Rekindle your passion for practice

A lot of you know me for my sunny disposition. I'm the Chicken Soup guy, always seeing the cup as half full. As you might imagine, I still see the glass as half full, and, in fact, for veterinarians in 2010 and beyond, I see the cup brimming over.

But I think we've arrived at a point in the evolution of our profession where we need to do a little soul-searching. We need to do exams on ourselves just like we recommend for our clients' pets.

When I first decided I wanted to be a veterinarian, back in the 1950s, the profession was primarily made up of men treating large animals. Now it's a profession of women and men—notice I didn't say men and women—treating companion animals. Veterinarians are studying day and night to become diplomates in an ever-expanding array of specialties, the likes of which we couldn't even imagine 50 years ago.

Dr. Marty Becker, shown here with his dogs Quora (left) and Quixote, is a Veterinary Economics Editorial Advisory Board member, writer, speaker, and resident veterinarian for Good Morning America. (Photos by Joel Riner)

But there are also practitioners who have lost their way, who have burned out and given up the quest for joy in the practice of veterinary medicine. They're looking for that one thing, that tiny spark to get their flame going again.

Now, I don't necessarily think we need a revolution in veterinary medicine. By all measures we're doing pretty well. According to a BusinessWeek cover story in 2008, consumers spend 25 percent more money on pets—their food, grooming, and veterinary care—than on movies, music, and video games combined. Fifty-three billion dollars, or more than what's spent on candy and toys combined—that's how large this market is.

What's more, the pet industry is projected to grow 5 percent this year, recession or no recession. So as a whole, we're doing incredibly well compared with every other industry. But I do think we need a little renewal in the profession. In the spirit of the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, we need to get back to the garden. You might remember the Joni Mitchell song, but the garden I'm referring to is the garden where the seed was planted to bring you into the profession in the first place.

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Let me guess. You didn't get into this profession so you could retrieve financial information from your practice management database and compare your hospital to others in areas such as fees, revenue, and expenses. You didn't get into this profession because you had a desire to work unmanageable hours, manage a bunch of people, make hiring and firing decisions that affect lives, or design the perfect hospital.

After all, if your primary concern was financial success, you'd have used your superior brain power and the drive that got you into this profession to fill cavities as a dentist, remove wrinkles as a plastic surgeon, or analyze algorithms for Google. And you'd be on vacation in the Greek isles right now instead of reading this article.

You got into this profession because you wanted to care for animals. It was a seed that was planted in most of you before the age of 10 and has caused some of you to never miss a day of work because of illness. Why? Because that passionate drive to help animals can eclipse almost every other aspect of your life.

WHAT'S YOUR STORY?

For me, it started out with Luke the Labrador retriever. I lived on a small family farm in southern Idaho where we grew potatoes, corn, wheat, and hay for dairy cattle. We had a small dairy herd, and we had chickens and sold the eggs.

How important are your clients pets?

Luke lived in an old cabin shed. In the winter we'd put straw around the outside of the shed and a burlap sack around the front to keep the cold air out. When I was 6 years old, a blizzard blew in, and I asked to bring Luke in for the night. Dad said he was made for this weather. He resisted, I persisted, and Dad finally said I could bring him in—for one night only, on the porch and on the linoleum. When the storm quit, he had to go back outside.

Well, when Luke got onto the linoleum, he was like a dog on ice skates—it was a surface he'd never experienced before. He collapsed and infantry-crawled the kitchen. First he looked one way, then he looked another way, and he thought to himself, "Man, it's nice in here! I like this." When he reached the spot where Dad was standing, he did the "Lab lean," his tail thumping the side of the table. Then he got up on the couch.

From that moment on, literally and figuratively, Luke became an inside dog. He still herded, retrieved, and guarded. But he spent a lot of time in our house. He was part of the migration of biblical proportions where pets moved from the barnyard to the backyard to the backdoor to the kitchen. Luke's coming inside was my first glimpse of the human-animal bond.

A lesson from a legend

Not much later in my youth, we found a cow lying on a big mound of straw looking like a fiberglass statue, completely motionless. The veterinarian came out and asked me to help him with fluids. He took out a needle that looked like a tailpipe and hit the cow's jugular on the first shot; blood started shooting out with every heartbeat. He had me hand him the bottle and hooked the tube onto it. The fluid went in, and all of the sudden that cow staggered to its feet, and away it went. I thought, "My God, this guy's powerful."

