Episode #99 – Rick Dowlearn

Behind the Camera
Rick Dowlearn discusses his fascinating career telling stories about animals and the people who care for them. He shares lessons from producing popular Veterinary television programs; building trust with animal care professionals; leading creative teams; connecting audiences with meaningful animal stories; and launching his newest project, The Animal Show with Gozer & Rick.

Transcript

Stacy Pursell:
Do you work in the animal health industry or veterinary profession? Have you ever wondered how successful people got their start and what led them to where they are today? Hi everyone. I’m Stacy Pursell, founder and CEO of The Vet Recruiter, the leading executive search and recruiting firm specializing in the animal health industry and veterinary profession. I was the first recruiter in the United States to focus exclusively on this space, building the first search firm dedicated to this unique niche. Over the past 28 plus years, I’ve developed relationships with many of the industry’s top leaders and trailblazers. The People of Animal Health Podcast features the incredible individuals I’ve had the privilege to connect with throughout my career. In each episode, you’ll hear their stories, their career journeys, leadership lessons, and the impact they’ve made on the industry. With a wide range of expert guests, you’ll gain insights, inspiration, and ideas you can apply to your own career.
Thanks for tuning in and enjoy the episode. Hello everyone, and welcome to the People of Animal Health Podcast. Today’s guest is Rick Dowlearn, an executive producer, showrunner, writer, and director whose career has taken him behind the scenes of some of television’s most memorable stories about animals and the people who dedicate their lives to caring for them. Rick served as showrunner for the first two seasons of Magic of Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and his credits include Dr. Oakley, Yukon Vet, Dr. K’s Exotic Animal ER, Pop Goes The Vet, and Critter Fixers: Country Vets. Through those experiences, Rick has a unique vantage point into veterinary medicine, animal care, conservation, leadership, and the remarkable bond between people and animals. Now he is bringing that experience to a new project, The Animal Show with Gozer and Rick, a video podcast he hosts alongside his French bulldog Gozer, highlighting fascinating people, businesses, and organizations in the animal world. Rick, welcome to the People of Animal Health podcast, and how are you today?

Rick Dowlearn:
Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for having me. I’m so great. This is a fun thing that I’m doing and I get to talk to you about how much I love animals and my show and everything, and it’s so great to meet you.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, let’s dive into this and I like to start at the beginning. Where did you grow up and what was your life like growing up?

Rick Dowlearn:
I was born in Dallas, Texas. I grew up just outside of Dallas in Plano, Texas, maybe just a few miles from South Fork Ranch.

Stacy Pursell:
I know exactly where Plano is.

Rick Dowlearn:
Yes. I grew up there in the ’70s, ’80s into the ’90s. Life was on the edge of suburbia growing up. We were the last house in the area of the housing development. So we were very close to the creeks and prairies and the various things and forests that I would go run around and dig holes and try to catch snakes and crawdads and all those things that boys, I guess, did when they were kids in the ’80s.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, before your career became so closely connected with animals, what did you think that you were going to do professionally? And then how did you first get into television and storytelling?

Rick Dowlearn:
I started out as a child actor. So I’ve been in the television film industry almost my entire life. I have no other marketable skills. I started doing commercials and print ad modeling and theater when I was 11 years old. And by the time I was 12, I had done my first feature film, which is having its 40th anniversary this year, True Stories. It was filmed in Dallas, directed by David Byrne. I played an actual speaking role in that film, Larry Culver, and that put me on track to be in some type of entertainment industry job for the rest of my life. I went to college in Dallas at Southern Methodist University for theater. And then after that, I moved to Los Angeles where I got my master’s degree in fiction. I knew I wanted to be a writer or creator. I long discovered by that point that I wasn’t a very good actor, or at least maybe I was cute when I was little and just not as good when I got older.
But I got much more interested in storytelling and really to just get a job. My first job out of USC was writing pitches for documentary TV shows for a very well respected director, Chuck Braverman. And I was his director of development and I just learned how to pitch an idea. And along with that, learned how to actually make the films too, because it was a very early digital filmmaking time, 25, 26 years ago, and you could just go out there and make a movie. And it feels like the way it feels today where there’s a lot of opportunity out there, but it’s big and it’s tough to get your arms around it. But if you know how to tell good stories, I think that you’re in good shape. I’m sorry.

