Episode 76: Fear Free with Dr. Marty Becker

America’s Vet, Dr. Marty Becker, DVM, joined us on this episode of The Good Dog Pod to talk about the Fear Free Movement. Developed by hundreds of experts in behavior, medicine, and handling, Fear Free has become one of the most transformative initiatives in the history of companion animal practice.

Over the last four decades, Dr. Becker has owned or co-owned seven veterinary hospitals, lectured across six continents, became an adjunct professor at three colleges of veterinary medicine, and wrote 25 books, his most recent being From Fearful to Fear Free: A Positive Program to Free Your Dog from Anxiety, Fears, and Phobias.

Transcript

Mikel Delgado [0:25] Hey, everybody! This is Dr. Mikel Delgado. I’m the Standards and Research Lead here at Good Dog, and today I am so excited to introduce Dr. Marty Becker. You may have heard of him as America’s Veterinarian. He earned his veterinary degree from Washington State University College of Veterinary Medicine, and since then, he’s been a pioneer in the field of the human/animal bond and human/animal connection. He’s owned many veterinary practices. He’s lectured all over the world, written at least 25 books, 3 of which were New York Times bestsellers. His most recent book is entitled From Fearful to Fear Free: A Positive Program to Free Your Dog From Anxieties, Fears, and Phobias. Today, we’re having Dr. Becker here on the Good Dog Pod to talk about Fear Free and what it means for us, what it means for you. So, Dr. Becker, welcome to the Good Dog Pod! 

Marty Becker [1:17] It has a little sing-song to it: Good Dog Pod! I like that. Thanks for having me, friend. You and I have known each other a long time. My daughter is your same name except one other K so instead of Mikel, she’s Mikkel. 

MD [1:35] Which is why you often call me Mikkel. 

MB [1:38] That’s true. 

MD [1:39] I’m like your other daughter. 

MB [1:40] That’s true.

MD [1:41] So we are here to talk about Fear Free. For those members of our audience who may not be familiar, can you just introduce us to the concept of Fear Free? What it is and how it came to be?

MB [1:51] Fear Free is just looking at the emotional wellbeing of animals. Those of you that have children or grandchildren or nephews or nieces or have neighbors with young children—you know we look at both physical and emotional wellbeing. We would no way have a child that you wanted to make sure they brush their teeth and they eat healthy and they exercise but not worry if they were bullied or were autistic or had severe anxiety. The problem has been, with animals, we’ve talked about what are the absolute needs: food, water, shelter, and veterinary care. And that’s not enough. We have to look at both physical and emotional wellbeing of animals. That’s what Fear Free is. 

MD [2:39] That’s great. Tell me about your personal epiphany and when you decided to found this organization. 

MB [2:45] Oh my gosh! I have loved animals since the time I was—my earliest memory is walking alongside an Australian Shepherd. The only reason I know what dog it was is I saw pictures later. It was like when you learn to walk, I could reach out and hold the top of its back and walk along beside it. And then starting at age 6 or 7, I wanted to be a veterinarian. But I wanted to be a dairy practitioner. Six goes to 22… 15 years and I get into veterinary school. The first hour of the first day was a talk by the dean welcoming these students. Within the first 15 minutes of his lecture, I decided I wanted to be a companion animal practitioner. How could you change what you worked on and thought about for 15 years? He was a Jewish prisoner of war. He was befriended by a Belgian Malinois, which looks like a German Shepherd kind of. I’m sure that’s on Good Dog. But the Malinois befriended him, so that human/animal bond had life breathed into it. It was so eloquent in his description that I became an evangelist for the human/animal bond and also the healing power of pets. He was the first person to look at the human/animal health connection. That took me into practice and then I wrote Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover’s Soul, and I started on Good Morning America and then I started the syndicated column. Then it just all kind of dominoed. Everything was going along swimmingly. Married to the love of my life for 43 years. Dr. Oz has introduced me as America’s Veterinarian. My wife calls me the Old Man but that’s a whole other story. I’m up here on this beautiful, long home on a horse ranch in Northern Idaho—this idyllic setting—and I tease Dr. Karen Overall (a boarded veterinary behaviorist) about ruining my life because I was on Vancouver Island in Victoria. I gave the keynote one day at the CanWest Veterinary Conference, and she gave the keynote the next day. She was in the front of the room supporting me the day before, so I thought I’d better go support her, but I was in the back of the room because 1) I like to sit in the back of the room and 2) I was going to sneak out and have a beer. I thought as soon as she engaged somebody, she’d never notice I was gone. But she gave this unbelievable talk about fear and about emotional wellbeing, and it’s one of those things you don’t expect that changes your life. Fear Free was born in an instant, in that talk, her opening two or three sentences. We spent 5 years developing it, working with boarded veterinary behaviorists. When it launched in April 2016, it was an overnight success. 

