Do you want to be an American idiot?
If you're a pet owner an animal lover, I have a very very important question to ask you, and that is what do you feed your dog?
What do you feed your cat?
We are inundated with marketing in America, always have been, always will I'm a big proponent of marketing and advertising and what was fed to us, like we feed our pets as a steady diet of you are a horrible abusive pet parent, not pet owner pet parent unless you have someone like Guy Fiertti in a kitchen chopping up organic, fair trade, free range, ethically sourced, pesticide free, GMO, missing preservative, absent,
carbon neutral, gluten free dog or cat food. If you don't feed your dog or cat that you are an abuser. Doug Hoffman is a doctor, a veterinary medicine and a cute pet here in Cincinnati. Yes or no, Doug Hoffman tell the truth? So help you God? Is it necessary?
No? So Scott's good to be here. How are you, buddy? Goodness? See right? Great questions?
Been a minute since my buddy Doug's been on the show, And and now you know why, because he's going, what's this guy? Going with this right now? What's what's happening? No, I you know it's it's like, you want to do best by your pets and you really need do they really need organic peas?
You do want to do the best by your pets, There's no question about it. But the key, the biggest key with dog food and pet food. I don't care where it's cat food, dog food, whatever his consistency. The mistake people make a lot of times is feeding a variety of things. They don't do as well as we do with a variety of foods. The other thing, too, is all the vegetables, all of that type of thing. I mean, dogs are carnivores. Cats are carnivores. They do
better with meat based products. They do. They put a lot of the other thing and corn meal, different things like that for forfiller, but a lot of your dry foods. Like I have a great dame. I feed him one food all the time, and you're a doctor. Occasionally occasionally I'll give him the crust off of a pizza, pizza, I sauce, no nothing. He loves it. It's the greatest
thing in the world. Nuts, a little piece of cheese every once in a while, he does great, and he's done great, and they don't have diarrhea, they don't have vomiting, they don't have all these problems, and they're not overweight. Yeah, I mean, you know that's that's the key with this. If you do a lot of this, I mean, they love it, but that's more us making ourselves feel better about what we're feeding them than what they really need. A lot of the foods out there are very nutritionally
well bound. They're made to feed them the same thing all of the time. It may be boring because we.
Think, oh, I want to have Chinese to that, I don't have Korean.
I'm gonna have a dog all the time, none of that.
The other thing about it, you'd feed your dog all this stuff and then they'll go need a dead squirrel.
So yeah, right, I mean, there's not a pickiness with any eating poop. Let's just call it what it is, not exactly other than like carrots or broccoli or I can't get my dog eat any of that, but I don't feed it that, So it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter it's lead. If there's some butter on it, they'd probably just crush a carrot, right.
Yeah, I would. They'll eat anything. I mean I had when I was an emergency. I had a dog come in on emergency because this was a Thanksgiving. Somebody had done one of the you know, roasted the turkey outside, had all the juices and poured it out on their decorative stone to get rid of it. And the dog ate all of the stones, ate the rocks, the rocks, the whole thing came in, took an X ray. His entire stomach was filled with stones. Didn't lick them, ate
the rocks. So they're not picky. They'll eat whatever.
They're also not particularly bright. They get sick on chocolate and grapes and they'd crush them chocolate grapes like chocolate dug grapes.
I think we're great. Well, that's you know, that's where the variety of stuff comes in, is it can become dangerous. I mean, you know, the pets are sensitive to things that we're not sensitive to. So yeah, yeah, you know you're safe with with the standard dog food and it's a good quality food. Yeah, a good quality food. Stay away from the generics.
What about cats, because they see the ones I've seen is like they tend to like their their dinner on crystal with like a it's got like I don't know, some sort of reduction, vial reduction on it or something like that.
Yeah, and they just sit there and they eat.
It out of crystal like a water Is it the Waterford crystal that the cats eat out of?
Is that? What does it for them? That's that's I think says a lot more about the owner than it does about correct.
Yes, because you don't care about your pet unless you're spending stupid amounts of money trying to feed them. I'm glad you, Doug Hoffman. I'm glad you cleared that for us. I've always wanted to ask that question of a veterinarian because you know, I'm about I'm about the value I you know, we love our dog, we take care.
But I'm like, do I really need Like what's that? I understand. We got to start this. We're in the wrong business. You know, we had to. We had to here.
You go, let's convince people and we can teach classes and sell products, breastfeed their animals.
What about that? Let's well that would be right.
It's like, well, you know the next step. I would not either, but I don't know someone would go, oh, yeah, you should. You should totally breastfeed your cat. What could go wrong there? Doug Hoffman is with acute pet here in Cincinnati, and uh we we haven't talked in a while, I know. And people obviously love their animals, sometimes more than family members. I get it because the the affection is there for them too. About dogs and cats, longevity is a big issue here too. You know, you mentioned
the food thing. I also think about what exercise is very very important for you and dog or the cat is a cat?