Stacy Pursell:
No, go ahead.

Rick Dowlearn:
So after a few years of doing just many different kind of follow verite documentaries, I eventually made my way across the country and became based in the Washington, DC area where National Geographic is based. And around 2014, I began producing animal related reality content for a new network that had just come on called Nat Geo Wild. And it was a channel that was just dedicated to just giving the people all of the compelling animal content that they could handle. And I began that stretch of TV programming with a show called Bandit Patrol. And we followed a number of wildlife rehabilitators who lived in Kentucky and just learned about their day-to-day commitment to saving all of the animals and animals that I had no idea that people cared about or even knew about. And I was completely immersed in this culture of these folks who were spending their own money or raising funds to take care of squirrels that had been hit by cars or raccoons that had been caught in swimming pools or just anything, hawks that were caught in… Animals are caught in a lot of things it seems like in my stories.
But it was just real people authentically engaging with their world and trying to make it a better place. And that was the way I entered into the world of animal television and I just followed my nose through it. I was led into this wonderful world of amazing veterinarians, people who are just absolute medical geniuses that have to manage not just one species. I mean, these are doctors and technicians and people who have to understand so many different types of animals and different types of metabolisms that I felt like I’d walked into just this realm of passionate, empathetic geniuses. And I just was like, I can make some TV out of this. And it was probably about 10 years of just making great shows. I got to go all sorts of places and meet all sorts of people and most importantly, all sorts of animals, I guess.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, Rick, you’ve spent a tremendous amount of time around veterinarians while producing shows such as Dr. Oakley, Yukon Vet, Dr. K’s Exotic Animal ER, Pop Goes the Vet, and Critter Fixers: Country Vets. What have you learned about veterinarians that you don’t think the general public fully understands or appreciates?

Rick Dowlearn:
I would say how smart they are. They are so much… I mean, it’s what they have to have quickly on hand as a holistic understanding of life on this planet and how it all works with parasite loads and just everything that you don’t even think about. And yet at the same time, they’re probably the most important thing that they have to do is handle the human who has brought the animal into the office and understand that kind of personal interaction and deal with that kind of mental and psychological stress that that customer is under. And everyone thinks no one knows my dog like I do. You just don’t understand. So these professionals who don’t make a whole lot of money and come out of school so deep in debt and have such a passion and love for what they do and that I didn’t realize how behind the eight-ball every veterinarian is when they get out of school and how much they owe and how little they’re making and what they have to put themselves through to prove themselves just at the very beginning of their career.
There is no doubt that if you are visiting your veterinarian, you are talking to someone who is intensely passionate about what they do, what they’ve had to go through before they’re even talking to you on this Wednesday morning when you brought your dog in, it would blow your mind. It would exhaust you. I can tell you that much. The work ethic is just incredible. Yeah, they’re my heroes. I love veterinarians.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, you’ve had an unusual opportunity to observe veterinarians at work, not as a client and not as another veterinarian, but as a storyteller, watching them interact with animals, clients, colleagues and their communities. What has surprised you the most about the veterinary profession?

Rick Dowlearn:
Not to be a total bummer, but the amount of stress that these professionals are under, and I think that we do need to really pay attention to the mental health of our treasured veterinarians and techs and everyone who supports the whole practice. I was surprised at the availability. I mean, as a customer in the pre-vet TV time, I was annoyed a lot of times about availability and like, “Well, you really can’t get the vet you want.” And once I stepped into say a clinic like Critter Fixer where they’re seeing maybe a hundred patients a day and maybe… I mean, across the spectrum of the most mundane and most dramatic things that are happening, just how busy and how dedicated and yet how much they can multitask or how much they have to multitask is probably one of the… Yeah, that’s what stood out the most. Also, how loud it is, just how loud it is in a non-exotic practice.
When you’re around a lot of dogs coming out of anesthesia all the time, it’s a cacophony. And there’s a way that they sit with life and death at the same time happening around them all the time that is so zen and it’s awe-inspiring and also can make you sad. It makes you very thoughtful and it makes you appreciate your animals and everything that we all do to keep these little critters alive and happy and engaged with us. Veterinarians are in charge of a lot of our happiness and we need to cut them some slack, I guess is what I’ve learned over 10 years. There’s a lot more, but they’re just the most engaged, empathetic humans who are put in some of the most pressured situations.