MD [5:28] Before that epiphany at her talk, looking back, do you see the pets you lived with differently? The animals that you treated at your clinics differently? Obviously people who are in veterinary medicine are empathic and love animals for the most part. Do you feel like something inside you changed personally?

MB [5:47] Yes! We have a family saying: Live for today, plan for tomorrow, no regrets. I have regrets, definitely. It sounds good on a plaque, and it looks good on the wall, but in reality, I have regrets. One of them is that I still remember my mom and dad using racist language, you know? I think all of us have things where you think I wish I had handled that differently. The person at school who had a hard time. But specifically with animals, I’ve always loved animals. And I’ve always been compassionate. But I didn’t realize the damage we—and not just veterinary medicine people, people that deal with companion animals: groomers, sitters, daycare/boarding and things like that… I hear this a lot from people that embrace Fear Free. You look back at that dog. Yeah, we got its nails trimmed. They brought him in to trim his nails. Yeah. There were 6 of us holding it down. We tied its muzzle shut with some gauze. It was salivating and struggling, and it expressed its anal glands, and it urinated. It may even have pooped a little. But we got it done! You send them out of there, and now to think of the trauma that we caused! Or cats—we were taught restraint. Before Fear Free, I had their head in one zip code and their ass in another zip code. That’s just the way you were treated. You think back: oh my god! Restraint! Restraint was designed to protect the people. Now you have something—we call it gentle control. It’s designed to protect the pet! You still get exactly the same thing. The pet is in positional compliance for a blood draw, for a radiograph, for an examination. They’re there where you can do your job. But the outcome is totally different. In the one, the pet thinks it’s fighting for its life. In the other one, they know that we’re fighting for their emotional wellbeing. I absolutely have regrets, but now most of the veterinary schools in the United States require Fear Free certification of students before graduation, so they’re learning something completely different. 

MD [7:52] That’s really great. Until recently, Fear Free was focused on the veterinary clinic. It seems like in the past year or so, you’ve really started to expand what Fear Free means. Maybe you can talk about what Fear Free means to those of us with companion animals in our homes.

MB [8:10] Fear Free, when it launched on April 1, 2016, there were programs for the veterinary profession specifically, for veterinarians, veterinary technicians (which you sometimes call nurses). Kennel attendants, and so on. Right now, there’s 110,000 people that have gone through that course, and there’s veterinarians in 63 countries (I believe) that have completed that course. So it’s had an impact globally. And then we got thinking: What good is a great veterinary visit if they have a poor home life? So we created Fear Free Happy Homes. Fear Free Happy Homes is complimentary to all pet parents. Let’s go back further. How about where pets are sourced? At the shelter! That whole process of maybe pets coming from the southern United States to the north on the Hunter Hount Railroad. Pets that are relinquished from the home; how about the way they’re handled upon entry? So we created FearFreeShelters.com, completely complimentary to all shelter and rescue employees and volunteers. Then you start looking at these pieces and you realize: What about having a bad experience at grooming? I think many of us have been to a pet store chain and looked in the glass and watched pets in grooming, and you go: Wow. Those pets are really stressed. So we created, like spokes of a wheel, the hub is a Fear Free certified veterinary healthcare professional, but we have Fear Free programs for trainers, for groomers, for pet sitting, boarding is imminent, for shelters, for the home. One of the reasons we’re really delighted to be talking to Good Dog is it’s going back to the way it was when I was first practicing veterinary medicine in the ’80s, where most pets were sourced locally in homes. Now to think about: it doesn’t matter where you get this pet. You get it from a local breeder. You get it from a breeder halfway across or all the way across the United States. It doesn’t matter. We just want to engage with you at the very start, so that you look at both the physical and emotional wellbeing of that pet, from birth to earth, from conception to—I better not say the term I use in medicine—but it’s after death. You could say birth to earth or conception to resurrection. How’s that? 

