A Rural Veterinarian on Why Vets Have the Highest Suicide Rate and the Child He Lost

Vance Crowe [00:00:04] As the crow flies on the Vance Crow podcast, welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here today. I spoke with veterinarian Bruce Fi, who is a traveling veterinarian. His wife is actually a veterinarian, and we have a really wide ranging conversation. We start off just kind of getting used to one another and figuring out what does it mean to be a traveling vet, what's going on in the world? But as Bruce and I get talking, we end up going into some rather personal issues. We go into some of the challenges both of us have had, trying to start a family with our wives. We talk about books that we read that impacted us, and coming in contact with ideas that we didn't initially agree with. If you listen to things, even just earlier in this podcast, or definitely in my past, you would hear me speak very, very negatively about things like organic farming or chiropractic care. And I wouldn't say that I am completely sold on these ideas, but because I've been coming in contact with people like Bruce or scientists, farmers like Jason Mock, I'm starting to reanalyze my position, trying to understand what do I actually know and what was an opinion that somebody gave me and I was carrying out, not really thinking too deeply about it. This is a fun conversation because it's so light and it's such a pace that's different than what you're hearing in other places. So I hope you enjoy this conversation with Bruce figure. Before I get to that, I do wanna tell you about a class that I put together that is now selling like crazy.

Vance Crowe [00:01:36] I had been asked by people to put together a class that helped them figure out, how do I look professional on video calls? How do I look more like you do in the podcast? And so I put together a class that was online and people could sign up for it and do it live. And then I realized that so much information was being passed through that class that instead it would be better if people could watch it at their own pace. So I worked together with my executive producer, Ben Anderson, and we created a class that is about professional telepresence, basics, how to sound and look good on a video call. And we broke it into a class that's 70 minutes long that you can watch in two to five minutes segments. And by the time you're done, you'll know, should I spend a little bit of money on lights? Should I change the way that my camera is oriented? How can I lower the amount of echo in this room? The 70 minutes in this class will be worth your time because you won't have to scour the internet trying to piece together this idea. This will tell you how to look and sound so much better than the others on the call that everybody tells me after they've taken it, that their friends say, Hey, how did you do that? I want it to help me. So if you're interested in taking this class, go to store Articulate Ventures, or just visit the link below and you'll be taken to a class where you can buy it online and make this class your own. And if you're interested in buying this for a larger organization, maybe you have a board of directors or for your company, then just write me an emailVance@vancecrow.com and we can get you a bulk order where you can buy a bunch of classes.

Vance Crowe [00:03:09] And we may be able then to plan an in-person session where I get on Zoom and I give you feedback about how your group did, how much better you look, how your sound is. I'm really excited and interested in this. And we all know now because of Coronavirus that there is no doubt that we will be doing thousands of video calls into the future. So making these changes now, learning how to look and sound better, will make a huge difference. Thank you so much. I try and talk about the things I'm working on so we don't have to run advertisements. If you wanna support the podcast, check out store Articulate Ventures. Thanks so much. And now on to the inter interview with veterinarian Bruce Fi. Bruce Fi, welcome to the podcast.

Bruce Figger [00:03:54] Hey Vance, thanks for having me on.

Vance Crowe [00:03:56] So you are a traveling veterinarian in Kansas, which to me sounds like a job that would exist to somebody in like the late 18 hundreds that maybe Laura Ingalls Wilder would've encountered. I didn't realize there was a need for a mobile vet in our, in our world today.

Bruce Figger [00:04:14] Yeah, it's that, that's pretty true. It's kind, I kind of do things in that method. The, the farm calls, house calls. I, I even carry a little black doctor's bag that's kind of an antique. My wife got me for a graduation present, but it's still pretty handy. I keep all of my, you know, the drugs that I use that I bring up, you know, if I've gotta go treat a cow and she's in a chute or she's out in a pasture, that's kind of my main go-to bag for all of my favorite treatments and and stuff. So yeah, the kind of in the rural areas or I'm, I moved back to kind of where I, where I grew up and it's 30, 40 miles to a vet in, in any direction. So that always seemed, I remember that was kind of a difficult thing when, when we were growing up, the vets will come out, you know, a lot of vets have a clinic and then do farm calls in addition to that, but it, you know, it's kind of a waste to travel. And a lot of times they're busy in the clinic and you've gotta load something up and bring it to 'em. So I thought that maybe we, I could, I could do this and kind of went for it. And it, it's been working out. But that was when I, I remember when I was shadowing vets, that was always my favorite thing. I didn't like being in the clinic. I liked being in the truck, going out to the animals and seeing what we could get done just on the farm there.

Vance Crowe [00:05:32] And so is it when a vet, when a doctor, a medical doctor comes out, they go into a practice, they're usually surrounded by other doctors. They're a part of like a hospital system. When I see you having your, you know, you're sitting in your truck and you've got your doctors, you know, your veterinarian sign on there, I think, man, that looks like Bruce is out on his own figuring this business out. Are veterinarians just different than doctors in that way and that it's a more solitary career? Or is this unique what you're doing?

Bruce Figger [00:06:03] What I'm doing isn't particularly unique, but it's probably a little bit, it's not quite the norm. There's most veterinarians when they get outta school, it's, it's just like doctors. You go into a practice that's established, you work with, you know, some mentors and then an, a pretty normal path for, for a rural vet or a mixed animal vet would be to go, go work with an established practice and eventually work up to buying in or buying out the, the older vets there, basically. But there are quite a bit, there's a lot of variation in the, in how to do the, or in how to practice. There's some people that are just consultant vets that, like I have some friends that go to feed that just go to feedlots and are there, you know, kind of on staff vet and give them advice. They don't do a lot of the hands-on working on the animals, but they train all the cowboys and what to look for and how to treat things, and they set up protocols. And so that's one, one way to go. There's also, there's corporate clinics that, those are usually the small animal ones that are owned by, you know, there there's a big conglomeration of clinics all under the same kind of corporate veil. And so they, they have a, there are some advantages to that in the, the way the companies are structured and things like that. So,

Vance Crowe [00:07:27] You know, it's interesting, I've had one of the veterinarian on, and she was a small animal vet and I've had a chance to visit several veterinarian schools around the country, university of Florida, Iowa State. I think I've been to a couple in either Kansas or Kentucky. And it's really interesting because in the current veterinarian situation, if you wanna be a vet, you have to learn how to do everything from lizards all the way up to elephants and horses and cows and dogs and cats. And you're talking about the anatomy of entirely different species that broke off from the evolutionary chain millions of years ago. And yet a veterinarian is responsible for all of them. As you look at the veterinarian education system, is that the right way to go, make everybody a generalist and then you focus on cows? Or is this just a vestige of the education system that needs to be changed in order to update, you know, so that small animal vets don't have to learn how to work on elephants and aren't wasting their time?

Bruce Figger [00:08:29] Yeah, you're absolutely right. And they say that it's harder to get into vet school than med school because med school's just one species. So, but there are some schools that track is what they call it, where if you want, if you're interested in large animals, you focus mostly on large animals for the four years and you get a little bit of the small animal stuff and then you get out and you know, your career goal was to work on large animals, but that's probably not as good of a structure. It's probably better for us to learn about everything then we can be a little bit more diverse in our career choices as, as we move forward. You know, I've had some friends that as we were going through school, changed their, changed their minds. I, I think there was one girl in my class who was really interested in horses, and then we got to the fourth year of vet school and she's like, I really like small animal surgery. And started pursuing that a little bit more and I think she got into like emergency medicine for small animals and stuff. So, but it helps us, I think it helps us communicate better as a, as a profession so that, especially when there's, you know, something going on with food animals that could affect small animals or if they're, you know, like an outbreak of a disease or something like that. Does that happen that Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, rabies and rabies is a pretty common zoonotic disease, one that affects humans and multiple species.

Bruce Figger [00:10:00] So there's a lot of public health kind of tied into that too. And I can't, I can't think off the top of my head of one that that would be real concerning. There is a disease traveling that's in Kansas right now that affects horses and food animals. So we're, we're kind of having to keep a, a close eye on that. And so we gotta communicate with our regulatory veterinarians at the state level and we have to be out on the search for it in, in the public space basically.

Vance Crowe [00:10:33] You know, what's striking to me as coronavirus came out and people were talking about pandemics or how diseases spread, that the people that I have a good relationships with, and I was talking with regularly as this came out, were people that have animals, they have livestock and they're used to seeing a disease spread across multiple animals or across a herd or jump from pen to pen. And it was just a different experience than most humans have because most humans experience disease as my kids got sick or my spouse got sick, or family got sick, or maybe our neighbors did. But very few people ever get the chance to zoom the camera lens out far enough to see how does disease spreading throughout a population. But I think a veterinarian or people in cattle or other livestock have a different interpretation of that. Would you agree? Is that what you saw during coronavirus, that you had a better understanding?