Stacy Pursell:
Veterinary medicine can involve complicated science, emotional situations, and very difficult medical decisions. As a storyteller, how do you make those situations understandable and compelling to a general audience without oversimplifying the medicine or losing the authenticity of what’s happening?

Rick Dowlearn:
Authenticity was always the goal, and that’s the wonderful thing about being able to work with National Geographic where we are working with fact-checkers, research. We have doctors in the moment really making sure that, they have to get it right for the patient, but then we’re also charged with getting the story right. And what’s easy about my job is I can just follow the emotion and I can gauge how much information needs to actually be conveyed in order to have the impact that you need. Sometimes you say less. Sometimes the more that you explain, you take away from the drama of the moment.
And that’s where you have to rely on just amazing doctors where you can be working with Michelle Oakley and she can have her arm all the way inside an animal and be consulting reference books and working out migs per kg on the tundra. It’s just this amazing multitasking kind of thing. And you just need to be there and not get in the way and kindly remind your doctor to eat a candy bar or remain focused and taking care of themselves so they can perform obviously for the cameras and do their job, which is the most important thing.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, and the viewers on television see the finished episode, but they don’t see everything that happens behind the camera. Is there a story or a moment from one of these programs that profoundly changed the way you think about animals, veterinary medicine, or the people who care for animals?

Rick Dowlearn:
Yes. I may have mentioned this story before, but this is the first season of Magic of Disney’s Animal Kingdom. I think it was the second day of production. We began filming a hoof trim on a giraffe. We began production on, I would say it was late August. We had placed cameras and tripods in that giraffe’s enclosure six weeks previously, and this is July. So this is the first week of September. We begin our endeavor to trim Kenya’s toenails. At Disney at a lot of forward-thinking facilities, the animals participate in their own healthcare. And so the idea is that we’re going to get Kenya to offer her feet up to be trimmed.
That started in September. It was the third week of March when we finally filmed Kenya placing her own hoof onto the block in order for Dr. Dan to come in and start beginning to trimming his toes. And that is just the patience that is involved. All to say, patience is what is required in filmmaking and in parenting and probably in podcasting and just existing right now, just knowing that you can’t make it happen until it’s going to happen and all you can do is make the best conditions and have at least a good time doing it. But that was a toe trim that was months in the making and it became a running joke as we would show up and we’d try to get Kenya to approach and months and months and she’d get close, we’d get a little bit, but no success until that day when we were almost finishing filming Principal Photography right before the pandemic, that was actually when that happened, that we had our success.
And it became an iconic story for that whole series that, especially at Disney World, at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, if we need to go out on the safari and film a story, we may only get 10 minutes and we may need 30 minutes of total time of getting that to make the whole story, but you’re just going to get it 10 minutes at a time because that’s the way it’s going to happen because that’s when the animal’s going to show up and that’s when the guests aren’t in the picture and you’re able to get your shot and your storytelling better reflect what you can get. You work with what you know you have. You can’t go to every audience member and explain to them that this story would be so much better, man, if we could have only been out on the Savannah for an extra 15 minutes each time. So you write the story that you have, and I think that’s what we all do, and that’s what’s so great about animals is they’re going to let you know whether you’re doing it right or not.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, you served as showrunner for the first two seasons of Magic of Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and that seems like an extraordinary environment in which to tell these stories. What was that experience like for you?

