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Pets: the best form of therapy

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Pet owners
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The speaker for today’s webinar is Dr. Nadine Hamilton. Dr. Nadine Hamilton is a leading worldwide authority on veterinary well being author, psychologist, CEO and founder of love your pet love your vet. As an advocate for the veterinary profession, Dr. Nadine founded the charity love your pet, love your vet and partnered with royal Canon to reduce stigma in veterinary professionals seeking help raising awareness within the community about the realities of working in the profession and providing psychological and educational support to veterinary professionals. So without any delay, I’ll hand you over to Nadine.

Thank you so much, Dani and thank you everyone for joining us. It’s a pleasure to be presenting today on this wonderful topic about pets the best form of therapy and I hope you like my little photo there. That’s me and my beautiful Labrador Jana, who is 11 on Monday. And yeah, she’s an absolute delight and I talk about her a little bit more as we go through and the benefits that she’s been able to bring to not only myself and my family but other people first I just wanted to share this post I think it’s so appropriate. The best therapist is for and four legs and as a psychologist myself, you know, he does provide therapy I have no problem at all in advocating for our four legged friends as therapy. I just think they can be so beneficial to us. You know, there’s so many benefits and wonderful things that they offer us. You know, and I’m going to talk about them more anyway. But I could obviously go on forever and ever talking about how much how much we can benefit and we adore our animals but I won’t I’ll stop and keep moving forward but I just wanted to share that with you because I thought it was absolutely beautiful and in my opinion it is so true. So a quick overview of what I would like to talk about today is how important are our pets. I’m going to be bringing in some of the research that’s being done and looking at the population some of the statistics around our pets. Also looking at which animals are most popular. Who are our pet owners. So what are the population or what is the proportion of the community who own pets then obviously you know my favourite topic, the benefits of pets and also animal assisted therapy, which you may be familiar with. You may not but I want to talk about that and some of the research that’s been done there as to the benefits they can provide. At the end I’ll be sharing a personal story about my other cat so this is my cat here in this photo this is Panda she’s a Berman or her her pedigree name is Princess panda because she is a little bit of a princess. But my  Burmese are the I’ll share a photo of him at the end and don’t worry, it’s a happy story. It has a happy ending. So I hope you’ll you’ll stay tuned and listen to that and and the personal experience that we’ve had that was completely unexpected, but how that all turned out and what happened to us. We’ll have a summary at the end. I’ll provide my contact details for anyone that does have any questions or wants to get in touch. And then as Dani said, we’ll be going through to the little bit of a question and answer session before we wrap up. So and I know this was pretty much covered so I won’t elaborate too much on that. It’s suffice to say yes, I completed my doctoral research into veterinarian wellbeing. I found that the charity love your pet, love your vet back in 2017 that actually started launched again for our campaign with oil cannon in 2018. And currently we’re working on our next campaign. So if you haven’t seen that, I strongly recommend that you do just because we look at the realities of what goes on in the vet profession rather than just the myths and the perceptions that all our vets and nurses door day’s play with puppies and kittens. There’s a really dark side to this profession that’s quite alarming. My doctoral research was converted into a book, which has become a best seller coping with stress and burnout. And I’m a pet mummy to Jenna as you saw in the photos of Ozzy who you’ll see at the end. And of course, I’ve always been a massive, massive pet fan wanted to become a bit myself but I learned really easy on that I was way too queasy for that. And so I probably got into psychology instead. And I’m so lucky and so fortunate to bring my passions together of helping people but also helping the people who help our pets and care for our pets. So it’s a really nice balance for me. So on to the juicy stuff now and how important are our pets? So let’s have a look at some of the statistics that are out there. And I’ve got a reference source for this at the end in case you want to look at the full document and all of the research in more detail. It’s really quite interesting. But just to summarise a little bit on some of the statistics around pet ownership here in Australia, so we have roughly three in five of our households have a pet. So it’s roughly around 61% or 5.9 million people if you want to put it into more context. So here in Australia, we have one of the highest rates of pet ownership in the world. There’s nearly 29 million pets in Australia. This is pretty alarming. When you think about it. That’s more than our population. I think our population is around 25 million or 26 million. So they think that there are actually more pets than people in Australia is pretty huge. But it also goes to show the importance of our pets and how how much we can benefit from them whether we’re using them as pets or whether they’re working animals or not, you know, however we’re using adopting pets into our lifestyle really. So it’s a massive, massive mature industry is the right word to say but it is massive, obviously pet ownership within Australia to think you know that the majority of households have at least one pet. So which animals do you think are going to be the most popular? I think it’s a little bit obvious or for me it’s really obvious. So it may come as no surprise to me and my beautiful January again this is her being a little bit of a crazy she didn’t didn’t like to sort of sit still for photos too well, so she thought it was more fun to flop on me so that she could roll over and have a belly rub, which you don’t see in the photos. She’s absolutely adorable and she’s incredibly funny as well. But yes, dogs are the most popular pets here in Australia. So roughly 5.1 million dogs in Australia, or at least 40% of households that have at least one dog in the household. So some obviously have more, some have less. Again, depends you know, if you’re a dog person and how you treat them, it actually breaks it down in the research into the particular breeds as well that are most popular ownership. I think typically your retriever. So your labrador retriever your golden retrievers are very popular, but also some of the smaller dogs as well, particularly for those who may live in like apartments or units or some of the elderly population who may not be able to have a big dog in the house or they may not physically be able to handle a large dog in the house but having you know, the smaller dog, whether that’s you know, like a fox terrier or a Maltese or a Chihuahua, you know, there. There’s certainly multiple breeds that are out there that are all providing help and support and benefit to their pet owners. Second two dogs again, this may not come as any surprise that cats and here’s here’s my little Pandy again, so roughly 3.7 million cats here in Australia, or around 20% 27% of household owning at least one cat. I know in my mom’s household where there’s a few people living there. I think they’ve got four cats there because I’ve had foster cats and everything as well and that in that household. I have obviously to you know, but we have friends who don’t own cats. You know some people don’t like cat Some people love cats. So it is a personal choice but on average, dogs and cat are their most popular animal as pets here in Australia

