Hi everybody and welcome to another episode of Vet Chat, and today we're speaking with someone who has very much taken the opportunities that, you know, the veterinary profession and career has offered him over the years. And, you know, created a great portfolio for himself, a great ambassador for the profession, er, and as he would admit himself at times can be, can be polarising in opinion, but you know, we need people like that in the profession, people who will challenge the norm, who will challenge the status quo. And, and who will really actually get people thinking as to, you know, what am I doing, why am I doing it?

And you know, frankly, does it bring me any joy and happiness. So today I'm delighted to be joined by Pete Wedderburn, and Pete has had all kinds of stuff going on in his in his career, which, is, is what, 30 years plus now, Pete? I can't believe it now, Ben, but it's 35 years I qualified last year, 35 years.

Yeah, it makes me feel like a real elder member of the profession, but there you go. I don't feel like that inside, but that's what's happened. The time has passed.

That sounds like dogs barking in the background, Ben. As is always the great part when you start recording a podcast comes and the dog goes absolutely bananas. Well, as this is a veterinary podcast, we'll probably leave that one in.

Yeah, you know, obviously you've, you've been going for a while. And, and what, obviously, you know, the profession has changed hugely in the time that you've been involved in it, Pete. And you know, how, how have you sort of adapted to those changes on, on a personal level and, and you know, how have they affected your sort of view of, of how things work in this profession?

Well, I, I, I, I guess we all just operate as the individuals reacting to what happens around us. And so I think that the, the big changes as in corporate ownership of practises, it's not something which has impacted on me personally so much. I think what probably the biggest thing that's impacted on me is, is two things.

First of all, how our understanding of animal, animal minds. Has changed, I'll come back to that in a sec. And the other one is how communications have changed, how mass communications have changed.

So, to, to go to the first one, our understanding of animal minds. One of my favourite sayings is by a French revolutionary called Jacques somebody who said the present order is the disorder of tomorrow. And I, I think that what, what that kind of means is that what we see as normal in 30 years' time, we'll look back at it and say, how the hell did we think that was acceptable?

Examples would be like in in the 1970s, it was quite acceptable to make racist jokes, comedians to talk about. Same-sex attraction in a, in a really derogatory way, and mother-in-law jokes were a staple, and you know, these kind of certainly things now which would be seen as extremely incorrect, and you wouldn't, you wouldn't be allowed to continue in the entertainment business if you told those sorts of jokes, but back then they were completely normal. And so the same thing applies across our lives.

And so back when I qualified as a vet. The idea of animals having emotions and thoughts and so on, that was very much seen as being anthropomorphic. And, it was very much the mentality.

The belief was that animals were essentially a bunch of reflexes, and they worked by reflex behaviour, and training dogs worked because you, it was Pavlovian, pure Pavlovian, you know, give a reward, their behaviours repeated, and, and. And the people who said dogs looked sad or looked happy, those kind of things, they'd be said to be totally anthropomorphic, making it up in their heads, dogs doing nothing of the kind. Now, since then, we've had all this new dynamic imaging of brains which shows us that animals' brains light up in the same places as our brains when they feel different emotions, and they possess the same neurotransmitters and chemicals in their brain as we do.

And therefore, logically, you know, why should they not be feeling the same emotions and sensations and so on that we are. And so it's moved now to to to where essentially if an animal looks like it's feeling a particular emotion, well it Probably is, and there's nothing anthropomorphic about that. So that's a huge change, and it changes the way that we look at animals.

I mean, when I qualified as a vet, we didn't give space pain relief, you know, pain relief was available, high, high dose, sorry, high, high end stuff like morphine and so on, but bigger, but you, you, you, you wouldn't use them routine. In, in, in the interim, and at the same time as us realising that spaces and routine procedures needed to pain relief, we also developed the, the, the modern non-steroidal type medications which are very effective. So, so that's, that's one way in which, you know, this.

In those 35 years, very much animals have become more like little people, and, and, and that's our understanding of them has, has been that they are much more like little people. And at the same time, people have this no doubt become more anthropomorphic about their pets, children, and the term pet parents and fur babies, these are used and, you know, so, but that, that the real significance of all of that is that it does change the way the vetting profession operates. And it, it creates a higher expectation and and and a bigger burden I think for us.

At the same time, this cover your ass type medicines come in whereby, especially new graduates feel obliged to do absolutely everything that could possibly be done. Think too much about what that actually means, from a logical point of view, they just want to make sure they can't be criticised afterwards. So that's, that's that end of things that's changed an awful lot in that period.

Yeah, and I think obviously, you know, the, the, the shape of the veterinary profession has obviously changed so much and as you say, you know, there is this elevated expectation and elevated pressure on on vets, not just, you know, from from from pet parents or pet owners or. Baby, guardians or you know, however anybody chooses to identify with their, their pet nowadays. But very much from the, you know, from the professional side as well, obviously there's the corporate side, there's performance driven factors, you know, practises are businesses, they have to stay afloat, you know, obviously you've been in in in in practise for a long time, you, you've seen that sort of business journey of, of, you know, building a practise, and, and obviously you know there are those pressures, but as a.

