Intro 00:00
Stay tuned for this engaging conversation with Carrie Hyde, producer of a new play called Dog Eat Dog. Stay tuned to find out what it's all about and why you should care.
Dr. Judy Morgan
As a pet industry veteran with over 40 years of experience, Carrie Hyde is a certified pet nutritionist and a former veterinary technician with a passion for animal welfare. Leveraging her communication skills as a national debate champion and BA holder. Oh, this is bad! I've got a national debate champion debating me today. We're we're in trouble. She now produces Dog Eat Dog, a play that tackles critical issues facing pet communities. Her mission is to combine her animal expertise with the power of persuasive storytelling to inspire real change for pets everywhere. You're in for a treat when you hear what is behind this play, what made it come about, and some of the stories that are talked about. It's pretty heart wrenching. So hopefully we can keep this a little bit upbeat and lighthearted. Carrie, welcome to the show.
Carrie Hyde 01:07
Hi, Dr. Morgan. I'm so excited to be here. I hope I can contain myself.
Dr. Judy Morgan 01:11
So I have seen little snippets. I saw a snippet from Las Vegas where I guess that was sort of a trial run of the play, and it it it is continuing to evolve, and we get audience reaction, and then go, "Ooh, maybe we need to change that a little bit. So, what? Why? Just tell us how this came about. I mean, it's it's sort of there's a lot of things that that we talk about on our channel about the pet industry, the veterinary industry, a lot of the things that are wrong with it, how it has changed over the years, and people react in different ways to it, and we know that things like corporate takeover of the veterinary world, big pet food, big pharma influence over the veterinary world-it's not really a good thing. And it in the past 41 years, I have seen huge changes in big pharma, big pet food corporations, veterinary medicine, the practice of veterinary medicine, the the teaching given to the veterinary students, the slant that is put on that education, and we've seen the changes that it has from a lot of different perspectives, from a monetary perspective, and we'll talk about that some more. The the you know the price tag that goes along with taking a pet to the veterinarian, or even feeding a pet and wanting to feed the best, the price tag has changed dramatically over time, and some things have changed for the better as far as technology, procedures, level of care that is available for our pets, in some ways has has changed a lot for the better because we have a lot more diagnostic tools and treatment capabilities, but unfortunately, sometimes that is also a negative.
Carrie Hyde 03:34
Right? Absolutely.
Dr. Judy Morgan 03:37
So, give us a little bit about your background and what made you start this whole thing.
Carrie Hyde 03:41
Okay, so I've also been in industry 41, maybe even 42 years, and I started out working in a grooming shop, and then just kind of worked my way up through. And like you, I've seen the change, and I think that's part of the problem with some of the younger generation. They they just know what they know now. They don't know how amazing the veterinary field used to be, and how unbelievably. I mean, you could walk into a veterinary clinic with your sick animal on any given day that just got hit by a car, maybe, and the vet would just take them. Now, if you walk in, they're like, "We're not an emergency clinic. You got to go down the street. Like it's become such a business mindset, and I guess you know, in in my kind of little girl idealistic way, I want that back so bad. Like I just want that back so bad. And so I started doing these pet expos, which you spoke at before, and I thought that was going to be my way to try to get this information. But very quickly, I realized that the the amount of problems that are within the pet industry are so vast. And how do you get that across in in a very short, concise? You know, we're living in a world where we want everything quick and easy.
Dr. Judy Morgan 04:56
And if it's not a 62nd reel on social media, I'm not paying any attention at all.
Carrie Hyde 05:00
Right? We all are. We are all victim of that, or we're all doing that, where we want to flash through our stuff. So, back when I was in college, I was on what is called the forensics team, which is a combination of forensics. Just means debate, actually. If you if you if you define it that way, it can mean just debate. So I was on the debate team, but we had a way of teaching people through argumentation. So my degree's in argumentation, and we taught people really heavy arguments through theater. And so we used just different kinds of ways to do that. We would do it through song. We would do it through dance. We would do it through any different way. And so we would take pieces of literature and we would teach. And so I went back to my roots. I actually contacted my old speech and debate coach. Her name's Lisel Rinehart. She's one of the writers of the play, and I said, "Listen, I I I don't want to leave this world without leaving an amazing impact where people really can sit and see why this matters, and why if we don't make these changes at some point, it can continue to get as bad as it's getting, and so she got on board. She hooked me up with Marco Benesi, who's one of the writers and he's one of the directors, and he has now become so passionate about this. Just from he had no idea this existed, and so he started helping me do research. And I met him in Palm Springs, California, about two years ago, and we sat down, and I just poured my my passion at him, and he got equally passionate, and we wrote this play, and it's it it's a way for people to see the problems in a very concise 45 minute passionate you're going to cry, you're going to laugh kind of thing, and now it's turned into a 501c. It's a it's a charity event, so we're trying to raise money to keep this going and get. But ultimately, what we really hope for this is to change some laws. So, and we talk a lot about some of the laws that are hindering our pets' health, and and so we talk about that, and we're going to push forward and try to get some of these laws, all the way down to the rabies vaccine, to the pets are property laws, are all in the place. So that's it
Dr. Judy Morgan 07:08
okay. So our goal is to change laws, and obviously it's impacting people. So when you have how many times has this been done in person now? Five in different cities.
Carrie Hyde 07:20
Yes.
Dr. Judy Morgan 07:21
Okay. And what has been the impact on the audiences that have seen it?
Carrie Hyde 07:26
So they've they've been in front of different audiences. So the very first time we took it out, I took it to the this big event. It was all industry people. So it was veterinarians. It was done. Jae and Adrienne from the Two Crazy Cat Ladies were so helpful in helping me, kind of put it out there for the very first time, and which was really scary. They let me do it up on a stage. They're so great. I called them and they said, "Yeah, sure. I mean, they had no idea what I was doing, like none. They didn't even have any. We didn't even have the script fully written yet, and so we put it out there. But that was all in front of industry, and so we industry as in pet industry. So veterinarians, people, pet groomers, like everybody that was at Jae and Adrienne's party. So there was probably about 100 and something people there.