Bruce Figger [00:11:25] Yeah, I think so. That brings up an interesting kind of story too. I had a professor in vet school, he, he did a lot of the feedlot stuff and he always wanted to study kindergartners going, coming back from Christmas break and as a model for how disease spreads in a feedlot when you bring in a new, like a new group of cattle. But he, nobody had ever given the funding for it, he said, but it, he, he always saw that as a very similar thing. These,

Vance Crowe [00:11:54] Well, and that's precisely,

Bruce Figger [00:11:56] And those are coming from very, you know, from all these different spaces and you bring 'em into one kind of contained area and then it's a, there's a new, somebody's carrying a bug that's novel to the rest of 'em, and then everybody gets sick and then they, you know, bring it home to their folks and, you know, well

Vance Crowe [00:12:12] That's, and that's precisely what people are worried about with colleges, right? Yeah. So I think

Bruce Figger [00:12:17] Notre

Vance Crowe [00:12:17] Dame said, we're gonna bring everybody back. We're gonna try and come back early, but when you leave for Thanksgiving break, that's it. So maybe those students will come home and bring disease with them, but they're not gonna go home, meet with Aunt Sally and her snot nose kids and, and then get infected with something and bring it back to the college campus.

Bruce Figger [00:12:36] But

Vance Crowe [00:12:36] It's so interesting because we've never thought about controlling society in terms of disease spread in this way. It, I mean, we had when it was, you know, sexually transmitted diseases or things that you could be vaccinated before, but at least in this modern age, this is kind of like a, a mind bending thing to try and figure out how do you control disease among populations of people.

Bruce Figger [00:13:00] Yeah. That, that's gonna be tough. I think especially on the, the college end of things because I've heard, you know, oh, they're gonna do a lot more online classes, but there'll still be some in person. So these college kids are gonna, are, they're not gonna stay in their dorms or in their houses if they don't have class to go to, you know, they're gonna be, even if the bars are closed, they're, they're gonna find a way to get together. So it's gonna be really tough to keep, keep things from not spreading it on in the college towns, I think.

Vance Crowe [00:13:28] Yeah. And you think about like, what is going on in the brain chemistry of a 17 or 18-year-old kid, maybe even 20-year-old kid, right? They have some innate drive in them to go mix things up to go be adventurous, to go, to go be exploring and seeing things. And when they have children or they get married or like they will settle down. But if you say, Hey, generation of kids, we have a new disease that we've not seen in modern times, we want you to change literally something that is innate in you as your brain chemistry on mixing with other people and finding people to hook up with and exploring ideas. Like, I just can't imagine how long you think you can hold back human beings from intermixing with one another no matter how bad the disease is.

Bruce Figger [00:14:17] Yeah. Especially like these college freshmen coming in that didn't get a graduation, didn't get a, a spring to their senior year. They're gonna be really kind of antsy, I think, about social interactions and, and getting out and, and doing something now they don't have any,

Vance Crowe [00:14:32] What would you have been 18, right? 18. You're, you're smart enough. You, you see that now in the focus that you were in, you were able to get into vet school and be able to make it through. But had somebody come along and been like, Hey, you just gotta give up two years of your youth just to sitting at home and you can talk with people online. Would you have been a compliant person?

Bruce Figger [00:14:50] I don't think so. Especially out here in the rural area. We, it, my home county has had two cases and so that would be really hard to, to stay inside and stay away from everyone. Especially when you're 18 and you know everything. You'd already, you know, haven't figured out that, that I'm not, I'm not gonna get it. Nobody even around here has it wouldn't be, probably wouldn't be smart enough to, to think through and find the, the information that's, that that disagrees with, with what you think.

Vance Crowe [00:15:22] Yeah, there's a lot of babies that have been born on, on young people that thought they were invincible or that it couldn't happen to them or something like

Bruce Figger [00:15:30] That.

Vance Crowe [00:15:30] Yeah. That their exposure to the elements or random chaos can result in things that you didn't anticipate. But anybody else watching would be like, yeah, you keep messing around like that, it's gonna happen.

Bruce Figger [00:15:42] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:15:44] So when you think about going to school, 'cause how long have you been out of being a, a, a vet?

Bruce Figger [00:15:49] I graduated in 2016, so I've been a vet for four years now.

Vance Crowe [00:15:53] And when you think about being a vet for four years, were you prepared when you were done with school or were you as prepared as you were going to be?

Bruce Figger [00:16:02] I think I was prepared as I was going to be, but I still still wasn't quite ready. I remember the very first small animal appointment I had. So when I got outta school I went to work for a, a mixed practice in North central Kansas. And I, my first day was like a Saturday and I was pretty much, there was one other vet there, but it was super busy and they kind of threw me in an exam room and said, yeah, go vaccinate this dog. I was like, okay, cool. What are, what are we vaccinating for today? But I had a good technician that got everything out for me and got ready 'cause I was just, I was so nervous, I just blanked out on everything that I had learned for, for a minute there. But there was, there was a lot of stuff that you just gotta get out and actually get some interaction with some animals and some clients to start up, you know, applying, to start really practicing, you know, all the information was there and I had a lot of notes and stuff that I, that I could go reference. But it, it took probably a couple months before I was really kind of rolling and could handle some stuff on my own felt like.

Vance Crowe [00:17:08] So when we talk about things like vaccines or, or when you're helping animals, one of the things that if you've been separated away from animals, it's really difficult to see that animals get sick. So do cows get influenza and a cold and sicknesses like that in the same way that human beings do?

Bruce Figger [00:17:30] Yes, for the most part. I think the, the answer to that would be, yes, cows, especially respiratory disease is their, their main thing. There's a bovine respiratory disease complex, which consists of different collection of viruses and bacteria that we try to vaccinate for that, that seem to, to tip that off. But what's really interesting about 'em and why they have so much trouble with respiratory disease and it's more of a lower kind of a lung respiratory instead of more of a, you know, nasal type is if you look at a cow in cross-section, like if you cut her off midway through her body and looked at, you know, we're able to kind of pop her hood up and look at her on flat ways. It's mostly stomach. Cows are like all stomach and like a little bitty chunk of lung. So they've got this, you know, this big body they've gotta carry around, but not a lot of lung capacity to help 'em out. Where like a horse is like a ton of lung. And then like a big, a big giant colon is their, their hind gut fermenters. So they've got a lot more end to their gut than cows. And cows have a big, the big rumen where they break down those grasses and stuff. Wait,

Vance Crowe [00:18:44] Yeah, I never really thought about that because horses eat grass just the same way as cows. Do they get that, but are they, are they somehow like digesting the, the grass differently? 'cause they don't have a multi chambered sum? Yes. Okay. So how does a horse, horse horse digest grass then?

Bruce Figger [00:19:00] So horses are, they're, they're kinda weird, but they've got, their digestional tract is is completely different. They're, like I said, they're hind gut firm renters where a cow eats grass swallows it, it rolls around in her rumen for a while and then she regurgitates it, chews it again, swallows it again, and does that for a while. That's, so that's ruminating and that's how she breaks down the grass. But a horse eats it, they cannot regurgitate. They've got a really sharp, where their esophagus goes into their stomach is a really sharp turn and a really tight sphincter. So once it goes in, it's gotta go to the back. So they've got a regular stomach like a monogastric does, you know, like humans. But once it gets back to the colon, it's this big giant thing that takes up the entire bottom of their abdomen and it wraps around and makes a sharp hook and then wraps around again. And so they're fermenting back there. That's where they break down forages

Vance Crowe [00:20:00] And that fermentation, does that mean that they extract less energy out of it like a cow? One of, so I've had a chance to actually put my arm inside of a cow and feel, feel the stomach and the, and the little like fingerling things that are sticking out of it. Oh yeah. I don't even know how to describe it. But when that, when I was learning about this, they were telling me this is the way that the cow has evolved to be able to extract basically as much sunlight out of the grass as it can or as much of the carbon energy that you can, the a TP. And so I always assumed that you had to have that in order to be able to extract energy out of grass, but horses obviously are doing the same thing. So even though it's in the back, is it doing something different? Like how, how is it, are they able to get as much energy out of grass as cows can?

Bruce Figger [00:20:48] They're not as efficient because a cow does all that breaking down at the start and then absorbs all that energy, you know, through the rest of her intestinal tract and the horse, it's at the end. So they've got, you know, just a small amount of area to absorb all that. But they're still pretty good at it. They're probably not as efficient. I can't think of, you know, any, any statistics or anything offhand of, of how, you know, their, their feed conversion rate. But there's a, you know, that's probably one of the reasons that we eat cows and not horses.

Vance Crowe [00:21:21] Do you, do you work on horses as well?

Bruce Figger [00:21:24] Yeah, yeah, quite a little bit. I I sewed up a nose on one yesterday, actually this guy had called me in this. He went out to check his pastures and his horse had lacerated his, his nostril and so we, he, we got that sutured up and, but yeah, so I'll work on about anything that somebody will call me out to do really. But I see quite a bit we, you know, work on teeth. So horses' teeth are constantly erupting. Their born and their teeth are, are really long, but they're up in their jaw and so they erupt down throughout their life and they grind on each other, but they get sharp. So we have to go in and, and grind, basically grind the teeth down a little bit. We call that floating. So I've got a specially shaped file to run along the sides of their teeth to take those sharp points off.