Rick Dowlearn:
That was a career defining project. It’s so dear to my heart. It was such a mountain to climb, but it was with such a great team. I was no real Disney fan or not fan. I didn’t truly appreciate Disney until I became just immersed in it and found that culture to be something that just swept me up, and we all achieved such incredible things in animal storytelling, things that we would all say, “No, we can’t do this.” And then we would get together and like, “Oh my gosh, if we have the patience and we have the storytelling ability, I think we can come up with the parts.”
It was such a privilege to be able to do that with so many great professionals and in front of 50,000 guests that were there at the park every day. And we became part of the park a little bit, is what I like to think, is that we became a little bit a part of the Disney animal story, which to me is so great that they take it upon themselves to almost give back to the animals that they’ve spiritually taken and given us to us in characters over the years, that when it comes down to taking care of actual real animals, those guys rock. What they do to be so overly overly mindful of their charges is incredible.

Stacy Pursell:
Rick, you were balancing animal care, veterinary medicine, conservation, science, entertainment, and one of the world’s most recognizable brands. What were some of the challenges of making all of those pieces work together while keeping the stories authentic?

Rick Dowlearn:
I think it was the number one thing. The challenge was getting everyone to make the moment this small. You’re not seeing me, but the challenge was to make the moment everything that you could fit in front of you. Something like Disney is so huge. And to add onto it that the pandemic came about at the very end of our production. So it was just a logistical undertaking that. And I don’t even know if I’m even following your question anymore, but could you-

Stacy Pursell:
Well, that’s okay. That’s okay. I’ll go to the next question. Was there a particular animal or story from Magic of Disney’s Animal Kingdom that you still think about today?

Rick Dowlearn:
Yeah. I mean, I think about Gino the gorilla a lot. He was such a dude. And his legacy and just how important these flagship animals are to these organizations. I mean, it was almost as if that animal knew how important he was, and he took it with a sense of humor. He got me. The first time I was warned, he’s like, “He’s going to try to scare you, and if he scares you the first time, he’s going to try to scare you every single time you come into this enclosure and into the back area where he was kept.” I mean, I was ready for it, but he’s enormous and he’s this gorilla, and it was a gorilla that knew me. The fact that there was a gorilla that lived at Disney World, that on some level, understood my place, at least in his world, that I was a guy who he was going to get a rise out of anytime I walked through.
And that connection there, I mean, he’s since very recently passed on, and I love the gorilla team so much at Animal Kingdom. I mean, all of them, and they moved from house to house and different places, but just I feel honored to have hung out with Gino. And then after that, I would see probably. There’s a flamingo named Sandy who I, God, I think she’s a flamingo, yes, who I would have to go back and look, but there’s a couple of key stories that I’ve told that I still think about a lot. It’s the best park. I’d never been to the park until I was charged with making a documentary series for it. I think that’s probably the way it needed to happen, because I came in with not as a fanboy or anything like that, and I just tried to approach it straightforward as a professional, but got sucked in emotionally immediately.

Stacy Pursell:
Hey, everyone. We are interrupting the episode briefly to talk to you about today’s sponsor. This episode is brought to you by The Vet Recruiter. The Vet Recruiter is the go-to executive search and recruitment firm in the animal health industry and veterinary profession dedicated to connecting exceptional employers with high caliber candidates. With a deep understanding of the animal health industry and veterinary profession and a vast pool of talented candidates, we make the hiring process seamless and efficient for the animal health and veterinary employers who have critical hiring needs. If you are an employer in search of top talent or you work in the animal health industry or are a veterinarian ready to take the next step in your career, look no further than the Vet Recruiter. The Vet Recruiter has placed many of the industry’s top leaders, from CEOs to COOs, to chief veterinary officers, to VPs of marketing and sales and heads of R&D and chief scientific officers.
We have built sales forces for many leading animal health companies and have placed more veterinarians in clinical practice than any other search firm in the US. Ready to take the next step? Visit thevetrecruiter.com today. That’s thevetrecruiter.com. And now let’s get back into the episode. Rick, you’ve said in the past that your experiences have made you fascinated by what makes certain people animal people. You’ve now spent years around veterinarians, keepers, conservationists, trainers, and other animal care professionals. What do you think animal people have in common?

