Episode #52 – Dr. Marty Becker

Do you work in the animal health industry or veterinary profession? Have you ever wondered how people began their careers and how they got to where they are today? Hi everyone. I’m Stacy Pursell, the founder and CEO of The VET Recruiter, the leading executive search and recruiting firm for the animal health industry and veterinary profession. I was the first recruiter to specialize in the animal health industry and veterinary profession in the United States, and built the first search firm to serve this unique niche.

For the past 25 plus years, I have built relationships with the industry’s top leaders and trailblazers. The People of Animal Health Podcast highlights the incredible individuals I have connected with throughout my career. You will be able to learn more about their lives, careers, and contributions. With our wide range of expert guests, you will be sure to learn something new in every episode. Thanks for tuning in and enjoy the episode.

Welcome to The People of Animal Health Podcast. Today we’re honored to have Dr. Marty Becker, a visionary in the field of animal wellbeing, known as the Jacques Cousteau of the human animal bond. Dr. Becker is the driving force behind Fear Free, an initiative revolutionizing veterinary care and beyond. His influence spans grooming, training, shelters, and even agriculture. A celebrated author, media personality and educator. He is dedicated to improving the lives of animals everywhere. Join us as we explore his groundbreaking work, passion for pet wellness and the future of Fear Free in shaping compassionate animal care worldwide. Marty, let’s start off at the beginning. What was your life like growing up and where did you grow up?

Well, I’ve been lucky enough to have traveled to 94 countries, all 50 states, all seven continents, and the state I am from, people almost always say the same thing. I come from Idaho and they go, “Idaho potatoes,” unless they happen to confuse us sometimes with Iowa. So I grew up in rural Southern Idaho, right down in potato country. We had a small family farm in a small ranch, so we raised potatoes and beans and corn and hay and alfalfa seed, and then had a small dairy herd and then a small beef herd. It’s funny we say our mom and dad, we broke the back of that family to put four kids through school. So I’ve got an older sister, 12 years older, that’s a physician, a sister, Susie, that was eight years older, and then my brother was four years older, was an attorney and then myself as a veterinarian.

Well, I love that because I have a big family too. I have five children, so I love that you had four siblings. Well, you grew up on a farm, you had potatoes, corn, raised animals. At what point did you decide to become a veterinarian?

Well, there’s a spark that happened early on. I would go to some people other farms and stuff next to us with my friends and animals were treated pretty rough, a hotshot, for example, or twisting a cow’s tail or throwing rocks at it to get it to go back in the corral. And dad and mom, they knew that if we were good to them, they were good to us. If you treated dairy cows really calmly, they gave more milk. If you treated beef cattle better, they put on weight better and had healthier calves. And I still remember one of my jobs is picking eggs. We used to pick eggs and wash them, weigh them, and sell them at a local grocery store. And one of my jobs was to pick these eggs, so it’s still dark outside, especially in the wintertime. And I’d always thought there was ghosts everywhere because there was quite a ways away from the house out in these outbuildings.

So the hair was always standing at the back of my neck, and you’d go in there to pick these eggs and these chickens would peck your hand if they’re sitting on the eggs. So it was take so long, and I thought I got a better way to do this. So I just walked up to these little wooden cubicles and just went like this, and all the chickens flew off and there’s feathers floating around and like, “Hell, this is easy.” I just pick all these eggs. I worked pretty good till about two weeks into it when dad caught me and I walked outside the door and he tapped me on the shoulder, “My God.” It’s like, “Oh, he’s got me.”

He goes, “That’s efficient, but that’s not the way we do things around here.” So I had that kind of thing of treating animals well baked in. And then there was a veterinarian come out that was treating a dairy cow that had milk fever, and he asked me to help him. I’m a six-year-old kid, he had me hold a back then the fluids were in a glass bottle, and he took a big long needle, looked like the tailpipe on a ’57 Chevy and hit the jugular vein on this cow that was comatose. Every heartbeat of the cow, the blood was squirting out at the end. And then he told me to hand in the bottle and he hooked the rubber tubing on and hooked it on the needle and standing there, holding it up. And he goes, “You ever thought about being a veterinarian? You’re good with animals. I hear you do good in school. You got to think about being a veterinarian.”

And lo and behold, those fluids gurgled into that cow and it rose to its feet and staggered off like one of us at the end of semester veterinary parties. And come to find out later, it had milk fever. And what happens is the last trimester pregnancy, they build the skeleton and then all the calcium in the milk, they don’t have any calcium, so the nerves can’t fire. So [inaudible 00:05:54] some calcium solution in and off the nerves start firing, the muscles go and the cow rises up. So I thought, man, this is like magic. Fallen cow rises up, everybody loves him. And then he came out and gilded a horse. So it gave a horse up and it fell down. So fallen cow rises, standing horse falls, everybody loves this guy. So that started at age six. Then I started saying I wanted to be a veterinarian.

Wow, I love that. What a neat story. Well, you’ve been described as the Jacques Cousteau of the human animal bond. What inspired your passion for improving the emotional well-being of animals? And how did that lead to the creation of Fear Free?

I think there was three steps. One, my mom and dad about the way they treated animals was gentler than anything I saw. Number two, reading All Creatures Great and Small, back in probably early high school, just reading that and reading those stories that humanized that and brought to life in a highly emotional way. And then certainly most importantly, the first day of veterinary school. So from age six to age 20, I told everybody I want to be a dairy practitioner. I want to be a dairy practitioner. Well, Dean Leo Bustad, the person who coined the term the human-animal bond, was our dean. And he gave introductory talks at Washington State University. He was a Jewish prisoner of war at Sobibor, was befriended by a Malinois that’s supposed to terrify him, and instead it befriended him. And he gave this amazing talk on the human animal bond.