As a profession we are. Very, very stressed, we're very, very prone to burnouts and so on and so forth. I dare say, you know, not, not massively different to other, you know, high pressure professions as well.

But, but have you noticed, you know, a, a change in, in terms of, you know, the, the attitude of vets to how we approach our work? I think, I think like I say, the, the, the cover your ass thing has come in big time. Back in the early days of my, my career, I suppose, when I was an experienced young vet, so we're talking probably 20 years ago, 2025 years ago, there'd be much more of a what might in a derogatory way be called have a go attitude.

And an example would be that I would have a dog that's, I remember little terrier that had a quite a dramatic pericardial effusion. And the dog wasn't doing well at all, and I, I drained it once, and the dog improved dramatically. And in those days, the ultrasound wasn't available and referral specialist surgeons were available, but they, they even they weren't familiar with doing these procedures, and also the owner didn't have the funds to go to them.

So I ended up doing a thoracotomy and a pericardectomy, and the dog went on to do very well indeed. Now, that was the first time I'd done one of those, and I, I think these days, Vets wouldn't feel, they would feel it was negligent to do that actually. Even when the owner was told, look, there are risks involved and, you know, there are alternatives, but they're gonna, they will cost you money you don't have.

Even with those provisos, I think still you'd be struggling to, to be, to, to be in a position where you would actually attempt that sort of surgery nowadays. Back in, back in, in those times it was fairly normal. So I would have done, you know, I, I, I remember doing things like removing liver lobes of dogs with a a focal cancer on the liver.

Adrenalectomies on, on a Cushingoid dog. I, I, and most dramatically I remember doing, moving a a liver tumour from a hamster, which sounds just ridiculous, but this little hamster, I didn't set out to do it, right? The dog, sorry, the hamster had, had a, had a, a big pot belly and I could feel a mass in his abdomen.

So I, I told the owner, well, there's something in there, probably a tumour is probably inoperable. And I, I, we opened it up and had a look. I feel like a, a, a living.

Well, an exploratory laparotomy. And when I was in there, it was very obvious. One quarter of the liver was totally abnormal, the other three quarters were completely normal, and it wasn't that difficult to remove that liver lobe, and the, the hamster went on to do very well afterwards.

But, so those, those sort of veterinary adventures, I, I think don't happen so much now because it's all moved to the, you have to do the gold standard or nothing kind of thing. I, I, I think that that's a shame. I mean, I know, I can think of cases myself where, you know, we've, we've been frank with owners and said, look, you know, these owners haven't had, you know, 2 pennies to rub together in some circumstances and, and, you know, you turn around and say to them, well, look, you know, one of the vets in the.

Team has never done this operation before, but we see this as a potential educational experience for them. Now there's that real balance, isn't there between ethics of, of, of trying, and of course you know ethical medicine has, has taken huge leaps and bounds, as you say, you know, the, The pros and cons of that er are, you know, you look at the individual animal and and the risks to that individual animal at the same time, you know, you look at the, the benefit of upskilling one of the veterinary surgeons such that they can offer, you know, that level of of expertise to other people in future. So it, you know, there's certainly not a straight right answer, is there, but I, I can certainly think of cases over the years where, you know, you look at something and you go this, this, this.

Really serve for somebody to, to, to learn from, and you know, I, I can think of cases of GDVs over the years where you know, there's, it's that one thing where you come out as a new graduate and you have this cold sweat about it being 2 o'clock in the morning and a GDV and nobody answering the phone ever and all the phone lines being cut down in the area and you're not being able to get any help and support, but you've got to do it. And many vets would actually surprise themselves in their abilities. Given the removal of the shackles as it were.

And saying look, you know, actually I've done this, I've done this, I've done this, yeah, you know, let's let's go and and see where we go from here. But of course, one of the ways that that you've managed to, to engage with the public and to educate them on, on, on the plight of the veterinary profession and the plight of veterinary professionals, is, is through your media work. And, and obviously, you know, sort of there's, there's several vets across the profession who are doing the high-end media work and and acting very much as you know, sort of flag bearers for the profession and.

What, what was the driving force behind that, and you know, on a personal level, what do you get out of that? Well, that's, that, it really, it started when I, so I, after qualifying as a vet in, in '85, I, I did kind of the usual thing, I suppose, and that I went travelling for. I went to Africa actually for a year and did a did a sort of postgraduate research there.

After that, I, I, a year of that, I came back and I worked in mixed practise for 4 years. I, I thought that was gonna be what I wanted to do. I discovered it wasn't what I wanted to do.

The mixed practise didn't suit me after all. And so then I went backpacking with my wife for a couple of years. When we came back from that, then, we, we, I was looking for something that was a bit kind of what you might say, left of centre or kind of a bit different.

