The Largely Equine History of Veterinary Medicine

And yeah, and I should just say live stock. Sure, just eighteen word title live stock. Livestock is a great word. And then masked is also one of my favorite words for the kind of earthy homeliness it has to it last. The collection of edible nuts that pigs and squirrels, Yeah, off of youah, masked acorns, chestnuts, All that stuff is under the umbrella of mast don't you? Isn't it like livestock?

Livestock masked, measuring things by the foot, wearing like a cloth hat like it all just kind of has that same vibe going on. And I love it all, Yeah, because I can picture a stinker squirrel just like chewing and going, hey, you want to go get some masked. We're running low one mass. Let's get some more mask guys. After this mask and the other mask. We've only got two masks left. All right. Uh, Olivia did a great job because when I asked for an article about vetinary medicine,

I was like, who whoa, whoa, whoa. It was like, what I really want is like the history of vetinary medicine. Not one of those old kind of articles where it's like to become a vet you should. I mean, there's a little bit of that at the very end, but I found this endlessly fascinating to see where we were and where we are now. Yeah, it's kind of like the History of dentistry episode you ailed up look at that, so um, yeah, you have a thing with history of

medical fields. Apparently, so we're talking about vets, specifically the history of veterinary medicine, and we don't exactly know when it starts. Our first unambiguous evidence that people were caring medically for animals comes about forty one ish hundred years ago in the Mesopotamian city of Lagash, where somebody named La Ladina m I was mentioned as somebody who was an expert in healing animals. I guess scrawled on a

bathroom wall somewhere in Lagash. But we presume that the people were caring for animals thousands of years before that, because we domesticated animals thousands of years before that, and just by the very virtue of us depending on those animals, somebody along the way figured out it's kind of important to keep these animals healthy and happy, and we need to figure out tips and techniques for doing that. And

that was really the birth of veterinary medicine. Yeah, I mean, you're their lives depended on these this live stock, live stock mass uh, And so of course they wanted to keep these things alive so they could use them in all the ways that they were used. Uh. And of course we're talking about at the time, like very rudimentary stuff like hey, what should we feed them? And then uh, let's watch and are they thriving? So let's either feed them more of that or less of this. So in

other words, let's work on their diet. Let's who we can get that right, Let's see what kind of like herbs and fruits and roots and things like that we could use to try and heal them. Uh. There's the actual word veterinarian, which is an English term based on the Latin verb the the hearing v A v e h e r i, which is to draw, as in like you know, uh, drawing horse or something like that, like a horse drawing a wagon. It was. It was because you could win an art scholarship if you could

draw that. Barrot right. Horses were the one thing that I could draw because I had a book once that taught me how to draw. Really, so you start with three. Is that a book or a movie or something? I don't know. It sounds like something done it um? Is

that what it is? Okay? So you start, You start with a big circle, and then you make a slightly less big circle a little to the left of that, and then a little up into the left above that slightly less big circle, you do a smallish circle, and then you've got the rump, the front, and the head of the horse, and you just start filling lines in from there. And believe me, it works. Yeah, it really

works really well. Can you still draw a horse? I haven't tried in a really long time, But will you try and draw a horse and put that on your Instagram? I would please? I will. By Josh oh that's funny. Um. And then look, you know, you can look back on that when you're fifty six and have all those fun memories like I was so terrible at drying. We can pull it out and say look what you did when you were Uh. So we're gonna get to the US.

But all of this action right now, in terms of caring for cattle and horses and cheap and things, is in medieval or is in Europe. And in medieval Europe, um, you might you know, have a status symbol animal like hey, I'm a falconer or something. Check out this bad boy or look at these regal greyhounds. So they would care in that case very specifically, would care for what we might think of as a pet. But that was not the common thing, and pets as far as veterinary care

didn't come around so much much later. No, but this does support part of a long standing trip Asian that exists still today that the the well off to the uber wealthy are responsible for funding veterinary practices. You know. Yeah, and um, in in Great Britain, in the United States, UM, the ideas were that if you were responsible for um, for putting shoes on a horse, if you were a ferrier.