And at the end, he asked for volunteers for the People-Pet Partnership that match elderly people with homeless pets. And so I went from the back of the room to the front of the room to volunteer, and my dairy career lasted 30 minutes. Now I’m going to be a companion veterinarian just based on this incredible kind of the way Fear Free started, which I’m sure we’ll talk about at some point. That started at a single lecture. So funny how you can be moved to almost like evangelical move to come up to the altar.

Well, I love your passion, and I know that Fear Free has made such a tremendous impact on veterinary care, but its reach extends beyond clinics to grooming, training, and even shelters. What are some of the most exciting ways Fear Free is changing industries outside of veterinary medicine?

Well, Fear Free started out, if we go back to the genesis, it was just to match up with the oath we take. We take an oath to prevent or relieve animal pain and suffering. I think an oath is a sacred promise, and I came to realize that we were causing it by what we were doing or not doing as were other people that dealt with animals, with trainers, with groomers, with pet sitters, with dog walkers. And so Fear Free took off and in veterinary medicine, and then we realized, well, we can help them have a Fear Free visit to the veterinary hospital. But what if they have fear, anxiety, and stress at home? What if they have fear, anxiety, and stress going to the groomer? What if they have fear, anxiety, and stress going to the trainer with the other dogs? So we decided really early on to create an ecosystem of everybody that deals with animals would be educated and inspired to look at both physical and emotional well-being.

And if you think of Fear Free, I want you to think of a wagon wheel. So in the center is the veterinary health care professional. The spokes are fear-free shelters, fear-free grooming, fear-free training, fear-free boarding, fear-free pet sitting, fear-free ER, fear-free mobile veterinary practice. And eventually we’ll probably have the kind of thing to connect everybody on a rim that we’re all speaking to each other about a groomer and a trainer and a veterinarian can all speak about this pet’s health. But all roads lead to the veterinarian. And more specifically, if we look at the very center of that hub, our Board of Veterinary Behaviorists, they have the education, the training, and the experience. That’s what Fear-Free is built upon. It’s just that they never had a voice.

And we have, of the 100 Board of Veterinary Behaviorists, about 60 are on the Fear-Free Advisory Group. So that’s ultimately the bedrock. And then built upon that are 12 boarded anesthesiologists and animal handling experts and subject matter experts in all the parts of not just veterinary medicine, but in grooming and training in the shelter world.

Wow. I love all of that. Marty, you’ve spent decades in the media as an author, columnist, and influencer. How has storytelling played a role in your mission to improve the lives of animals and the people who care for them?

My mom, Virginia, was like a cross between Maxine and the Far Side lady when everybody else’s parents were normal, mine were delightfully abnormal. My mom was ribald, she was funny, she was a storyteller. And she taught me early on about story selling. So I can still remember there was a Boy Scout jamboree and you sold these tickets for the jamboree. And she talked to me about how to story sell. And so you couldn’t just come in, do you want to buy some tickets for this? You had to tell a story. And then I think that led to, I became editor of the school paper. And this is funny, Stacy, I’ve had people ask me, “You’re obviously a leader. Did you have leadership positions in high school?” I’m like, “Well, student body president, class president, captain of the football team, editor of the school paper, blah, blah.”

Well, there’s only 23 kids in my class, Stacy, so the bar’s pretty low to take these positions. But I was editor of school paper, and the teacher goes, “Could you ought to be a writer? You’re really good at this.” “No, I want to be a veterinarian.” And then I went to undergraduate, had an English lit guy, said, “You’re really good. You ought to be a writer.” “No, I’m going to be a veterinarian.” And then it’s funny how it carried forward to veterinary school. And then because I was privy and partnered to the human animal bond, when the Chicken Soup for the Soul books came out, this is a crazy story. My beloved wife of 47 years, Teresa, got me the original Chicken Soup for the Soul as a Christmas present. I have a nerve condition, so I have to fly first class and I got to have some room.

And I was up in first class 2A and I was reading this and I was crying, and I’m wiping tears and blowing my nose and looking out the window and a big lump in my throat. And the guy next to me goes, “What are you reading?” And I go, “Read this.” And he read it. He started crying and the flight attendant come back and looked at us like, “What’s going on? What?” And he said, “You read this.” And she started crying. So that really taught me the power of words that you could evoke. You get that oh kind of feeling or that lump in your throat or tears or just be moved to action. So that’s really where reading thousands of those stories literally, and then writing our own, you really could see how storytelling has been told throughout history in an effective way to teach.

Well, I love that. And I love what your mom said about story sell. I haven’t heard it phrased that way before, and now I feel like that’s something I’m going to use in the future. Well, some pet owners still don’t fully understand what Fear Free means. How would you explain its principles to someone who has never heard of it before, and why should they seek out Fear Free certified professionals?

Stacy, if I go back to the family farm in rural Southern Idaho, our dogs were outdoor dogs. They lived actually in a calving shed with a fence around it. And every night you hooked a chain on them because they were intact, they weren’t sterilized. And so they’d go chase their girlfriend. So I remember about 1963 when the first dog came in our house, same year the Beatles invaded America. Luke, the Labrador Retriever. Big snowstorm. Snow was horizontal blowing about 80 miles an hour across these frozen potato fields. And I asked dad, “Can I bring Luke in?” I’m nine years old at that time in the house. “No, he’s made for this kind of weather.” Well, he resisted, I persisted. And he goes, “All right, tonight, only on the porch, and then he got to go back outside.”