Dr. Judy Morgan 08:12
Okay,
Carrie Hyde 08:12
that one was was written. I come from. I love to teach through laughter and through tears. So I've always said, if you really want to to persuade somebody to do something, it's important to bring out those emotions because they're the two hardest, and they're very different emotions, right? So if you make someone laugh and you make someone cry, you can pretty much make them do anything. So if I can make you laugh and I can make it cry, can I get you to understand that we need to change these laws? And that was the goal. Well, I missed that goal a little bit because what I did was made people cry a lot. I tend to be really good at getting people to cry, especially when it comes with animals. It wasn't my intention, but so we got a lot of. And now we're talking about people who are spent their careers working with animals, so it was pretty easy to make them cry. And so we got a lot of that, but we got really good feedback. Like, where is this going to be again? How are we going to see this again? What's going on? So the feedback was what I needed. Like, is what do I need to change? And it absolutely met my goal for that. So we went back to the writing table, and we decided we needed to add a little bit more humor and kind of lighten it up a little bit. And then we took it out a second time, and that was in front of just pet parents.
Carrie Hyde 09:24
just pet parents. We didn't really. I mean, if vets showed up, but I really needed to get an audience filled with some pet parents. We've done a couple of readings that way, and the response from them is always the same. It's always the same. Are you kidding me? Every single time we go, which is why I wanted to name this show that is every single time a pet parent sees this, they are in shock that veterinarians are committing suicide. They're in shock that pets are considered property in the eyes of the law, so that if something does go wrong, they can't do. Anything about it? Really, there's very little recourse for them. When I talk about, you know, the we talk about big pharma, right? And we know that the testing that they're doing on these animals for these drugs they're putting out there are minimal, and so we we address that. And the reason why it's important to change that law, pets being property, is because guess what? If there's no recourse for the drug companies to put a drug out that they've only studied for 12 weeks, and then ends up killing their dog? You're not going to have any recourse on it because your pet is just property. So that's why, in the big picture, I say the play is really about changing some laws. The rabies vaccine law, of course, is on my radar. Pets are property is on my radar because I think it encompasses everything. Dog food manufacturing companies. We know there's been tons of lawsuits. They don't have to pay much. Nothing really happens, right? Right. Nothing happens because your pet is considered property. But on a smaller but also larger scale, we really just want to speak to pet parents so they know. So they know what questions to ask. So they know. Oh, I didn't know that if I didn't ask this question, it could end up hurting me. And so the play speaks to the pet parent, so they have some power within them to do something when they're standing in the vet. But also, we're looking for any lawyers, litigators. Right now, we're in the early stages of this play, so we are looking for people to come on board and help us make these changes,
Dr. Judy Morgan 11:20
which would be amazing.
Carrie Hyde 11:22
Yeah, so we're hoping.
Dr. Judy Morgan 11:24
You know, I I think it's a it's a big road. For instance, human vaccine companies have carte blanche.
Carrie Hyde 11:35
Yeah,
Dr. Judy Morgan 11:35
there's no recourse against a vaccine company if your child is damaged from a vaccine, or you are damaged from a vaccine. So if we can't even get that changed, hanging to have some recourse against these companies with these pet drugs, it's going to be very difficult. And I mean, I know when we did Project Jake, and we we were fortunate enough, after a lot of badgering, to have a conversation with people at FDA about the isoxazoline drugs, And we presented our data from our survey, and we said, "Look, 65% of the people that use these drugs reported some sort of a side effect. Not all of them were life threatening. Not all of them resulted in seizures, but there were side effects in the majority of animals given these drugs, and the response. And we had hundreds of 1000s of complaints that have been registered in Europe and America, and FDA's response was, "That's not enough."
Carrie Hyde 12:45
It's always going to be, "It's not enough.
Dr. Judy Morgan 12:47
It's not enough. Yeah. So this is this is a big a big nut to crack because it's it's been that way for so long that it it getting anything changed legally, especially when it comes to the animals, because they really do look at it and say it's. And frankly, I've read reports on this on the human side too. When we look at some of the the chemicals that are killing people that are that are used as pesticides, herbicides, whatever, and they know that they're carcinogenic or whatever. And I mean, if we go back and look at the tobacco industry, knowing which was interesting because my father, when I was going into seventh grade, got a job as national sales manager for a large tobacco company in Virginia, so he uprooted the family. We moved from New Jersey to Virginia to be right in the middle of the outside of Richmond, to be right in the middle of the tobacco industry, and he was going to be national sales manager. And this was in the early '70s, right when they really were starting to get all that evidence that cigarettes were killing people. Yeah, that it was seriously damaging to your health. And I mean, I remember cigarette ads. So as a very small child in the in the 60s, where they would literally prescribe smoking to pregnant women to help calm their nerves, which is like the craziest thing in the world because if anything, it makes you jittery,
Carrie Hyde 14:23
right?
Dr. Judy Morgan 14:23
But they literally were prescribed, recommending cigarette smoking to pregnant women to calm their their nerves and make them, you know, deal with this better. So anyway, my father signed on to be national sales manager right at a time when all this was coming to a head, and so he went to all those meetings and he got all that inside information. And God bless his morals and ethics because we only stayed a year and he quit. He said, "I see what is happening. I and he was a heavy smoker, and he said, "I can be responsible for killing myself. I cannot be responsible for selling this and pushing it to kill 1000s of people, and the cigarette companies knew, but they were like, "Ah, it's it'll cost us less, right, to settle these few lawsuits.
