Finally: Why veterinarians have a high suicide rate
Dr. Will McCauley had just finished his shift at a small Dallas animal clinic when he went home, fed his pet pot-bellied pig and then held a loaded handgun to his head. The 33-year-old veterinarian was wracked with student debt and worn down by the daily demands at work, which included euthanizing dogs and cats and being vilified by pet owners for not meeting their expectations. “I was tired in this miserable state of mind,” he says. “It just drained me so much.” For reasons he attributes to either fear or hope, McCauley didn’t kill himself that summer day in 2016, and he quit his job later that week and stopped practicing.1
As I’ve long suspected, veterinarians are finding conventional practice unfulfilling.
It’s long been known and publicized that my profession has a high suicide rate. It’s much higher than any other medical profession.
The rate of suicide in the veterinary profession has been pegged as close to twice that of the dental profession, more than twice that of the medical profession, and 4 times the rate in the general population2
The 2012 CVMA National Survey Results on the Wellness of Veterinarians (n = 769) found that 19% of respondents had seriously thought about suicide and 9% previously attempted suicide. Of those who had seriously thought about it (n = 135), 49% felt they were still at risk to repeat. The risk is real. The numbers are compelling.3
The usual reasons trotted out
I’ve never been satisfied with the reasons ascribed to this epidemic in my profession.
1. Work pressures, burn out
Inadequate professional support and professional mistakes, along with other work-related stressors such as long working hours; after hours on-call duties; conflictual relationships with peers, managers, and clients; high client expectations; unexpected clinical outcomes; emotional exhaustion (compassion fatigue); lack of resources; limited personal finances; concerns about maintaining skills; and the possibility of client complaints and litigation can all contribute to anxiety and depression, which increase vulnerability. Long-term exhaustion (burnout), characterized by disillusionment and demoralization, may also increase vulnerability.4
2. Having to euthanize animals
3. Demand to do free work
Another soul-crushing aspect of the job that most other health professionals don’t have to deal with, veterinarians say, is constantly being asked to perform services or give out medications for free and then being cyberbullied or harassed if they don’t. In 2018, Americans spent more than $72 billion on their pets, and more than $18 billion was for vet care, according to the American Pet Products Association (APPA)5
Cyberbullied if you don’t work for free? Well, that’s creepy on the part of owners who’d stoop to that. Do they feel entitled to free? What, because they’ve “rescued” some poor animal?
Luckily, those folks never darkened my door.
Getting closer to reality
Finally, a study that’s finding a point much closer to the heart of the matter in my mind has recently been published.
Imagine being up against this wall: your treatments are just plain ineffectual.
All the training, all your knowledge you worked so hard to acquire in all those years in vet school, and, after years of practice, it dawns on you: those chronic cases aren’t really getting better for all your efforts.
That’s called “futile treatment,” and I submit it’s the norm in conventional medicine.
More than 99% of 474 veterinarians surveyed said they’d encountered useless or nonbeneficial veterinary care in their careers, according to a new Cornell-led study that documents the prevalence of futile care for the first time.
The authors use a working definition of futile care as continuing treatment when relevant goals can no longer be reached.6
I’ve written about this “dirty little secret” of medicine earlier.
Cure is an impossibility in the very system of medicine that’s the “norm” in the world today. The best that’s accomplished is a modicum of symptom “control” with drugs or surgery.
That’s a lot like seeing the oil light pop on on your car’s dashboard and taping over it with electrical tape because, well, it’s bothersome.
And, while those drugs are sort of controlling things, your animal is really getting no better.
No greater joy of life, no ability to get off the drugs, no improvement in all other aspects of life besides the symptoms being deadened a bit.
The deeper nagging at the vet conscience
Still unspoken of is a far deeper reason for vets to get disillusioned, even to the point of suicide.
I write this as a vet of 42 years who’s been on both sides of the fence.
Conventional practice was the first seven years of my practice life.
And while I was blessed to work in a lovely rural setting with great partners and wonderful clients, it wasn’t until I stepped out of that practice that I saw a bigger picture.
Training in first acupuncture and later homeopathy, my eyes were opened to a far greater reality I’d never realized in my early days:
Much of conventional prevention actually harms your animals.