You also more often I think than putting shoes on a horseback, then you would carve their toe nails or their hoofs I guess is another way to put it if you want to get technical. Um, but there's a certain way you can carve them to make them faster, to make them more stable, to make sure they're not their feet aren't aching that kind of thing, and that kind of evolved into the earliest um I guess in the US and Great Britain practitioners of of horse medical care.

If if you went to see the ferrier that he could probably help you with your horse, especially if you needed your horses John cut Off. Yeah, they they would. That's one of the surgeries they would a fairier could perform for you. You could also go to a cow leach um, which is just kind of what you think. It's someone who, uh, you know, someone who takes care of hows. I guess it would use leeching methods and things, but it was someone who specialized in dealing with your

sick cow. And again they were the fairiers, and the cow leaches did this stuff because they were just around them all the time, So it makes sense if you're shoeing a horse, you're just you have more maybe an intuitive sense of how to help a horse, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, And so you would basically learn this as an apprentice, which means that some my good ideas were passed along, some really bad ideas were passed along.

There wasn't any book learning about caring for animals at the time, and there wasn't a lot of specialization outside of fairiers um and I guess aside from I get the impression that cows were getting some side attention here, but for the most part, it was horse horse horse. Of course, that was like the driving force of the establishment of veterinary medicine as a as an actual specialist field. Yeah,

big time. And you might not be surprised. You may be surprised to learn that it sort of not quite lock step, but it sort of progressed. It feels like just behind medicine on humans, Like as we started dissecting humans, they started dissecting horses, and it just sort of makes sense.

It's like, these are other living mammals, and if we learn how to study bones and muscles and organs of people, then we can certainly learn how to do that on this horse A sea change book came along in six by Uh would that be Gervaise or Gervaise I'm going with Gervaise, Okay, Gervais Markham called the new hotel name by the ways mark them. Yeah, oh boy, I'd stay there. Um and I love how I like on the nose. No, no, the fake name you used to check the name of.

That sounds like during the January break. That sounds like a hotel, Jane Gervais Markham. It sounds more like a white heel um law firm. Alright, maybe is that the right term, white heel. I don't know, well healed, well he whe No, white hot, a white hot law firm. Yeah, now I get you. Now. No, that's a great hotel

name to check in under Gervais market. Uh. And this was back when book titles were more of a description of what's in the book rather than and they still try and get to that, like we learned that when we titled our own book. But they were really on the nose. Back then, this was called Markham's Masterpiece spelled pe c containing all knowledge belonging to Smith, Ferrier or worse leech touching on curing all diseases and horses. And I'm not joking when I said this thing was a

big deal. It was the go to book for two hundred plus years. They were printing this thing two hundred years. Imagine if our book was printed for the next two hundred years, this would essentially be like the Horse Caring for Bible, is what it was. The problem is this again, a lot of those bad ideas um got put into this book too and spread, like using leeches for blood letting, um for things like purging, which I think is exactly what it sounds like, Yeah, exactly, using herbal remedies, some

of which may or may not have worked. It's not like we're saying like, nope, modern veterinary message is the only possible way to care for an animal. Like I'm sure a lot of these folk remedies did actually work, just from you know, people trying them over and over again finding this this this is pretty effective. But there was also a lot of bunk in there too. Yet these books were good enough that they for two hundred

years they were used to care for horses. I just want to make sure that we got that point across. Should we take a breaker weight let's take a break, Chuck, I'm getting a little riled up. Let's take a break. Good, settle downy Okay, Chuck, you talked about a sea change. You want to talk about a real sea change. I got one right here. There's a guy named Claude borg Lot Lot. Yeah. He was a Riding Academy instructor actually, the guy who ran the Riding Academy and Leon France

back in the seventeen sixties. And um, he said, you know what, there's not a lot of like formal science based education in caring for horses. And I think that's problematic. So I'm going to write a little book in seventeen fifty, um, talking about how to care for horses. But also I'm going to kind of like go to Louis in his court and say, guys, this is really, actually very important. Horses have an enormous impact on our lives, and um, I really think that we should start setting up horse