Yeah, absolutely, I mean I think that's you know, one of the best ways to get in shape is get a dog, you know, to walk, you know, and and I think that's that's key to that type of thing. You know, we're big, big fan of, you know, exercising our pets and and obviously responsibly, you know. The big mistake people make, especially as we're heading out of winter
into summer, it's going to start getting hot. Yes, be careful with your dogs and taking them for long runs because you've decided now you're going to get in shape. Is not in shape, especially if it's hot, especially if they're sort of the smash mouth breaky cephalic dogs.
Heat stroke is a big, big in the do A.
Lot of times. You'll see it, oftentimes in the spring because when you hit that seventy, all of a sudden they're not used to it. And all of a sudden, somebody's taken their dog for a four mile run and the dog hasn't walked half a mile and three months and they can't handle it. And especially the dogs that have some of the breathing issues, we see that and
the heat stroke comes on very quickly. It's very serious, one of the most sort of devastating emergencies we see because it's sometimes those dogs are hard good.
Enough well, I mean, think about it. So maybe you're training to run, maybe you're going to tank of the pig. It's like, okay, well this cold winter, you've been running out of a treadmill. Your dog hasn't right. You can't just run out, and they're like they've been sedentary this long. You got to build them up.
Really, it's really watching them. You know. The thing that we always one of the first signs you'll see with the dog is it'll start to he'll sit as you're walking them, and everybody's like, come on, come on, get in shape. Let's go. Dogs don't sit unless so you know, these are little things to watch for. I've been on walks at the parks and things and been able to predict as I've walked around, which dog I'm going to
end up seeing is going to be a heat stroke? Okay, And it actually happened to me once at Sharon Woods and really watched the dog go by, and I said, that dog's going to stroke. And when another hundred yards and the dogs on the side, actually the guys like, I don't know what to do. His temperature was one hundred and nine. Oh lord, what so what what it was a take it's a seventy five pound dog. Oh, we had to pick it up and the haariot he had to go run and get his car. Oh god,
get it to the dog. And he was okay, he was not. Dude.
You just can't drop a dead dog.
Star.
There's kids list if people are weeping, right, and it's just lie justly Yeah, dogs by, he's the nice farmer. What the kind of show is this? Oh that's terrible though. It's it's just horrible though.
Poor guy. Well it was too long. Yeah, so it's one of those it's not a great story. But it's a story that's real. Like when you're talking about exercising, especially this time of the year, it's great to do that. Do it in moderation, make sure you're watching it.
Okay, important too, because then the results can be good. Because dog, he's not gonna. Dog is going to go until it can't go anymore. It's love life, yeah.
And there's some that it can go forever and there's some that cannot. Okay.
The other thing too, we see and I've talked to Sanjay Shaefercamani or your physician. He comes on Thursday mornings and we talk about health and fitness and all these things. But I think that it's true with pats as well. We talked about nutrition and the like. But people are now using doctor Google or shat GPT to answer the medical questions and there's some pitfalls with that. I'd imagine that's probably true with pet care as well.
It's I think it's even more with pet care. It's becoming very popular with you know, especially with the advent of AI and things like that. The problem is they can't talk to you. It's one thing if you know what your symptoms are and you're telling somebody or looking it up and going this is how I feel, this is what's going on, this is what's happened to me. Yeah, it's another thing to interpret that from a pet, and you don't really know what you're looking at, right, so
you don't necessarily know what's an emergency. For instance, my cat is peeing all the time. I think he has a urinary track infection. What should I do for a urinary track infection when in fact he's peeing all the time because he can't pee, yes, and he's blocked. Or my great Dane is vomiting. What should I do? Okay withhold food? Wait, okay, he's not actually vomiting. He's he's gagging because he can't vomit because he's bloated, and it
should have been a surgical emergence. So there's different things out there that that people just don't know because it's just.
Can't and other patch too for that matter, and keeping them on dogs, but you can't yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right, because you know that's what happens. We see a lot of there's a lot of things that can be really serious that somebody can say, well, you know, and that's why, like you know, all of our hospitals were very cautious with our front desk people to say, listen, you know, try not to give advice over the phone because you don't know. You can't see it and they can't see it, and it's sort of like listen to you know, it's your bait. It's like a pediatrician, you know,
you can't talk to you. So you have to really do a good physical exam and see what's going on, not just hear about it from somebody else.
Doug Hoffman, doctor veter a veterinary medicine on the show here on seven hundred w al who started talking about saving money whether you or not need to feed your dog these bougie foods and the answer of courses or cats for that matter, I'm kibbles, fine, don't change it up, don't go from brand to brand. And what about like if I wanted beef versus chicken, the same thing. If I if it's beef and sweet potato, keep it beef and.
Really just consistently. Okay, it's not that one is better than the other, it's just don't switch it up all the time.
That's what causes And also table scraps too. Although my dog will cry and cry and cry. If he can't lick the bowl, he's he's the best. So we have the pot scrubber mode on your dish or soer, don't do that. Just get an animal and put the bowl down and let them clean well.
And it's one thing if you give your pet food scraps, like you give it a little piece of baked chicken. Don't give it steak, don't give it pork. These are things pancreatitis. Oh well, okay, good all. You'll have to be sensitive to it, not as much as.