Carrie Hyde 15:16
Yeah, that's how they do it,
Dr. Judy Morgan 15:17
and that and that is how they do it. I mean, and we have a friend who is a lawyer. He's left that career, but he said he sat inside a lot of the boardrooms at these big pharmaceutical companies, and they literally would have conversations. And this is what they wanted their lawyers and their actuaries, actuarial people to figure out: is how much if this many people die, and we have to settle for this much per person. How much is that going to cost versus what are the profits of if we sell this many doses of whatever? So this is what's going on in the corporate towers. Of well, we'll just figure out how much how much money we'll make versus what it'll cost us to settle these lawsuits, and they hope that most people won't figure out the connection, so that you know there there will be 1/10 as many lawsuits as what there should be. Right. So this is big to to try to try
Carrie Hyde 16:15
to try to take on
Dr. Judy Morgan 16:17
Try to get these big pharmaceutical companies. To I mean, and I tell people all the time, and folks, if you haven't figured this out yet, if your veterinarian says there's this brand new drug that just came out, it is the best. It's there's no side effects. It's going to give your pet renewed life, renewed vitality. The first question you want to ask is how many animals was that tested on? How long did they test it? Do we know how it interacts with other drugs, with vaccines, with anything else that might be going on? What if my pet has comorbidities like kidney disease, heart disease? Because guess who the guinea pig and the trial patient is for that drug? It is your pet because we don't know the side effects of these drugs until they get tested on hundreds of 1000s or millions of animals. So they might have tested it on 20 beagles in a colony. That's a lot different than 2 million dogs that are different breeds, ages, sizes have kidney disease, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, whatever else going on at the same time. So you know, you want a veterinarian who says, "Yeah, this new thing just came out. Well, I'll I'll get back to you in five years. I'm going to see what it does over the next five years. Then we can make a decision about whether this might be a good drug.
Carrie Hyde 17:39
Absolutely,
Dr. judy Morgan 17:40
because it's so hard to get them withdrawn.
Carrie Hyde 17:42
Yeah, so very hard to get them off of it. Yeah, my business, which is the spa back in Tustin, we now have veterinary medicine there. And when I hired the veterinarian and the vet tech, because they usually go after the vet tech, like the drug companies will come in and they go for the vet tech first and try to get her on board with whatever you know newest greatest drug. So when we were hiring vet techs, I said, "Listen, first and foremost, I don't even want to know about the drug until it's been on the market for 10 years, and then we can talk. And she said to me, "Oh, the vet hospital I'm working at right now. We just had a bunch of two dogs. I shouldn't say a bunch. We had two dogs just die. Have you heard of this drug called? I probably shouldn't say it. Have you heard of this drug called drug called Labrella? And we had to pull it off the market. And I said that's exactly why.
Dr. Judy Morgan 18:32
Yeah. Well, pull it off the market at that that clinic
Carrie Hyde 18:35
that clinic. She's like, we had to pull.
Dr. Judy Morgan 18:37
It's a long way from being pulled off the market.
Carrie Hyde 18:38
You're right. She said we had to pull it because they had two dogs die, but it hadn't been on the market. It is a huge, you know. I should maybe call it more of a dream to change laws and get things done. But what I do know is, if you don't start, nothing happens. So if you start with this big dream and you get this, this is still good. If I still can get pet parents to to think about what they're doing and to know that your groomers and your your even vet techs sometimes aren't licensed right. Now I'm not a I was an unlicensed vet tech for years, so I'm not against that. But sometimes, like in the dental world, I always say you really want to have if if the as a vet tech, I was the person who did all the dental cleaning, and I worked for a very small veterinary hospital. We had very few people there, and we would put them under, and then the vet would walk out, and I would be responsible for machines and anesthesia and breathing and monitors and all of that kind of stuff while I was cleaning. And so there, you know, there are some things where you need to know to ask these questions, and so the play, the play was a way to both help the pet parents see and see how big of a problem it is. Because if I just tell you it's a little problem, because I don't really want you to know all how bad it is, then maybe your eyes and ears aren't going to be open. But if I can show you how bad this industry is, your pet is considered property. So there is. No recourse for you. Are you going to be more willing to ask those questions? How long's that drug been on the market? How many dogs have been tested on it? Are you going to ask those questions if you know that if something does go wrong, there's nothing you can do about it? I hope so.
Dr. judy Morgan
Exactly. It's all about education. Stay tuned. We got to take a break. We'll be right back.
PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT #1 20:22
Dog Eat Dog: A Carrie Tale is a one-woman show, part stand-up, part eulogy, part industry expose. The show weaves Carrie's chaotic, funny, and heartbreaking personal history, together with a look at how corporate greed has taken over pet food, veterinary care, and the lives of people who dedicate themselves to animals. It is ultimately a love story about the wreckage we come from, the pets who save us, and the radical act of refusing to be quiet. This show will be included in the agenda at the Naturally Healthy Pets Reunion Experience, April 23 to the 25th, 2027, in Dallas, Texas. Podcast listeners can get 15% off tickets using code PODCAST90 at nhpreunionexperience.eventbrite.com. Learn from expert speakers such as Dr. Judy Morgan, Dr. Peter Dobias, Drs Marsden, Dr. Kendra Pope, Dr. PJ Broadfoot, Dr. Peter McCullough, and enjoy shopping the natural vendor market for both pets and people and more at the Naturally Healthy Pets Reunion Experience. You can use code PODCAST90 for 15% off tickets today.
Dr. Judy Morgan 21:32
Welcome back to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. My guest today, Carrie Hyde, has put together a play called Dog Eat Dog. Now you touched on something right before we went to break about groomers and sometimes vet techs not being licensed, and so we want to talk about that because that is, I think, a huge problem. So I know people who have listening to me for a long time, know this story, but one of my equine chiropractic clients, she was in school to be a school teacher in college, and she decided to get a part-time job at the local vet clinic as a receptionist just to make some extra money to help pay for college. She was on the front desk for two weeks, and they came to her and said, "Would you like to be our head technician? Now, yeah, your eyeballs just went crazy. The head technician, not just a technician, but the head technician, because they didn't have anybody. And let's just say that the quality of medicine that was being practiced was not gold star. And she was smart enough to say, excuse me, why would I even be a technician? I have zero training. I know not. She was an animal person. She had dogs and cats and horses, but that doesn't mean that she can draw blood or put in a catheter or monitor anesthesia or even know what to monitor or how to monitor or work the equipment, how to run the lab tests. So you know she was smart enough to say you're crazy, and not only am I not going to be your head technician, I think I don't even want to be a receptionist and be associated with this sort of medicine. Yeah, I love her too. She's now a horse trainer and very successful. So the teaching thing, she's teaching people how to ride instead. So very smart person, but there are a lot of veterinary clinics. Unfortunately, that now my clinic, we were the opposite. If I all my technicians had to be graduates of a college program, whether it was a two or four year, and they had to pass the national boards in order to be called a technician in my hospital and do the duties of a technician. Now, with that said, because they had that level of training, my technicians had a lot of responsibility. They were given a lot of responsibility with me, and they took it very seriously, and they were very good at it. And frankly, they some of my head technician was getting paid almost as much as a new grad veterinarian would be paid, but she was worth her weight in gold. But groomers now, and we go this with dog trainers too. There is no national exam, state exam, licensing board for these professions.