to some of our pet owners,

so who are our pet owners most likely to be. I think this is also really interesting as well because it’s easy to think that it might be you know, people who don’t have commitments, like with children or extended family living there. Or it may be elderly people who may be living alone. It’s really quite open. You know the range of people but it was found in the the most recent research which is on the 2018 or 2019. That families so 77% of families with children over the age of six and 82% of families with children within the 12 to 17 year old range. Were one of the most likely cohorts to own pets here in Australia. So that’s that’s a lot when you think about how many families and you think you know that approximately 80% of families with children have at least one pet rural households or make up around 70% of pet ownership. People who have a mortgage was around 70% I thought that was quite an interesting statistic. That may be because some people who are renting may not be allowed to have pets in the home. Whereas if you have a mortgage, if you own your own home, you have a little bit more of a say whether you want to get you know, a dog or a cat. It’s also restricted as well. I know you know in certain areas, particularly here on the Gold Coast where I live in Queensland, you know you’re only allowed to have so many pets per household as well you know and depends on the size of the block of land and all those sorts of things. So you know, I think that that is quite interesting and I know that unfortunately there are people renting houses that admitted to own a pet so it can be a little bit restrictive there. Households with four or more people, women 64% I also thought that was quite an interesting percentage, whether that’s because women are generally more nurturing and you know, had that more nurturing thing. I don’t know if you know why that would necessarily be the case. You know, does that demonstrate that women are more likely to love pets than males? I don’t know. I’m not sure if the research sort of dug right into that. But I just thought Yeah, it’s it’s quite an interesting proportion there that they’ve sort of singled out that statistic. And also households with annual incomes over $50,000. Again, not sure if that is just due to the cost of actually owning a pet. And as pet owners yourself, you might understand that it’s it’s not always cheap. They’re always unexpected expenses that can come up there. Obviously they’re expected expenses, you know, their routine care and treatment that come into it. So it may be that people can’t afford to own a pet and they realise that and choose not to, you know, whether that equates demographically as well. You know, whether they’re, there’s people that own their own house, they are more likely to have a higher annual income and that’s why, you know, there’s a lot of questions I guess around that it’s it’s a really interesting piece of research that was done, but I think it just helps to provide us with a bit of a snapshot around who are most likely to own pets. You know, what, what are the population of people here in Australia? That are most likely to find those pets. This is the bit that I love the benefits of pets you know, and as I said before, I could talk about this all day, you know how much of a benefit that I see pets can bring and I’m you know, assuming that many of you can also relate to this as well. That human animal bond that can develop, you know, between an owner and their pet. Many of us, myself included seeing our pets as an extended part of our family. They love us unconditionally. I would say maybe cats might exception as well without sort of turning discriminatory against our cats just because I know what what my hand is like she’s she could be quite happy with to be left in the room by herself. She’s really not affectionate and really not that loving. Although I guess you know, she’s special she loves us loves us in her own way. You know when I compare that to you know, Ozzie era, our Burmese you know, he’s completely different. I look at Janome and you can see in this photo here just you know the love the unconditional love and affection. And loyalty. You know that she’s demonstrating there and I hope that you know is demonstrating you can see that that’s reciprocal, but it’s just just amazing. You know, when you come home and you see your dog so happy to see you their tails wagging there might be yapping when you come in the door. You know, they’re generally really pleased to see you. And you know, that is something that can be so uplifting and companies sometimes just the neck that they know, you know they come and sit with you if you’re not feeling very well or you’re feeling upset. I think those are the sorts of things that I personally find beneficial, you know from pets. They can be our best friends. You know, what did they say that dogs are man’s best friend? That they really can they can be so faithful. They can be so loyal and trusting. You know that they trust us. I mean, we’re responsible for feeding them and caring for them. They can’t take themselves off, you know, to a restaurant or to the vet for treatment. If they’re not feeling well. It’s up to us as the owners to recognise that you know and provide and honour them with the best possible care that we can. And as I just pointed out, most pet owners feel that pets a part of their family, that they’re a beloved family member and that’s why it can hurt so much when it’s time to say goodbye to them. Whether that’s expected or unexpected. It can be absolutely devastating. And as a psychologist who used to provide pet loss and grief counselling support to pet owners, I was quite alarmed and you know, had experienced that myself and I’ve looked at some of the attitudes of people that I don’t think clearly pet people they don’t necessarily understand that this is like losing a member of your family. You know, my my last dog we had in our family before I had children so she had been in our family dog my daughter’s grew up with her. And when we lost her it was literally one of the worst days of my life. You know having to say goodbye to her when she was nearly 16