Well, he came in and stuck his head through the door looking in the kitchen. And I remember him looking to the left and looking to the right. It’s like, “Man, this is nice. You got me out in that old crappy calving shed, and you guys are living in here.” And he came in and he did the lab leaner thing on Dad. And then he went to got the zooms and flew around the house and then flew into the side of the couch about like a trampoline and his old tail… Oh my God, look how happy he is. Well, he became an indoor outdoor dog. He still had a utilitarian role to hunt and to guard our stuff and to herd cattle. But it was more of an emotional role then.

It’s not that many years that pets move from the barnyard to the backyard to the back door to the bedroom, or if you grew up urban, outside, inside, underneath the covers. So that had to be the first part was that bond. And then we started calling them pets. So they went from animal to pet to family member to child. And now in a new study, millennials and Gen Z, what do they consider their dogs and cats? Life partners. Life partner. And so what do you want for your life partner? Stacy, you said, did you say you have five kids?

Yes.

Okay, five kids. Do you just want them to be physically well or physically and emotionally well? So as millennials and Gen Z, delaying marriage, my son’s a good example of that. 35 years old, going to be 36 coming up, not married, two cats, they are life partners to them. So what Fear Free is is wherever this pet is in your home, at the groomer, at the veterinary hospital, we take the pet out of petrified and put the treat into treatment. So almost everybody’s experienced their pet in extreme distress. Let’s say it’s thunderstorms, let’s say it’s fireworks. And they’re terrified and they’re shivering, shaking, panting, yawning, salivating, stiff, leaning away, hiding, curled up, furrowed brow, tucked tail, tucked ears.

That’s not normal. And that’s something that’s very easy to treat. It just makes me sad every time I think of 4th of July or thunderstorms of all the pet suffering, when it’s so easy for a veterinarian to treat cutie pie. And it’s like going to the veterinarian. Every animal is like, and I’m saying, every animal, not just pets, they’re like a one-year-old child. They’re taken against their will for healthcare, some call it. They don’t go by free will. Number two, they have zero idea why a procedure benefits them. How does stuffing this thing down my mouth, if I’m getting medication, looking at this wound, sticking an otoscope in my ear that’s like a fire pit, checking my teeth that are like a flamethrower went across it, manipulating my sore joint, giving me an injection, palpating my painful abdomen. How do they know?

They don’t know anything about how that benefits them. Taking a radiograph, endoscopy, anything. They have no concept of time. When I get a flu shot or give blood, you know exactly what you go in, what the procedure is, how long it takes, how long the jab takes. And then you know, okay, I can leave the relief of fear, anxiety, and stress or pain. They don’t have that concept. And lastly, and most importantly, they can’t flee the threat. If I think I’m going to be harmed or killed, if I’m a human, guess what? I ain’t going to the dentist. Or I saw people when COVID first came out, walk out before they got the jab. Well, we can do that. We don’t have to go on a roller coaster where you think you’re going to die.

But they are kept against their will. So most pets think they’re going to be harmed or killed going to the veterinarian. I know that sounds harsh, but it’s true. And people that parents feel like I’m hurting my pet by trying to help it. I know how terrified my cat is, or my dog, I know what it’s like in there. I know they come home and have diarrhea for three days. I drag them in, they drag me out. So what Fear Free is there’s 250 some people that came together to create these proven protocols to take the pet out of petrified and put the treat into treatment literally and it’s apples and oranges.

A typical practice, you have to drag your dog in there and it drags you out at supersonic speed. And in a Fear Free practice, because of the protocols, most of the time the dog will drag you in the clinic and you have to try to drag it out because it thinks it’s still a golden corral for dogs. And one last thing in the practice I work at where Fear Free started, 85% of the cats that aren’t sick or injured will take a treat, 85%. That means you have to have really low fear, anxiety and stress levels, and really good protocols and have a cat that comes in hungry.

Well, Marty, you actively support several animal welfare organizations and shelters. What do you think are the biggest challenges facing shelters today, and how can the Fear Free approach help improve outcomes for shelter animals?

Well, if you remember earlier I talked about the People-Pet Partnership that match elderly people with homeless pets. I’ve literally been involved with it since my freshman year of veterinary school. And it’s been something we’ve actively, I’m among the board of five local shelters. I’ve been on the Board of American Humane for seven years, I can’t work at a shelter anymore. I was involved with humanely euthanizing pets at one time for a shelter where they were gassed to death with carbon monoxide. And that end of life passage is something I can’t do. But I so admire these people that do this. And the thing is, most of these, if you’re looking at purebred versus a shelter pet, still way too many people go for a purebred pet when 30% of the pets in a shelter are purebred, by the way. So if you go through breed rescues, you can almost always find another pet.

But there’s so many behavior issues related to confinement with dogs that are all together. And that’s why we have a Fear Free Shelters Program. If you go to fearfreeshelters.com, it’s complementary to all shelters and rescues, employees and volunteers. I think there’s somewhere around 160,000 people have completed that five hour online course. But that’s something that really, really helps. And another thing with people, I think the pet public, you hear them, “I work all day. It’s not fair to have a dog.” Well, listen, I work at home and I’m going to grab here. There’s four dogs in here, but this one happens to be right by me. Okay. Cutie Pie is asleep. I work all day, he sleeps 90% of waking hours. Actually, they sleep about 80% of their waking hours. Listen, you’re working, they’re sleeping. And also, there’s some really good studies out. If you have one pet, if you get a pet buddy, they live longer and they’re sick less often and they live longer. So there was a bunch of geese coming over today, and the dogs all alerted to it in their own sing-song.