I’ve been pointing that out for decades now, and I saw it day in and day out as the “doctor of last resort” when the animals presented to me were:
- Not only NOT getting better in Dr. WhiteCoat’s practice, but
- Were actually getting worse the longer they took part in what passed for “prevention”
Chief among this “Ah ha” was studying the effects of vaccination during homeopathic training. (The term for vaccine injury is “vaccinosis,” a term coined by human physician J. Compton Burnet way back in 1884)
Here I was, surrounded by other holistic veterinarians, some at it much longer than I, and our instructor, Dr. Richard Pitcairn, was showing us case after case illustrating the harm that was coming from vaccination,” recalls Falconer about his awakening. “More significantly, he was also showing us that sick animals usually didn’t get better without, at some point in their treatment, receiving a vaccinosis remedy.7
Greed vs caring and “do no harm”
I’ve always been a bit more innocent than might be good for me.
Early on in my discovery of the long known damaging effects of vaccination, I started blogging about it.
In my innocence, I assumed my colleagues would see the error of their ways and back off on the excessive use of vaccines.
One, that repetition just plain wasn’t helping build more immunity.
Two, and far more importantly, it was causing chronic diseases like allergies and autoimmune disease.
And yet, many years after the main vet associations were urging vets to stop the annual vaccine nonsense, it came to light that some 60% of my colleagues were still pushing this on their clients.
That’s when I stopped forgiving them.
It wasn’t that they didn’t know better. These decisions were fueled by greed and these vets were clearly ignoring the welfare of their patients.
If you knowingly were perpetrating this in your practice of medicine, where the code was to help, not harm them, wouldn’t that eat at you at some level?
That’s worse than “futile treatment” by a mile.
Might that inner conscious awareness of causing harm also be fueling the crazy high suicide rate in the veterinary profession?
It’s always seemed a likelihood to me.
Will that be studied and admitted any time soon?
I seriously doubt it.
It’s one thing to realize your treatments of anything chronic are ineffectual.
It’s another for a profession, especially one that used to be associated with compassion for animals, to come to grips with the fact that in its haste to add more to the bottom line, they were actually causing harm to the innocents.
A way out
To my colleagues who see a glimmer of truth here and want a way out of the quagmire, I’d urge a pause and a retraining.
It often starts with acupuncture training. It’s an amazing body of ancient knowledge that’s been organized into a year long certification training that often opens doors to burned out, disillusioned vets who truly want to help their patients.
Acupuncture is often the gateway to other fields of holistic endeavor. It’s internally logical, it’s physical, and yet it’s deep acting and affects much more than just the physical.
If placing needles in flesh isn’t appealing, you can skip right to where many of us went after that: classical veterinary homeopathic training.
It’s world changing, actually cures patients, and there aren’t nearly enough of us out there doing this work.
For those of you with animals who need a way out of the same quagmire for your animals’ sake, please view my Recommended Resources page for the AVH list and the video I’ve made for you on how to choose a qualified homeopathic vet.
Key understanding: you needn’t have someone located near you to get this amazing work done. For years, I did this with long distance telephone consulting and many of my colleagues offer this service as well.
Let’s get veterinary medicine back to being an honorable profession. One that animal owners can once again trust and one in which vets feel great about their work. The conventional medical model has been broken from the get go and for everyone’s sake, it needs to be stepped beyond.
The comments await you and I’d love to hear your thoughts. Uncivil ones will be deleted. We’re all better than that, even in these challenging times we are living through.
- Here’s Why Suicide Among Veterinarians Is A Growing Problem | Time magazine, https://time.com/5670965/veterinarian-suicide-help/
- Suicide in veterinary medicine: Let’s talk about it – PMC, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4266064/
- Suicide in veterinary medicine: Let’s talk about it – PMC, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4266064/
- Suicide in veterinary medicine: Let’s talk about it – PMC, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4266064/
- Here’s Why Suicide Among Veterinarians Is A Growing Problem | Time, https://time.com/5670965/veterinarian-suicide-help/
- Futile veterinary care is widespread, study finds | Cornell Chronicle, https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2022/05/futile-veterinary-care-widespread-study-finds
- Is your ‘holistic’ vet really holistic? A fresh look at the health risks associated with pet vaccines – NaturalNews.com, https://www.naturalnews.com/042090_pet_vaccines_holistic_veterinarians_health_risks.html
compelling reading, thank you.