It’s just devastating. And it’s I think that sort of part of that human animal bond that we develop. You know, just it’s just that unconditional love. I’m not sure. Maybe you can describe it in a much better way like how you would describe the love that you have with your pet and just it’s just it’s next level. I don’t I have no words I guess to try and explain. You know how I feel about the benefits that you get and the love you have with a pet. I think it’s also nice to point out like how helpful pets can be as well. And particularly during you know, obviously this unprecedented year where we’ve had COVID and the restrictions there’s been a lot of memes out there are funny pictures of dogs saying no I’m not going out for another walk today. You know when people were in lockdown or in isolation and they were only allowed you know to exercise the dog, you know to every family member wanted to take the dog out for a walk just because they wanted to get outside. So that’s that’s one of the benefits that pets have been able to provide. They helped with not only that companionship, that friendship, that loyalty, but they helped to keep us fit you know by if we have to exercise particularly walking our dogs or exercising our dog that if we’re physically walking with them as well we’d get the benefit out of that, you know, we’re out there getting fit and we’re getting out there and getting into some fresh air, perhaps getting out into nature. It also can help with social engagements with other people. If you and again, I’m just restricting this to dogs, but it may be the case if you own horses and go to horse shows or horse events. If you take your dog, you know and you’re walking you go to a dog park and you start talking to other people, you know they can be the social aspect out of it. You know when we take ginger on her walk. There is a lot of people around that we see you know, also out walking their dogs. We have quite a lot of Labradors in my my suburb. And it’s quite interesting to see the dogs I think Jenna looking, you know, I think there’s three or four black Labradors that we see quite often on our walks, They all stare at each other as if they are you my brother or sister. They seem to recognise each other but just having that you know, when you sit there and you say hello and you’re petting somebody else’s pet. It’s quite a nice way to sort of be within the community but it just helps with those social engagement and not to mention the physical and mental health as well. And I’m going to talk about that a little bit more when we talk about the benefits of animal assisted therapy. So some of the benefits of owning a pet, the physical fitness as I was just mentioning, our psychological health, you know, knowing that if we can sit there if we’re feeling distressed and just being able to display and get it all out and talk to your dog or your cat or might be your bird, it might be a fish, it might be a horse, you know, whatever that animal is just being able to talk again, they’re not judging you. They’re not criticising you for anything. They’re just say they just listen, they might look at you and they might just close their eyes and go to sleep. But it’s just that physical or physically being able to just vent and get it out or just, I think dogs have a really uncanny knack of doing this as well. They know when to come and sit next to you when you just need, you know, to pet them. Jenna did that brilliantly in our animal assisted therapy course that we went and again, I’ll share that with you shortly. Also, there’s been research they’re showing how they can help to develop the immune system, as well as as well as cardiovascular health of health sorry, lowering blood pressure, promoting exercise, promoting optimism, and again, having a direct impact on people who are experiencing anxiety in the patient. So it’s not just effective. I’ve got this cute little dog girl got a gorgeous cat or it might be a third or whatever animal it is that you have as a pet. There are proven benefits there to owning pets and obviously having that rapport with them. You know, I don’t mean just having them outside and leaving them to their own devices and neglecting them obviously. So you know, this is you know that good responsible pet ownership what we’re talking about. And I love this. I love it about it again. I just think dogs are so that is that next level up, but generally pets they care they don’t care if you’ve got smelly breath. They don’t care if your hair is an absolute mess. If you’re not wearing makeup, if you’re just in your tracksuit pants and slippers. They don’t care they’re not judging us and I think we can learn a lot from our pet in that way. And there’s a favourite quote of mine and I’ll probably get it wrong but it’s along the lines of be the person your dog thinks you are and I think it is just such a beautiful quote. I can’t remember the author of the quote, but it’s just beautiful. You know, like our dogs look at us and they just think that we’re the best thing on earth. How amazing if we did that with humans wouldn’t can imagine how much different the world would be if we were like that and we treated people the way you know the non judgmental way that some of our animals treat us. So you may have heard about animal assisted therapy or you may not basically AAA to animal assisted therapy. This is a form of treatment. So there’s generally a therapist or somebody trained, you know, in working in animal assisted therapy with the person as well as the animal, but the objective behind it is to be able to help that person either with their social functioning, their emotional functioning, or their cognitive functioning. I know here on the Gold Coast is there’s a few places that do the equine therapy as well. I’ve been out to one of them and I have to say it was just the most amazing experience even just standing in the paddock and just watching the horses, just how calming it really was. But some of the most popular animals are particularly equine therapy. Dogs, so again, you know like with the different kinds of therapy dogs that are used. Dolphins have also been used. You know, there is so many varieties and there was a clip that was doing the rounds on one of the social network pages about a horse that was actually going in to the hospitals to visit people to visit patients to help with their therapy. There was another story that I read quite some time ago about a dog that was a therapy dog and used to go and visit people in hospital. And it used to get off on say like the second floor and it would go to a particular Ward and there’s a particular patient that it had quite a good bond with. And one day that owner was taking the dog to the hospital and they weren’t going to that Ward they were going to the fourth floor to do something else. But then the elevators stopped at the second level. The dog ran out and the aide is going No no, no, we’re not going here today. Went to the ward and that patient was actually there. They had been admitted and unknown or unbeknown to the owner that this dog just knew that that patient was in there and went straight straight to the ward straight to that patient. Just amazing. There’s also the stories at the other end we’ve kept in some of the nursing homes, I think is it in Italy, maybe where this cat was able to essentially predict when one of the nursing home residents was about to pass away. And as I recall, I think it would go and sit on the bed of the person and then the next morning, you know that person would have passed away. So it’s just amazing how in tune they actually are but we don’t always give them credit for that. Extensive research again supporting the benefit psychologically and physiologically of animal assisted therapy and some of these I find significantly. Like wow this is quite amazing. Who would have thought that there would be this this many benefits. But some of those are that general lowering of blood pressure and there are levels of cholesterol using less medication so you know whatever the medication is required for generally like having pets and having them used in this way can reduce the amount of medication required, as well as the amount of visits to the doctor. There can be faster recovery from illness or surgery as well. I know my cats they just know you know, one of us in the family are unwell and we’re lying down on the bed, they’ll come and sit on the bed both of them, you know they’re just at the end of the bed or they come up next to us. You know that’s not always the norm for them to do that. But they just know or if you know someone’s feeling a little bit upset. Jenna is the exception to the rule. But even the cats tend to pick up on that later. They’re around us a lot more they’ll follow us around a lot more. It’s just amazing. Being able to deal with stressful situations a lot better, as well. And also heart disease risk factors. So some of those associated risk factors with heart disease have been shown to be lower.