There was a neighbor dog barked, and they answered back, and then they’re sniffing where the chipmunks are back out here. Well, I can’t smell a chipmunk walking across there. I don’t know what the neighborhood dog said, but I really encourage people to have more than one dog. Instead of thinking you’re betraying the dog, you’re actually helping it. And also for people with children, the earlier they have pets in their life, the less allergies, asthma and eczema, they’ll have their entire life. So I wrote a book called, grab it here, The Healing Power of Pets. And I wrote it with The New York Times reporter. We used to always thought, well, pets make us feel good. We just didn’t know pets were good for us. And now the science has caught up. And I tell you what I think of a pet, we went through a litany before, animal pet, family member, child, life partner, I think they’re a human life support system cleverly disguised as a four-legged family member.

I love that, human life support system. Well, I know that you’ve dedicated part of your career to educating future veterinary professionals. What are some of the most important lessons you emphasize when teaching at veterinary colleges?

Okay, right. Here’s where we’re going to get some controversial.

It’s okay, we don’t mind controversy.

I just wrote an article about this. So let’s just look at the basic differences. I was of graduating class in 1980. Of my 73 classmates, probably 60 of us were from farms and ranches. And so we’d seen live births, we’d seen death, we’d handle cattle, we’d handle horses, we’d handle pigs, we’d handle chickens, we had dogs and cats and everything else. Most people don’t come from that background anymore. So they’re coming in with really… It’s scary if you’ve never handled a horse or a boar or any of these things if you’re just coming into it new. Two is when we didn’t have the student debt. So I got to say that we came in with very low debt and now they come in with a real high debt level. But what I see, if I see one problem overall is that there’s the unwillingness to work harder than everybody else. We used to say we work half days. That’s what dad would say, “We Beckers, we work half days, 12 hours.”

And so I know I probably shouldn’t mention the chain, but it’s a big group practice. It used to be full-time was five days a week, eight hours, and now it’s three days a week, 10 hours. And the number of patients they see eight to 10 patients a day for three days, it just doesn’t add up. Listen, if you want to survive, you can do that. But if you want to thrive, you’re going to have to practice differently. I’ll give you an example. I just had somebody that I helped, that I mentored that they needed to make another hundred thousand a year. So how did we figure it out? In this metropolitan area where they’re at, there’s no emergency clinics. You have to drive about 30 miles to get to emergency clinic. The clinics all close around six o’clock. So what happens after six o’clock? Because nobody wants to take emergencies.

You go to the emergency clinic, it costs a fortune, literally. And you wait and wait, and wait, and wait, and wait. So that practice is not being used at night. So he simply extended the hours. So now it’s from 6:00 PM to 2:00 AM And did they have trouble getting a vet tech to work? No, because now it takes care of the childcare problem. So they work the late shift and somebody else can cover childcare during the day. So I think that to be… And also, this is the other thing, I’m a below average veterinarian, and I’m dead serious. If you looked at every skill set a veterinarian has, so reading radiographs, and maybe this changed now with AI, but in the old days, reading a radiograph, doing advanced dentistry, doing orthopedics, these senior pets with multimodal conditions that you’ve got to try to crack the code on.

Listen, I’m good in the exam room. I am average, below average, one of the curly, crazy complex cases. I’m way below average for surgery. But guess what? I used to do orthopedics. I did spinal surgery, I did end-to-end anastomosis for intestinal obstruction. I did cystotomies, I did splenectomies. Now everybody wants to refer everything. And then it’s so expensive. And so we’ve culled out all these different things that we should. It made it interesting to do. Did I do as good a job as a boarded orthopedist? Probably not. But the dog used the leg again and the dog that was paralyzed walked again. And of course, not everyone turns out like you hope it does. But I think the newer things are going to have to go back to these practices of doing more things without referring.

And that’s part of access to care, Stacy. 40% of the people can’t afford veterinary care. One of the other chains, I won’t mention the name, it doesn’t matter if it’s California, New York, Florida, Texas, or Idaho, two films, a lateral and a VD, of a pet plus running it through their AI software is $1,500. That’s a digital radiograph read by AI, $1,500. So I think there’s a coming storm when pet parents, consumers find out that veterans are paid on production, that they thought, oh, that’s why they’re recommending all this stuff. I think it’s just a matter of time before that comes out.

Well, thank you for that, Marty, and I got home from work at 7:30 last night, and my son, who’s almost 18, he goes, “You’re home early.” I said, “It’s 7:30.” He’s like, “But you usually don’t get home as early.” So I’m used to working long hours and late hours too.

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Well, Fear Free is not just about reducing stress in pets, it also impacts veterinary professionals by improving workplace culture. How has Fear Free changed the way veterinary teams operate and interact with animals?

This is one of the amazing things. We have almost 700 Fear Free certified practices. They don’t have any trouble finding veterinarians or veterinary technicians, at least not nearly as much trouble because nobody gets into veterinary medicine to make life worse for pets. And you certainly don’t want to be something where you have something that thinks it’s going to be harmed or killed, and you’re the one that they think is going to harm or kill you. And it’s dangerous. Often these people wake up the next day sore from a rodeo with a pet. And listen, I want to go back before Fear Free started, I’m no Temple Grandin. I was bite stretch cats on into two zip codes.

I mean, that’s what I was trained. I was part of a rugby scrum holding down a dog to get a blood sample or trim their nails. I’ve had more than one dog poop in my pocket. So it literally scared shitless. So it took that awakening at that care and overall to give that talk that made me realize that, God, we can’t cause repeat fear, psychological damage to these pets. There’s a different way. And so with the practice team, it’s what a joy it is when the dog or cat, a lot of them are on pre-visit pharmaceuticals. Even for the practices that nobody’s Fear Free certified, the practice in Fear Free certified, Fear Free has changed veterinary medicine because there’s so many cats are on gabapentin, so many dogs are on trazodone coming in. So many pets are not lifted up on the exam room table.