Rick Dowlearn:
I was just in the dollar store this morning making a quick purchase to complete my kids’ lunch, and a guy came in with a tortoise in his hand. The fact that there were three people inside the store that immediately knew what this guy needed to do with the tortoise, and then I didn’t feel the need to step in, but they were able to tell him, “You need to go back out there and put that tortoise down or carry him farther in the direction that he was going.” I feel like we are surrounded by people who are empathetic and can communicate with more than just humans, and I will say probably can communicate with animals better than humans, but they’re the animal people. I was told about them before I started my first show that I would be encountering some animal people in my rehabilitators that I was following in Kentucky, and they are.
They’re a different type of person. I think that they’re the people who take the time to understand the natural world or maybe are drawn to it for any number of neurological reasons or who knows, maybe it’s magic, but there are people who are open to bigger ideas of what consciousness is and what it means to coexist in this world. I got so lucky to be able to get paid to do almost like an ethnological study for a decade or more into what makes those people tick and what’s so important about the animals that they work with. I’m convinced that these are the people who are going to save us.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, you have worked so closely with veterinarians. Did working so closely with veterinarians change the way that you communicate with or lead people?

Rick Dowlearn:
Yes. As a storyteller, my job is to tell the stories animal first, at least for National Geographic, that was our mission is animals first and the animal POV. So we wanted to tell the story from the animal’s perspective, but of course the challenge is that animals don’t talk. So you have to follow a conversation between a veterinarian and an owner, but you have to tell the story as though the animal is listening, which means that you’re not necessarily following the people all the time and it takes a great deal of trust in your sound guy, but also in a lot of other things that you just have to know that the conditions are right, the story is being told, and you may get the right shot, you may not, because your cameraman may be sitting on that moment where he wants the dog’s ears to twitch or do something.
You’re not just filming a conversation between two people. And so if you’re a good director, you’re following the animal and you just have to make sure that you’ve taken good notes and you have a clear understanding of what’s going on in the story so you can direct it in the moment to get the beats that you know you’re going to need to get when it comes down to tell it. And I don’t know if I’m giving you too much inside baseball storytelling, but it’s a matter of trusting all the elements and that how you’re seeing the story unfold in front of you is not going to be how you’re going to tell it a month from now when you’re cutting it together because so many things are in play. It was such a tricky thing to make seem easy.

Stacy Pursell:
How did you earn the trust of the veterinarians and the animals?

Rick Dowlearn:
I read up on things. I mean, you have to be able to talk on some sort of, I’m not going to say a clinical level, but having a very solid AP biology background from high school and then a continued curiosity that I was able to develop in other shows that I did earlier in my career, like MythBusters, even in Moonshiners, where you deal with basic science that you need to communicate to the masses. And so you gain a genius’s trust, like say you’re talking to the veterinarian who’s the genius in the situation, you gain their trust by at least making the attempt to show them a good example of putting a tough concept into a simple phrase. And once you do that and you start that parlance, that’s when I felt like I connected best with my doctors. It was when I could show them that I would stumble to try to get to their level to then explain it. Just here’s what I do. I’m your science communicator. Please trust in me to communicate for you.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, you are now taking your storytelling experience in a more personal direction with the animal show with Gozer and Rick. Tell us about Gozer first. Who is he and how did he become your co-host?

Rick Dowlearn:
Gozer is my sweetheart French bulldog. He’s five years old and he’s looking at me right now and doing a little can we play bow? And I will be playing a little bit of fetch with him in a second after we get off this call. But he is my Frenchie. He is our Frenchie, my boys and I. He’s the most empathetic dog I have ever met. I’ve had dogs all my life. I’ve interacted with him on many levels. This dog is smart. He came into our lives when a family had to be shipped overseas for a military obligation and had just gotten a new puppy. And I was called because supposedly I know what to do with fussy dogs. And I can tell you a French Bulldog is a very fussy dog that has a lot of needs. But the person who sent the dog, my sweet Gozer, trusted me that I would take care of him and I think that I have.
He was by my side during a major health event I had a couple of years ago. I had a major heart attack and I’ve been public about my recovery and my walking my dog through my neighborhood and chit-chatting with him during my recovery became the basis for my exploration of my next step in my life and my career. And I found that I was just chit-chatting with this guy and people would come up and talk to me more when I would have Gozer with me. And he’s named Gozer after Ghostbusters, the Sigourney Weaver character right when she turns into the Gozer, the key master. And he’s a brindled black French bulldog and he has a bit of that Gozer look to him. Yes, he keeps pricking his ears up because I keep saying-

Stacy Pursell:
Well, where did the idea of the animal show with Gozer and Rick come from?