But there’s still more ageing is decreased. Through obviously the physical exercise the socialisation we know as well that a good social support and having a good social network is a protective factor for our mental health. So if we’re able to go out even if we live by ourselves and we don’t have social support, like have friends or family close by, if we’re out there and engaging in that physical exercise and socialising with maybe it’s other pet owners or it’s people that are so can I pet your dog or you know those kinds of events that are happening, has again been shown to help that increase mental functioning and a subsequent decrease in ageing. Pet Therapy, obviously providing many benefits of ownership, which can be really important for people who are entering either an aged care facility when they feel like they have had to leave their pet behind. So I know there are a number of aged care facilities where they have pet in there they might have a resident cat, as I said like the one I think was that was in Italy or some will will bring in you know some of the dogs that go around and visit with their residents there. I know they were doing some research I think it was with the Griffith University and they were like with people who had lost their pet that they were using toy dogs toy pets, but essentially that’s what they were, you know they look like a toy dog but they were a little bit animated as well. So they had different things so people could pet them and or you can buy the kids one I think they’ll call Furbies or her babies or something. I used to have them as well. So they were quite small. They were battery operated. You can pet them and with the cat it would sit there and start pairing as well with the dog you could pet it and it was actually lower down and like a different was gonna lie down. So it was really good, particularly that I would find if I had someone who had lost a pet and just wanted that physical comfort of holding an animal and we couldn’t bring the physical animal into the clinic or for some of the younger children. Just that comfort of just you know that they felt that they were just petting a cat or petting a dog even though it wasn’t a real one. It was a simulated and as close to real one as possible. And again, you know, it’s one of the few interventions that can lift the spirits of people in nursing homes and hospitals hospices, there. There’s so many stories you may have read a lot of these yourself or you may have even had that experience with your own loved ones where you know, just taking the pet into the hospital or the environment that they’re there in and the benefits that have come from that it’s, it’s amazing. But also think about how the quality of life can be improved by some of our service dogs or our assistance dog. So there’s a little bit of a difference, like our service dogs or assistance dogs generally registered so they’re approved like with our guide dogs are saying idols in assists the service dogs are approved to go in wherever their owners going so that they’ll be allowed to go on transport into you know, restaurants with their owners into shopping centres and so forth. With therapy dogs, they don’t have any rights to per se. So technically, you know, left the organisation committed. You can’t take a therapy dog into the supermarket, you couldn’t take a therapy dog, you know onto a bus or a plane, not here in Australia anyway I know in the US they have emotional support animals that I know they have separate rules for them. But hey, you know therapy dog doesn’t have the same rights as a service or assistance dog. Think about the quality of life that these people have, you know, purely by the use of having one of these dogs so we have like our guide dogs who are seeing eye dogs, you know, to separate organisations to help people have that vision impairment. There’s also an organisation that you may not be aware of, but they’re based on the Sunshine Coast. They’re smart pups, assistance dogs so these are specifically trained for children with special needs. So it may be a child that has autism or is on the spectrum there and has special needs and so the dog stays with them. It’s trying to stay with them. So if that child wanders off the dog, you know will stay with them is trying to stay with them. There’s also an organisation called Mind dogs. So this is where you can have your own dog trained. I think it’s a 12 month training period I had a girlfriend who had a minder that has to be approved you have to go through you know this rigorous training and obviously have the pet approved you know, to make sure it’s suitable to be going into a public environment. But mind dogs are exclusively for people who have a psychological condition. So that may be anxiety or depression or post traumatic stress disorder. Something that has a you know, psychological diagnosis to it. So they have their own dogs trained up to be accredited, I guess to be, you know, registered as a proper service dog per hour serving a non serving Defence Force members with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. There’s an organisation called Young diggers and they have their their dog squad there that’s used for training them. We have seizure alert dogs for people with epilepsy. We have assistance dogs Australia for general animal assisted therapy, you know, which would be more in the therapeutic environment. If you are going for a counselling session and having you know the dog generally, in that session with you. The I’m just going to jump back I wasn’t sure if I elaborated on a little bit more but just really briefly, as I alluded to earlier, but quite a few years ago, I had some funding from Medicare Locals to be able to provide a wellness coaching programme using animal assisted therapy. So this is where I had Jenna trains I use as an actual trainer. She was from Delta dogs. She was a qualified trainer with Delta dogs. I’m not sure if you’ve heard of those but they go into some of the nursing homes and hospitals as well. I believe that they’re also in the United States as well as here in Australia. So we had her had her train to obviously make sure she was suitable to do that. And also my girlfriend he had her mind dog that was obviously registered through mind dog so we use the dogs in providing this well being coaching programme, essentially a six week programme. And so what we did was we did some pre and post testing with the participants to see what their level of depression anxiety and stress was at the start of the course. And then we tested it again at the end of the course just so we had a little bit of a measure as to has this been of benefit, you know, and obviously we couldn’t say 100% It was because we had the dogs there. We couldn’t say 100% It was because of the content that was provided. But we wanted to say you know is this combination of benefit. The amazing thing was and it was just absolutely incredible that particularly Jenna, she’s very low energy Labrador, but she gets really high energy when it’s time for food or if she’s going out she gets really excited. So I would have her in the car. She’d be jumping around for joy, and then got into the workplace where I was working. And she’d be like, Oh my gosh, it’s so many people around. This is so great. This is really exciting. And whether it’s I want to talk about my typical gender. As soon as we would walk into the doors into the training room, she would just switch off and go into work mode. Like she knew, Okay, I’m here to work, and it was incredible. She would pick up on people’s emotions before we would be able to see there was one case where Jenna got up. She had been asleep. I think we were in a lunch break. And you know, my my colleague was talking to one of the participants and her dog was fast asleep under the chair and we were having a break. And it’s obviously important to make sure that the dogs get a break. And then Jenna was at the side of the room so I was just doing some paperwork and there was just one other participants that in the group at the exact same time so the dogs were on opposite sides of the room both have been asleep the exact same time they both got up and went over to this lady who was just sat there, you know, while we were having a break. And so myself and my colleague, we both looked up because we’re like, okay, where are they going? Obviously we’re trying to keep an eye on the dogs. And they couldn’t get out. The doors were closed, by the way just to clarify, but we both hated this lady and she was crying. And then the dogs had picked up on that like I didn’t notice it. As I said I was doing paperwork we were in a break. But I noticed both of the dogs at the exact same time went up and sat behind this lady. Another time Jenna went and sat by someone she would pick a particular person each time each session to sit with and the people would get How did she know that I’m feeling really anxious today? Or how did she know that I’m feeling really sad today? Without fail that happens every single session? It is amazing. And I was quite flabbergasted myself to actually sit and go wow, you’re like how do they know that? That’s just how in tune they are. It is just amazing. Like I keep saying that word but that’s how incredible I really think it is just to see and just how they know. They just have this sense. They just seem to be able to pick up on that and just know.