Temple Grandin, my friend, she’s Fear Free’s chief of animal welfare or director of animal welfare. She’s taught me that animals number one fear from birth is a fear of falling, all animals. So what do we do over the past? Lift an animal off their feet and put them on an elevated slippery table. Exactly the opposite of what you should do. So I think it makes it to where you feel like you’re looking after both physical and emotional well-being of animals. You know how to mitigate other problems there at home, feel safer. And it’s what people want for their own pets. I asked one time, Stacy, there was, oh, at least 2,000 people in an audience. These are veterinarians, veterinary technicians, veterinary healthcare provider. How many of you hate to take your own pet to the vet? It’s three-fourths the hands and probably of as honest as everybody. We don’t even want to take our own pets to the vet because it’s so stressful.

Well, I have to say that when I go to the doctor, I don’t like to get up on the table either. I just want to sit in the chair and look the doctor in the eye and talk to the doctor. But I love that you’re partnered with Temple Grandin, and I know the work that you’re doing with Temple even touches on the well-being of animals used for food and fiber. Can you share more about how Fear Free principles are being applied in agricultural settings?

We’re early into this, but this is going to be exciting. When Fear Free started, again, it was going to be just to match up with our oath to prevent or relieve animal pain and suffering and here we are getting close to 10 years later with 400,000 people certified and 700 Fear Free certified practices. And all the veterinary technician schools requiring Fear Free certification. It’s just blown up. But one of the things is, well, companion animals, what about animals used for food or fiber? We do have a horse course already, and we do have an avian course. But what about dairy cows? What about pigs? What about chickens? And there’s a movement that started in Europe. It started with the five freedoms of animals, freedom of thirst, freedom of hunger, freedom of pain, freedom of discomfort. But it’s been replaced by the five domains.

And the five domains is talking about positive things. And if you were going to sum up the five domains, animals get to experience behaviors positive for the species. And whether this is allo grooming, this is grazing, this is foraging, this is, I can’t even think of, wallowing. They get to experience behaviors positive for the species. So Chobani, the world’s largest yogurt plant is in Twin Falls County, Southern Idaho, where I was born and raised. It’s a huge dairy area. California is the number one dairy state followed by New York, and then Wisconsin and Idaho are about tied. But if you have cheese on a pizza, it probably came from Southern Idaho. There’s six cheese plants there. The world’s largest yogurt plant. They’re starting to pay extra for milk that comes from happy cows. And what is a happy cow? In this dairy, it’s 5,000 cows in the dairy I went to. So this is not a boutique dairy, this is 5,000 cows.

There is a happy cow back scratching station per 100 cows. Think of a car wash with no water. And these cows line up like it’s Starbucks drive-thru to go through this thing with these brushes. And they vocalize, it sounds like they’re, well, they’re very pleasurable. They’re happy moos, okay? And sometimes you’ll watch them leave and go back and get right back in line when they want to be milked. When I was a kid and we were milking cows, it was 5:30 AM 5:30 PM. Now cows, when they want to be milked, just go in the barn. There’s facial recognition, so it knows what cow it is. We used a bucket with a washcloth to clean the manure off and what you call biosecurity, because you don’t want to get stuff in the milk, they get an udder massage. And it’s literally like one of those things you’ve seen maybe on when you’ve been on vacation or you’re getting those salt baths and they close the lid on it like a coffin, and this thing pounds your back with this water.

It’s very pleasurable for them to get an udder massage. So guess what? They release more milk. Then there’s the sound of a mother cow calling her baby. And that sound works throughout a cow’s life to cause them to relax. So guess what? They’re going to give more milk. Then there’s pheromones in the air, bovine appeasing pheromone is in the air. The same pheromones a mother cow secretes works on that cow throughout its life. Then it gets to where its stanchion is and there’s sweet feed there drops down and music starts. And there’s about 40 tracks of music that are proven to relax cows and cause them to give more milk. And they keep testing to figure out which one the cow likes the best. So often in a milk barn, you’ll have 20 cows being milked at a time, either in a circular, what’s called a herringbone, where they’re kind of slanted like this, or else they’re on a carousel.

Every cow can be listening to a different track of music. We jokingly call it Mootown instead of Motown. But so between the backscratching, the massages, the pheromones, the vocalization, the music, these cows give 10% more milk. So it’s for sustainability, there’s fewer rates of mastitis. The calves are born with a higher birth weight. So Stacy, you’re a lot younger than me, but the target audience is not us. The target audience is millennials and Gen Z. California Prop 12 legislated a better treatment of animals. Millennials and Gen Z would love to consume products from animals that had a life worth living. So my prediction is we’ve already had conversations with major grocers with the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, National Dairy Council, National Pork Council. It’s better for sustainability, it’s better for the animals, it’s better for the producer, it’s better for everybody. So there hasn’t been a new food category since organic in the early ’70s, which just as an FYI started with the Oregon legislatures where organic started. And I think within a couple of years you’re going to see a new food category based on animals that had a life worth living.

I love that. Wow, that’s incredible. Those cows are leading the life of luxury. Well, Marty, with such a packed schedule between media work, Fear Free, philanthropy, and clinical practice, how do you find balance in your own life, especially on your ranch in Northern Idaho?

Well, I’m probably not the best person at that. I absolutely love to work. Like I’m in a loft of our log home. We live on a horse ranch deep in the mountains in northern Idaho. Like I’m six miles from Canada, 15 miles from Montana, 35 miles from Washington State. Early, when my son was young, I come up these stairs two at a time and he asked me, “Why do you take stairs two at a time?” And I said, “I just love to see what’s going on, get to work.” And just recently for the second time, he said, “I want to find something where I want to take the stairs two at a time.” He’s still not found that yet. So I still love, love, love to work. I mean, absolutely love it. If I go back before I had the one intervention and before Fear Free started, I was taking three months a year off.