MD [10:33] I like that. So, that brings up a really good question, which is the implications for our breeding community. We’ve talked with Fear Free, and we had you on for a webinar earlier, so hopefully our community is familiar with Fear Free. Our breeders are basically responsible for raising puppies during a huge chunk of what we consider that sensitive socialization window, that really important time in a puppy’s life. So what should our breeders be thinking about as they care for these neonate to 8-12 week old pups until they’re going to their new homes?

MB [11:05] First of all, I applaud these people. I’ve kind of fought the grain over the years. A lot of our community didn’t get along with the shelter community. “Oh my god; they’re stealing our business! They’re competing with stuff.” Hello, 50% of Americans can’t afford veterinary care, and they perform a very valuable solution. We can’t forget, when I was first in veterinary school (let’s go back to 1976 when I had that epiphany), we were euthanizing 28 million dogs and cats. Now, here we are, this many years later, it’s 600,000—nearly approximately almost all cats. The early spay/neuter and all that stuff did a good job. I’ve always been supportive of shelters. It’s just another manifestation in how Fear Free Shelters is complimentary to them. But these breeders, a lot of times, there’s a crazy cat and dog antagonism because the breeders tell them this, and they come to the vet, and we say, “Why did the breeders tell them this?” And then the breeders are saying, “The veterinarians are so stubborn!” I’m for these breeders because what you’re doing is you’re providing a human life support system that’s cleverly disguised as a four-legged child. I mean that. We found that out during Covid, that when we needed to reduce fear, anxiety, and stress in our lives—what did we do? We bought or we adopted pets. There’s nothing that can reduce cortisol, the stress in their life, like pets. It’s a medicine that tastes good. It goes down easy. There’s no side effects. You can activate it by one trip to the treat drawer. When you think about this, I’m raising something that’s going to have a 10-20 year impact on the human family. They’re going to be healthier. They’re going to be happier. They’re going to be more active. They’re going to be more social. What I’d like the breeding community to think about—one thing I will tell you is a lot of the breeding community is all about prenatal vitamins and things like that. It makes zero difference. I’m not even that good a scientist, and I will tell you it doesn’t do anything! Nutrition, on the other hand, is of course a big part of it. But think about what to expect when you’re expecting a litter of puppies. Just like the mother does not want to be stressed (she does not want to smoke or do all these things)—she wants to be comfortable—those are the same things as a breeder that you need to provide for the bitch or the mother dog. She has low levels of fear, anxiety, and stress. She has things that make her happy and calm, including massage. You don’t have her dealing with noise phobias. If she’s stressed out about thunderstorms or loud noises or snow sliding off the roof—that’s not okay. It’s just learning. If I go back to the ’80s, when I was first a veterinarian, we were like Match.com before there was any Match.com. We connected people together. “You’ve got this dog. It’s an adult. It’s got a nice conformation. It’s got a nice personality. Here are a couple of people that have the opposite sex with the same characteristics.” But now it’s about, “We’ll put them on this diet, and you have to prepare a place to whelp.” We know a lot more now. If we do that together, everybody wins. The bitch wins. The puppies win. The pet parents that are going to adopt them win. And the breeder wins. I do think a Golden Retriever is not a Golden Retriever is not a Golden Retriever. You could have three litters in one zip code and how those pets are going to live their life and the impact they’re going to have on the human family could be completely different, even if they’re all AKC registered.