Vance Crowe [00:22:14] And if they were out in the wild, if so, whatever remnant this was of, of an evolutionary track where the horses would have the teeth in there and they'd come down, what would the horse do in the wild to not have sharp teeth? Or is it that in the wild they would have sharp teeth?

Bruce Figger [00:22:29] They would just have sharp teeth. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:22:31] And that makes them more dangerous?

Bruce Figger [00:22:34] No, not really. I, I wonder if it isn't almost a limiting factor for them because it makes it un, you know, they get sores on their mouth or on their cheeks and on their tongue and yeah, they can't it, but it's the, the teeth we're working on are back on the sides and they've got those real long cheeks, you know, and the, so it's not like they can bite something with, with the sharp points. I don't know if the, that I, I wouldn't think it would help break down bigger, harder, you know, things if they, like, if they were trying to eat apples or something like that. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:23:06] Because I was just imagining you were saying that horses essentially have giant fangs in the front and they're sharp and that's how they fight. But you're saying these are the teeth that are all the way in the back that Yeah, like

Bruce Figger [00:23:15] They're molar

Vance Crowe [00:23:17] Interesting. And so you do this dental work on horses, but the mouth of a cow is different.

Bruce Figger [00:23:24] Yeah. Yeah. So cows, so horse's, teeth sit, the top ones sit out wider than the bottom ones. So that's where they get, and then they, they chew, you know, kind of this way so that, that's where they get that angle. 'cause the outsides of the top ones don't, don't have anything to grind against and the insides of the bottom ones don't. So that's where the points show up. And cows yeah, don't seem to have that problem. I don't, I think that they're, it, they're similar. I think that their teeth still erupt, but not, not nearly as, and they're, they're actually lined up better.

Vance Crowe [00:24:01] And this is the craziest part about veterinarian work, because I don't, I can't think of a single other profession where the breadth of knowledge that you have to have in order that you can do this is so large, right? Like the difference between how the teeth of a, of a cat are versus the teeth of a horse. This is just like a, a, a wildly different thing. However, somebody could be on the farm and a cat with a, with a, you know, an abscess in their mouth is the same as one with a horse. Is just that the, maybe the price difference or something is, is somehow different. But somebody has to be able to handle all of those things, eh?

Bruce Figger [00:24:37] Yeah. Yeah. And so the drug, the drugs can be a lot different. So when you get into that, you know, the, the physiology of, you know, phar, you know, pharmacokinetics and things like that can be vastly different between species and, but a lot of things are also pretty similar. You know, an abscess, you're gonna treat pretty much the same on any critter you're gonna do. You're, you know, try to drain it, try to get it clean. If there's something in there, try to get it out, give it some antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, you know. So some of those things are kind of, kind of the same, but you got, you have to know which antibiotic can you give a cat that you might be able to give a horse. But it would cost a ton because there's, you'd have to give so much more or you know, could, if you pick the wrong drug, some that would work in one species, you might kill another species. So.

Vance Crowe [00:25:32] And when you think about the way human beings are thinking about drugs and medicine and vaccines, is this also going on with animals? Like, you see the movement where people are saying, these cows have never had antibiotics and I know that people are worried about eating food that would then somehow expose them to antibiotics and that would somehow drive forward antibiotic resistance. But what is the flip side of this? If you have cows where the owner doesn't believe in antibiotics or vaccines, first of all, does that exist? And then second of all, what is the cost of that?

Bruce Figger [00:26:12] I think it exists to an extent. I have never personally worked with someone who did not want to give antibiotics to one of their, to an animal that that was sick. And sometimes they even have people who want to give antibiotics to something that doesn't need it. But as, hmm, as far as people being exposed to the antibiotic resistance, we don't, I don't think we get that. We, we don't really see that coming through the meat from, you know, giving, especially like if we give one cow a treatment for, for an abscess or something like that, you know, the withdrawal times are really rigid. We, you know, adhere to those. We don't send something to slaughter that has had, that is, hasn't been off of an antibiotic for long enough to, for her to be safe to go into the food system there. And then, but there are some people who are doing the organic, organic production basically. And there's organic and there's antibiotic free and there's all these little kind of niche things. And a lot of times if there's so, so you've got a group of them that are like that and you have to give an antibiotic one, he just can't be part of the part of that niche market, you know, he can't be

Vance Crowe [00:27:36] Labeled as, yeah, so once a cow, so if you have a herd and you're having a, and we're gonna do these antibiotic free, but a cow gets sick, then what the, the rancher will often do is pull that particular cow out of the herd, treat it with antibiotics, and then just never put it back. So the other cows in that herd that have been, they just didn't catch the sickness so they didn't need the medicine. And so therefore they can be marketed and sold in this antibiotic free way.

Bruce Figger [00:28:01] Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:28:02] Very interesting. And whe when you're out in Kansas, are you seeing people that have a huge diversity of ways that they raise cattle in, in these kind of thinking? Or is it basically everybody's doing the same, they're trying to figure out how to do it more efficiently?

Bruce Figger [00:28:17] Yeah, it, yeah, I'd say probably everybody's a little bit more of the same, but they're, they're changing the way, the way they do things a a little bit. You know, some guys really like big cows, you know, they have big calves so that they can, you know, they're selling, you know, 'cause that that's what they're selling. They wanna sell big calves. And then there's some people who are doing, you know, smaller cows and trying to get bigger calves off of the, trying to get bigger calves. But, but you can have more smaller cows on less area. So I work, but I work with, you know, varying sides of sizes of herds and some, you know, kind of smaller hobby farms and up to, you know, bigger cow calf productions. I don't do a lot with, with any feedlots, but, but I work a lot with cow calf guys and there's, you know, kind of a thousand ways to skin a cat with that, the way that people do, you know, some people will implement artificial insemination to get better genetics into their herd. Some people are more focused on, on grazing and rotation, rotational grazing and, and focusing more on their, their soil and their plant, you know, soil and their grasses to, to, to be more productive. And some people, you know, you can add in little things, you know, different dewormers, different vaccination protocols, different timing of calving to, to try to catch different markets with your calves. And there's, yeah, just everybody does it a little bit different.

Bruce Figger [00:29:49] I would say

Vance Crowe [00:29:51] A few years ago I had a chance to speak to the association of bovine practitioners and is enormous thing, and it's around veterinarians that are focused on cattle. Like when you're in, one of the things that happened was there was a breakout group that I went to and I expected it to be kind of small. It was about mental health with veterinarians, but the room was so filled that they decided to do two of the same class back to back. Oh wow. Because there were so many people there. And it struck me, and I don't think I was quite well enough acquainted with the industry to ask, but what do you think is going on there? Is that a pattern you see? Is it that people are like, Hey, we're worried about this, so we're gonna focus on it? Or is it actual real problem that is specifically facing veterinarians different than other people?

Bruce Figger [00:30:38] I, I'm not sure if it's facing veterinarians too much more differently than other people. And I think we're being, everybody's kind of becoming a little bit more aware of mental health it seems like. But there, yeah, there is definitely, I think an actual problem in the industry. There's a lot of, a lot of people trying to address that. There's different groups. The su the suicide rates for veterinarians are the highest among the professions. I think the we're at

Vance Crowe [00:31:04] Four times why, what, what is that going on? Because people, when you think about a veterinarian, you think of the little girl that loved, loved, loved kittens or dogs or horses or whatever. And so they're getting to live out the very dream that they had. And, and maybe it's not that maybe there's other people like you loved cows. How is it that they get into this world, they're living their dream and it's, and they're taking their own life.

Bruce Figger [00:31:28] So yeah, take that little girl and run her through an extremely rigorous education, you know, four years of, of education and then saddle her with a quarter million dollars in debt and kind of throw her to the wolves and make her work, you know, 12 hour days, six, seven days a week, and have owners be mad because you're charging too much or you can't save their dog, or you won't, you won't see them. There's a lot of, a lot of those extra stressors that come in. You know, you've got all this compassion for animals and sometimes you, you, you can't save them, you because of financial constraints or, you know, sometimes the, there's, they're too far gone in their disease process or, you know, some things you just can't, you can't cure. And that, and seeing those animals, you know, one after another every 15, 30 minutes, every hour, every day. And yeah. So that, that kind of all com compounds into this mental health

Vance Crowe [00:32:41] Problem. Is it, we have a different, is it, is it that veterinarians are facing a different problem now? I mean were, were the veterinarians of old not in this scenario? Or was it that the type of person that became a veterinarian or the type of person that had the opportunity to become a veterinarian, just select it out for a type of person that was just not going to be burned out by this? Or has this always been a problem? Like is it just seems like one of those things where you're like, where does this come from? Because I can understand your compassion fatigue, I can understand overwhelming student debt, I can understand, but it must be since the dawn of, of veterinarian services that owners think you're charging too much to save their dog and it should just be done magically, right?

Bruce Figger [00:33:24] Yeah, you're probably right.

Vance Crowe [00:33:28] Hmm. I'm not sure.