It seems that many people like myself can not offord a natural pathic doctor, to visit one in our area the office visit is 400.00 to start before anything is diagnosed or resolved. So Dr. What do you charge for your services to treat animals? Acupuncture? Could you list your services and their costs that would be helpful. Kind regards and thank you.
I believe the only safe vaccine is one that is NEVER used.
I think you hit the nail on the head here. I worked in the environmental field for years and burned out for a similar reason. I have nothing but empathy for vets in this situation. I just wish they’d stop taking their frustrations out on “non-compliant” patients like me.
Dr Falconer great article. I like how you give veterinarians options of where to go next. I have a couple thoughts:
Mainstream human medicine is also a disaster. While making dogs chronically ill can’t make for much job satisfaction, it also doesn’t answer the question of why veterinarians are hit with higher suicide than MD’s. I was wondering if pay has to do with it (my understanding is vets acquire similar schooling bills but make a fraction in salary/pay). But also more importantly, I wonder about the rabies vaccine that is required for vets. Could this be contributing?
I have two questions for you:
1. I have a tween daughter who is interested in this field. She is 100% unvaccinated and I’d like her to stay that way. It’s there any way she could become a veterinarian unvaccinated?
2. Do you have to go through regular veterinary school to end up being the veterinarian homoeopathic in the end, or can you skip to that part?
Hey Erin,
Your daughter may already know that women have outnumbered men in vet school for some years now, but best thoughts:
1. Probably could refuse rabies vaccines (the only ones we were vac’d for in vet school) without repercussion, and
2. There are lay homeopaths, but the road isn’t an easy one. So, being a vet first, then training post-grad in the PIVH is the path I’d recommend.
The benefits are a great basis in pathology, anatomy, physiology, and diseases of note for each species, plus a good bit of authority as someone who’s gone through the rigors of vet school and THEN went on to become a homeopath.
If I help someone find a human homeopath, I like to send them to an MD homeopath for those reasons.
Well grounded in the basics of health and disease, but then deeper understanding in post graduate training that’s literally life changing for most.
Please give her my best. (My mom knew long before I did that I’d be a vet…maybe you see that for her as well)
My sister was a DVM and is now an MD. She decided she wanted to be a “real” doctor and I heard her cite that she would never have to decide about putting a child down. She was the first to graduate both a DVM and MD from Texas A&M.
She helped created an ethics curriculum for the A&M vet school after she was in practice. Notably many in her MD class didn’t understand why they needed an ethics class. Let that sink in.
I don’t frequent any Dr WhiteCoats–for humans or dogs. I’ve spent many years educating myself with homeopathy and other natural methods to treat most problems that come up. I think of hospitals as Temples of Death. A friend was recently admitted due to a psychotic break she experienced at some New Age retreat in Denver. Of course, they tested her for Convid and probably ran the test at high threshold cycles and voila! She tested positive. They injected her with the clotshot and put her in the Convid isolation ward so that no family could visit for the entire 10 days she was held captive there. God only knows what else they gave her. This person was shot-free and they injected her with the poison for a mental issue. Unbelievable!
As for my dogs, I am dealing with very waxy ears on my 8 month old Goldendoodle pup and recently he had hurt his leg and was limping. I followed the advice of one amazing homeopathic vet, Dr Will Falconer, and Symphytum and Ligaplex got him back on his feet and running. I’ve given him 200C Silicea for the voluminous production of ear wax and eye boogers. Keeping my fingers crossed, the wax will wane. Haha!
All this to say, I will not go to a conventional vet. In my experience, they are as dangerous as conventional medical professionals. In a way, it’s all good because we need to take our power back from the arrogant, brainwashed “gods” that are maiming and prematurely killing our beloved fur babies.
Unfortunate but true that veterinarians are as medically minded as any human doctor with little good coming of it for our fur beloveds. Yes they can be dangerous. Very sad, as the vet I trained with 40 years ago could look at an animal 50 feet away and tell you what the nutritional deficiencies were.