MD [14:55] That’s a great point. You brought up a lot of really great points. Hopefully you didn’t lose everybody when you dissed the supplements! But, you know, I think the breeder/veterinarian relationship is definitely something that we’re interested in promoting and building. Each has different expertise and something to bring to the table. There’s been research on communication issues between veterinarians and breeders, and we spoke about that on a Facebook Live not too long ago. It’s something that, here at Good Dog, we’re really trying to facilitate: good relationships. Ultimately, everyone is here for the same reason: to have happy, healthy dogs, to have happy, healthy dog owners, to facilitate that relationship between the dog owner and the dog. I think all of this is related. Even though, maybe, there are issues where there’s disagreement, the ultimate goal is to have happy animals. I think Fear Free fits right into that concept. Of course, we know that early life experiences can impact later outcomes for puppies, so talking about the environment for the bitch and making sure she’s basically happy and relaxed and not stressed, I love the idea of massage. Is that something that you have looked into yourself? The effects of massage on dogs?

MB [16:04] First of all, I’ll tell you the scientific part of it: Narda Robinson is a DVM on an MD, and she used to have integrated medicine at Colorado State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. She has a book out: Therapeutic Pet Massage. It’s published by AHA Press, which is the American Animal Hospital Association. She’s so research-oriented. She’s not ooga-booga, hearsay. I’m the opposite. For me, if I’ve experienced it, witnessed it, or believed it to be true—it sounds good to me! Fortunately for Fear Free, we have a Head of Research who is the opposite of me. But Narda is really hardcore research. We know the research is there. My wife, Theresa, took a course and became a certified pet massage therapist. I got to witness what it does in my own house. I’ve got to see what it does when I work a long time. She works with me at the practice. See her doing a massage on a pet before they’re seen (and if she has time, after they’re seen). These pets literally come back and recognize her and back up to her, almost like trucks. They’re like, “Oh, god! I remember you!” And they back into her for a massage. 

MD [17:17] “Please massage me again!”

MB [17:18] It’s quite a thing to go to a Fear Free practice and actually have the dog drag the owner into the practice and have the owner try to drag them out. I’m not kidding you. It’s the exact opposite of most places where the pet parent tries to drag them in, and then the dog drags them out at a cartoon-y speed. It’s all related to looking at the triggers, trying to remove or reduce the triggers. If you can’t mitigate it, there’s things you do: ranging from compression garments to nutraceuticals to pheromones to pharmaceuticals. You put the treat into treatment. Pets come in hungry, and they are given the most amazing treats. They’re not too novel. Like I’m not going to give them a cone street fruit cake from last year that they’re like, “I don’t know the taste of this!” But it is something they’re familiar with but don’t get very often, like hot deli turkey, like Easy Cheese cheddar and bacon, or peanut butter, or shrimp or salmon or tuna. For cats, it can be whipped cream or Easy Cheese or deli turkey. Warmed up deli turkey? There’s not too many pets that won’t take that. 

MD [18:28] When I was working at UC–Davis, I think the saying was: “The veterinary clinic is not the place to start a diet.” So, the treats were really embraced. 

MB [18:37] They don’t live here. I was at Disney over the weekend, and I ate so much stuff! But I don’t go to Disney every day. That’s the thing. You want to have things that overcome the fear, anxiety, and stress levels. It’s pretty amazing. 85% of the cats that came to the clinic when Fear Free started where I work—if they’re not sick or injured, they’ll take a treat. 

MD [18:59] That’s great. And dogs, of course, I think are a little more open to treats. 