Rick Dowlearn:
I’m looking to make that next step in storytelling. The media landscape’s different now. There aren’t as many of the kinds of shows that I used to make being made and the funding for how entertainment is being made and consumed is just different. And I’m going with what I know and what I love and what I feel like I can introduce a business model where I can help people who are running nonprofits or have a small business and are doing those small things or actually no, doing huge things on a very small level. I know how much money is out there from these big advertisers and I’m going to be out there just saying, “Hey, look, I want to go to big guys to get money so I can help these little guys because no matter how we develop economically, we still can only take care of our pets locally.”
We can’t ship our dogs off to Amazon to go get treatment. You’re still going to need a local community no matter what that is here to take care of your animals. Why not get into it? Why not love the people and support the people who are part of this? Because this is why we do it. And so what I want to do is I want to go to the larger stores and brands of this world and say, “Look, I’m going to promote this one lady who bakes her own dog treats in her kitchen. I hope you’re okay with that, but can you still please sponsor me? You’ll still make what you can make and you will get these stories and you will get this entertainment and you will get these animal people following the brands that they feel are supporting them.”
Because I think it’s time that we start supporting these people who are giving so selflessly, the people who open a thrift shop so cats can get adopted. There’s another thrift store that donates to wildlife rehabilitation that’s in my town here in Frederick, Maryland. And so I’m trying to be local here beginning in the DC area and finding those stories where people are interested and maybe would want to sponsor some storytelling or directly sponsor the people that I’m featuring. But yeah, I’d like to make this my job. I don’t know if it can be my only job, but these are the stories that I’ve found that really engage me the most. I love talking to you about this.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, what do you hope somebody feels or perhaps thinks differently about after watching an episode at the animal show with Gozer and Rick?

Rick Dowlearn:
I want people to be more empathetic and I think animals are the key to that happening. I think that we can watch inspiring stories and see lots of cute animal faces and learn about how we fit into this world as just one species among thousands. It’s a key to maybe the getting along and I want to put some positivity out there into the digital sphere and I feel like this is storytelling I know how to do and I should do what I know how to do. And that’s engage people and get them to talk about their animals because I also feel like it’s an easy job because people like to talk about their animals.
So even when they’re in the most sort of stressful moment, interviewing them at a veterinary clinic when maybe they don’t know what the fate of their animal could possibly be, if you then also at the same time ask them, “Well, what’s a funny little thing that he does that makes you laugh?” They’ll still do it because that spirit of what these animals give us, we carry it with us. And so I want this podcast to be a little bit of that feeling that if you’re not, maybe if you’re going to work and you’re watching this on the train or in your car or listening to it in your car, you come away with a little bit of something and it puts a smile on your face. I want a little bit of that on a regular basis.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, you’re putting more attention on people and organizations making an impact within their own communities. Why are those local stories important to you?

Rick Dowlearn:
I mean, these local stories, they’re the people that I run into. Maybe I’m just like a Mr. Rogers neighborhood kind of guy, but I mean, I live in a relatively small town in Frederick County, Maryland. But this is the life that, I don’t know, I think that a lot of animal owners and animal appreciators, dog owners especially who get out into their community and go to farmer’s markets and get engaged in things. These are the people. My pitch to advertisers are, if animal people are your audience, let’s talk because those are the people I know how to talk to and that’s the people I want to talk to.
And these are people who are buying dog food and who are making differences and we’re serving on civic boards or I don’t know, running for office. We’re all animal lovers. It goes across, maybe we’re not all, but loving animals goes across demographics, goes across professions. It hits everybody. And I feel like I can talk to the widest number of people possible by finding common ground by talking about animals and what I know about them and what I want to learn more about them. And that’s the relationship that I think will just keep giving and will give me infinite stories.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, what kinds of people, businesses, organizations and stories do you hope to introduce to your audience through the show?