Dr. Judy Morgan 24:27
It is a profession. So how do how do you know if you're getting a a good groomer, a bad groomer? Like how can you hold them responsible? Like because you know you you own a grooming facility. Yeah, and now you own a vet clinic, which I think that's really interesting. In the state of New Jersey, which is where I practiced, you have to be a veterinarian to own a vet clinic, and that is not so in a lot of states.
Carrie Hyde 24:53
Yeah, well, there's if I'm correct, someone can Google this. I'm sure they will. 15. States in the United States allow for a non-veterinarian to own. California happens to be one of them. Colorado is one too, which is kind of interesting since California loves our rules.
Dr. Judy Morgan 25:09
I yeah, it is. I I thought when you first said you were doing that, I was like, really, she can do that? That is weird to me.
Carrie Hyde 25:14
Yeah, I can I can do it. I'm thankful that I can do it. I also do think that you know there's a lot of veterinarians who are amazing veterinarians and really bad business people, and so
Dr. Judy Morgan 25:27
Most them are bad. Yeah, okay, okay.
Carrie Hyde 25:30
I go as far as to say bad business, but it's it's it's a different brain that you're using, and so I really do wish that the United States would open that up for that because I think what happens is vets end up working for big corporations, because that's all that's available to them, possibly, and they could work in more small clinics. But I think that's another problem in the industry is that it's being stifled and controlled, and so we can't have someone like me, who's passionate about animals, open up a vet clinic and hire an amazing vet, right? But there's the other sides of it too. You could get somebody opening a vet clinic who just is all about money and forces the veterinarian to do something that she shouldn't be doing with her license to
Dr. Judy Morgan 26:07
corporate medicine.
Carrie Hyde 26:08
I know, so it's you know it's a it's a it's it's hard it's a it's a difficult thing. But yeah, I'm lucky to have it. Groomers right now, there is no license in any of the states as far as I last I checked. There's no licensing at all. Now, some groomers will argue that if you make groomers get licensed, then it's going to make the cost of grooming go up. And maybe that's true. I don't. I don't expect the license is going to be that expensive. That that's going to mean all these dogs have to now be charged a whole bunch more. Will it solve the problems? Probably not. I mean, child daycares are licensed, and children are getting abused in in care. What it does do, though, would do is that at least the person that went and got licensed had some serious. They would probably learn something that they weren't learning in the regular stuff. But your question was, how do you know if you have a good groomer or not, or how do you know if you have a good boarding facility? It is difficult. I have been working with the animal shelter back at home, asking them to do something where you force kennels and groomers to have cameras, which isn't even at all. It's not required either, so they don't even have to have a camera up, so that if something did happen to your animal, you could say, "I want to see your cameras and see my dog. So that is one thing I tell people. I would never bring my animal somewhere. It doesn't mean that they have to have the live cameras that are playing all the time. Sometimes that can get a little tricky in different states because the staff doesn't want to be completely on live camera all the time. And I can understand that. We actually had a girl working for us one time that had gotten out of a really bad situation and just couldn't have any social media or anything, so she didn't want to. But they should be able to provide you some camera footage. So that's the first question I always say. Both your veterinarian hospitals, I think all of them. Why not nowadays? Cameras are everywhere. Where I not have cameras. So that's the first question I.
Dr. Judy Morgan 27:57
That's interesting. That you know, I there are some, and it it kind of became the vogue for a little while, and then it I think it left, and it'll never come back after COVID because now the veterinarians don't want to do anything in front of the clients. Every everybody is all about whisking your animal to the back. Yeah. So here in North Carolina, the ophthalmology group-it's corporate owned-and they have a bunch of different locations. And so, when we took our new adoptee to have his eyeballs checked because he had glaucoma and cataracts, and he was blind, and we wanted to see if a cataract removal would give him some vision, so you know, we found the the eye associate group and drove an hour to get there, and we were not allowed in the building. Now this was in 2022 or 23, so way past COVID,
Carrie Hyde 28:56
way past.
Dr. Judy Morgan 28:56
And I said, wait a minute, what do you mean I'm not allowed in the building? Oh, we don't let any clients come in the building. There is a technician in the parking lot coming to take my dog, and I said, "Do I get to meet the doctor? Oh, he'll call you on the phone. Okay, great. So they take my dog in, and they do the exam and everything. Call me. The guy calls me on the phone, tells me what he thinks. You know, we can do surgery. Blah blah blah. So we've been there probably six or seven times. I have yet to meet the doctor. I've yet to step foot inside the building, and I said to the technician, "You do realize COVID is over? That ended a long time ago. And as and and I'm a veterinarian, by the way. So how about a little bit of collegiality for a colleague, or not? And she said, "Oh, no, we don't let anybody in the building. And I said, "Why not? She goes, "Well, it's corporate rule. And I said, "Well, it's kind of dumb, you know. Like, do you you do realize who pays the bills? Like, I'm paying you $5,000 for the surgery on my dog. That pays your salary, his salary, the rent." Like to clients that you don't want to deal with, and I said, "Why are why are we not allowed in the building? Oh, it's just easier for us if we don't have to deal with people. I'm like, "Deal with people, you know. And so I've I've yelled at the doctor on the phone. It gets me nowhere. My dog still goes in without me, and I think as clients, we should boycott those practices.