veterinary schools. And Louis the fifteenth said, Okay, I'm with you, man, Let's let's try it. Yeah, he said, you wanna you wanna keep hunting foxes? King Louis said sure, And he said, well your horses aren't doing so hot, and there's no school to make them feel better, So why don't you fund this? And they funded it, I believe, sort of temporarily at first, and I guess it proved to be, you know, at least successful in off to really put

it on the books for good. I think what what really changed things was something came along called, uh, the render pest, which totally sounds like some folk horror movie ari aster thing, But the render pest was the cattle plague and it hit Europe in a big, big way, and we're talking to the tune of about two hundred million cattle dying over the course of what is that like fifty something years in Europe alone. Yeah, in Europe. So that that really made King Louise sit up and

take notice. So that short term grant become became permanent state support. Uh. And this bourge a Lot guy was he was a really big deal because he started a couple of schools and it's it is what these schools did, but it was also these schools then sprouting other schools, and the people that he instructed then going on and teaching others. It was really just the beginning of a movement, which was vet School. And it was good that they

started that. Um that that that was kind of like the ground zero for veterinary medicine because they seemed to actually know what they were talking about. They used science based, science backed best practices. Um. They It wasn't just a lot of hokum, you know, they actually said, does this actually work? Let's test it out, um. And so it did spread, i think at first to Vienna in seventeen sixty seven, about six years after the Leone School was

set up, uh, London, se Berlin, sevento. And then you know, for those of us in America, you're like in America in well, it wasn't about a little less than a hundred years later beside before America really started to get serious about veterinary medicine. Yeah. It was almost as if the American colonists um set things up. They were like, all right, we're gonna kind of do things like they were done a hundred years ago in Europe where we

came from. Um that like we you know, they cared about horses and cattle just in the same way that you know, as far as depending on them for all the things that livestock provided but it was not. It

was just way less advanced. They were still doing the the let's feed him this and see what happens, and and again, this is a new country, so they were there was a bit of a learning curve I think, as far as um climate and like what's available to eat and stuff like that, But it wasn't so different that they had to kind of go back a hundred years. I don't think they were still using Gervais Markham's book

right though they were actually right, they definitely were. Yeah, the thing I saw it described as so in the United States in particular, it was just basically taken for granted that if you own a horse or you own livestock, you the horse owner, the farmer, has the knowledge to care for and keep those those animals healthy. That that it's your responsibility. That it was just viewed as you know, um, veterinary medicine was just viewed as another chore around the farm.

It was not something that you need a book learning for. You didn't need some pencil neck from the city to come tell you how to do it right. Um. It was just up to the farmer, the horse owner to to care for their animal. Yeah, and I've got something kind of staggering here that Lvia dug up um that horses. Of course, here we go again. Man, it's so hard to not say horses were the main animal that everyone

was concerned with. But uh. There was an analysis of advertisements for veterinary remedies found in Tennessee newspapers from eight and found that more than half worse from were for horses and then following in order, where cow's, chickens, hogs, and sheep. And what's astounding to me is that means that someone did in an elysis a veterinary remedy advertisements in Tennessee It's papers. Yeah, you got me with that.

I was gonna be like, so you found that astounding up pulled it out at the end, some people who had too much funding. Do you think O Livia did it? No. I saw the paper and I don't remember who wrote it. Oh, man, I was so hoping she'd be like, guys, I went over and above this time it was me. Um so the thing that um oh what was his name, Claude bourge a lot, the guy who founded the Leon Veterinary

Academy that kind of spawned so many others. The thing that he worened Louis the fifteenth about like, hey man, you really depend on horses a lot. We need to keep them safe. That kind of came in bit America, horse bit America in the rear end um, because by the eighteen seventies there was a horse um plague kind of like cattle render pest, which, by the way, Chuck, I just want to say this. Do you know render pest is one of two diseases considered eradicated from Earth,

the other being smallpox. Yeah, it's almost kind of like how smallpox devastated humanity. Render pest devastated cattle for very a very very long time. And so we just said, we're done with this, and so in two thousand and eleven it was declared eradicated. They should decide that about all disease. I agree. They're like, we're still making our mind up about the other. We're done with this one,