Rick Dowlearn:
I hope to let people know how many rehabilitators and rescuers live amongst them in their own neighborhood. I hope it piques a curiosity for those people who do start businesses with almost an animal spirit at its core. I mean, my coffee shop has a mascot dog and from that mascot dog, there’s adoption events. There’s various things that just come about from people talking about how much they love their animals. Then next thing you know, you’re maybe taking your kid to see a show playing at a cat cafe that then has a fundraiser for another social cause or some other sort of interest that they’re into.
Pets are almost a gateway drug to society or to other groups. They’re the envoys that we take with us through the world. And I think that a lot of adventurous people are those people who take their dogs out with them, whether people are totally jazzed with it or not. Animal people are very independent and know what they want and know what they need for their self-care. And I feel like they should be spoken to directly and with respect. And yeah, that’s the fun show that I want to make.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, Rick, after years of producing stories from major television networks and global audiences, what appealed to you about creating a show of your own?

Rick Dowlearn:
I was very lucky that I worked on the shows that I had such a tremendous amount of freedom to find the story. And that comes with just doing it for a while and relaxing and knowing that it’ll come at some point when you’re working with real subjects. I completely forgot your… I’m so sorry.

Stacy Pursell:
The question was about producing a story of your own versus you’ve been with major television networks and then what appealed to create your own show?

Rick Dowlearn:
What I was saying is I was fortunate enough in the last few years of my career that I had the ability to figure it out and people trusted me enough that this is more of an extension of what I was doing than necessarily finding a new kind of thing that I have to get good at and listen to somebody else tell me what to do. But this really is, this gets me back to just engaging with people and making it about their animal story and not maybe all the other things. And then I’m going to build out from there that I need to get back to that.

Stacy Pursell:
You’ve spent years around the veterinary profession without actually being a veterinarian. From that outside, but very close perspective, what do you think the veterinary profession does exceptionally well?

Rick Dowlearn:
The veterinary profession does a very good job, I think as of late, connecting to the right economic model for the client, which I didn’t think was happening. And maybe this is just my own experience or where I live, but I do feel like we all understand that there is a metric of who you’re going to get per client and how many clients you get in per day and then something’s got to give and grow one number. I feel like, again, it’s the empathy. I feel like this profession teaches us to deal with disappointment and the fact that life isn’t fair in such a brutal way because you can convince yourselves even in a lot of human medicine situations and you can explain it away and you can hope and you can discuss.
But a lot of times when there is that kind of communication that you can’t quite get through with an animal and it is black or white, veterinarians I think teach us how to learn from failure. And I’m not meaning that in any way saying that vets are more prone to failure than anybody else, but they just have to pick up and move on in a way that’s like soldier like, that’s like first responder like. And that’s why they all get passes from me. If I’ve ever crossed a vet, please know that I wish you no ill. They just keep going and it’s a resiliency that I feel like I picked up in my career watching those people. I’m really crystallizing for me right now that’s what I learned from all those guys.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, on the other side of that question, is there anything you think the veterinary profession could do a better job of communicating to the public?

Rick Dowlearn:
I would like to help the community find a better way to… Better way. Yeah, better way to discuss the mental health issues that are in the profession. And it’s not like there’s anything bad about how it’s being discussed now, but I think that we really need to check on our vets guys. And I think that we need to find that same, and maybe it’s my fault, but we need to find that way to communicate that message. It’s distilling that hard to understand message that I was charged with doing to learn about the animals. I think someone needs to be a veterinarian first sort of storytelling POV campaign that we need to maybe get going.
I think if people spent some time in the profession or around it even for a day, they would know. I mean, I know that Hodges and Ferguson with Critter Fixer, I know they do a vet for a day program that’s very cool. I love how they get that education out there. They are the gold standard. And Dr. Will Draper and Dr. Julia, the people who get the messages out there who aren’t afraid to just hop on to Instagram or to Mark and Kelly or whatever and to rah, rah, rah for the veterinarians. I mean, these guys are my heroes.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, Rick, you’ve watched veterinarians interact with pet owners during some very emotional moments. What have those experiences taught you about the human animal bond?