Bruce Figger [00:33:29] Yeah. It, it has to have been a, a growing problem because I remember when I was in an undergrad, I had a friend that was a, or his, I think his, his dad was a dentist or something like that. And at that time, dentists had the highest suicide rate in all the professions. And so we surpassed them here within the last 10 years. But, so it's been a growing problem, but I think that it must have been there before. Like we said, people that go into this had, you know, really care about animals, but you add in all these extra stressors of, well, they care about animals, but not necessarily didn't learn about business too much. And so they kinda learn that they're, you know, a lot of people in this industry or workaholics. But, and I think you're right as here over the last couple decades, the, the industry, the demographics have shifted. So it used to be a lot, yeah, a lot more male dominated profession. And now we're, it's, I think the, the people graduating vet schools now, it's like 90% female. I don't know if that would

Vance Crowe [00:34:39] Oh, it was amazing. Really have anything to do with that.

Bruce Figger [00:34:41] It was

Vance Crowe [00:34:41] Amazing. So I was at, I was at the University of Florida and you walk down their hallway every year, they would take a photo of their graduating class. You, when you start, when University of Florida started, it was all men, like all men. And there weren't very many, there were like 12 people coming outta that class. And then as you go down the hallway, the classes get bigger and bigger and they're still being like all men. And then you start seeing some women and then half women. And then you see, like, now it's, I, I mean, I would say this, the, the, the signs I saw were like 90% women. And it was like, wow, what a dramatic cultural change. And you can see it on the walls, but then I hear the thing that you're talking about and I, I'm like, okay, is it that that's just an observation that we're making that there's more women and now that people that are having this compassion fatigue is, are they unrelated? Are they a function of one another? Like it's a, it's a really bizarre, hard thing to isolate. Yeah.

Bruce Figger [00:35:41] And hmm, I had an I idea, but now I've, I've kind of dropped it, but, so yeah, at the same time, the, your student debt rates are climbing the, and I'm just kind of based off basing this off of some of the older vets that I've, that I've been around. Those guys love to work. They've got, and they'll just, they'll kind of just live at their clinic and go, go, go all the time until they, you know, until they fall asleep basically. Or have to stop. And Hmm, it doesn't sound right to say that women can't do that. 'cause I know a lot of women that can, but I, so I wouldn't

Vance Crowe [00:36:22] Say, I can tell things are necess. I, since my wife became, when my wife became pregnant, her priority. So she is the best in her field. She will do everything she can to be number one, wants to learn, wants to help, wants to, but now that she's pregnant, like I can already watch the priorities changing. And that's not, that's, that would be, I, I could be sitting there being like, go to work, go to, you know, like, I want you to work all the time. And she's like, we've gotta get the nursery done. We've gotta get things organized. We've gotta, so I don't know if this is all women, but I can say for my wife who is at the elite level, when she started to become a mother, something changed within her and it's her own choice or her own drive or her own something. And I would imagine that that is also, I mean, she's the only one that's gonna be able to feed the child for quite some time. So we, you can't just expect that the way that men worked in this regular environment should just be like, and picked up and put towards women.

Bruce Figger [00:37:16] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That, yeah. So that, that kind of fits. I think there's some different, yeah, you've got your family dynamics and things that tie into that, but, and my wife is also pregnant and she's also a veterinarian too, so, so she, you know, I see her, she, where her clinic is, they can do basically 12 hour shifts. So she'll go, you know, she'll be gone all day working on these critters and, and you know, talk through these cases with and kind of tell, tell me what's going on at, at work and stuff. And there's, yeah, you know, she has some hard days sometimes that are, you know, it's pretty tough when you gotta, when you have to put down multiple animals, you know, that are in a day that's a fam you know, a family pet. So that's probably another thing that's, that's tying into the, to the, what did we call it? The mental health?

Vance Crowe [00:38:07] Yeah, I mean, I think

Bruce Figger [00:38:08] Calamity.

Vance Crowe [00:38:08] That's right. So I had a veterinarian on that was a small animal vet, Brittany, Brittany Kennedy. And you see this woman, she comes over and she is smiling and she is bright and you know, just excited. And it was a fun, it was a totally different type of veterinarian than what you are where you're like day in and day you're putting your, you're doing ai, you're with these giant animals that make the wrong move in the wrong situation and they can kill you, right? Like

Bruce Figger [00:38:32] Absolutely.

Vance Crowe [00:38:32] And so she has this, but she was telling me about how, you know, sometimes you are sitting with somebody where they are about to have the worst day of their life because their companion is going to be put down. And you have to have enough strength and fortitude and leadership to say, Hey, this is the decision you, these are all of your options and if you choose this one then we'll, we'll live it out. But then leaving that room and walking into another room and doing it again and then doing it again and then doing it again and you start thinking, even if you only did one a day, it would really tax you if, if somebody had to come tell me that my dog was gonna die, like man, you become the vessel for a lot of things. And I wonder if livestock isn't just different as far as the, the people care about their animals, but the compassion is just a different frame set.

Bruce Figger [00:39:22] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And when you, you've got one dog that's with you all the time, you know that, that your buddy that that does stuff for you hangs out, watches TV with you and you know, you lay around on the couch that's a lot different than, you know, having a hundred cows and one of them is, is sick or has a broken leg or something like that. You know, you're not hanging out with that cow every day on, on a personal level, you know, so you don't have that much attachment. But of course, you know, all these, every rancher cares about their cows, wants to take care of 'em, wants to do the best for 'em, and also doesn't wanna let 'em suffer if you know, unnecessarily. And especially if they're, they run into a problem that that can't be solved. Horses, people are a little bit closer with their horses though, horses. So they get a little bit more, you see a little bit more sensitivity. I've, I've been around some people that are, that are really sensitive about their cows too. So that, I think that's kind of pervasive throughout the, the industry really.

Vance Crowe [00:40:24] What do you suppose is going to be the largest technological changes that are coming to veterinary work in the, in the next few years? Like, what are the things that either people have been counting on or about to happen or they don't see coming, but it, it's something people should say, Hey, this is gonna change some things.

Bruce Figger [00:40:42] So one of the things that I've ran onto, it's more on the, the cattle side. It's more of a, more on the cattle production side. Not so much a veterinarian, but I think it'll tie it, there'll, there'll be a lot of veterinary involvement in it is, and I, it almost sounds too good to be true. So I hope it kind of works out. 'cause I've been watching these guys for a few years. It's, they've came up with this RU bolus, so it's basically a little transmitter to put into the stomach of the cow that tracks, tracks movement, tracks temperature and what else? You know, so, so it uses those things to sense to, to pick up on disease. It's, it, they say that it can tell you when the cow starts to calve all of those things. And so I think some of those technologies are coming through. Some people have tried it with ear tags. I think they have a little trouble with that 'cause the tags fall out and they, like, they need a battery. So they're pretty heavy. So they kind of drag down. But there's a lot of people working on variants of that kind of technology As far as the, the individual animal thing, animal tracing in general, like on the like large large groups of animals moving, like how, how cattle travel from a farm to a sale barn to a feedlot, to a packing house. And especially the interstate travel that's becoming a little bit more technologically advanced. They're trying to do more what they call RFID tags, which is a special ear tag that pings back a, a signal when you have the, the right reader to pick it up.

Bruce Figger [00:42:19] So they're trying to do, to do more of that. So it makes it easier to, to track them from place to place as they move in case there's a disease outbreak, you can backtrack 'em and figure out where they came from.

Vance Crowe [00:42:31] Well, and this is a fascinating, I think it was at the Association of bovine practitioners where instead of doing the same, the standard neck badges that then allow you into this workshop or that workshop and they want to count, they just gave everybody the equivalent of an RFID tag. And then they put the sensors so that when you would walk through it would say, okay, this person went there and it was just like, oh, this is how this works. Now I don't, it may not be the bovine practitioners, but it was some cattle conference that I was at that I was like, wow, this has saved hundreds of hours of people like looking at badges and looking around and making sure all these people are in the right place. 'cause you know, you've gone through the shoot that says you're in this workshop, you stayed there for 30 minutes and then you left early. So people are leaving that one early. We should know that for next time.

Bruce Figger [00:43:19] That's neat. Yeah. And that's, that's one of the things that there, that there's a push to do because there was, they have the, the older RFID tags, you have to get like right up next to 'em with the reader or pretty close. They do 'em a lot in dairies. 'cause everybody's in a stanchion. You can walk along right next to their heads with the scanner, but they're trying to get some that'll go over like a, a 10 by 10 or not 10, like a 10 foot gate that you can run a group of cattle through

Vance Crowe [00:43:44] Sell farm. Yeah. And that's exactly what we were doing.

Bruce Figger [00:43:46] That's exactly. And they'll pick them all up. So yeah, that's pretty neat that they did that.