MB [19:04] Even if they don’t take the treat, here’s the other benefits: they get the choice of where they’re examined. They can not be up on the table. They can be in the lap, in the carrier, in your lap, on the floor, on a yoga mat. We do a lot of therapeutic massage. We have something called a Zoom Groom that you can buy from the Kong company. We know the places that most pets like to be touched. If you’re a woman and you’re listening to this, you know how you love to get your hair washed by somebody else? Imagine these little rubber fingers on the Zoom Groom on the tailbase of a dog or cat! Oh boy! That feels pretty darn good. 

MD [19:40] That’s great. One of the other things I’ve noticed that Fear Free has offered more of too is this concept of training and cooperative care, which is actually having our cats and dogs be like an active part of their treatment and having them accept different types of handling. Can you speak to how that became part of this? 

MB [19:58] You ought to see me. I’m smiling so wide I could eat a banana sideways right now, because I just think of Good Dog and the influence you have and are going to have on how these puppies are raised. What you would want to do as a breeder is set these pets up for a lifetime of success. When you look at all these things, during Covid, we watched how they were testing for Covid in zoo animals. They had the 3 M&Ms for the orangutan population. The elephants all got jelly beans or something. And then the lions got chicken baby food. They actually present themselves for services. “Oh yeah! You bet I’m going to come over there and present!” This rhino will give you its foot to have its nails trimmed because they’re going to get pieces of apple or something. 

MD [20:55] How else are you going to trim a rhino’s nails? 

MB [20:57] I’ve actually done a rectal on a rhino, Mikel. Is that on your bucket list? 

MD [21:03] That was not on my bucket list, no. 

MB [21:07] That’s one of the ones where you have a few drinks and you go, “Okay, what’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?” That was actually part of a therapeutic procedure. I want to let them know. That wasn’t a college prank! But when I think back to dairy cows (I grew up on a dairy farm; that’s why I wanted to be a dairy practitioner), when you artificially inseminate cattle or you’re checking to see if they’re pregnant, you use a sleeve and you go up their rectum and you actually feel the ovaries. Those cows see that sleeve, and it’s like, “Oh god!” That’s why they kick. That’s why they’re moving. When you think of fear, fear is caused by something painful or something disturbing. You get your nails trimmed too short and you’re a dog, “Oh, that hurts!” Now seeing the nail trimmers is disturbing. Even going into the room where the nail trimmers are! You see a syringe. “Oh, I had a vaccination. I had a blood draw. I had an injection. That was painful!” Now seeing the syringe is disturbing. In cooperative care, you’re not going to let the pet see the syringe. You’re not going to let the pet see the nail trimmers. How would you do that? 1) You could use something called a calming cap, which looks like you’re looking through a screen door at dusk, but you use a distraction technique. You’re giving them paste or big chunks of peanut butter off of a pretzel stick. They’re not looking at the nail trimmers. They’re not looking at the syringe. A good example: when we teach all of our dogs to present themselves for nail trims, they come in, and we cover the nail trimmers (or if we’re going to vaccinate, we cover the syringe with a little piece of cloth that’s been spritzed with pheromones). They don’t see it. And you do it in a different place. You don’t do it in the same place you always trim their nails. What I could see these breeders doing—this crazy thing is you’ve already started to teach these puppies to do a chin rest. It’s a good example, where they come up to you and they rest their chin on a little piece of towel. That’s where you look at their teeth. That’s where you look at their eyes. That’s when you handle their ears. That pet has known that touch, physical touch, on all these different parts throughout their entire life.

MD [23:16] Yes, and then they can actually consent. Because they come over, they put the chin on the rest, and they’re saying, “It’s okay to touch me now.” We definitely want to bring more education to our breeder community about these topics. Certainly it’s on our agenda of things we want to bring up to our breeders so they can learn to apply some of these techniques in the home. You’ve talked about the extension of the idea of Fear Free, not just being in the vet clinic, but actually coming into the home, before the veterinary exam even is a figment in anyone’s imagination. We’ll have lots of opportunities to talk about that again in the future. I did want to just ask you: 1) Who do you live with, as far as pets are concerned? 