let's get rid of it. So there was a horse plague that came around at least some sort of epidemic that really kind of spread throughout the United States, and um, it showed America like, hey, you guys really depend on horses because the horses all called in sick to work. Mm hmm. They did, and this is a time when uh, there was I think what they responded with was, hey, we need to care for our horses. But it wasn't necessarily medical care. Still, it was, you know, again, let's

see if we can get their diet better. Maybe if these horses are really sick, we should clean their stables out more. Maybe we should you know, change their blankets out and give them clean blankets, things like that. But it still wasn't and you know, they had sort of the home remedies and stuff they were still doing, but it still wasn't this I guess what would have been at the time advanced medical veterinary care happening. No, And as a result, because they hadn't really figured this out yet,

those horses that were sick. Um the fire, the Great Fire of Boston in eighteen seventy two burned as badly as it did because the fire department basically had to show up on foot. There weren't any horses available. They were all sick. And also from that outbreak in the eighteen seventies, the A s p c. A UM developed and was actually given policing powers in New York City because they would go around and inspect horses out on

the street to see if they were sick. Because if you were an owner and you were making your horse work sick, you were in big trouble, especially with the A s p c A, because you could make other horses sick or you were just doing the wrong thing both. Okay, yeah, that's good to know. And again this is in America. They were lagging behind such that they were still uh using like you know, charms and rituals and spells and

things in some kind of rural parts of America. At first, it's kind of funny to think about, but this is this is what it looked like at the time. Chuck tell them how to cure bots, which is parasitic fly infection that horses can get. Well. If you're talking about the one from Bok mhm, this is from a healer, I guess a horse healer in Pennsylvania and boxes that parasitic infection. Uh, here's what you would do. I no way you're making me read this. Uh. You would quote

stroke the horse down with the hand three times. M so far, so good, lead it about three times, holding its head towards the sun. Saying the Holy One saith Jose have passed over a field, and there he found three small worms, the one being black, another being brown, and the third being read thou shalt die and be dead. Can imagine passing your neighbor while they were doing this. Wouldn't just be like, we need to get locks for our doors. They just stroke that horse down three times. Yeah,

So moving on, Chuck. Finally, in the United States, Uh, medicine itself wasn't really professionalized until the eighteen forties. Um, but around the same time, kind of like you were saying, and I think it was great Britain where the anatomists and the veterinarians started kind of working side by side, are co evolving. A similar thing happened in the United States again just a hundred years later. So weird that

it took that long. And then finally, Um, it was in large part thanks to the the Civil War too, that gave people a great appreciation of all the importance of the horse and how much we needed to care for him. The thing is, we're still totally focused on the horse, not just in the United States but around the world. If you were a veterinarian, all you do is horses, maybe cows, maybe chickens if you have a huge gambling problem and are in debt or sheep, that's

but that's about it. Yeah, but really the big focuses on horses still just horses, guys. I promise we're going to get to doggies and kiddies at some point the last two minutes. A big step forward was in eighteen sixty three there were some veterinary surgeons from seven different states who met in New York City and said, had some drinks and said, have you seen what's going on out there in the country, Like they're stroking horses down and like they're doing whitches spells and it's just the

Stone Age. We need to get it together and said They said b to that, and they established the U S Veterinary Medical Association, which would become the American Vetinarity Veterinary Medical Association, and said, you know what we should do. Will let anyone in who is who says they are a practicing veterinarian uh that has or even a student that has at least three years experience, and they could get in if they can practice, if they could pass an oral exam like that, you got good teeth. That's

what I actually thought when I first read that. By the way, really for for two seconds, I was like, what has that got to do with what a dummy? Uh? If they passed an oral exam and could provide documentation or even just testimonials that said, you know, these are my qualifications. Plus they had to walk around the room with a stack of books on their heads without dumping

them over, that's right, very important work. Uh. And Josiah H. Stickney, as a graduate of Harvard Medical School, was the very first president of of the I guess at the time the us v m A. And that's uh, that's that's legit. You know, Harvard Medical School, you're right there in five step with with medical doctors at the time. Right. So that became the American Veterinary Medical Association, which is still