Vance Crowe [00:43:50] And it's interesting, you know, the, the, I, I went to a thing called ion, which is this huge cattle show up in Canada and I went with Dwayne Faber, who's a dairy farmer and Jared McDaniel who's a cattle rancher. And Dwayne stood up on stage and was like, Jared, you should accept RFID tags because they're coming. We did 'em in dairy. Everybody thought that it was gonna be the end of the world. 'cause now the farmer doesn't get to be independent. His cows are tracked everywhere. Well, it didn't end in some 1984 surveillance state. And if cattle did it, you'd be able to track them and you'd be able to do all these things. Well Jared had a very different opinion, and I don't want to quote it, but I think to some extent it was,

Bruce Figger [00:44:31] We

Vance Crowe [00:44:32] Wanna be free, we don't wanna be tracked and we don't want somebody to have the ability to, to tell us where and when we should pasture these things. So RFIDs are a weird thing in American agricultural culture. Are you seeing this as well?

Bruce Figger [00:44:45] Yeah, yeah. There's some people that, that don't like 'em, but then there's other, there, there's also some industry groups that are trying to, to get ahead of it. They're, they're trying to go out to the, to the ranchers and say, we need to do this before on, on our own terms before the government makes us. Because if the government makes us do something, it's not gonna work the way we want it to. But at the same time, those kind of tags cost money. And so that's just another added expense for the rancher on, you know, an already thin margin and there's no value added for something like that, or they're so far yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:45:24] Certainly not, because right now they're not, they're not doing like country of origin labeling. So if you do all this work to make sure that your cows are tracked and monitored, I think there are a lot of ranchers that believe RFID tags are a way to get closer to vertical integration in the same way that like the chicken barns that were built by the companies and then the companies would say, well just put the chickens in there and now you're not so much a chicken farmer, you're raising somebody else's chickens through that system. Yeah. And I think their fear is that RFID is that kind of logical progression is like

Bruce Figger [00:45:57] First first step in that. Yeah. I had a friend that he, he he liked to, I I was telling him about the, the rumen bolus and he's Yeah, that's really cool because he wanted to be able to sell his information to the next, the next producer. You know, if like, if he's taking his calves to the feedlot, he wants to be able to tell him this is what, you know, here's the information on what all these weighed, the vaccines that we gave him, yada yada yada on each individual critter. And then you could even take that a step further and say, okay, you know, these are my genetics. And you or you track, you track that animal clear through the packing house and say this is how they graded, this is how they marbled how they gained and, and dressed out and stuff like that. And so you could use that as a marketing, something to add, you know, that would be a value added thing to that. But it's gonna add a lot of work to what you're, what you're doing also.

Vance Crowe [00:46:51] Yeah. And it's gonna expose things, right? Anytime you track it, you discover that there is a Pareto distribution where there is 20% of the people that are raising cattle are getting 80% of all the top end, you know, production or something along those lines. And so, you know, the people that really want to adapt that are the ones that are, Hey, this is gonna benefit me the most. I'm gonna come out on top. And the ones that are saying like, Hey, this may, this may expose some weaknesses I have or it may or it may not even be exposed weaknesses I have. It may say if you track for these specific qualities, you're gonna get those qualities and not these other harder to name, harder to track, harder to visualize. And so you have this kind of, well like edge of chaos where there's people that want more order and people that wanna keep it the disordered system and they're gonna clash together.

Bruce Figger [00:47:42] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:47:44] So as you're looking around at the world, what are you paying attention to? You're a veterinarian that's traveling around trying to keep your business up. Your wife is pregnant, you've got kids, but in this spare time, what are you doing with your attention?

Bruce Figger [00:48:00] Listening to a lot of podcasts? So it's been, your podcast has been great 'cause how you're bringing different people from Yeah. All these different industries. And especially when, when the outbreak first happened and you were talking to a, to all these different people every like, every day. It was really great to get some better perspectives on that. But I've been trying not to watch the news as much lately 'cause it just kinda seems to be same story over and over and over.

Vance Crowe [00:48:27] Well it's interesting to think about that term, right? Like watching the news and we start thinking about like, it's not actually news anymore. It's, it's some kind of entertainment. And maybe it never was news, I'm not sure, but I, like, I don't go to find out what is, so in Swahili they have this term called Habari zao meaning what is the news of the day? And you would, you would not confuse that for the newspaper telling you what's going on. It's more of like, what is the, the gossip, what is the, what is the things that are being heard around here? And it's interesting because I, yeah, it, it it appears to me that if I want to know what's going on, the last thing I would do would be to watch the news.

Bruce Figger [00:49:13] Yeah, you're right. That, that's exactly right. So yeah, so I'll tune into Twitter and Facebook and see, you know, what everybody's kind of talking about there. And especially like the ag Twitter stuff where they're talk, you know, people are talking about what's going on in the industry or you know, when there was the packing house fires and everything, everybody had their, their opinions on the conspiracy behind that. That was really cool to, to tune into and keep track of because it's not on CBS or on our, you know, local station. Nobody's really talking about those kind of things that in depth.

Vance Crowe [00:49:52] Well, and that's the wild part about agriculture is that there are agriculture outlets and there are news whether it's successful farming or ag news Daily or you know, the, the, their real agriculture up in Canada. So there are news outlets, but because agriculture is inherently spread out and decentralized and there's, you know, the closest thing you can get to an election that matters to everybody is the presidential election. But these people still have churn and news where a cattle rancher needs to know what's going on in Oklahoma and in Texas to find out what, what's happening in my world. And yet there is not a centralizing news force. And so Twitter and the networks that you end up building is what allows you to know, am I on the edge? Am I keeping up with what the most recent thing is or am I behind? And I feel like a lot of the more storied institutions, institutions are a week or two behind if they ever, and they also have an, a different relationship with the people they're reporting on than say Twitter does.

Bruce Figger [00:50:55] Yeah, absolutely.

Vance Crowe [00:50:58] And so I kind of interrupted you on what you pay attention to these days. So if you're not reading the news, you're watching Twitter and you're checking things out, what else are you paying attention to?

Bruce Figger [00:51:10] Hmm. Been I guess trying to fill my free time with little free time I have. Or trying to make some time to read, read some books. I've been hitting some of the parenting books quite a little bit here lately. 'cause our, our baby's due here in like two weeks,

Vance Crowe [00:51:29] So. Oh man. So have you found a good one? Is there a parenting book that you're like, Hey, this one seems to have set me up right?

Bruce Figger [00:51:35] We did. I did A Happiest Baby on the block and it's about the, hmm, the, the fourth trimester. So the idea that human babies are born earlier than they, they really should be because they're not quite ready for the world. And so you gotta kinda recreate some of those womb like environments or stimulus and it'll to help with their behavior or you know, basically if, if they're crying a lot. So there's five S's that the author talks about, which is swaddling sound. I try to rattle 'em off so I can remember what they are

Vance Crowe [00:52:13] Swinging I think is one of them.

Bruce Figger [00:52:14] Swinging Swinging, yeah. Swinging side and sucking. So yeah, so you wrap 'em up, you turn on loud noise, like a, like a loud static or you know, kinda white noise. And then you lay 'em on, lay 'em on their side. And this is to get 'em to calm down, not, you don't let 'em sleep that way. That was very emphasized in the book. And then, yeah, you know, pacifiers and, and that kind of jostling movement 'cause all of that is like, it was, is very similar to the environment in the in utero.

Vance Crowe [00:52:48] My, my neighbor Jamie Salvatore, who came on the podcast not that long ago because he runs a YouTube channel. He's a super interesting guy. And we were walking in the neighborhood and he saw my wife and he was like, you, you need to read this book. And it's the one that you're the, the happiest baby on the block. He's like, it's the weirdest title. There's one chapter in there for dads. That is the chapter you need to read. So you've just confirmed exactly what Jamie was saying that that that's a good book to read.

Bruce Figger [00:53:17] Yeah. And they've got, I think they've got like a DVD too with the videos on how to do the swaddling and stuff like that. So looking forward to, to trying that

Vance Crowe [00:53:25] Stuff out. And did you, did you need to take a birthing class or because you're a veterinarian, this was not something you needed to do? 'cause you've got it on lockdown.

Bruce Figger [00:53:32] Our, our birthing veterinary birthing I think is quite a little bit different, but, but we, we couldn't because of COVID, so we're, we're just gonna kind of have to wing it, but

Vance Crowe [00:53:45] Oh dude, we took ours online and let me tell you. Oh

Bruce Figger [00:53:48] Cool.

Vance Crowe [00:53:48] That is awkward as hell. But I would do that any day because you're like in your house and you're learning these exercises and kind of breathing and this kinda stuff. And anytime you don't wanna be looked at by the other people in your class, you just click off the camera.

Bruce Figger [00:54:03] That's awesome. Yeah, and my wife at her clinic, there's been four or five, it, it seems like four or five babies within the last couple years. So she's got a lot of of people that she's talking to and get, you know, just getting the, the things that are important from them or what the, what worked for them. And we've got some, some of the, the handouts and the, the notebooks from, from those baby classes when they were able to take 'em. But, but we couldn't, so, and I wasn't sure how this was gonna come up, but I thought we'd hit it. This is, this will actually be our, our second child. But our, our first one didn't make it. He, we only had him for a couple hours. Wow. 'cause his, his, his kidneys didn't develop. And so when your kidneys don't develop the, the, basically the urine and utero is the amniotic is what makes the amniotic fluid. And they breathe that in and that's how they develop their lungs. And so his, his lungs didn't develop, so he, you know, didn't have much for breathing capacity after he was born. But we got that diagnosis, you know, six months into that pregnancy. And so we didn't, that was before we'd taken any of the classes, so we did not wanna be around a lot of happy expectant parents

Vance Crowe [00:55:23] During that. So you knew you were going to have a child that was unlikely to live very long.