You may have to break the news to band it because he's not going to take this well that he should not be licking the bulls clean. But well, the fall of that habit, I guess, I don't know. So he seems to be doing okay, he's fine, he's fine.
You know.
One of the other elements here too a pet care and this is your business in any Q pet is is it seems like it's getting it's getting everything to get more expensive with inflation and a light too, But it seems like in pet care too, the prices are going up.
They are, and you know, I think that's one of the biggest issues in veterinarian medicine right now? Is is care becoming unaffordable? Yeah, you know, because insurance still only accounts for maybe three to four percent of the pet population. So it would be great if everybody could do that.
But even the pet insurance companies are seeing, okay, well this is expensive, yes, right, their rates you know, what used to be unable have become you know, difficult to do every month for some people, right, And and that's a real problem for you know, taking care of these pets of the way people want to take care of them. Yeah, and you know, I came from a business that did
you know, could do everything. I mean, you know, my old hospital, I was one of the first ones to bring stereotactic radio surgery to veterinary medicine and cancer treatment. That's great for a certain amount of people that can do that. It's great that we can. The question is, you know, it doesn't mean that we always should because
sometimes people just can't afford this. So what are other treatments that we can do to at least help as much as we can, or figure out ways to bring costs down in some way.
Yeah, and that's a challenge of human medicine as well as the veterinary medicine as well too.
Cost everything seems to be.
But I would say, you know, if you introduced insurance into it, like people, isn't that going to inflate the cost even more if someone else is paying for it?
Well, I you know, at veterinary medicine, I think one of the reasons that you see that on the human side. You know, my wife is an internist on the human side, and you saw this with insurance that some of the issues with that is that costs are so high, not because of insuran, but because of the threat of being sued, right because of you know, without tort reform. It's hard and I don't want to get into good content. Yeah, it's all different, but we don't see that on the
codinary side. So you know, we're just trying to get people to take care of their pets as best they can. Thank goodness, many many people said just what you said. They treat them as family. But it's still expensive no matter how much you love your pet. Sometimes you know, these thousand, two thousand and five thousand dollars bills.
You can't afford that, And sadly the alternative is like, well, we've got to put our pet down, and that's the most tragic thing of all because of money. So I know you guys are acute to pet. You're keeping the costs.
And that's our goal, I mean is emergent care. You know, we're sort of that in between you know, general practice that you know is doing you know, the vaccines and dentals and boring and all of the things that are sort of primary care and the twenty four hours specialty emergency. We sort of fit in between that the emergencies that are emergencies to the client a lot of times, you know, the ear infection, the laceration, of sudden limping. We're there.
And the goal that we had with this company was be there to treat them when they need it, because it's sometimes it's hard to get into your family vet. Sometimes there's really long waits at the special hospitals. But also make it so that people can afford this and get in and be treated and not have this be something that sort of deters them from the other treatments
their pet may need. Yeah, exactly exact, because we don't want somebody to have an emergency and now they can't get heartworm prepetitive for their pet or they can't get vaccines or something like that.
All right, So to keep it, you guys are on top of Hille Road, Westchester.
We are. We have locations in Westchester. We have location in Beaver Creek up in Dayton, We have one in Bellevue, Kentucky. And we have other ones in in Cleveland and a couple actually in South Carolina.
It's pretty gro in practice. Congratulations, Thank you. You guys would be like Starbucks pretty soon.
Well and have that would be uh, that would at yeah, but no, it was it's you know, one of the goals was is we wanted to do more than just one in one location. We wanted to try and be, you know, have a little bit of mass to this and that you know, we can you know, help not just the clients and the pets, but also help the veterinarians that work for us and the staff have you know,
hopefully have veterinarian veterinary medicine be fun again. Yeah. I think there's a little bit of that's that's getting lost in the mix.
I hear that in the in the human and it's it's all about numbers and.
Well it's hard. It's hard. It's just doing what we were talking about, trying to treat a pet and and then giving them an estimate and they go, I can't do it. And now you know, there's just there's there's where medicine is just not fun because you certainly don't want to be in a situation where you have to choose your pet's life over your pets treatment. Are you getting?
You know people there, people have emergencies people, So you know, we're trying to maybe maybe change that model a little bit. So I love it. That's good.
Look human touch and you know they but cast conscious not a bad but it's like, hey, you know we we we're trying to keep everything down for everybody because life is expensive. Doug Hoffman is team. You're looking for a cute care for your pet, cat, dog and everything?
Is there? Anymily want you? What about a giraffe? I brought a giraffe and have to go to Giraffes Toys.
R us is close so we can't even do that anymore.
Anyway.
It's a cute pet on in Westchester on Tellers the Road.
What's the website? It's a cutepet urgentcare dot com.
All right, doctor Doug and Jess and Steph, thanks for coming in this morning. A cute pet is the place answering the tough question here. Do you really need to feed your dog or cat all that fresh stuff? The answer is no. Decent kibble will be just fine. The reason they put vegetables in those things, it's more about you than it is the dog. Dog doesn't need that. You need that to make you feel better about your self, So don't know the guilt trip. You don't need any
more guilt trip. Scott's Loan Show seven Idre will top