But it’s also important, I think just to sort of end on a bit of an important note that we all know for those of us who are pet owners and adore our pets and you know, as I would like to think responsible pet owners, there are so many benefits to owning a pet. But it’s also important to remember that we do need to make sure that we’re looking after their health and well being you know that our responsibility as their owner or as I said earlier, they can’t just get up and walk off and take themselves to the vet if they’re not feeling well. They can’t just walk into a restaurant and order their own food. You know, so that’s part of our responsibility. We need to make sure that we can provide appropriate and adequate care for them. We need to make sure that we are providing them with a nutritious diet and a healthy nutritious diet and that would be something you know I would highly recommend speaking with your vet about to make sure that the diet that you have your pet on is the most appropriate. I understand not everybody can afford, you know to be paying a lot of money for high end products but speak with your vet about getting something that is appropriate. It may be that there are things that you can do that you don’t have to buy a really really high end product. It may be that this particular product here is just as suitable. If you are on a tight budget. You know, it’s more important to make sure that you are getting that nutrition in there and again, you know, my advocacy is around our veterinarians are a bit nurses, you know, who are the experts in that area. We also need to make sure that we can afford their veterinary care. So, you know, with an annual vaccinations defect thing you know, obviously is a one off, but it depends how many pets that you have as well. The parasite control, you know, making sure that they’ve got their tick prevention, their worming prevention, all of those things that are coming into it, having their health checks, you know, so generally, you know, I know when I take our pets to the vet, you know when we go to their annual vaccinations, they have a health check. You know, they check their teeth, they check everything while they they but also accidents and illnesses you know, we need to expect the unexpected because you just never know when something is going to crop up. Pet Insurance and yes, I’m well aware that we’re doing this presentation here through through pet short and I can absolutely promise you that I wasn’t told to say this. This is because of my own personal experience which I’m going to share with you a moment and how important this has been to me and my family and why I am such a huge supporter of pet insurance. You need to be aware of boarding costs if you’re away from the home you know who’s gonna look after your animals. So you need to make sure that that care was there, as well as their you know, appropriately making sure that they’ve got adequate bedding, you know, your colours, your leaves, your registration with your local council, all of those sorts of things. So it’s not just a matter of going out and buying an animal a pet and then that’s it. You don’t have to spend any more money. It is ongoing, you know, and they are for life. So just to to end off here now, with a personal story. This is my beautiful boy Ozzy. Yes, he is named after Ozzy Osbourne as well. They are from Black Sabbath, the heavy metal so yeah, that’s a long story but instead of back to the part as well sometimes as well, so he’s he’s a little Burmese boy, and had always been incredibly healthy. When was that last year? End of October. I think it was that he turned nine in December. So it was just before he turned nine. He was diagnosed with diabetes. And he went downhill rapidly. So we sort of knew that there was something else going on. I’m beyond grateful for the incredible incredible team that look after my pets, that they sort of said look, we’ve we found actually found a lump and we’re concerned we don’t have an ultrasound capacity here who needs to go to the specialist centre and have that ultrasound because we are concerned and we can’t detect on X ray what’s actually going on. So we went across to VSS specialist service here on the Gulf Coast, who are also think they’re amazing. And they did ultrasounds and I know this is quite funny. I get the funny part out of it. They said actually, the good news is we just think it’s that that’s in so that was really encouraging. And sorry for that a little bit too. Too much information. But while he was there, you know, we said look, he’s he’s just people Osijek he wasn’t responding to it wouldn’t eat and like normally he’s a bit of a pig. He wouldn’t eat he just it was like he had nothing left. And so they just ran so many different tests. They did everything. And it