around today. And this was the eighteen sixties. And then Congress even said, hey, get this, we want to get in on the act. If you are a if you're in the cavalry, uh, you have to have at least one fairier in a regiment, and that fairier. If you're going to take care of horses, you have to have a degree from a veterinary college. We're gonna start taking this seriously from now on, everybody. Okay, no more messing around, no more heck craft or anything like that. We're done

with that. We're gonna get into science now. Yeah, quit stroking down that horse and go to school. Uh. A lot of veterinary institution and sprang out from this, and these were for profit places. The quality was very uneven. He still hapn't about that. The quality was very uneven at these schools, and most of them were in big cities, of course, still focusing on those horses. But then something

weird happened. The automobile came along. Horses were kind of kicked to the curb literally and off the streets, and all of a sudden, a lot of these uh, veterinary schools closed up shop. They're like, well, that's it, that's that's our practice. What else is there to do? And by the end of the nineteen twenties they were all but gone. Yes, but there was a an astounding stroke of good luck for the veterinarians who were who were

around at the time. Okay, and that is that um up to that point, like if you treated anything but horses, you were on a descending hierarchy kind of like I was talking about before, and one thing you just did not do was treat dogs. If you're a veterinarian, you

did not treat dogs. And veterinarians were totally fine with that until the horse kind of lost its importance like you were talking about, and so veterinarians kind of started to look around and they realized that in Great Britain there was a woman named Maria Dicken who had established the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals of the Poor. Yes, free treatment to any sick animals anybody brought in. It was a real hit among the poor and cheapscape pet owners at the time. And um, they were doing it

without any veterinary training whatsoever. They were just using trial and error. And just from that kind of experience, I actually got really good at treating dogs. And so veterinarians said, well, we don't have horses to practice on anymore. We're gonna take over dogs and we're going to go after the p ds A and basically make them work with us. All Right, I feel like that's a great the little cliffhanger there, we're finally at doggies. We're still not at kiddies.

Yet everybody, believe it or not, they too, even a little bit longer. But we'll get to that right after this. All right, So where we left off was you introduced a woman named Maria Dicken who did great work kind of founding the idea of what do you call him, like like like you know, like a free animal clinic. Yeah, free clinic for animals. Yeah, free for animals. I feel like there's a word that I can't quint land end on. It's free clinic. No, that's not it, but but that

is it. So it's fine. But in the inboratory, she didn't know she did great work. Uh they I think they had a patient load at one point. Now, okay, but then I'm out of ideas of over four hundred thousand um like treatments per year. That's a that's a lot. But like you said, the people that studied in school to be vets all of a sudden found their callfers

empty because all the horses were just standing around doing nothing. Now, and a very wealthy woman left fifty thou pounds to the p d s A and the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons said, well wait a minute, we we should have some of that money, because you're giving all this money to this place it's not even accredited with doctors. And that's what kind of got them together. And they started hiring doctors, either kind of permanently as full time

staff or farming their cases to these professional doctors. Right, and so veterinary medicine kind of transitioned at the same time. Uh that people in the West and Great Britain in the United States as well, We're starting to kind of change how they viewed dogs, like their dogs were brought

in from the outside. They became members of the family UM and so as such, people were willing to spend money on their medical treatment and they would go to medical professionals and the veterinary practitioners were waiting there with open arms and UM bills in hand. That's right. Uh So we move on to our second hero of the story. If you're a cat person, you need to know this man's name, and it was Louis or Louie. Do you know which one. Let's go with Louis Louis. No, No, no, no,

I'm sorry. I realized now it's got to be Louis. It is Louis because his name is Louis Commody. That's right. Louis Jacob Moody was in a veterinary a specialist in New York City and Louis Comody said, you know what, A cat saved my life. When I was a kid, there was a house fire and I guess this cat went over to him and went fire and woke Moody up. And this is his story. And he said, so you know what I'm gonna do. I am going to dedicate my life to caring for the cats of the Greater

