Did you ever hear something you were not meant to hear that changed your practice world in an instant? This column looks at two such incidents.
The first happened to Dr. Gustafson one day while she ate lunch at a local restaurant. She had just completed a grueling morning of surgery and settled into the last booth in a dim corner, seeking peace and quiet along with nourishment. A short time later, she heard someone enter the next booth but gave it no thought because she was engrossed in writing notes about her cases as she ate, plus the divider between the booths made it impossible for her to see the other booth’s occupants. However the melodic voice and unique accent of Belle Muldavi, one of her practice’s most conscientious and affluent clients, immediately attracted her attention. Normally, good manners would have prompted Dr. Gustafson to go back to her work and lunch, but Ms. Muldavi’s familiar and distinctive pronunciation of the veterinarian’s name caused the practitioner to keep listening. When Ms. Muldavi’s firmly stated, “I’m thinking about finding a new veterinarian,” Dr. Gustafson could not have focused on her lunch or her work even if she had wanted to.
“But why?” Ms. Muldavi’s companion asked. “I thought you really liked Dr. Gustafson and the way she treated your animals.”
“Oh, I do. She’s been absolutely wonderful with my tropical birds and the horses,” replied Ms. Muldavi. “But since I got my border collie, I’m seeing a different side of her and I’m not sure that I like it.”
“But she loves dogs!” the other woman emphatically defends the eavesdropping veterinarian. “Everyone knows that!”
“Well, she might love dogs, but she apparently hates their testicles,” countered Ms. Muldavi. “When the subject of getting Jo-Jo castrated came up when he was still a pup, I told her that I’d decided against it. She immediately started lecturing me about the horrible things that would happen if I didn’t have the surgery done as soon as possible.”
“Did you tell her why you didn’t want to do it?” asked the friend.
“I thought about telling her about looking up a lot of research on the pros and cons and discussing it at length with my sister who’s a reproductive physiologist. But Dr. Gustafson was so passionate and so insistent, I didn’t want to go there. Instead I just listened politely and then changed the subject as soon as I could.”
“But don’t you think one unsolicited lecture is a minor reason for leaving a good practice?” the friend asked what the now grossly embarrassed and horrified eavesdropping veterinarian considered a reasonable question.
“It’s not just that,” replied Ms. Muldavi with a sigh. “Since then I can’t help wondering if she wants Jo-Jo to become aggressive or develop testicular cancer or fail in some other way she can relate to his testicles. I’m so used to her wanting the best for my animals and that’s always been a big part of why I wanted her to care for them. Now I feel like Jo-Jo has one strike against him any time we walk into the clinic. Two if you count each of his testicles.”
Ms. Muldavi’s companion chuckled, but neither Ms. Muldavi nor Dr. Gustafson saw any humor in the situation. The veterinarian remained in the booth until the other two women left, her thoughts in turmoil.
In a second practice view-changing incident the veterinarian, Dr. Reese, is helping out at the annual community flea market. This year his job is to direct vendors to their locations and help them get set up if necessary. Once everything is running smoothly, he retreats to the recreational vehicle reserved for helpers for a well-deserved break several hours later. As he is relaxing inside the RV’s dim interior, he sees a former client, Craig Auclair approaching with another man he does not recognize. The two men stop to examine a collection of old tools on a table next to the RV where Dr. Reese easily can hear their conversation.
“How come you’re using Doc Hurley when Doc Reese is so much closer to your place?” asks the stranger. “Don’t you think he’s a good vet?”
“I know he’s a good vet,” answers Mr. Auclair. “But I don’t feel like he can support me the way he used to.”
“But why wouldn’t he? You run one of the best operations around here and everyone knows your animals get the best of care,” countered his friend.
“You and others might think that, but since I took over my dad’s place, I don’t think Doc Reese would agree. Dad hadn’t worked the place for years and I’d been thinking about diversifying and getting into some niche markets, so it seemed like an ideal time to jump on the organic bandwagon. But shortly after I decided that, I heard Doc Reese speak on the subject and he didn’t have one good thing to say about it,” Mr Auclair explained to his companion.
“So what?” replied the friend. “As long as he does what you want him to do, what difference does it make?”
“His support makes a lot of difference, but I didn’t know how much it did until I didn’t have it. Once I realized how much his interest in my animals and what I was doing with them contributed to my success in the past, his lack of it made me feel like I was being set up to fail.”
The friend grunted something in agreement and the two men moved on, unknowingly leaving a badly shaken Dr. Reese in their wake.
In both of these scenarios, the veterinarians gain insights into their behaviors that they probably never would have gained otherwise. However, unlike overheard praise that would cause their spirits to soar, overheard criticism makes them feel victimized. Drs. Gustafson and Reese initially feel a wave of righteous indignation: how dare those people criticize them when they were only doing their very best! But once the practitioners vent a little and settle down, they both admit that their client and former client might have a point.
“I do have very strong beliefs about spay and neuter and I do make these known to my clients,” confesses Dr. Gustafson. “And while I see it as part of my job to be on a particular look-out for those problems peculiar to intact animals and mention these to clients, I can see how this could make owners of those animals view this as my wishing their animals harm.”
This is followed by two somewhat more troubling revelations: “And I admit that I do feel vindicated when an intact male dog growls or snaps at me or when I diagnose mammary cancer in an intact female. I also know that I don’t react that way to conditions that are more prevalent in spayed or neutered animals. Now that I think about it, I suppose some clients might pick up on that.”
She ends her introspection by saying, “Still, I always considered Ms. Muldavi a very responsible pet owner and never consciously wished her dog harm.”
Dr. Reese’s predicament is somewhat different in that he aimed the ill-fated presentation that cost him a valuable client at the lowest common denominator, those farmers who lacked the fundamental husbandry skills to succeed in conventional farming who might think that organic meat and poultry production would be easier.
“My goal was to prevent needless animal suffering and it seemed like stressing all the problems associated with organic farming was the best way to do that,” he explained. “It never dawned on me that someone with as much experience as Craig Auclair would attend such a talk or that he’d think I was talking about him if he did.”
But Mr. Auclair did attend and, like Ms. Muldavi, he took what his veterinarian said both literally and personally. Because he did, he automatically assumed that Dr. Reese would not want to help him in his new endeavor, even though he fully intended to incorporate the same high standards into it that Dr. Reese had admired in the past.
How could these practitioners have avoided these problems? A good place to begin is to remember that truths generated to address the needs of a particular population may not necessarily address those of any one individual within that population, let alone members of a different one. Add the fact that most of us like to be right and that taking a one-size-fits-all approach to any situation greatly increases the odds that someone will think that approach is wrong; breakdowns in communication are almost inevitable.
Both of these practitioners had the very best intentions in mind when they said what they did. Both truly believed that they wanted only the best for the animals in their care as well as for their clients. Unfortunately neither of them realized that some could perceive what they viewed as justifiable passion as uncompromising rigidity.