Carrie Hyde 30:23
I agree,
Dr. Judy Morgan 30:24
and I think if you go and actually the practice that I take my animals to now, they take them in the back all the time. They take them away from me every time.
Carrie Hyde 30:31
Yeah,
Dr. Judy Morgan 30:31
I do happen to trust them. and I've been in the back. I've been in the back filming. They've let me film things. My dogs get dentals. We had one of them get a vasectomy, they let me come in the back and film, so I I trust them. but I'm still not a big fan, of you taking my animal away from me. And again, I think clients need to stand up. Now, when I was in practice, we had some clients who were needle phobic, blood phobic, right? And they would say, "Please don't do that in front of me. Okay, that is fine. I'll be happy to take your animal and treat them, you know, with kid gloves and treat them like my own. And I think again, my clients had a lot of trust for me and for my staff, so we didn't get complaints. But if I ever had a client who said, "Listen, I want to be here when you do this, and with that said, if you know if your animal is having a cystocentesis, they're sticking a needle in the bladder to get urine, and you're a little squeamish, you might want to tell somebody because the last thing we want to do is have to pick you up off the floor. And I'm the kind of person, if you faint, I'm going down right behind you. Like I don't do human medicine at all. If you puke, I'm puking. If you faint, I'm fainting. That's just the way it is. So I I will give you that caveat. But I I am really against this. Take him in the back. Taking I would never send my child or my grandchild off with a stranger and say, "Here, go poke them with whatever you want.
Dr. Judy Morgan 32:08
I had a friend who lives overseas, and she wanted to take her dog to another country. And in order to do that, that the dog had to get a deworming before going to the new country. This is that's a rule in a lot of countries. A lot of them require flea or tick treatment or deworming before going to a new country, and so they took her dog to the back. And when they brought it back, and she looked at the receipt, the dog had been given Bravecto. Now this is somebody who's very holistic, does not use any chemicals on her dog, and she figured I figured they were just going to give the dog something, you know, like some liquid Perantel or some you know Senbenzole or something. Nope, got Bravecto, and she kind of flipped out, but it was after the fact. So what are you going to do?
Carrie Hyde 32:51
There's nothing you can do?
Dr. Judy Morgan 32:52
And this is one of the reasons why you don't just let them go to the back. So let's talk more about the play. Give us a couple of examples of different things that you tackle and some of the stories that go along with them.
Carrie Hyde 33:11
So, the all of the stories in the play are true stories. So they weren't, you know, fabricated by us. Most of those stories were my experiences. So one of the stories in there that we talk about is a court case between a mobile groomer and a pet parent whose cat had fleas, and so she called the mobile groomer in. And when I before I say this story, I just I'm like I'm not against mobile grooming, but I have very big concerns about mobile grooming because I know there's some great mobile groomers. So I'm certainly not going to say all mobile groomers. So before you guys send me hate mail, if if you're not this bad mobile groomer, then I'm not talking to you. But there's this push in the industry to do a lot of mobile grooming, and so you get these guys with a lot of money who know nothing about grooming, and so they just buy the bunch of vans, and then they find some girl on the street who has zero experience, and they give her a van, a clipper, pair of scissors, moving object, your dog or cat in this case, and they send them out there, and they pay them $20 an hour on average, and with no experience, no license to get, no training. So she had one of these type places show up at her house. Her cat was infested in fleas. They took they took the cat, and within about an I think about 20 minutes, she said she heard the cat just screeching, and so she ran out to the van and could couldn't get. She said she was banging on the van door. I was a expert witness in the court case, so I got it was really privy to a lot of information. I got to see the pictures of this cat. They wanted me to look at all the pictures and tell the the lawyer that contacted me. She said. What do you think this is? So I looked at the pictures immediately. Knew it was a chemical burn. What kind of chemical? I can't tell you. I wasn't in the van, but it was a chemical burn for sure. And it went from the top of the head, right between the eyes, down along the face. And so the testimony from the client was that, I mean, from the pet parent was that she opened the door. The cat was seizing, foaming, bleeding from the eyes. They rushed her cat to the vet. The cat passed away, so she started a court case. The veterinarian that saw the cat said it was a chemical burn as well. So I said the only thing they wanted to know what chemical in a mobile van used to groom dogs and cats could do this, and I said, "Well, I mean, maybe bleach if they had some bleach up there, but I thought more likely that it was flea and tick medication, like an advantage because the cat was infested. And I don't know if you get people who are listening have cats, but cats generally, when they get fleas, they get around their eyes, up around their head. This mobile van guy testified that he was in a hurry that day, but he didn't use any chemicals on the cat. But and so ultimately,
Dr. Judy Morgan 36:06
He didn't use any chemicals on the cat. It just spontaneously ulcerated and burned and combusted. Okay, pretty much sure.