New York area. And everyone went, you mean cats? You mean these things? We those things we kick off the sidewalk because they're annoying us. And he went, cats the thing that saved my life, right and um. He actually his daughter credited him with elevating cats to the status they enjoy now. Again it's like a beloved member of the family. Before if you kept cats around, it was probably because you had a rat problem. The cats provided a function. They were like, you know, working animals in

a lot of ways, and all of a sudden their pets. Um. And he wrote a book called All My Patients Are under the Bed. It is super cute. Um. So Louie commuty. Second, uh, second hero, and then there's another hero that comes up in a second. I don't want to jump too far ahead, but I'm gonna give everybody your name. Her name is Lilah Miller, and she is known as the mother of

shelter medicine. And thanks to her in the nineteen seventies and people working in the decades leading up to that, UM, we went from the wholesale slaughter of dogs and cats unwanted dogs and cats too, essentially no kill shelters that killed just a tiny fraction euthanized a tiny fraction of the dogs and cats that come coming to their their doors. Shelter. That was the word I was looking for. No, that wasn't quite right. No, an infirmary works better, clinic works better,

laboratory works better than shelter. All of them worked better. YEA, Sometimes you're looking for the wrong word, you know. Yeah, I guess, So you just gotta own it. Uh yeah. So we don't have to get to in depth here, but suffice to say, like well into the nineteen seventies, the way we got rid of um stray dogs and

stray cats was reprehensible and terrible. I have to say one thing, though, I agree, we don't need to get into it, but um, there were so you know how like there's just like it's literally open season on some animals that there's too much of still today they call them cullings or whatever. It was like that in the cities, but with dogs and cats. But it makes you think like, okay,

well everybody back then was super heartless. Not true. There were sociopathic sickos who would become those people who who like killed their quota and there weren't quotas, by the way, but they would round these these dogs and cats up

and carry them off in the wagon. Does wagons would be frequently attacked and the drivers like beaten and the cats and dogs inside freed by just average residents in a city when they saw these wagons go past, even back then, so they were like I think most people still felt about you know, animals like dogs and cats like we do today, just they didn't keep them in their house. But they still saw him as these living, sentient beings that are worthwhile and shouldn't just be you know,

murdered for good reason by some the local sicko. Totally alright, So back to Lilah, Miller, I'm glad you said that, because that's that's a pretty good, uh factoid. I'm not I'm not for taking matters in your own hands and like street violence, but I don't know in that case, free the dogs. And I'm glad you said that because I couldn't tell if you were bored with my story

or not. No, not at all. Uh. It reminds me of a T shirt Emily has That's a very popular shirts is be kind to animals or I'll kill you. That's a great So Lila Miller, she was one of the very first UH African American woman to graduate from Cornell's Veterinary College. She was the one, like you said, she came along said we can do better. At the time, even if you know, I mean, I guess they were

mostly kill shelters at the time. Um, but even if maybe you were one of the few that wasn't, it was still probably like a warehouse, uh that didn't have great care for animals. It just was not like what it is today. And we have Lila Miller to thank for that. Yeah. She um to change protocols, Yeah for sure. Um. She she like she basically came into the field and said, this is all low hanging fruit. We're doing basically nothing

to help improve the lot of these animals. So let's start doing things like setting up adoption programs, making sure they get vaccinated, making sure they get spayed and newter. That was a fairly recent thing from the sixties or the seventies. Maybe um oh no, I'm sorry from it started in the thirties, but culturally it wasn't a really big thing until the sixties or the seventies thanks to

people like Lyla Miller and Bob Barker no joke. Um. And and as a result, because of these these protocols that she came up within just the complete change and attitude she brought to animal shelters, um, the rates of euthan asia just plummeted in cities around the country. Like, if you want to be grossed out, go look at euthanasia rates of cities like Los Angeles or New York or Boston in like nineteen sixty. Um, it's just mind boggling.

And now it's down to just a small fraction of what it used to be because so many of those dogs are adopted out because of these change of protocols. Thanks to Lyla Miller and others like her. Yeah, and I mean, just so much has changed since then, Uh as the dog and cat population has grown, and even more and more pets have have come inside. I mean you think, like, yeah, people started having pets a while ago,

and uh, and it's been fairly static. But get this stat between the number of pet dogs in the US grew by fifty and by almost two thirds of household pets owned at least or households owned at least one pet, and those pets sometimes had pets where. Uh and just the you know, you and I grew up in the