turned out he had a couple of really serious conditions and probably never heard of them before but hepatic lipidosis and Collegio hepatitis. When I mentioned that to vets, they always give me a look as if to say Whoa, that is serious. And you are incredibly lucky. So he had you know the best of care. He was in the ICU unit there for four days. And I cannot tell you the relief on our vets face when I said we had pet insurance because one of the most stressful things for our vets and I know this from my research is when they know that they could treat an animal but the owner can’t afford it and they have to put an animal to sleep. It’s one of the most distressing things for a vet that have a disproportionately high rate of suicide. They’re around four times the average of the general population to suicide, which a lot of people aren’t aware of. So just that relief it was also we were just getting ready to go overseas as well. We like oh my gosh, this is our you know our travel money. I was going for work but at least I’ve had enough money to do it. Just the relief of knowing that we had pet insurance to cover those expenses. I cannot tell you how grateful I was that we made that decision to get pet insurance for all of our pets. We our expenses alone just between you know our vet clinic and the specialist Centre for over $6,000 You know how many people got that kind of money just lying around without knowing that they’re going to get some kind of rebate back? You know, we certainly didn’t. And so to me to know that I think I’ve got like 75% back on that, you know, the middle level of cover. Just to know that we got the bulk of that back was it was just amazing. I didn’t have to stress about okay, you know, I guess they’re doing this test and that test and everything was absolutely appropriate that they did, but just the I guess the importance of knowing that we had that reassurance behind us that we didn’t have to worry about the cost of the treatment so we were able to give Ozzy the best possible care about two months ago now he is completely in remission. So it has been a massive 12 month journey. It took us about nine nine months. I think that he’s gone from you know, being a diabetic cat with these two, as I believe and correct me if I’m wrong, life threatening conditions to being fully in remission. It is just marvellous. And again, you know, just having that importance of penetrant to set peace of mind we were so grateful for So just really quickly because I know we need to wrap up now. Obviously the benefits of pet ownership are far reaching. We’ve talked about a lot of them today. I don’t think I’ve even touched the surface of pet ownership. They do cost money. So we need to make sure that we’re prepared to be able to look after they’re expensive as they arrive. As I said, we never expected we were going to have a diabetic cat that then had two extra conditions requiring you know, ICU care at a specialist centre. Never in a million years would have thought that we would have gone through that but it did. If you love your pets, please love your bed and the nurses but let’s not leave the nurses out they are incredible and do an incredibly credible job without them without pets feed. You know in the long run our pets wouldn’t survive, you know without our veterinary professionals. So, please you know just even just a genuine Thank you can make a difference hold back on any snide remarks about you know, they’re just in it for the money or they earn a fortune that actually really poorly paid as well. But that’s a whole other story with that. And again, you know, if you’ve got a pet there, give it a pat a kid a cuddle or all of the above and tell them how much you love them and appreciate them. I do that every day with my furbaby and I hope that I hope that you do too. You have any questions you’re welcome to reach out to me my contact details are provided here. General email address, and also my two websites and sorry, I just know that there was a typo in the positive side solution is comm.au.au. If you’d like to look at our lovely pet campaign, there’s a whole series of videos that we’ve done as well that’s also available on our website. I would encourage you to do that. Just to see I guess and what’s really going on within this profession. And if you want to look at the research project 2019 on animal medicine, Australia, put this survey together. It’s I think about an 18 page document. It’s quite extensive. But it’s it’s really informative. I found it really good and really helpful. So I hope that you have enjoyed that. I know we’ve got a little bit of time, just if there’s any questions that anyone would like to ask. But I hope that you have enjoyed that and thank you so much for joining us in the webinar today. That was awesome.