I have no more respect for conventional medicine, nor the people who practice it as professionals. I’ve become deeply embittered.
Species appropriate feeding is not difficult to learn about and the information is available! And it just. Makes. Sense.
Homeopathy isn’t so obviously logical, but once it’s cure has been experienced… WOW! And after a little digging, the logic is more than there. And the lack of harm should be screaming at vets/doctors. The vaccine insistence is ludicrous. And people get all bent out of shape if I mention not over-vaccinating. Not even “don’t vaccinate”, just don’t over vaccinate!
I hope more vets and doctors stumble across this well thought out and well written article and instead of killing themselves, reassess and retrain in a modality that is actually healing.
I am so on board with your thoughts! For myself I plan on printing out this article and I have a few people (including vets) in mind that I would like to show it to. I’m finding that the deeper I go into my learning, the more I want to share it. And being a squeaky wheel may not seem to do much at first, but all I want is to plant that seed; however small it may be to start.
So glad that I found you and your “site.” I have never believed in “vaccinations,” but was afraid not to go along with the crowd. I recently lost my beloved chihuahua and knew I had to get a replacement to try to recover from my grief. I found an “orphanage” for dogs on the internet and saw a little chihuahua and called about her. I went to check her out. In the meantime, I heard a “dog communicator” tell us not to choose a dog, but let the dog choose us.
When I went into the house, they had several dogs. One jumped up into the lap of the caregiver, sat down, and immediately started “staring” at me, intently. Then, all of a sudden, she jumped down and headed straight across the room and jumped into my lap and snuggled up close to me. She had chosen me!! The sweetest little dog, so loving and intelligent. She was six years old, and the papers said she had been spayed. There was no birthdate, but I “counted backwards” from her rabies tag and gave her a birthday. I’ve never believed in vaccinations, so if she was six, going on seven, she surely must be immune by now. I will NOT be giving her another vaccination. She already has some sort of cough and I am assuming that must be due to all of those vaccinations. (I have not yet found a holistic vet.) Also, she had not been spayed, and when I called the adoption center, I was told that that sometimes happens–they take groups of dogs to the “hospital” for spaying and sometimes some of the dogs “escape.” They told me they would arrange for me to have her spayed, but at now seven years old, I am afraid going under anesthesia would be harmful, so I will live with “diapers.”
Thank you so very much for your information and encouragement to better care for our pets. They are God-given.
Interesting read. 100% accurate. Our goal should be to detoxify the gene pools we have damaged due to environmental factors and suppression.
Just wanted to insert another perspective for those considerate people who will listen. I am an animal lover from my earliest memories. I don’t think I could live without my pets – large and small. But I also graduated from veterinary school and would like to share my insight and experience. I do not practice and in hindsight, it’s probably vital that I did not I would have been a statistic and at least considered suicide. For those who don’t know, this is what vet school is like. My class stayed together (like it was in kindergarten) for the four years of school. We met in the same classroom day in and day out 8 to 5. I think it is fair to say most of my classmates were nice people. The majority were female and many of those were compassionate, tender hearted. I don’t think anyone I knew expected vet school would make them get rich quick. Most were over achievers and wanted to be in a helping profession. I graduated and at least thought I knew a little something. But I chose to stay at home and raise adopted children. Yeah, so I’m a Molly Mercy personality. In the course of taking care of my family and beloved pets, I stumbled on information gradually over years that conflicted with the conventional medical knowledge I had learned. I recently listened to a doctor in an association with other doctors trying to get out true information to people about vaccination to help them make informed decisions about vaccine and they discussed how hard it is for people to accept that they have been lied to and deceived. It took me years to come to the conclusion that at least some of my education was basically untrue. To this day, I still have to get continuing education hours to renew my license and it has to be RACE approved to be accepted. Guess who sponsors that approved CE? Pharmaceutical companies. Guess where vets in practice get information during their busy practicing? Pharmaceutical reps who drop by to get their orders for supplies. I understand people’s anger. I have been in a university convention and listened to a speaker mock “alternative” therapies and I simmered in anger. It seemed so narrow minded and the whole auditorium mildly chuckled along. I have also listened to a speaker during a convention rant in his lecture that he could not in good conscience alter his vaccination schedule because he cared for the best interest of his patients. This followed a university change in policy for their vaccination schedule due to some side affects they were seeing. I have also in retrospect recalled things I was taught in school that clearly are blatantly untrue and remembered the smug expressions as professors struck down silly myths people believe and how we (vets) must correct these misunderstandings. And now I am finding some of these “old wives’ tales” are in fact true.