Carrie Hyde 36:14
So what was so great about that case was that just a week prior, she had the cat into the veterinarian to get some blood work done, and so they had a whole history on this cat just a week prior that the cat was healthy. They argued in court that she didn't have pictures that day; that burn could have happened, you know, anytime. And so, ultimately, the argument that the group mobile grooming van took was that the cat was property and that he didn't own her owe her anything and that he would replace her cat and he could buy her another cat. She found the cat; it was a stray cat, so there really wasn't any no market value, no market value at all. And he in court continued to say, "I'll give you another cat if you want, which I couldn't believe this guy could say this, and he did, and she lost the case, and so she didn't. There was nothing, and so we wrote that story in there. It's a very powerful moment in the story where the two are arguing, and it's just shocking because the name of that scene is called "You Know My Pet's Not a Toaster, and because that's how they treat her, like in court, is just well his property, and it was really awful because the judge, you could see even within the judge that she didn't want to give the answer to this case. Like she didn't want to say, "I can't help you. I can't give you anything. So she, but the eyes of law, there wasn't anything she could do. Even the judge knew this is ridiculous. Like this is obvious that this happened in in your care, and there wasn't anything that anybody could do. So we wrote that these stories were so important because, to your point, if you're not there or there's not a cameras to show you what's going on, what do you what are you going to do? What you have to be able to either be there with your pet, which also becomes a problem. I know, as a groomer, sometimes if the pet parent is sitting there, the dog's wiggling, and I've got sharp scissors, and we're trying to trim something or take blood, and so it's this really catch 22. So the only solution I can come up with it is possibly a camera because I don't want to injure an animal who's trying to get in their pet's their parents' arms, right? When you're trying to take blood, but at least I can tell the pet parent. You know, I can't have you back here because he's not going to sit still. We could try, we could try, and if it doesn't work, but if anything, you have any questions, I can show you the camera. That's the only other recourse I think we have is to have those cameras up and demand them, and don't go into a place that's not willing to do it
Dr. Judy Morgan 38:38
Yeah, I wish that we could. And I started to say this earlier, and I got sidetracked. I wish we could get back to for for a while. There, they were building veterinary clinics where everything was glass walls, so you could see everything that's going on. The same with groomers. Yeah, like I would love to take my pet to a groomer, where if I chose to hang out, which actually the groomer we were using in New Jersey, her waiting room had a glass wall. So if I chose to sit there for three hours while everybody was getting done, I literally could have seen everything that was being done the entire time, and I think that sort of transparency would be so amazing. And there are some animals that are much better behaved when they're not with mama. we see this with some kids too. You know, they're they're much better behaved when they can't put on a show.
Dr. Judy Morgan 39:37
We had some animals that we we couldn't pick them up, we could, but the owner could hand them to us, and once the owner handed them over, Then they were absolutely fine to me backwards, but but do not, yeah, do not get anywhere near them when they're protecting Mama.
Dr. Judy Morgan 39:55
and so you have to know your animal, and I mean some of the. Like you know, a police dog, man. You better believe I want that handler there every single minute. I want that person being in charge of that dog. Those Schutzen trained dogs. Yeah, I want that handler there. Like I'm not touching that dog unless that handler has you know eye contact and they've got that dog under control. So you know, I think sometimes we shoot ourselves in the foot by saying we'll be right back. We're taking them to the back. We'll just go do what we need to do. And you know, there's so much that goes into that. If your animal is being taken away from you, you better be very, very explicit about this is what I want done and nothing else. Do not decide to be the nice guy and throw in whatever while he's back there, just because oh I just looked at the record and he's due for it.
Carrie Hyde 40:49
They throw in a lot of stuff: nail trims, anal gland expression, ear clean, yeah, all of them. They just throw them in.
Dr. Judy Morgan 40:54
Yeah, no, just be very, very specific. We need to take a break. We'll be back to this enchanting conversation in just a minute. Stay tuned.
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PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT #3
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Dr. Judy Morgan 42:56
Welcome back to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. Carrie Hyde and I have been discussing her new play "Dog Eat Dog, and there's there's a lot in this play. And actually, we're going to have more conversations about how this play gets traveled around the country and how people get to see it. Are you worried about first of all, it would have. It's going to have to get big enough that the corporate world, big pharma, big pet food, big vet med, corporate would have to see it. So that's the first thing they would have to see it. Are you worried about them coming after you, or coming back at you, or having some sort of backlash
Carrie Hyde 43:47
Sure who wouldn't be? I have a business with 28 employees. I'm always worried about somebody coming after me. What I would hope is that even though Dog Eat Dog means big corporation, big guy taking over the little guy. That's really what that means. It's an idiom. However, I would hope that the big corporations would see that also within the play we talk about the benefits of big corporate. You touched on that a little bit when we talk about you know a small little mom and pop vet hospital might not have an MRI machine, right? So there are some benefits to it. I would hope that the corporations could see that we can work in this world together, and there are some benefits to it. People are starting to lean towards holistic medication, and they want to know some of it. So, if the big corporations don't want to learn it, then people are going to keep keep going away from them. So, we do touch a lot on there about how we can work together and how we can communicate. I shared a story off camera earlier about my cat Batman, who's also in the play. He's famous now. Just saying, my cat's famous. Batman. We shared that story about what we went through with him and trying to understand how we. I had to take him to a big corporation, but. I knew how to communicate with them and how to work my way through those, but I needed to get him on a Sunday, and the small place in my town wasn't open. And so, and this was before I owned a vet clinic, before somebody calls me out on that. We're going back years. So I think that yes, I'm concerned, but also hope that they can also see this as a benefit to everyone who owns a pet, and I know even the people who are corporate owners own pets. So I just don't think that it's something that is you know we're not out to to talk bad about veterinarians. We're not out to say all VCAs are the worst thing ever. We're not out to do that. We're out there to bridge the gap between the communication between the pet parent and the veterinarian. And I know people need to make money, but there's we there's a line that we've crossed, I think, and we need to come back.
Dr. Judy Morgan 45:45
So, do you think that pet owners are inadvertently somehow contributing to the problems in the veterinary industry?
