Make that appointment, don't forget that first visit that exam.

(23:50):
It will be free to your pet. You can learn
more online checkout vet dot com or again even better,
pick up phone game a call. Make that appointment six
oh eight three one eight sixty seven hundred that's six
eight one eight sixty seven hundred, Doctor Greer, it's always
great chatting with you. You enjoy this fantastic day and we'll
talk real soon.

Speaker 2 (24:06):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
News comes your way next right here on thirteen ten
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