So Mikkel, who’s 40 years old, I didn’t see her her first year of life. I was still farming, believe it or not. I had a farm ranching practices out as a veterinarian. And then we opened up multiple locations and then I started lecturing and stuff. And I never saw her, I go to work before she got up. I come home after she was in bed, and I happened to read a book then that I was reading a lot of self-improvement books. And one of the books talked about the fact that around the world, the elderly, tribal elders or elders in a family were sources of wisdom and counsel. And how when the US, we were youth obsessed, we don’t listen to our parents or grandparents, but it said one way you could tap into that knowledge was to ask people that are at or near retirement, “What do you know now that you wish you’d have known when you were my age it would have caused you to live your life differently?”

And every single person said, “I wish I’d have spent more time with my family.” In fact, it was so predictable. I had it written in my day planner, and when somebody told me, I said, “I knew what you were going to say.” So I thought, how can I do this? So I thought I’ll work twice as hard as everybody else for nine months, but I’ll take three months a year off. So it wasn’t three months at a time, but it could be three weeks and then two weeks, and then one week and three days. But I’d always planned my schedule out the year before the days blocked off. So people would just know Dr. Becker’s unavailable, didn’t know where I was, what I was for business or stuff, but I did that clear through the start of Fear Free. So that was about, so say 86 until 2010. So 24 years.

You were intentional. Intentional.

I took three months a year off, but I tell you, I still outworked everybody because in those nine months where I worked, I worked harder, I worked twice as hard as everybody else. I literally did 18 months worth of work in nine months. So people are like, nobody knew I was taking that time off. And then with Fear Free, we bootstrapped it, we spent all the retirement money, I just stopped doing everything else outside that earned income, stopped taking time off, and then spent clear until I had the clearing session or the intervention with my family. So from actually 2011 to 2019, didn’t take any time off hardly.

Wow. Well, I know you’re very dedicated and I like to work too. I just love to work. I don’t understand why some people don’t enjoy it, but maybe they just haven’t found what they’re passionate about. So what is next for you and Fear Free? Are there any exciting new initiatives or developments in the works that our listeners should know about?

Well, we have two products coming out with Procter & Gamble. So if you ever go to the dental side of Procter & Gamble with Colgate, you always see pro-health. We’re going to be kind of working with Procter & Gamble to be what pro-health is to the dental side on a line of products coming out with Procter & Gamble. And then we’re talking to a major retailer about having a line of products called Vetted by Fear Free. And the products will be existing products, but you know how people put veterinary recommended on a product? I mean, everybody puts veterinary recommended. That means nothing. To get an actual veterinary recommendation is extremely difficult. Just ask the Zoetis or Lenco or BI reps and it’s really difficult.

So what we’re going to do differently with this retailer is for the skin and coat, boarded veterinary dermatologists curate that, for dental products, boarded veterinary dentists, boarded orthopedists for ramps, lift supports joint supplements, boarded behaviorists for pheromones and nutraceuticals. So everything will be curated by boarded people. So it truly is vetted. And then a veterinary practice or a shelter could recommend, “Hey, go to this section in this store and these are products you can trust.”

Wow, that’s so interesting. Well, I want to switch now and talk about the veterinary profession and what you’ve seen along the way. I’m curious, what has been the most surprising thing to you during your career up to this point in the veterinary profession?

I think the fact that you never know what you’re going to do. I was at a cat whisper symposium at the Oregon Zoo, and there was a bunch of people came from other states, it was a really crowded room. And I was at the head table with Heidi Schaffer, a boarded anesthesiologist, Tony Buffington, a feline guru called Buff Cats, his nickname, all three of us went to veterinary school to be dairy practitioners, and one’s a boarded anesthesiologist, one’s a boarded nutritionist and feline expert, and I’m whatever I am, and then Chicken Soup came and then TV came, and then a syndicated column came and you just never know. And I think for other people is some people find a great career in social media now. So I do think that the surprising thing is just the fact that we’ve given up too much that we should be doing in general practice, that we’re all referred to specialists now, and that’s part of the problem with access to care. It’s just too expensive.

Well, how have you seen the veterinary profession change over the years?

Well, this is interesting. I don’t think anybody would know this. When I started one, the concept of one-stop shopping for pets. So when I was an undergraduate, I was in a business class and I thought, okay, there’s more 7/11 than any other business in the world. Why are they popular? Convenient hours, convenient locations, convenience at one-stop shopping. So I thought, what if you had a veterinary practice that being convenient hours, convenient locations, convenience, and at one-stop shopping? So I wrote a business plan for it. So remember the first day of school I decided to go to companion animal. So when I got out of school, I went into partnership with a veterinarian and we thought of this idea of all pet complex. So back then you had to be forward in the Yellow Pages. That’s where people found you is Yellow Pages. So all pet complex, but we also treated all animals.

We treated avians and exotics and things, but we had full line pet stores, we had grooming, we had training centers back in, this is in the ’80s, and we located on commuting routes. So Salt Lake City, Boise, Idaho. So they always had belt routes and we’d order someplace to get in and out really easy. And we were open seven to seven, seven days a week. So convenient hours, convenient location, convenience, and one-stop shopping. So when Sam Parker was the CEO of PetSmart, one of the co-founders, he came to me and wanted me to create veterinary hospitals inside of PetSmart to duplicate what we did, but at a bigger scale. I said, “It’s not for me.” I thought it’d cost me my marriage. I’ve seen those things where you get all involved, plus everybody would universally hate me, and at the time I’m doing TV where I’m representing their profession.