Bruce Figger [00:55:27] Yep. Yeah. For, let's see, we found that out in January of 19 and our due date was April, the middle of April. And, but he came, came on his own in the middle of March, which it, so he was about a month, a little over a month early. But didn't it usually that with that condition it's not, they, they, that doesn't happen. So we weren't sure if that was something else that was going on or, or why that happened, but it, it, it worked out all right. 'cause we were, we were worried he, if he was gonna make it clear to his, to his delivery date or, or through any of that process. So we were, we were pretty happy to be able to meet him.

Vance Crowe [00:56:15] You know, this is the most, I think this is a really important conversation for men to have because without going into my wife's privacy, things like we've had a long row to hoe where, where yeah. Things have not worked out the way that we had hoped. And nobody told me this growing up. Like now when I talk to young men that are in their twenties, I'm like, Hey, people lose pregnancies a lot. And, and it's hard. And if no one ever tells you that it's 10% or 15% of all pregnancies go that way, you think you're completely alone. But when it happened to me and then I go start telling people about it, they're like, no, that happened to me. I'm like, man, we were friends. I knew you when this happened and you didn't tell me. And they're like, well, the culture is, you don't tell people you don't talk about it. And I'm like, bullshit f that like, when this happens, you need to tell people about it because the shock and awe of thinking you are the only one that this has happened to. That your, your family is the only one that's endured something this heavy. It makes the weight that much heavier until you find out like, no, there's a lot of people in the world that have been carrying around this kind of hurt and you just don't know it.

Bruce Figger [00:57:28] Yeah. You're absolutely right. And this, well, our conversation right here is a perfect example of that. Yeah. 'cause I told you about our situation and you opened up about, about yours and there's that, that happened to us, you know, that's basically been happening, happening to us for the last year and a half where, you know, we're learning about all these troubles that other people had and that nobody ever talked about before. And so there's, it's a, it's all over the place. And then on top of that, people on the other end of things that are having that have trouble, that have a lot of trouble, you know, with fu fertility issues and stuff like that. So yeah, we, we had a lot of people come up and thank us for, for sharing our story because we, yeah, we'd been posting everything on Facebook and then, you know, before we found out, and then once we did, we just kind of kept tried to keep people up to date on what was going on. So it was, it was pretty interesting to see people kind of come out of the woodwork with their stories and stuff.

Vance Crowe [00:58:26] Yeah. And so in, in, when I was in Kenya, I learned this concept that we don't really have a word for in the United States, but in, in Kenya they have this concept called Poe. And Poe means that somebody has had something terrible happen to them, like a death in the family. And you go to say Poe, which we go to a funeral and we say, oh, I'm very sorry for your loss. And then, and then we leave and it never feels very satisfying. 'cause we're always like, well, when I said I'm sorry, I'm not sorry, I, I just, I'm trying to empathize with them. But when you go to say po to another person in, in Kenya, what you're actually doing is you're going and you're being slow with them. And one of the things that I didn't realize until later is poe means, I'm sorry, but po poey means slowly. So there's some kind of combination between the idea of being slow with people and sharing their burden with them. And once I internalized this concept of Poe, it helped me understand that one, I am better in my community if I share my burden with others. And most of that is because if I show that I'm vulnerable to, to needing somebody to be slow with me, then when I show up to be slow with another person, they, they already feel like it, it was welcomed and now I welcome it. And, and it's a much more, it's a, it's a term that we don't have in our current culture and I think it makes it hard to share the burdens that other people have.

Bruce Figger [00:59:59] That's really interesting. I like, I like that the, the slow aspect of it because that's what it felt like. Just the whole world boom, you know, slowed down and Yeah. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:00:13] And I mean like the, I think the concept of it slowing down and that there's nothing that will make it feel better than another person being slow with you.

Bruce Figger [01:00:21] Like,

Vance Crowe [01:00:22] Even if it's just coming. And I went to a funeral in Kenya where we were going to say Poe and I was sitting there like kind of upset with everybody that was around 'cause they were talking about the weather and they were talking about what they were doing next week. And they were, and I was like, shouldn't we be doing a, shouldn't we be remembering this person shouldn't? And they had figured out in a different way and it was like, no, we're just here, we're talking. We're, we're musing together, we're drinking tea together. And it's, it's something that stuck with me for a long time because there were a lot of times in my life when I didn't know how to express my sorrow to another person. And so I was embarrassed. And so I didn't say or do anything at all. 'cause they didn't want to hurt anything. And now I realize the core thing that you can do is just show up. Just be there and say poey, just spend time with people. 'cause that's, and, and, and in my opinion, all that matters.

Bruce Figger [01:01:14] Yeah, absolutely.

Vance Crowe [01:01:18] So you're looking forward to two weeks. Have you blocked off time? Are you planning on taking a block of time off of work? Or are you going to two days later, back out in the fields and go, go, go.

Bruce Figger [01:01:29] So I, I'm taking some, I'm about to start taking some animal chiropractic courses starting this week, and they're gonna be, they're three hours away and it's five days a week. It's gonna be like Wednesday through Sunday. So I'm gonna be not home for the next five weeks for all but, but two days a week. So yeah, it's, it's gonna be a stressful time around here. But my, my in-laws are, they're planning on coming out. Once the baby comes, we're gonna, our doctors turns out, our doctor's only in the hospital on Mondays and Tuesdays anyway, so that, that works out great as you know, as long as a baby comes operates. But, so yeah, short answer, no, I'm not taking off any time. We're gonna be working pretty hard at all of this, but we're, we're gonna get it worked out. This was about the, about the only time that was really gonna work to take these classes with the, the rest of my work schedule and stuff. And I wanted to, to get out and start, start doing, being able to do some chiropractic adjustments here this fall once we get some more, you know, once we're gonna have to start buying diapers and baby food and daycare and things like that. So we're trying to think of new ways to, you know, other revenue streams to add to the business and things like that. So, and

Vance Crowe [01:02:52] Animal chiropractic. So tell me about that because my initial reaction is like, ooh, is this like a weird fool's kind of gold? Like what, what is this, this like a voodoo? I really like Bruce, but I'm hearing him, I'm hearing him talk about voodoo here. So what does this mean?

Bruce Figger [01:03:10] So did have you ever been to a chiropractor? I've

Vance Crowe [01:03:13] Not, my my wife says that they have a lot of really good skills and they do things for runners that, that in certain circumstances are really valuable. I used to totally write them off, but I'm very interested to hear your opinion of chiropractors.

Bruce Figger [01:03:26] Yeah, we, we went when we were younger, you know, if we got hurt our back or something in playing sports or something like that. So it, I never thought of them as something out of the ordinary. But I remember I had a friend in college tell me that he didn't believe in chiropractor. Just like, what? How do you not like believe in him? They, they pop your back, you know, which is kinda what I, what the only thing that I thought it really entailed. And there's a lot more details about, you know, how the nervous system affects the rest of the body physiology. It's, but they, it is kind of a, seems like it's looked down upon out of the medical professions because it's a little more hand wavy and not as easy to study. You know, we like to use our, you know, drugs or compounds and things that we know that this molecule does this in the body and dah dah dah dah da. And we can,

Vance Crowe [01:04:21] Yeah, we pretend that you can isolate things and as best we can, that's what science tries to do. But when you get into things like biology, one of the humbling lessons that I've had to learn not being a biologist is like we have an idea about how things work and we can have a lot of really good ideas, but when they all get stacked up on top of each other, there's a hell of a lot we don't know. So if you can only accept the things that you can prove definitively, you will shut off a whole different way of understanding how the world works. That probably, if you were willing to just write it off, you're probably not humble enough.