seventies and eighties. I'm a little bit older, but I even remember being a kid and like very shamefully, I mean, we didn't live in the country, but we lived you know, we lived in the woods on a couple of acres in suburban Atlanta. And like my parents grew up in and not rural Tennessee. But you know, they didn't grow up in big cities in the nineteen like forties and fifties. So like I, we didn't take our animals to the that like, we had cats that came and went, they

weren't inside. We had dogs that were out in an outdoor. And that's not to say, like, you know, if people have a very nice outdoor enclosure for their dog and that works for them and the dog is safe, that's a personal choice. I think all dogs should be in bed with you personally. But I'm not gonna like, I'm not shaming people that might have an outdoor dog or cat as long as they're really really cared for. It's not what I do. But back then, like our animals

never came inside. If a cat happened to run inside, it was like, get them out of here. And I wasn't saying that. I was like, oh, the cats inside, the cat's inside. But like the the notion of uh and this was like even veterinary care, Like if they really really really needed something, our animals would go to the vet. And this is like the shameful admission. This isn't not trying to like out my family, but this is kind of how it was, is what I'm saying.

And but the notion of taking your animals in once a year for a checkup, right, was just people didn't do that kind of thing back then. No, it's a really relatively new thing, and it's it's evolved in lockstep with the amount of money that the middle class and upwards were willing to pay to to take care of their pets. In the amount of pets. That's part of it too. And also I believe that veterinarians have um come up with new and amazing ways to to bill

you that you can't spend money on your pets. Oh God bless them. We'd spend a lot of money there for sure. And then also there's been um a lot more specialization as a result, so you don't have to go to the same vet for your dogs, you know, Raby's shot and to treat their you know, tumor or something like that. Like there's there's pet oncologists, neurologists, epidemiologists, um,

it's it's really something. But because veterinarians they they don't learn essentially as a profession, they went from being completely with all their eggs in the horse basket to totally abandoning the horse and putting it all in the pet basket. And as a result, there's this there's a real shortage of rural veterinarians who are large animal vets that know how to work on a horse, that that know how to work on a cow. Um, and I'm guessing that that's going to be something that will have to be

addressed eventually. Yeah for sure. I mean it's really amazing how things have changed in the past, like you know, thirty forty years in the U. States. Uh. And I want to shout out my vet. Can I do that? Uh? Yes, Well, I'm gonna shout out Avondale Vetinary Hospital because they're great. We followed our doctor Stacy Stacy is her name, when she left our old VET to go to a new practice.

We followed her there because she's so great. So big ups to Dr Stacy and Dr Graff and Michelle and Kim and Leona and Cat and Abbey and Jordan and Jennifer and Carrey and everyone else who helps out there. Uh, they're awesome. And I just you know, more and more people are becoming and you know, we should mention another reason that there's more veterinary care is more people are interested in becoming vets. Um that that job has really exploded over the last twenty or thirty years. Yeah, for sure,

it's good work. Um, I guess I'll showed up mose Vet. We're actually torn right now because mose Vet left Dr Jennasco, who's awesome. She went to another practice. But we love the practice that Mos at so much for like hemming and hauling about. That's tough. See, we were ready to leave. We're getting a little frustrated with other parks parts of the old practice. So when Dr Stacy left, we were like, oh great, this is perfect. That's awesome. So that's a

tough decision for you. It is the compromise we came up with. We're just going to get We're gonna double up on everything that mogus done. Just go to both one right after the other. Man. Double in your bed, Bill, I love it. I have a little Mo anecdote if you don't mind me sharing, I would love to hear about little Momo. So you me told me just this morning that Mo has a new um. So you said dogs should sleep in bed with you. Mo definitely sleeps

in bed with us. Um and most developed a new habit where uh you mean will be spooning Mo and Mo will decide that she wants to get on the other side now. But rather than just get up and crawl over you mean get on the other side, she wants you me to spoon her, but on the other side, so she'll tap you me until she wakes up, Yeah, and gets that she needs to roll over now because Mo wants to spoon on this boy. Mo runs us for sure. Well, yeah, at least somebody's in charge, that's right.