What I hope to impart is a little compassion for people(vets) who are stuck in a mindset that has been drilled into them, reinforced by veterinary boards who place requirements on them which are very biased against holistic and alternative medicine, and are probably in great pain themselves trying to survive in a consuming profession and still have a family life for whom they want to provide just like you do yours. I, too, have had three pets die of cancer probably because I did what I was told was “right.” I feel disillusioned about conventional medicine and the time it has stolen from my life and the lives of my pets. And it’s frustrating to feel like I have to start over to figure out what is right after playing by the “rules” for so long. So I can see both sides. I heard a medical doctor who had turned to functional medicine say that the way we practice medicine absolutely must change. But those things happen slowly. And those who are first to change will get a lot of retaliation from the status quo as has happened often over the course of history.
Thanks for your perspective Michelle. I’d have to disagree with your final statement that the early ones to “change horses” are in for retaliation, etc. I think the larger experience my colleagues in homeopathy have experienced is one of great appreciation from clients, who have longed for a more sensible approach to health and a medical system that’s not damaging. If a handful of colleagues don’t see that light, they’ve largely stayed out of the way of those doing the work. The “pooh poohing” that may happen in conventional meetings is nothing I’ve got a care for. My CE credits have been for homeopathy certification and I quietly ignored the ones for my license, for years on end. I knew in my heart that my CE was what counted, what helped me be a better homeopath, and do a better job for my patients.
All this to say: don’t be discouraged if you’re a vet who’s interested in “alternatives” that are safe and efficacious. Go for it. You’ll have no end of business and you’ll know you are contributing in a very real way to the betterment of the animal kingdom. And isn’t that why we became vets in the first place?
Yes, there is a lot of programming and status quo to deal with, plus pressure. The doc who suggested that washing hands between patients was totally discredited, would have to look up his name. So much for common sense.
Yet when I listen to one of the top cancer educators in the world (Ty Bollinger) present holistic veterinarians, who indicate that even knowing that vaccines cause cancer, that the system indicates veterinarians are supposed to just give it in the leg, so the leg can be removed, it is VERY challenging to be empathetic. Greed and greed-based harm have no place in health and healing in any form. No excuses. (Root canals and circumcision go in this category in MHO)
I had not given this topic much thought until recently. My town has no emergency animal clinic and we formed a group that we hope will enable us to have one in the future. We have been researching other towns and cities and learning how other cities of comparable size support and finance this type of facility.
This is how we learned about the significant shortage of new veterinarians. The vets in our area are overworked and stretched thin because we have had many vets retire and/or leave the area. In addition, this is a very poor area with close to 40% of the residents on some type of financial assistance.
Then it happened.
One of our veterinarians did commit suicide.
This was several months ago and it is still a shock and a huge loss to our community in every way.
I never personally met this vet but I was told she was a very caring and dedicated-to-her-profession type of person.
In addition, the veterinarians here, with the exception of one, practice conventional medicine. I have been utilizing an out-of-state homeopathic vet for over 3 years now. Had I not made this move I am pretty certain I would have lost my dog as he only became worse with conventional treatment. I certainly became much poorer.
He is doing very, very well these days, thanks to our homeopathic vet and to the information Dr. Falcolner shares on the internet.
It seems like both human and animal medicine need some major type of reset button to toss out what doesn’t work and bring in and teach what does work.
So much of modern medicine is a money grab…only trying to do no harm to their bank accounts.
Several years ago, I was referred to a holistic vet. I wasn’t able to reach her, and found out a few days later that after a farm call, she pulled off the road and injected herself in the abdomen with a euthanasia drug. It was shocking to me, and only now, after reading your article, do I understand.