So they found Scott Campbell and he did a tremendous job with what was called Vetsmart, then it became Banfield. But that’s probably the biggest thing. I think the change is certainly a change in the people going to veterinary school. I actually think the females are better than us. I think they do a better job, especially when you look at physical and emotional wellbeing. And then just the corporatization of the group practices and the kind of dumbing down of what veterinarians do.

Yeah, no, I didn’t know that history. And that’s so interesting because I worked with Scott’s team and I worked with Vetsmart, PetSmart and then when they became Banfield and helped them hire some of their first 300 veterinarians back in the late nineties and early 2000s. So I didn’t know that history with you. So there’s always, as I talk to different people, there’s like different pieces of puzzles of the industry because it’s such a small industry and different pieces of the puzzle come together with the history. So that’s so interesting. Well, let’s look at the future. What does your crystal ball say about the future of the veterinary profession?

We better figure out access to care or it’s going to really come to… It’s not sustainable for 40% and rising of people not to be able to afford veterinary care. And I’ll tell you what my crystal ball says, I don’t care if you have 80 veterinary schools, you can’t have increase the class size enough, create enough veterinary schools, get people out of retirement, make it easier for foreign veterinaries to come to fill demand because demand will just rise. What we’ve got to do, I think, is figure out smart ways to get the VCPR, for example, mass vaccine clinics where they’re run by local veterinarians, but in mass.

So you get hands on, you get to look past obvious things for ear infections and hot spots and long nails and stuff like that. But once you get the VCPR, now telemedicine becomes powerful. And I think that’s how you’re going to drive down the cost and fix the access to care issue. I got a pug in the background over here somewhere, had diarrhea the last few days, did I need to take him to a veterinarian? No, it’s the same kind of stuff. And if you’re on telemedicine, they might tell you to go pick up this metronidazole and some Cerenia, but you don’t need to go to the veterinarian for it.

And I also think that the thing of every dog comes in and we do all the blood work on it and all the radiographs, just to put it on a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory, there has to be a different option for them. If so, if I’m going to want them to do radiographs and do blood work, it could be a thousand, $1,500 when, you know what? Maybe we just try a Galliprant for a couple of weeks and see how they do. It’s just gotten-

I saw your pug a few times walking back and forth in the background. So adorable. Well, I would like to learn more about, because all successful people have habits that lead to their success. What are a few of your daily habits that you believe have allowed you to achieve success?

Stacy, I should probably wait until the end to say this, but this is the best questions. The extra mile is never crowded. And when these kind of stuff that you come up with and the way you do this, this is like, “Man, it’s just a pleasure to do this kind of stuff.” I think you and I both, we just hope we can help some people. So one of the things is a positive attitude that I come in with a positive attitude. I’d like to say it’s from faith, but my faith is about as deep as a birdbath right now. I’m struggling with that part, but it’s just people follow emotion, whether it’s negative or positive. And the great leaders in history have known that, Jesus Christ knew it, Norman Schwarzkopf knew it, Michael Jordan knew it. We could probably think of some more contemporary ones of that.

But people follow emotion. Two, and you and I spoke about this earlier about you getting a birthday card from me. I try to learn about people and take a personal interest in them and stay connected. And so trying to know their kids’ names and places, and so I connect them on a richer, a richer, deeper level. I’m very organized because I still use a Franklin Covey day planner. It’s right here by me. And I know a lot of people like stuff on their phone and outlook and everything, and I use Outlook and stuff, but I still use the day planner because they take notes. So some people have a little book they write in, well, I just write my day planner because then I can find the stuff because it’s indexed. I think another thing is I put myself behind my wife and my family. Everything is done.

I know a lot of people you want to say, “I love the Lord and I love my wife, and I love my family.” Well, I love my wife the most, and then my family, and I’ve always put her first. Having that kind of loving relationship where there’s I never going to think I’m going to come home, she’s going to be upset or going to be this. She just smiles just walking around the house when nobody’s even here. And then I think really working harder, everybody. I am a hard worker. I’ve flown almost 6 million miles. You don’t get that without, I mean, some people say, “I’ve flown a million miles,” well, try 6 million. And that’s just on Delta. I’ve flown another million miles on other airlines. But loving what you do, absolutely love what I do.

And I can tell, it really shows. Well, everyone’s career has some type of challenge or adversity along the way. What’s been the biggest challenge or adversity that you’ve encountered throughout your career?

Two things instantly come to mind. There must be the birds under the saddle because it instantly popped back up. Number one was when I got out of school, I went into a partnership with a veterinarian and I loved him and we loved each other. And then a spouse got in the way and it broke our partnership up and it ended up being great for me. But at the time was just so hurtful and it was unnecessary, but that happened. So doing through the thing of when you run an organization, like at one time I had 185 employees and almost 20 veterinarians working for me in these different clinics. And it’s hard sometimes when you’re the leader to people to not like… And that’s the same thing with Fear Free. My north star has always been the human-animal bond. Celebrate, protect, and nurture the bond. And always look at how can we help more animals.

And if you think of it that way, let’s take Fear Free. If we have more people become Fear free certified, we’re going to help more animals. If we expand into animals used for food or fiber, we’re going to help more animals.If we have more people take the shelter course, we’re going to help more animals. And then naturally that reads for a healthy business, the single worst thing I think that ever happened where I literally thought I felt like I was going to die was I did a 2020 segment. I was in New York doing something and ABC called and they had a 2020 segment. And what they did is they had an undercover, they had a dog taken to, I think they took it to Animal Medical Center and had people look it over and it was like, “There’s nothing wrong with this dog.” And then they took the dog to area veterinarians to see what they said.