Thank you so much, Nadine. And we do have a few questions that have come through. So the first question was regarding the animal assisted therapy practitioners. Do you know of a database where people can search for those practitioners in their area?

I don’t know if there’s a database per se. Some of the psychology groups like the Australian Association of psychologists incorporated or AAPI or the Australian Psychological Society. For members that have chosen to register they have like a find your psychologist service and I think from memory that you can highlight in there if you have expertise in a particular area. So if you do incorporate animal assisted therapy in your practice, other than that the animal assisted therapy Australia they’re based in Brisbane. I believe. I don’t know if they actually I think they have a network around Australia. But they would be probably the first type I would check. And again, I’m pretty sure which is animal assisted therapy, Australia. If you Google it, it should come up. If you can’t find it, please let me know because I can send you the link to that as well. But that would be somewhere that I would start. Again, depending where you are. I know that I have a psychologist colleague in Brisbane that uses her little sausage dogs and her therapy sessions and I also have a colleague in Sydney, I think is in Miranda and rosebay that they’ve been training a little French Bulldog. I think he has little Roy that they’ve been using. They’re in their practice as well. So but I think if you Google it, you know like animal assisted therapy if you’re looking for psychological support. If you’re looking for like the equine therapy as well you can just do go equine therapy as well and it should come up with equine therapy Australia as well. So that should come up as well. So hopefully that answered that question. If you get stuck, let me know and I can send you the link.