MB [23:59] It’s really funny. Do you ever have the discussions with your significant other or something or your family: if the boat tips over, who are you going to save? 

MD [24:09] I avoid those conversations. 

MB [24:10] Well, I don’t! My wife better be a dang good swimmer because Cutie Pie (I call him Canine Cocktail)... I know you guys, part of Good Dog, is having stuff that’s crossbred, right? We used to call them Heinz 57 or mongrels or mutts. I coined the term canine cocktail. The reason I like it is through genetic testing, you can kind of parse it out and see what ingredients are in there. But he’s a Dachshund Chihuahua Jack Russell cross. To describe him: he’s two dogs long and a half a dog tall. He is a distemper survivor. He’s just my heartbeat. I think I’ve had, over the years, 15 dogs. He’s that one that’s just my heartbeat. 

MD [24:55] Heart dog. 

MB [24:55] And then we’ve got a dog outside that is a Pitbull Boxer cross. The Pitbull Lab crosses are actually ideal crosses. They might chew your arm off, but they bring it back to you. I don’t think Boxers are too good at retrieving. But she’s a 3-legged dog, had a nerve tumor so we had to remove her left front leg. As they say, dogs have 3 legs and a spare. She does just perfect. Then a bunch of horses. So we had 6 dogs but went through a bad spell in 2 years and lost a bunch. We’ll probably start filling her back up again! My wife wants a Pomeranian or she’s thinking about a French Bulldog. She’s thinking about a Labrador Retriever. I kind of have a feeling it’s going to be a Pomeranian.

MD [25:42] We might have some suggestions for you. 

MB [25:46] Good!

MD [25:46] Before we wrap up today, at the time that this will be online, we will be approaching the end of the year. So I thought it would be fun to just have a few suggestions for our breeder community for New Year’s Resolutions that can help all of us have happier dogs. Just some quick and easy things that anybody can do to have a better relationship with their dog or make their dogs even happier. It’s all about what we can do even better than we’re already doing. What would you put on that list?

MB [26:12] Here’s my number one tip! This is so easy to do, and nobody does it. I’m just going to say this. Probably 99% of people greet dogs wrong. I was just in a busy part of Los Angeles, and I wasn’t too much into shopping, but I was into people-watching. I watched people over and over and over again greet dogs incorrectly. What do most people do? Well, all of us love dogs! We see a dog coming, “Oh my god! Cute! Can I pet it? What’s its name? What breed is it?” You’re staring at it. Eye to eye with the dog. You lean over. You put your first out. All three of those things are wrong. I didn’t know this before Fear Free. 1) You don’t want to have prolonged direct eye contact. 2) You don’t want to loom big. Think of Halloween. You’re big and you’re leaning down over; it’s threatening. 3) You don’t want to stick your fist in their face. That dog has smelled you since before you even saw it. What you do is you turn. You can glance at it. “That’s just beautiful!” And then you turn sideways, and you can talk to the pet parent. “Can I pet her?” If they give permission, then you just pat your leg. I’m 67, but I still get down on one knee and then call the dog over to me. If he or she doesn’t come, I don’t push it.

MD [27:35] Right, so you’re letting the dog choose whether they want to interact. 

MB [27:39] And then I also typically have some kind of treat in my pocket, knowing I might interact with dogs. So I’ll ask if I can give him a treat. I have a commercial pack, so they see it’s not something crazy. And then I’ll just toss a little—Hansel and Gretel it—right over. That’s number one. 

MD [27:56] So your number 1 piece of advice sounds like: Carry dog treats in your pockets all the time. 

MB [28:02] Yeah. I also have them in the car in case a dog is loose or something, and you need to find them. But learn how to greet pets. If you’re a breeder and you’re having people come over, teach them how to interact with these pets. 

MD [28:14] That’s great. Be an advocate for your dog! 