Bruce Figger [01:04:57] Yeah, yeah. I think you're right. Yeah. So as far as the, the animal chiropractic, I, I've been around a little bit. My wife had a, at her clinic there was a, they had one of their vets was certified in it. So he did a lot of, a lot of adjustments and he adjusted our dogs and yeah, especially if one of them was, you know, seemed to be acting a little off or something, we said, oh, maybe, maybe we can get her adjusted and see if that helps. And it, it seemed to, and had a lot, a lot of people that have asked me if I do it around, so there's think, there's quite a little bit of demand for it and people tend to think it works. And so if that's a placebo effect, you know, as long, if they're happy, I'm happy. But I think that they'll that So are you like, I think there is something to it because like I said, I, I go to one usually only when I need to. I remember this is kind of a, a sign of getting older. I stretch like this in front of the coffee pot one morning and something popped in my neck and I just, I it hurt to, to hold my head forward. And I went down, went down to my chiropractor and he, you know, cracked my neck this way and then like it was still there. And then he walked over to the other side and like did something like this and, you know, adjusted that one vertebrae and the pain was instantly gone. So there i, I believe that there is something to it, you know, it's not all smoke and mirrors, you know,

Vance Crowe [01:06:28] It's, it's, it's been one of those things that as I've gotten older, it's stopped being a threat to my understanding of science that we could say there could be things here that we don't understand. And like I was in a tribe of people called the skeptics that they want nothing included unless it is absolutely proven beyond the shadow of a doubt. And I think that like there's a valuable place in the world for people that are skeptical of claims and don't want them accepted without evidence. The reason that this can go off the rails and the way that it goes off the rails with somebody like me is that I start assuming I know way more about what the science says than what it does. And so I hold this idea in my head that we know how this, like you were saying this medical compound works or this medicine works, but when you really get down to it, it's like we tried this thing and in this many people it worked and this many people it didn't. And in this small group of people, when they tried it, it had these side effects. But we accept that compilation of data as science and proof and evidence. And yet when we walk over here to something like chiropractic care, you can see very plainly that there are some insane maniacs doing things inside of chiropractic care that you're like, that seems like Charlotte tree and witchcraft. But to take those examples and smear them over the entire thing is not about the chi chiropractors in general.

Vance Crowe [01:07:59] It's a hell of a lot more about like my inability to distinguish colors of gray. Right. Like where I'm just saying no, they're all the same. It's easier for me if they're all gray.

Bruce Figger [01:08:09] Yeah, absolutely. And what you're saying about, yeah, how, how we study things, the, you know, take this compound and give it to this many people or this many animals or whatever. Even in those, in our, in our science, we're still not very good at it. That's why it has to be, that's why we have to do peer review and, and things like that to, to make sure that our, that we're doing science ride. So I think there's a lot of,

Vance Crowe [01:08:36] Are you hearing about this movement right now that is like rejecting the peer review process? Have you, have you heard about this?

Bruce Figger [01:08:42] I think I heard something about it a little bit,

Vance Crowe [01:08:45] But there's a guy named Eric Weinstein that I find very interesting and he was basically saying, look, the greatest wildest scientific discoveries that have ever happened didn't come through the peer review process. There is a place for peer review because if you're putting forward a whole lot of data that says, this data shows that my evidence is validated and proven and tested. But he said a lot of the great discoveries, if the only way you will validate them and accept them as something that should be considered is if you get two reviewers who know the person that submitted the work, but they, the the person that submitted the work doesn't know who the reviewers are. You can get into these politically weird situations where the editors of journals become essentially the high priests that decide this is science and that's not science. And he was saying the peer review process, we now, right now think that is a fundamental part of the scientific method, but that it has not always been a part of the scientific method and we shouldn't take it as gospel. And to me that's like making me not just swallow a red pill that's like me swallowing a horse tranquilizer that's a red pill. Like it's huge.

Bruce Figger [01:09:58] Yeah, that's that's really interesting. Yeah. 'cause I would, I would've never thought about the, the political and of the, the peer review process, people coming down on a certain individual because they know who he is and they Yeah. May, might not like his ideas. Yeah, that's that's pretty interesting.

Vance Crowe [01:10:19] And it's human nature, right? Like I, I talk about, I have for a very long time said that I didn't like organic because it was not as efficient as the other system and efficiency was the only mark that I was measuring things on. But then I go and I meet somebody and, and anybody that that did purport to support organic, I was like, well you're just trying to maximize off the fact that people don't understand science. But then you go and you meet somebody like Jason Mock and you're like, this guy isn't like trying to shove this down anybody's throat. He's not trying to make like boatloads of money, he just wants a way out of the commodity system. Yeah. He just wants to find a path where he can do things where sustainability isn't marked by how many bushels of corn or or soybeans did you pull off there. He's got other measures of whether or not you succeeded once you let in the idea that there's a broader set than just efficiency. Now all of a sudden all the structures that you had built up on what is right and what is wrong, start to crumble. And it's been really difficult thing for me to figure out where do I fit in this world if I allow chiropractic and organic in as not purely evil, silly, selfish things.

Bruce Figger [01:11:31] Yeah. The, the stuff that he's is really cool 'cause he is kind of trying to, to hack nature in a different way, right? Using sunlight and not focusing on bushels per acre, but, you know, total production, it might even be, you know, focused. One thing that he makes me think about is there's this group of, or it's kind of a little company, it's called Ranching for Profit. Have you heard of those guys?

Vance Crowe [01:11:57] Oh yeah, I have. Yeah.

Bruce Figger [01:11:59] Yeah. So, so they're all about, they're not about, you know, production, production production, they're about profit. You need to focus on profit and then they, it kind of dribbles back to soil health is a big thing for them. So if you've got good soil and you're grazing your forages, right? Kind of everything else is is details. It's, they use a a tree analogy, right? So the, you know, your soil health is like a big trunk or a big branch of your tree and your deworming strategy and your, I think even like the, some of the, you know, your, your weaning weight on your EPDs is, those are twigs. So if you wanna, you know where you're gonna make a big difference is focusing on the, the branches and they, they use it too in your business set up the, you know, if you're wanting to cut dead wood out of a tree, you don't go cut all the little twigs out, you find the big dead branch and cut it out. And that's, you know, changing those things is gonna have a lot more effect on your, on your operation.

Vance Crowe [01:13:06] I I I, I know that the people that I have met that took those classes, they, they often say like, I knew these things, but what I really needed was somebody to give me the courage to do something different. Like we knew that the way we were cutting hay just wasn't gonna do it. And so we were trying to turn marginal land into, into stuff we could produce. And we found out like, hey, if we actually do the math, let's figure out a different answer here. And this is the same thing as like concepts with Dave Ramsey where he's teaching you about how to eliminate debt, right? The, the biggest component is getting yourself into a framework that you don't initially agree with. Or even like, but you say like, what is there to learn from here that allows me to have a system that I'm clearly not deploying right now? 'cause in my life I haven't figured out all of my problems, but I know that for me it's so tempting for me to be like, I understand this and I know this and I know all the players and I know their motives and therefore I'm not gonna change. And I think a thing like the Ranching for Profit allows people to see that there are other people taking chances and doing things differently, trying to get out of the commodity mindset.

Bruce Figger [01:14:18] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. There really cool ideas floating around and those things. And it's more of a, you know, they, they try to do those paradigm shifts where you're not, are, do you, do you raise cows or do you own a business that raises cows? You know? And so they try to get, try to get people to think more like business people than, than ranchers as they're deciding what, what to do. You know,

Vance Crowe [01:14:48] When you think of a business book that you've read, do you have any that come to mind that like shocked your system in the same way?

Bruce Figger [01:14:57] Not really. 'cause I think I, I was pretty open-minded as I started getting learning about business things. So let's see, when I, senior year of vet school, after we took our national exam, I didn't have anything left to study. So one of the vets that had came and, and talked at our, at one of our club meetings, brought a book of, of Dave Ramsey, his business book, the Entree Leadership. And so that was kind of my start off in reading about business. So that was kinda,

Vance Crowe [01:15:27] I

Bruce Figger [01:15:28] Stuck with a lot of his principles as I, and I listened to his radio show and his podcast and a lot of the stuff that he puts out as I was building my, as I started my business. So we kind of started on those, those same concepts. And so yeah, I, so I've kind of stuck in that lane, which might not be the most traditional way to do business finance or personal finance stuff, but it's, you know, I, it it's been working for us so far and I like that, like how it works out. Once you,

Vance Crowe [01:15:58] Once you figure out a strategy, you can take that block of like organization and then you just have it, you just put it in as a habit to your life. And you, I was talking with a friend of mine today about this, that if you have the habit of going for a jog and you notice that your dog goes nuts in the afternoon, if you figure out, well, I'll just take my dog for a jog in the morning when I go for my jog, now you're getting exercise and the dog is no longer nuts. So in the afternoon when normally your dog was distracting you, they're tired. And so you've handled that problem, which means now you have time to handle other problems. And that's what I think about these books. Like with Dave Ramsey, that was a, that was a huge find for me to come up with the idea of the debt snowball and pay off your debts. And like, I've transcended that part. I got rid of all of my debt, I moved forward in life and it was such a big moment. And then you realize like, thank God for that because I have this block, this stone that I can set here and now I can build other things on top of it. The book that really shattered my mind, the one that made me go looking up Dave Ramsey and was Rich Dad, poor Dad.

Bruce Figger [01:17:03] Oh cool.

Vance Crowe [01:17:04] Have you, I don't, have you ever read this book?

Bruce Figger [01:17:06] I, I've heard him, I think I've heard him talk about it, but I haven't read it yet.

Vance Crowe [01:17:11] The concept is really simple and, and once you kind of understand it, the, the, the rest of the book is about real estate and things, but the concept is essentially like the difference between being a wage earner and being a capitalist. And it's just a very interesting thing because I knew what capitalists were, but the book actually says, how can you be a capitalist? How can you figure out how to make your money work for you as opposed to you working for your money? And it was just one of those things that, like I was reading that book on the bus, going to work at the World Bank, what I thought was the, the top of achievement, the highest level I could get to. I read that book and I was like, I don't wanna be taking this bus to this job anymore. I wanna be going somewhere else.