I’ve used homeopathy and herbs for my animals for over thirty years, and I am amazed at vets who don’t want to hear about the alternatives. How sad for them, and how sad for us, and how immensely sad for our animals.
Dr Falconers article immediately caught my attention. The pet industry is so enormous there’s no surprise unscrupulous practices become common place.
Just like the human health industry. I do believe most vets chose animal care because they love them. The profession is not highly paid and very stressful as the article mentions. How tragic that the reasons why vets devoted their careers to their profession ie. to cure and bring comfort to ailing pets is having the opposite effect . What is it going to take for vets as well as human doctors to broaden their knowledge base enough to take seriously “preventative” care whenever possible. I’m questioning now if feeding my sweet 14 year old cat a prescription diet for a kidney condition is the right treatment or if it’s a fast track to her demise. Thanks Dr Falconer for giving us hope and good information to consider.
When my Belle underwent ACL surgery, at a cost of $5,000, including physical therapy, I wish my vet had told me about the inevitability of her developing osteosarcoma at the site of the surgery. Would have done a brace instead.
Just huge gratitude and respect to you, that’s all 💖🙏
Thank you so much for this article! As a teen I was blessed to work with and be trained as a tech by two local veterinarians who actually worked hard on finding cures for the animals that came into the hospital. I can remember the day back in the mid-80’s when myself and the rest of the staff was told we would be getting our first delivery of a new “prescription” dog food. Ugh! You know how the story goes. I truly believe that was the beginning of the end for curative animal care. Now, fifteen years into my mobile grooming business, I see horrible teeth, dogs that are seriously overweight with yeasty skin and feet, and loaded with warts. (Thank you, chemical laden dog food!) I think you hit the nail on the head. Our world has moved to the ‘quick fix’ mentality and as a result has cost so many veterinarians their very lives. Thank you for sounding the alarm and introducing homeopathy by writing articles. As a result, I’m now in my seventh month of three year homeopathic program and I am having so much fun learning! The exact science of homeopathy and what Hahnnamnn discovered is fascinating! I only wish Dr. Pitcairn would open up his training to homeopaths and former vet techs like myself who want to continue working with animals. At least his repertory is accessible in software like RadarOpus. Yaayyy! Thanks again for your point of view!
Thank you, Dr Falconer. I’ve been a pet professional generalist for 50 years: trainer, groomer, behavior consultant and natural feeding coach. As a small child I knew I wanted to be a vet. That became impossible after an accidental exposure to vivisection in a medical school’s laboratory at age 10. I didn’t and still don’t believe that torturing some animals for the benefit of other animals and “science” can be justified. But I have a sort-of scientific mind and have been an observer and helper all my life. For 20 years I have owned a pet care facility with day care, training, grooming, diy grooming, and classes teaching home made pet food making. I refer clients to vets like you, Karen Becker, Peter Dobias, Christina Chambray, and others. I send them to Dr Dodds’ Nutriscan test and then help them develop a diet for their animals. And while this is somewhat of a digression, here’s my main point:
Our local community college has a vet tech program, and students have been told that the generation of vets practicing today contains the last independent veterinarians. The trend toward corporate-owned practices is overwhelming the profession, and in the process, seldom remarked upon, the meaning of “profession” has been subsumed by the category of “industry.” Industrial values are efficiency and profitability. Advertising and marketing effectiveness is far more important than truthfulness. Humility is considered a betrayal. Internal critics are to be destroyed.
I think everyone has some sort of internal compass needle oriented toward integrity, and eventually cognitive and moral dissonance afflict those who try to ignore it. Sadly, our whole economic system is designed to suppress it by rewarding industrialists and punishing professionals.
While I have never regretted my personal decision not to become a vet, I am especially appreciative of veterinarians like you who uphold the values of the profession. I wonder if it is time for those brave stalwarts to take aim at the system more explicitly and directly? It would certainly require courage and entail sacrifice, but I am beginning to see (or I might be imagining it) in our society’s many levels of brokenness, some willingness to see, to reject and to change what’s rotten in the foundation. I’d love to know what you think about this.