It’s like sting operation, like we’ve seen where they take a car, and they say nothing’s wrong with it, or they move a wire and then the people say it needs a new transmission or something. So the crazy thing was they tried this before and they could never get a veterinarian to say anything wrong. The one veterinarian said, “You ought to have the teeth worked on.” And really when you looked at the dog, it had assistant stuff here, but they’d ask about vaccinations, about vaccinating dogs. And they took what I said, and they manipulated it within the dialogue to make it seem like I thought veterinarians were ripping people off.

So is that classic thing of taking something that fits in one place and you move it around and it has a different meaning. So it was on Friday night on 2020, and I was so proud of what I thought was going to show the veterinary profession is honest and stuff that I promoted it. And then I had moved down to Boston the next day, we were going to go to a Patriots game with my son was living in Boston, daughter’s going to meet us, we’re going to go to Foxborough, to a Patriots game On Sunday, I turned my phone on and I had 600 messages and there was a lot of death threats and a lot of, “I know where you go to work and how you drive to work and we’re going to kill you.”

That’s so sad.

It was really sad. And the other thing you find out at times like that is the people that stand up for you, the people that come up and stand up for you. And then it’s funny, it’s that same thing, this too shall pass.You just think, oh my God, how? I mean, I’m mortally wounded here. I’ve always done everything to fight on behalf of the profession, to speak to the profession, on behalf of the profession. It’s all ruined and two weeks later it’s onto something else. But it’s just a good example of you’re going to have things like that that come up. And I think it’s a biblical quote about this too shall pass, but it does.

Yes. Well that must’ve been extremely hurtful, but like you said that those things pass and people forget about them, but that must’ve been very hurtful at that time. What advice would you give the younger version of yourself?

Easy, and this is for younger and then a little bit older younger, but easier was to be more respectful of people and not tease people. So even some in, well, I don’t even know when I started grade school, I graduated in ’73, you can figure your way back, I guess 12 years, ’61. There’s always kids that got teased and I teased them just along with everybody else. And I think back as you get to be reunions and stuff with the people that you know, it’s not like it has persisted today. It’s worse with online bullying.

But I wish I’d have been more sensitive to some of those people and some I’ve had the chance to apologize to. And others, nobody knows where they are, even in that small little class. And I think as going to college that I’d have been more respectful of women. If I think back in the seventies, there was drinking, drugs, and a lot of promiscuity. And I think back that I really regret that I wasn’t more respectful of women back then and I was in a fraternity and it was just like that kind of culture. I don’t know if it’s changed today, probably not. It was probably the same way. But yeah, I definitely have regrets about that.

What message or principle do you wish you could teach everyone?

I think a global perspective of being in 94 countries, that the people are the same. I didn’t like Russia, I’ll tell you that. I’ve been there twice. That country I did not like. But there’s still things about it I liked, go to the Hermitage or St. Catherine’s Palace or Red Square stuff. But it’s funny that people around the world, people always say we’re the greatest country on earth. Well, have you ever been to any other country? And I can’t think of a single country I’ve been to where people say, “We’re so lucky to have our government. We love our government.” Everybody distrusts their government.

It’s the same kind of feelings we have. But when you meet people, they want to love and be loved, they want to need and be needed. They want to have economic opportunity, they want their kids to have opportunity, they want to be safe. They want to celebrate their family and their traditions. It’s exactly the same. And I’ve been in the poorest parts of India to Monaco, I mean the wealthiest places. And I think now when I see this increased tribalism in America, it’s disturbing, the bullying, the marginalizing of people, the 60 million Americans on Medicare to be laid on the altar of a 1% to make more money. I think it’s a real scary time and people are telling me to block out newsfeeds and not get involved. But then I read the words of Elie Weisel from the Holocaust that if you don’t speak up, they win. And I’m hoping a collective voice rises up and things come back on their axis.

Yeah. Well some of our guests say that they’ve had a key book that they read that really helped them. Do you have a key book in your life that has impacted you the most? I’d love to hear that story.

Oh, 100%, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I was so competitive growing up that that’s why you end up being captain of the football team. I mean, I wanted to score, I wanted to be valedictorian. Very, very, very competitive. And at the time, I thought there was a limited pie and you had to get your share of the pie. And when reading The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, which I’ve reread three or four times, I thought Stephen Covey was looking over my shoulder. How’s he know I think these things? Had the scarcity mentality. And by the way, he ended up being a client of mine, which is funny. He lived in Ogden, Utah. We had practices in Salt Lake and actually got to meet him as a client one time.

Oh, wow.

And he wrote an endorsement for Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover’s Soul. But that book, for sure, those 7 Habits of Highly Effective People are just as valuable today. The other book is Give and Take by Adam Grant, and that’s about helping other people. That’s a much more recent book.

Yeah. I’m going to put that on my list of books to read, Give and take, because I already have Habits, Stephen Covey’s book. Well, Marty, you’ve got the mic. What is one thing that you want to share with our listeners of The People of Animal Health podcast before you drop the mic today?

I would end by ending how I used to end a radio show I used to do for a while. And that is there’s only one greatest pet in the world and every family has him or her. And I’m Dr. Marty Becker, and we’ll see you next time on this podcast.

Well, Marty, thank you for being here today. It was a pleasure to have you on The People of Animal Health Podcast and I loved hearing your stories.

Stacy, thank you. I look at myself in this black, I look like a Double Stuff Oreo here, like the black with the white. I just need another black up on top here, kind of fading out here.

Well, you look great and I love seeing your dogs in the background. They look like they’re having a relaxing day.

They’re quieter than normal. That must be a miracle, I think. Stacy, thank you so much and you have a blessed rest of the day, okay?

Thank you, Marty.