Carrie Hyde 46:00
I think that one of, I mean, there there are so many problems in the pet industry, and one of them is convenience. I think that the more we want convenience, the more the pet industry is going to give it to you. So if you, of course, why wouldn't they? They can get you in and out fast. You're in a hurry. You gotta go. You gotta go. Like you're, you know, you're kind of doing this, and then they're gonna give you seven vaccines instead of one, and have you come back to get the other one if that's what you want to do, or they're gonna give you this drug instead of running the. Like if we look at deworming, for example, I personally will never deworm a dog without a deworming test. Like I'm not just gonna deworm you because that's how the industry's always done it, and then I think there's some natural things that you can give for deworming, but nobody wants to do that because it takes too much time, and that is driven by the pet parents. So yes, I absolutely think that in a lot of ways this is a pet parent problem. You have to stop one inconvenience from an industry that's so willing to give it to you, and until you can say, speak up, and say, you know what, maybe I just don't want this one year shot for fleas, right? Like you, if you are going to ask for convenience, the pet industry is going to give it to you, and it's going to kill your pets. That's what I know. So yeah, I think that they're they have both the power on both sides, right? We have the power to change it if we just sit back and understand what that means and what you you can't have you don't get your cake and eat it too you don't get your your kibble and eat it too whatever you want to call it you don't get both you can't have health and convenience I'm sorry it doesn't work that way
Dr. Judy Morgan 47:36
you know talking about the big corporate influence on veterinary students, so I had a really interesting conversation with a fairly new grad from vet school. She graduated about six years ago, and she is now looking to lean more toward the holistic side after working in traditional medicine for the past five years. And she told me something that absolutely floored me, and it should not have surprised me at all. But are you familiar with? I'm sure you are. Cole Harrington's movie Pet Fooled. Yes. So Pet Fooled is a documentary. If you haven't seen it, please go online, rent it if you have to. It might be free at this point. It's available on multiple platforms. It's called Pet Fooled, but he basically went inside the pet food industry, showed the ingredients that go into highly processed food, talked about the rendering operation, all the things that I've been talking about for the past 15 years about how FDA just overlooks all the poisonous, toxic things that are going into pet food and how it's made, and so this is a documentary that exposes all of that. And when you once you watch that, you will never look at pet food the same again. Well, in veterinary school, they actually show that movie to the veterinary students, and then explain to them how they should rebut everything that is in that movie. Everything in there is false. Now I don't know how you film the rendering process and say nothing to see here. Close your eyes. No, that's not real, though. That's that's all good stuff, right? You know, especially when we, when the the head of the biggest rendering company in the country stood at an AAFCO meeting and said it is virtually impossible to have a rendered product without euthanasia solution in it, and the FDA knows the euthanasia solution is in there and says, oh, it's not an again, it's not enough to cause a problem.
Dr. Judy Morgan 49:43
So this is what the students are. So you know, you as the client, you're standing there having this conversation with your young veterinarian and saying, "No, I don't want to feed a rendered product, a highly processed product, to my pet. And they have been taught why that is so good, and you're looking at them like they have six heads, and they're looking at you like you have six heads. This is why. So it's it. You can't blame the young veterinarian who has been fed the line of oh no these drugs have been highly tested. They're fine. No side effects. Okay, the occasional animal might have this side effect. Don't worry about it. It's one in a million. Yeah, it's not one in a million. It's it's a lot for a lot of these drugs. Yeah, but FDA at this point chooses to look the other way, it would be it's a pipe dream, but it would be lovely to disconnect the influence of big pharma on regulatory agencies. Good luck! I don't see it happening in my lifetime. It's probably going to get worse. So yes, could big corporations, you know, and I'm sure that when you're in the play, they probably don't mention any names. They probably don't mention any specific drugs, which you know we leave that up to me to open my big mouth and you know name names and have people come after me. I've been doing it for so long now that I just kind of go, yeah, yeah.
Carrie Hyde 51:18
It'd be my dream to get to to that confidence, seriously, like I-that's why we all look to you because you, you do it, you you take it on.
Dr. Judy Morgan 51:27
Well, and it's probably probably crazy, but you know, it's matter of fact. I was talking to another veterinary colleague the other day who's been out of school a little longer than me, and she said, "I'm 70 years old. What are they going to do? Take my license away, like that would be a good reason to finally say I'm retired now. So, and I don't even have a license here in North Carolina. So have fun with that. So you know, but it we have we have to educate people. and I think this is this is a fun, albeit you say everybody walks out crying, but it's a fun way to learn. Yeah, because they are true stories. How many stories are within? You said it's about 45 minutes. How many stories are there within that 45 minute period?
Carrie Hyde 52:16
They intertwine and come and go, and it's kind of interesting how we put it through there. What's also interesting is that the stories can be changed. So if let's say somebody wanted the play out, so the other part of this play, as a business owner that that was struggling to educate my clients, like I really had a hard time getting them. I only sell raw diets in my, you know, why don't you have kibble? And so I also wrote it for business owners so that it could speak to their clients. So let's say you're a business owner and you're like, you know what, I want to have I want to have this play come out and be done here. We can put in like we have probably 20 stories, but we can change those depending on what someone is interested in hearing. Like maybe you don't want to have now. My brother committed suicide, and at one of our this was a few years ago, and at one of our events that we did, a woman came up to me because we were we're still asking for feedback on this play. We're trying to build a Hamilton, so to speak, and it's going to take time to get to that. So we're getting feedback, and I had a woman come up to me and say, "I really don't like the suicide scene. I really just I can't do it. So I said, "Have you had somebody that's committed suicide in your family? Now this was interesting because she said no, and so I said, "Well, my brother at the time, my brother had committed suicide like a year and a half before that, and I said, "I have, and I think that sometimes you really need to talk about these things. I don't want this play to be against veterinarians. I want it to support veterinarians, good veterinarians who are trying to. To your point, this is what they learned. They're not no vet. I will say zero vets have gone into vet school because they don't like animals. Right, zero. So they all, we all boys, girls. When you grow up, and you're like, I just want to help animals, and you have this vision of vet school. And I always say this to some vets: go back to that person, and just get back to there, and stop all the the clutter and all the this study says this, and this study says that. And we talk about that, right? There's studies on both sides.
Carrie Hyde 54:20
We could go on this all day long. Well, I've got a study for this. We do. We have a scene where it's you know the the the corporate talking about their studies, and then the advocates' studies, and then the dogs' studies. And he's like, it's just good, right? Like, and so we do this whole funny scene about how hard it is to pick the foods that you want. You go to the food aisle, and you're like, this one says this, and this one says this, and it's just it's it's actually an opera that we wrote, and so they sing through it, and it's like the opera of trying to pick your dog's food and your cat's food and how hard it can be, but um, but yeah, it's a it's just difficult to get through all of the mess and get down to it. So, but
Dr Judy Morgan 54:58
do you ever see this? Being filmed, kind of like Pet Fooled, and being available for people to just download and watch, since not everybody can get somewhere where it'll be live.