Perfect. Thank you so much. That was super helpful. Another question that’s come through if we feel work with veterinarians, do you think that the attitude of pet parents to pets in rural areas versus pets in city areas is any different?

I’m not sure actually, I haven’t really broken it down in as much as just knowing that the vets that are in those rural areas can have a lot more pressure on them because one of the requirements with the registration boards is to have that 24/7 hour service. So I’ve actually had a client who was in a rural area was a solo vet in the practice, but was expected to provide an after hours service like on call service in addition to the day to day services. And so that creates a lot of stress and a lot of pressure from that perspective. I’ve also had a client unfortunately had a weapon pulled on her in a rural area, you know from a client that didn’t want to pay the bill. I don’t know that there would be a difference because I know just holistically the relationship between the client and the best staff can make or break the job. So one of the other major traumatic factors for the vets that contribute to their high rate of burnout and suicide. Those clients who are difficult you know, there’s clients that might use threats. They might use emotional blackmail. They make snide remarks. Those are the kinds of clients whether they’re in a rural or built up City area. It’s the nature of the clients themselves that can have that impact. But I’m not sure of any statistics around the proportion of how many rural clients with and how many city clients that that would affect I think it’s just a person by person basis. I hope that answered the question.

Okay, thanks that Nadine and and then next question and appreciate that you can’t give personalised advice but this pet parent has a daughter who has a beautiful golden retriever as her emotional support animal and when they go out to areas where the golden retriever can’t follow like restaurants, etc. Their daughter struggles a little bit being separated from this retriever. Any suggestions about how people that are using their pets for support can cope when they’re away from them for short periods?

Oh, that’s a really good point actually. And haven’t really put too much thought into that myself on this thing. And am I my friend who had the the mind dog that we used that I mean, she obviously was allowed to take the dog with her and those areas. I think it would be just providing that that comfort and that security like some of that psychological safety to let them know that they are okay that they are safe in this environment, maybe having some appropriate coping strategies that may come from the therapist for being able to cope while they are away from the dog so that they’re not 100% reliant on the dog. It may also be that if that is too difficult, can you find you know, pet friendly areas and maybe that your favourite restaurant doesn’t allow pets but maybe there is another restaurant that’s nearby that will you know, maybe it’s about that compromise going in there but it could be important again, I don’t know the circumstances but you know providing the pet owner you know who has the emotional support dog with adequate support to make sure that they know how to cope in situations where they are separated from the animal again, obviously it depends on there. Whether there’s intellectual impairments or or what the the nature of that is, I’d say trying to help that person to cope with that does that reassurance if everything’s okay, or just limiting the amount of time you know that they are away and then building up on that set? Maybe you know, let’s just try five minutes today where we leave the house and we just go to the letterbox and then come back, you know, and the next day it might be going down to the end of the street and back. So they’re just practising a little bit of that, like that separation anxiety like we often do with our pets. You know, those kinds of things might might also be good suggestions.

That’s great advice. Thanks so much to Dean and thanks to everyone for all of those questions. Unfortunately, we’re out of time today. Thank you again for attending the webinar. We hope you enjoyed this session. A very special thank you to Nadine for putting today’s presentation together and for giving up her time to share her knowledge and experience with us. Have a great day everyone and thank you so much for joining us.

About the webinar

Recorded: 14 October 2020

Pets really are the best medicine! In this webinar we meet Dr Nadine Hamilton from Positive Psych Solutions, a specialist and leading global authority on veterinary well-being, and discuss the many positive benefits of pet ownership – including improved mental health. If you’re looking for an excuse to add another furry family member to the mix – then this one’s not to be missed.

Dr Nadine Hamilton

Dr Nadine Hamilton

BSc (Psych), PGDip.Psych, MTrain&Dev, EdD | CEO | Psychologist
Dr Nadine Hamilton is a Leading Worldwide Authority on Veterinary Wellbeing, Author, Psychologist, CEO/Founder of Love Your Pet Love Your Vet. As an advocate for the veterinary profession, Dr Nadine founded the charity “Love Your Pet Love Your Vet” and partnered with Royal Canin to reduce stigma in veterinary professionals seeking help, raising awareness within the community about the realities of working in the profession, and providing psychological and educational support to veterinary professionals.