Once again you’ve hit the nail on the head….GREAT article, but how incredibly sad and very disturbing. My wish is for the world to read this and wake up.
You were the one to give me the courage to feed raw and halt vaccines and preventatives. I studied Homeopathy with you and have saved my animals more than once. (To the dismay of the Vets) I avoided a knee and hip replacement with Homeopathy and use it often to treat my family.
We desperately need good Vets!!! It is difficult to be nice when I am ridiculed for feeding raw and not using preventatives and vaccines.
I have a rescue pup who was given all vaccines and preventatives at 8 wks. He was full of worms as well. It obliterated his immune system and he quickly was over run with yeast. Do no harm ??
THANK YOU for all the work you do, and as you say, together we have a chance to make change happen.
Marcia
Wow. Very interesting. I never looked at it from that view. We have just found out our 10 yr old maltipoo has cushings. Come to find out all the symptoms I have been telling her vet for almost two years were of cushings. Took her having a seizure out of state and a different vet to found this out. To top it off her vet even does acupuncture and never even suggested using that when we had a hurt leg. Just meds. Thanks Dr Will for all ur knowledge and for sharing it.
Thank you for this article. I have been a student of yours which lead me to a wild and wonderful journey working with a homeopath to cure my dogs and me. And, that it is doing in more ways than I thought possible.
I, thankfully, found a vet who never pushes anything on me, and does listen to what I say, and raises his eyebrows when I speak something that means something to him. My dogs get diagnostics done with him only.
I absolutely believe it must be an unsatisfying profession to see the same dogs coming through the doors with issue after issue. Yet they continue to prescribe vaccinations, heart, flea and tick etc.
I friend of mine had a year-old pup who died from liver failure. June 17th, 2022 she was given Nexguard. June 30th she stopped eating and only ate from the hand. July 6th she died.The vet said that’s never happened in her practice before. I told her people, including vets, for some reason do not look at the big picture. Why would this dog die from liver failure. She was always with her people on leash. Coincidence that she died from liver failure less than a month after Nexguard?
I’m just so sad at the state of vet practices. With vets like you and Dr. Pitcairn, slowly but surely I hope vets start to take notice. I know you try, but your colleagues seem not to get it.
Wow! Will … I have never thought of an inner sense of guilt fueling the high vet suicide rate. I have long felt, largely from reading your materials, that it is easier to consider and discuss care-induced symptoms, eg vaccinosis, in the veterinary world than in the human care world. Now I have a better sense of the possible price that thoughtful vets pay to work in this world. I will be having this discussion with my own wonderful vet. Thank you!
It’s hard to feel sorry for those who know they are ineffectual in their practice, are actually causing damage to the animals in their care, know there is a better way but just continue anyway.
I’ve talked to hundreds of pet owners when I worked in pet supply stores that specialized in raw food diets and alternative health supplements who spent 1000’s of dollars at their vets to try to cure their animals and came to us as a “last resort”. They were desperate. Only to find out that the food they were feeding, the vaccines their pets were getting, and the preventive flea, tick and heartworm they were giving, all at the advice of their vet, were actually causing the conditions their vet couldn’t cure. And almost immediately after starting a species appropriate, balanced, raw food diet they were amazed at the change in their pets and were well on their way to curing those allergies, diabetes, kidney problems, etc.
I still have “discussions” with my conventional vet about raw food diets, etc and even though she has been impressed over and over again by the vitality and resilience of my animals, she continues to defend feeding her own animals and selling those “prescription” diets to her patients without a hint of remorse. She should be so ashamed of herself. She’s been a vet for decades and still resists alternative health care solutions despite what she’s seen with her own eyes.
It should be considered negligence. It should be considered criminal. And perhaps if she didn’t get paid until she actually cured those in her care, she would change her ways.
Thank you Dr. Falconer. Sandy Grannis stated my thoughts perfectly. Appreciate all you do for pet parents and the veterinary community.
Thank you for this, Dr Falconer.
It is disheartening that conventional veterinary medicine seems to parallel human medicine. With guidance and information from you I am better armed and able to keep my vow to my dog – to keep her as well as possible for as long as possible. I do believe in many instances ‘less is more’.
Thank you, again