Carrie Hyde 55:11
It's a maybe. It's a hard thing. Live theater. I don't know if anybody. I'm a huge Hamilton fan. I loved Hamilton, and then they filmed Hamilton live, and then they put it out so you could get it on like Apple TV or something. So I was all excited because my mom doesn't go anywhere, and we're gonna she's gonna get to see this. I'm sorry to the Hamilton people who filmed it. It was awful. It was so awful. So the different it's live theater. It's very different to put it on camera, and it loses. Even sending you the clips, I was like, "Oh, this just doesn't give the same power or energy behind it. And so I don't know that I'll do that because I don't want to ruin it. My hope is we can just get it in enough cities and towns and businesses. It's it's 45 minutes. It's easy. It's not the kind of play like people hear the word play and they think big production, right? Cameras and theater and all these things where we got to set up stages. It's very easily to set up. It's actually only got well. We're rewriting it now for two actors. Sometimes they'll have three, depending on what part of the country we're in, depending on where our actors will travel. We have some really amazing actors. Some of them have credentials that you would be shocked to hear. So it depends on where we're doing, but it's very easy setup, very easy set down. We have a couple actors that come out, so our hope is we can just take it everywhere.
Dr. Judy Morgan 56:31
And how do you decide where it's going?
Carrie Hyde 56:34
so right now, it's just been me picking places where it's going, trying to figure out you know what town we're going to do it. I have somebody right now who has a small pet store in Ventura, California, and she's talked about having the play come up there because she's struggling to teach her pet parents on on all of these things. They just they're shocked when they see it in this format, right? Because one of the things I learned from doing a lot of the expos that I did is that the average pet parent has a hard. Like I could listen to Dr. Judy Morgan give lecture after lecture after lecture after lecture for three days. Like I could do that. Like I could you. I can listen to these. But the average pet parent, I think, still wants that. Yeah, you know, like just tell me really quick all the problems in the in the vet in the vet world. I want to know all the details because I need to know it for what I do for a living, but they're not doing this for a living, so I think it's a little harder, and that's why that play was so important because it really speaks to the average pet parent who's just going to see a play. They don't even know they're getting educated. They're just like, "Oh, I don't know some play about dogs. I'm gonna go. Come on, Herb, let's go see this play. So that's why it's written that way?
Dr. Judy Morgan 57:42
Very cool. So now you've made this a 501c. So what's that mean?
Carrie Hyde 57:46
So it's a 501c. So it's a charity. The name of the charity is called Cause Productions. It was really important to me that I will not draw any money from this at all. Now I do have actors I have to pay. I have writers. I have. I'm the producer on it. Directors that direct them. We have different actors depending on what part of the country we're going to be in. So there is some money involved in it. But what I wanted to be able to do is that people could come and watch this and not have to pay to see it, and they could just donate to it so that we could continue on and continue to do it. Hopefully, it will be the big plan. Would be that if we could get, we could raise enough money. We would be starting to do some legislation, and maybe at least get on a on a smaller scale. Obviously, I don't want pets to be property. I would really like to see them at least listed as sentient creatures, and and not just be, you know, $2 billion if you kill my dog or nothing, right? There's a middle road there. I think we can walk when we know someone was negligent for something. But another law that I'd really like to see is the rabies vaccine law. Like I just really think that if we can get that to be used, I'm just asking for titers. I'm not even saying I'm like we're not asking for the world here. We're just asking for titers. So, if we could, along the way, raise money to get the rabies vaccine law changed in the states would be really amazing.
Dr. Judy Morgan 59:07
That would be me. You know, I would like to just even see veterinarians admit, and states to acknowledge that some pets with cancer or other diseases, should not be vaccinated. I mean, the vaccines clearly state to be given to healthy animals. I'm sorry if your animal is, you know, a victim of autoimmune disease, chronic kidney disease, heart failure, cancer, seizures, whatever. That's not what I consider a healthy animal, and I would like to see every single state allow exemptions to be written. But then we need the veterinarians to actually acknowledge and write those exemptions. Yes. So right now we have I don't know 15 or 20 states do allow exemptions, right? And yet the veterinarians. Will not write the exemptions because they're like, oh, allergies don't count, cancer doesn't count. I I will tell you if you go interview every board certified oncologist, probably 95% of them will say it's fine to vaccinate them while they're undergoing chemotherapy, which is just beyond crazy to me. So I would love to see change come out of this.
Dr. Judy Morgan 1:00:19
and I would really, really love to see this play be seen on a grander scale. We're going to talk more about that. Thank you very much for listening. Look up "Dog Eat Dog." I think it's going to be amazing. I've seen snippets of it, and I want to see the whole thing in its entirety. I will probably. I I don't know whether I'll cry or there will be steam coming out my ears. Probably a little of both. Hopefully both. You know, there's there. I guarantee there's nothing in there that I don't already know about the the downside of our industry. Right. But it just it it makes me mad, and and hopefully that anger, that sadness, that emotion leads to action, which leads to change, and I think that's the whole goal. Carrie, thank you very much for coming on and talking about this today, and everybody look for Dog Eat Dog. I think we'll have more information on this.
Carrie Hyde 1:01:23
Yeah, thank you, thank you so much for having me.
OUTRO
Thanks for listening to another great Naturally Healthy Pets episode. Be sure to check out the show notes for some helpful links. And if you enjoy the show, please be sure to follow and listen for free on your favorite podcast app. We value your feedback and we'd love to hear from you on how we're doing. Visit DrJudyMorgan.com for healthy product recommendations, comprehensive courses, upcoming events and other fantastic resources. Until next time, keep giving your pet the vibrant life they deserve.
DISCLAIMER
The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. It is no substitute for professional care by a veterinarian, licensed nutritionist or other qualified professional. You're encouraged to do your own research and should not rely on this information as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Dr. Judy and her guests express their own views, experience and conclusions. Dr. Judy Morgan's Naturally Healthy Pets neither endorses or opposes any particular view discussed here.