Bruce Figger [01:17:57] Yeah. And it, it's like you said, you get those building blocks on that you can stack everything else on top of. And that was, you know, having your finances straightened out is so important in, you know, especially when you run into crisis. And I think a lot of people are seeing that with COVID. We, and we kinda ran into that last year when we got the diagnosis for our son. Like we had all these other things to, to worry about to, to get planned, to get tested and you know, trying to figure this whole, this whole situation out. But the one thing that I was never worried about during all of that was money. 'cause we had our budget already set up, we were doing it, you know, that was, that was established and rolling and you know, we, we were still trying to get, get debts paid off and we still are, but you know, we, we had that structure that we knew we were gonna be okay on that. You know, we didn't have to worry about our bills, our

Vance Crowe [01:18:50] Rent or anything. Like

Bruce Figger [01:18:51] That's a path that

Vance Crowe [01:18:51] As long as you stay on that path, you're gonna still be able to move forward. I know for Annie and I, the, the first step that was one of the biggest in our marriage was when we decided we would open mail together where it was like on, on Saturday morning or Sunday morning whenever family meeting is, we pull out all the bills and all the things that neither of us really wanna deal with and we open 'em together and we handle it. And that one act of doing something that neither of us wanted to do made it. So we were both like flipped into this mode. And those are the kinds of things that you can only pick up if you're having good conversations with other people and you're like, Bruce, how did you figure this out? Or you're like reading books where people tell you how to figure it out. So that's why I'm always so interested. Well, Bruce, you're a busy veterinarian. You've got a life to live. I'm so glad you were willing to take Monday morning. I met you in the Articulate Ventures network because you were publishing videos to Facebook and they're clever and I wanted to give you a chance to talk about your Facebook page, what you're doing there and, and, and why people should come over there and, and take a look at what you're doing.

Bruce Figger [01:19:55] So yeah, that's how I do most of my kinda advertising. I guess I've been a little bit slower here the last few months on, on getting stuff up there, but my Facebook page is South Wind Animal Health, so I post, you know, some of the patients I'm working on and stuff. But I started this video series, it was kind of interesting how I got started. So at our last job, my wife in her spare time was doing beach body, you know, so talking a lot about, you know, the exercises in the shakes, Shakeology and, and eating right. And all this nutrition stuff. And so she, she had these groups going and one night she caught me dipping Oreos into cheesecake filling. And I, so I just

Vance Crowe [01:20:39] Eat

Bruce Figger [01:20:39] Terribly and still stay in, you know, pretty, I'm just kind of a skinny guy. So I, I've never really worried about any of that stuff or paid attention to that. So she started, so she videoed me doing that and like had me talk about it. And so we come, we started this deal called Bruce's Kitchen, where she would quiz me on calories or different food ingredients or, you know, just me and the kitchen doing weird stuff or eating horribly, like no, like no person should. And so then I would go home. So we were about, we were a couple hours away. I'd, I'd come home on the weekend or something and run into the neighbors and, and stuff like that. And they're like, oh, I love your cooking show. And so these, and a lot of it was older guys that I knew weren't on Facebook, so, but their wives were so their wives were showing them these little videos. So after I, I started my practice trying to get, trying to advertise, get the word out to where people would, would pay attention, but not, not just, you know, list listing my services over and over. I started this shoot side series where I kind of, I just talked about things I, that I thought were funny or,

Vance Crowe [01:21:43] Or clever. And for, for those that don't know, you're talking about a shoot as in like a cattle chute. So people put their cows into a chute where it, it compresses them and holds them in place. So you can give them vaccines or you can check them for things. And so Bruce is standing right next to a shoot talking straight to the camera. And I've seen you telling jokes. That's, that's been my interpretation of it.

Bruce Figger [01:22:04] Yeah. Yeah. For the most part it's always kind of, you know, some kinda little joke and I always try to do it, you know, in front of a different shoot and sometimes the shoot is a joke. One time it was a panel tied to a tied to a fence, you know, I call that the thrifty cattleman. And so we, you know, yeah. Try to do something funny. Some of my, probably my most popular or yeah, the most popular one I've had, I did one with Cedar Implants, which a progesterone implant you use to synchronize cows, but it's spelled CIDR and it's an acronym for something and confusing those with cedar trees. And so that was, that was a pretty popular one through the kind of the ag space there. But

Vance Crowe [01:22:44] Well, and for those that don't pick up on what he's saying, he's saying you can actually add in progesterone to make it so the cows are all able to get pregnant at around the same time so that a rancher can then impregnate them and know that the calves are gonna come in the, in late February or in yeah, early March or something like that. And so you're making jokes that are within this cycle of all the people that you work with. They know about ai, they know about progesterone and they know about these things and so you're taking what they know and you flip it to the side just a little bit or you make some kind of observation. And they're clever. They're really, that's why actually they were clever enough that I was like, I don't know Bruce, but I'm gonna have on the podcast. 'cause he's got a clever guy.

Bruce Figger [01:23:25] Yeah. And so we did, did one and I, I did him, I did one of, almost, I did every week almost for a whole year. And we got, so I got, you know, a Mother's Day one, a father's Day one My father's day was, you know, new tools for dad. It's like, you know, get him a new hammer and I pick up a crescent wrench and stuff like that, that, that's kind of, you know, ag humor is really what it is. And I got, I got into the habit of, well I started kind of running low, low on ideas and so I started doing poems and songs every five. And so like on my, you know, tens and twenties, I do, I think I do poems in, and then on the, you know, 25, 35 episode, I'll do do a song and, 'cause I've got some, you know, some kind of clever songs that I've wrote over the years and stuff. And so those, those have been fun to share with people and you know, it's, it's neat to, to pop those up and they're for, for a while, you know, people, I I had a pretty decent following for a while. People were, you know, if I didn't post one on Friday, somebody messaged me and say, Hey, you know, we're looking for your video and stuff, so I'm gonna, I kind of fallen outta the habit of it lately, but there's, I'm gonna try to try to get, get to do some more of those more regularly. But I've got, we just posted the, the 69th one here the other day and it got it, it got a fair amount of views. It got, I think it's like at 13, 1400 and it used to be just, you know, I, I'd hit a thousand views easy, but I think Facebook was starting to throttle me because I was getting too popular and I didn't wanna pay their advertising fee.

Vance Crowe [01:24:55] And so one more time, if people wanna find you on social media.

Bruce Figger [01:24:58] So my Facebook, my practice page is South Wind Animal Health. It's based outta, I think that's the only one out there with that name. But where you're in Stafford, Kansas, my Twitter is at, at BJ figure, I've got a personal Facebook page. It's just my name, you know, and then I, I've got Instagram too, but I don't do a whole lot on there.

Vance Crowe [01:25:20] I'm done with Instagram, I got rid of it. It's off my phone. I'm, it's over. I found myself using Instagram and they kept showing me photos that I would like to see. And I realized like I'm, I wouldn't go to Google Images and look up these photos. The only reason I'm clicking on it is 'cause you're giving me the exact thing that grabs my attention and I don't want you to have that. So I, I booted Instagram off.

Bruce Figger [01:25:41] I finally had to take the stuff off of my phone 'cause I was like, Facebook and Twitter, I took off my phone, but I left it on my iPad so that way I'm not sitting in the truck, like if I'm waiting on Amen, amen. Waiting on a client or something, you know, just scrolling all the time. So I that and that slowed down what I post on Facebook quite a bit, but, but I can still do, well they came up with the, the page manager. So now I can, you know, I can have the pictures on my phone and, and just load 'em to where I can just post but not read anything. So that's been super helpful.

Vance Crowe [01:26:10] But I'm, I'm completely with you on the idea that if you're scrolling, you're not thinking. And I found myself wasting time thinking I was thinking, so I'm scrolling, but really I'm absorbing things. I'm not doing my own thinging. Bruce, I gotta let you go. This was fantastic. Thanks so much for coming on.

Bruce Figger [01:26:27] All right, thanks a bunch, Vance.

Vance Crowe [01:26:31] Well that's gonna do it for my interview with Bruce. Figure, if you like this interview and you wanna know how to meet people like Bruce know that I actually met him because he joined the Articulate Ventures network. He was posting videos up about things he wanted to get better at, and he wanted some feedback. And so he came to my attention because he's a part of this network where people join it to support the podcast. They get some classes where they learn how to present their ideas in new ways and then they are intermixed with all sorts of people from all over the country. And so if you're like Bruce and you put a video up of a joke that you tried to tell, you can ask for the community's feedback and you start working on the punchline or how you do the delivery and you see that this Articulate Ventures network is a little bit like a gym for the mind, where you are surrounded by people that are also pushing themselves and doing things that are difficult and they don't always look good. But then you see that by practicing you can get better, you can become a tangibly better communicator. If you're interested in this podcast and you wanna meet other people that are interested and working on becoming a better communicator, the Articulate Ventures network is a great way to do that. So you can check out the link below or just go to Articulate Ventures that'll get you there. I'm so excited that you're here and I'll be back later this week with more interviews.