MB [28:17] I think #2 is really good socialization. We have a new little Colt here named Cory, short for Corinthians. We have balloons. We have towels. We have noisy plastic bags. We have wood he has to walk across. We have ATVs. We have cars. Everything that he’s going to be around, we sensitize him to. For pets, you need to make sure that they see men and women and all those other things. Just go overboard on socialization. And then handling. That’s the other good thing about massage. Massage and handling are right together. You touch their ears. You touch their lips. You touch their feet. Just think of a baby. I can close with this. If you think about a human baby, when a baby starts crying, everybody looks over there. We think, “Oh, dirty diaper! She’s tired. He’s got gas. They need a nap.” Nobody goes, “Oh, hell with it! Sunday Football is on. Who cares?” Pets show you their emotions. Once you start knowing the signs—and Mikel, you’re extremely good at this with cats, and I’m okay with cats and pretty darn good with dogs—they tell you exactly how they're feeling emotionally. You can just tell. That’s the thing I hope everybody starts to learn: start to decipher that communication they have and crack the code of it. By doing that, you have a richer, deeper relationship with them. 

MD [29:48] Yeah, and Fear Free Happy Homes has resources that can help people better read their dogs’ body language and understand how to interact with them and respect what they’re telling you. It’s not just being able to understand, but I think sometimes we want to cuddle our pets and we don’t stop and think,” Is this what the cat or dog wants? Is this welcome?” 

MB [30:11] I actually had to learn. I hear Dr. Oz calls me America’s Veterinarian. America’s Veterinarian had to learn through Fear Free that dogs and cats don’t like being stroked down the dorsal midline, which means the top of their back. I just love them! “I just want to love you!” From the neck down to the base of the tail—dogs or cats don’t like that. You learn the places most of them like to be touched. I’ll tell you the great thing about Fear Free—if you’re a breeder, you hear this all the time from the tens of thousands of people that have gone through the Fear Free Shelter Course, it changes your relationship with your own pet. You see things differently. You do things differently. When that happens, then you realize: The pets that I’m adopting or the pets that I’m selling—I want them to live a happy, healthy, full life. It goes beyond exercising them and getting them panting-tired and feeding them good nutrition and taking them to the veterinarian. There’s a whole other piece out there about emotional wellbeing. You want them to not just be healthy, but you want them to be happy and enriched. We kind of touched on this earlier about the enrichment piece. These dogs—their bodies are built for movement. They have a genetic exuberance to do certain things. They don’t want to be barn-retired. Whether you’re feeding them (that’s another thing as a breeder), I would want them to talk to these new pet parents about using food puzzles or food dispensing devices. It’s probably the number one thing. I forgot about that in these lists: to not feed pets out of food bowls. 

MD [31:45] Super important! It’s easy. You have to feed them anyway, so put the food in a puzzle instead of a bowl. Alright! Well, thank you so much for being here. Can you tell our listeners how to find Fear Free online?

MB [31:55] Yeah, go to FearFreePets.com. If you’re looking for a Fear Free veterinarian, groomer, trainer, pet sitter, boarding: FearFreePets.com. If you’re in any kind of rescue work, FearFreeShelters.com. I really appreciate the work you’re doing, and I’m not just sucking up to you because I’m on your podcast. I really think that people need it. You’re going back to exactly what we did in communities in the ’80s and ’90s. Somebody raised a really nice litter of pets. For some families, you get to see the circle of life. You get to see things being born. You get to share this gift, this joy. There’s nothing like a dog! There just isn’t. I was a resident veterinarian at Good Morning America for 17 years and met all these celebrities. Guess what! When you have a dog, you’re a celebrity. You come home, and they’re like, “Oh my god! Where have you been!” You go from work and change clothes and come in from the other room, and it’s like the second coming of Christ. “Oh my god! Where have you been?!” It doesn’t matter—rich or poor, Republican or Democrat, Black or white. It doesn’t matter. It has eyes for you.

MD [33:07] That’s great. Well, the feeling is mutual. We love Fear Free. We love having you on. Thank you so much for your time. I know we will have you back in one form or another, so thanks for your time!