Are you got anything else? I got nothing else? Okay, Well, if you want to know more about veterinarians, go get friendly with the veterinarian. They'll tell you what you want to know. Uh. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail, all right, so I can't put it off any longer. We're gonna go through some of the favorite tangents of two from from Ian Bowers of San Dusky, Ohio. Ian put together our Tangents and non Sequiturs list, and we said, hey, if you want to keep doing this,

we'll read it. And so Ian said, great, So here we go. I'm gonna go through these pretty quick. But these are these are fun walk down memory lane for us, because we we forget these jokes all the time. The Mystery of the towy Bee Tiles Josh's Love of the Alfred Hitchcock presents the three Detectives books. The Mystery of Coal episode uh, stainless steel pickup trucks at the Atlanta Olympics, and how you still haven't seen them? Yeah, that one's

popped up a few times. Water Land acknowledgements from May tenth. A Beastie Boys dad joke leads Chuck and Josh to reciting their favorite Beastie Boys line, and Chuck reveals the acts sidentally taught his daughter and the inappropriate Beastie Boys lyric when she was too young. Did I tell you off the air? No, I don't believe you did. Alright, So we're gonna take a short break and I'll let you know right now and then we'll be back in one second. Oh my goodness. So well, okay, Well that's

Josh's literal reaction to what I just told him. I'm so sorry, everybody, what a tease. I can't tell everybody sorry. Uh oh. Interestingly, Cat's invasive species long discussion right at the top of Josh and Chuck's favorite newspaper cartoon strips.

Sure of course. Uh. May thirty one, The Scintillating World of Interest rates discussion of the movie The Green Knight, lean, Josh and Chuck agreeing that has a flawless streak of movie releases rock and We're gonna go see the Whale in the theater soon and I don't want to know anything about it other than released it. Uh, talk to

me after you see it. Um. June seventh, Freedom of the Press, a very intricate, descriptive three minute discussion of how Josh and Chuck would ride a horse over a cliff. I remember this one wearing individual parachutes. I remember that too. We landed safely, if I remember correctly, we did. I like that when that bugs some people, though, UM, let

me see July five, ultra processed foods. Josh eating hot wings while wearing finger condoms, and the director Chuck worked for he would eat cheetahs wearing surgical gloves as a bit that was Tom Schiller. Uh. Supernova July nineteenth, UM discussion of which britpop bands are cool and which ones weren't. Planet Sterilizing event should be our britpop album name is what I said? And you said Zombie Stars the name

of our britpop band. Those two still work really well, I agree, silly string Uh we Josh brings up a video of a dog that got into a guerrilla enclosure at a zoo. Oh. Yeah, that poor dog. I remember that side note one of Josh's looser episodes, very amusing. Okay, what was it against silly String? Yeah, I I can't believe I didn't take silly String seriously. Short stuff, the Burner Street hoax, Chuck's daughter's love of the songs girls just want to have fun and her brief only girls

want to have fun and boys do not. M that's still ongoing. By the way, is there really Yeah? September six about Mallory and Mount everest um oh, not a tangent, but Chuck casually mentioned the rope trauma. Josh Josh brussatt Bush passed it without asking what happened to Chuck's dismay. At that point, Chuck refused Chuck he should say, became a big baby and refused to tell the story of what happened. Despite Josh asking repeatedly, Chuck said, I'll take

it to his grave. Classic s y s came moment, how the license place work, Chuck, Chuck's incredu incredulity. Sorry that Josh didn't know what Sarah about Sans Sara, he should say Chuck was a big jerk about the fact that Josh to know that that was the one you apologized about later, right, don't feel bad and no one ever wants to be told who you know? I mean,

it just made me feel bad all over again. Uh. And then finally, from just recently November on Goose Bumps, whether all or just some of the members of the band Boston to school it in m T Did we ever figure that out? They definitely did not, But I didn't look it up. I just knew that. Oh well, that was very nice of you just gently walked past it later on. Thanks Ian Bowers. Once again, this is a lot of fun. We'll read them again next year. Very nice. Thanks Ian, Thank you for um completing that

very stressful assignment. We would love it if you did it again. Okay, I agreed. If you want to be like Ian, you can't ianto one of a kind, but you can get in touch with this and send us an email of your own, Wrap it up, spanking on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,