Rick Dowlearn:
The human animal bond is as strong as any human to human bond. It is emotional, it is deep, it is unexplainable. It is nonverbal. That’s cats, that’s dogs, that’s guinea pigs, bearded dragons. They’re the key to us being better humans. And I would say you get a better dog, better “dog” by being a good human and a good owner. And I think that animals bring out the best in us and they challenge us to be patient, to be empathetic and to be observant and to be good stewards of our environment. They teach us all of these things all the time and they’re cuddly and squishy and all the things at the same time.

Stacy Pursell:
Rick, if you could sit down with the younger Rick Dowlearn at the very beginning of his career, what advice would you give him?

Rick Dowlearn:
I will say, once again, I heard Dr. Ferguson’s answer to this and I wish I could steal his, which was that he wouldn’t change the thing. I would say I would… It’s not that I would change a thing. I would tell myself to relax and to trust the story because I became a better storyteller when I started working on these animal stories because I took what I thought was a hindrance in that these animals can’t talk. I can’t feed them a line. I can’t suggest them something to say later on. I can’t plant those seeds, but instead I had to find out how to tell the story. And yeah, I would tell myself just to relax, that it’s going to be okay and you are going to have so much fun.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, what message or principle do you wish you could teach everyone listening to our podcast today?

Rick Dowlearn:
My mission is empathy with this podcast. It’s that let’s talk about animals. Let’s find some common ground to talk about and to geek out on and to have a little moment where maybe we’re not at odds so much. That’s what I want this to be about. And so that’s what I want to carry on to other people.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, Rick, some of my guests said they’ve had a particular book that changed their mindset or influenced the way they approach their career or their life. Is there a particular book that’s had an impact on you? If so, I’d love to hear that story.

Rick Dowlearn:
Oh my gosh. I revisited the Chronicles of Dow, which was a book that I read in the ’90s. It’s about health, discipline, the natural world and how we interact with it. And I wanted to look at it again to see if it meant the same to me as a 50 something year old man that it did when I was in my 20s or late teens. I think it connects to the last question that you asked and that Dr. Ferguson even answered with wanting to do less. I think we’re all on a journey that we wish in certain times we’re a different path, but it’s all in accepting the story that we’re in right now and making the most of it and making most of the resources that we have. I guess that’s what I’m taking from it right now.

Stacy Pursell:
And then Rick, you’ve got the mic. What is one thing that you want to leave our listeners at the People of Animal Health podcast before you drop the mic today?

Rick Dowlearn:
Please think of the people who are taking care of the animals that you know and love and maybe even the animals that you don’t even know about and love that are around you. This world is alive and we are in the middle of all of it and there’s a really special group of people operating amongst us who feel called to take care of those beings. I’m just here to help everyone appreciate what they’re doing and maybe give them a hand.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, Rick, thank you for being here and chatting with me today on the People of Animal Health Podcast. And if somebody wants to watch your show, how can they find you?

Rick Dowlearn:
The handle is @gozerandrick, it’s all spelled out, G-O-Z-E-R-A-N-D-R-I-C-K, and that’s on YouTube and it is also on Instagram @gozerandrick. And then for those people who are interested in the local goings-on of the Frederick, Maryland area, I am going to also be broadcast through their Everything Frederick Live podcast network in order to reach those people who serve our local community. Because like I said, the animal thing is very local and I hope that a lot of people start copying what I do and start highlighting the animal people that live amongst them where they are.

Stacy Pursell:
Well, Rick, thank you again for being my guest today on the People of Animal Health Podcast. I enjoyed our conversation.

Rick Dowlearn:
I enjoyed this so much. It was so nice to meet you, Stacy. Thank you.