Then we had a Lab puppy that swallowed a stick that got stuck in its throat. Our veterinarian performed what these days would still be considered a difficult surgery and then took the puppy home to keep it warm and watch it throughout the night. Every time someone talked about this veterinarian, you could see the respect, trust, and admiration. And I thought to myself, "You love science and you love animals; wouldn't you want to introduce yourself like that? Wouldn't you want people to have those feelings about you?"

Each of you has your own story—a story about how you became a veterinarian or got involved with the veterinary community. When you think back about what you got into this profession for the first time, you arrive at why you're in this business. Fix it in your mind. Repeat it like a mantra. Turn it into a sentence, and write it on a business card that you stick in your wallet. Print it on nice paper, frame it, and hang it on your wall between your diploma and mission statement. Surround yourself with this reminder of why you got into the profession in the first place.

How many times since 1980 have you been warned that you lack the proper skills to operate a small business and that you'd better learn them if you hope to survive? How many times have you been told you lack professional self-esteem? How many times have you been nagged to raise your prices, to charge what you're worth?

Now, what I'm about to say likely runs counter to what a whole succession of consultants and speakers (including me) have been telling you for decades, but if you find that your attention has moved from diagnosis to dollars, this is the time for renewal. This is the time to let the bottom line take care of itself (with the help of others) and personally get back to the garden.

You don't have to plant another seed—just repot yourself. Change the soil, trim yourself back, and get ready to push out new growth and bloom.

A RECALIBRATION OF EXPECTATIONS

The future is always uncertain, but today for most people "uncertain" is an understatement. You're in a profession that has proven to be relatively recession-resistant, but your practice will probably not grow a lot this year. Five percent may be cause for celebration, depending on the economy in your neighborhood.

Some of you are really hurting, and if double-digit growth is what you've been expecting over the years, the time has come for renewal. The time has come to celebrate the tails you make wag in the exam room, the clients you make smile, and the human-animal bond you nurture and protect rather than the high-five you get from your accountant at the end of the year.

Don't get me wrong. This year you're going to have to practice smarter than ever. You're going to have to make hard decisions about whom you employ, what services you offer, even what hours you're open. You're going to have to build and retain better teams, which is getting easier now that more people are in the employment pool.

But all of us veterinarians also need to ask ourselves how we can make veterinary medicine affordable for people. In my opinion, we're experiencing more than an economic downturn. We're in the midst of a sea change. I think it's time for us to prepare for the reality of the new frugality in America. I don't think we're ever going back to the free-spending days. And this is not all bad—we needed to learn to save again.

But despite this seismic shift that's under way, the people who come into our practices know that they can lose their jobs, their houses, and their 401(k)s, but they're never going to lose the unconditional love of their pets. After all, have you ever come home and found your dog's suitcases packed or seen a note from the cat on the counter that says, "Sorry, I found someone else"?

In these topsy-turvy times, our clients cherish things that are rock-solid, such as the celebrity greeting they get from their pets every time they come home from work, vacation, or even the next room. And they're not looking at us the way they look at Amazon.com or the Lands End catalog. They're looking at us as people they admire who are competent, confident, and compassionate and who know how to keep their best friends happy and healthy—and, by extension, keep the human family healthy and happy.

NEW ERA, NEW RESPONSIBILITY

In the frugal future we have more of a role to play than ever. Pets hold families and communities together. Pets may be the only solace a struggling family has. A pet may be the only reason a person with a terminal illness has to get up in the morning and take a walk. As professionals, we'll always be the ones whose job it is to strengthen the bond between pets and people.

But some in our profession think we've raised prices so high that we're in danger of serving only the elite in society—and I wonder if they're right. Can we afford to make the healing power of pets available only to those in the wealthy suburbs?

I'll end with this challenge: How will you renew your passion for this profession and the vitality of the profession as a whole? How will you repot yourself and be ready to bloom? What bedrock principles will you protect, and what innovations will you accept? How will you sing our profession's praises in the community and represent it well? What will you do to continue the noble history of caring for pets and nurturing and healing the humans in their lives?

Teddy Roosevelt said, "I ask that this people rise level to the greatness of its opportunities. I don't ask that it seek the easiest path." As a profession, neither will we seek the easiest path, but always the right road.