And a job, a job came up in Ireland, and Ireland back in 1990 was a very different place to what it is now. It was, it was, economically very underdeveloped and it was, I thought, well, that's a, it's kind of a really Interesting place to go that's different to what I'm used to. So I landed there and managed to join a practise where they wanted to take on a partner.

And so I, that meant that within 10 years of qualifying, I had my own practise. And that's when the media stuff came in because I was very keen to develop the practise, and I realised very quickly that that meant getting the word out there about good quality veinary care. Now back again, things have changed because back then, As a vet in the media, you weren't really allowed to use your name, you just had to be the vet.

It was seen as unprofessional and unethical for you to actually use your, your, your correct name. But that was just changing. I came in just as that changed, and we began to be allowed to do that.

So I started off by, by, by writing a column in the local newspaper, and I did it for free because I, I found that I really loved writing. It was something I enjoyed doing. And so I, I thought, well, I can combine my enjoyment with getting a bit of PR in the local press for our new practise that we were developing.

And once you, once you put your, your toe in the water in the media world, the thing is it kind of grows, and I, I, what I mean by grows, the toe doesn't grow, but the, the media work grows because people elsewhere in the media, they want to have a vet comment on something, they think, hm, what vets can we use? And if they've seen you in a newspaper, then they're gonna go, oh, we'll talk to them because they're obviously somebody who's out and about talking about stuff. So.

The thing I learned is if you want to develop a career in media, you have to just learn never to say no. So when you, whenever you whenever you get contacted. You don't say, well, listen, it's really inconvenient now, can I talk to you this time tomorrow?

You don't say that because they'll just go somewhere else. They want their problem fixed now, they want to talk to somebody now. So I, I just kept saying, yes.

So the local radio station, they wanted me to talk about dangerous dogs on one particular occasion, and I found I quite enjoyed being behind a microphone. And I said, would you like to have a a once weekly vet spot? And they said, Sure, we'd love that.

So I to do that as well. And then from there, in Ireland, a television programme started that wanted to have a weekly vet for children. So I started doing that.

And then things just went on from there. And then at some point in my career. So I really enjoyed at the same time doing the mixture of media work and also building a busy practise.

But I found it became increasingly difficult to, to, to fit the two things together. So there was one point, I suppose about 15 years ago when I made a positive decision, I'm going to take some time off practise. So I'm going to work a 3, a 3.5 day week, and I'm going to focus really hard on building the media work so it can, you know, give me some income for the other day and a half.

And I, and I wrote to every newspaper in the country, not just Ireland, also in the UK, and then I wrote to them a second time, and I just, I googled how to become a freelance journalist and I, Did everything you're meant to do, set up a website for my writing and, and things just began to trickle in then so I, I got regular columns in national newspapers in Ireland and then in the UK the big thing that I, I managed to To win, I suppose, was a regular column, a weekly column in the, in the Daily Telegraph, and that, that, that became a a really useful outlet. First of all, to spread good quality pet information to owners. So I, you know, I'd be answering questions about slightly offbeat aspects of, of pet health.

That would come in by by email and by carefully typed letter every week, and I'd be answering all these, as well as that, I had the opportunity to do online stuff for Telegraph, and that's, that was, I found that really, really engaging whereby you would be given the opportunity. It was unpaid, by the way, online work. Was unpaid then and still often is now, as you know.

And, but I would be able to use it as a soapbox to say, you know, talk about vets' fees or intensive farming or no sun slaughter, all sorts of issues that I felt, strongly about. I was given a platform where I could, You know, express that opinion and, and I, I really enjoyed doing that. And, and that's really carried on, Ben.

As time went by, I started to do a lot more of that work because there was more demand for me to do that work. And I started to do less work in practise. And that really takes me to the, the, the thing that I said at the start.

The, the huge change has happened is that when I start Out doing this media work. It's very much print, radio and television, whereas now it's all about online, whether it's podcasts like this, or whether it's writing blogs, or whether it's using websites to to to get to give people information about pets. And I've got very engaged with all of those things now.

Yeah, and obviously it's great that you have this, this platform to be, you know, an ambassador for, for vets, for vet nurses, for the veterinary profession, and, and you know, we, we do rely on people like that because, you know, people in the general public go to trusted sources of information, irrespective of what people's views on the various different outlets are, you know, everybody. People buy the telegraph because they trust the telegraph in the same way those that buy the mail trust the mail and you know, and so on and so forth so you know it is important that as as a veterinary profession we do reach out to our our customers because ultimately it's our customers that that pay for the profession, but how do you see that, that sort of, you know. The way that the customers engage with the profession, how do you see that evolving as we as we sort of, you know, move into 2021 in the aftermath of COVID-19, and then you know obviously further into the future and you know God knows what this profession's gonna look like when I've been qualified 35 years.

Well, how long are you qualified and I've been? 1212, right, well. I, I don't know how it's gonna, it's interesting to speculate on how, how, how it's, how it's going to change, but I, I, again, one of the big changes in my lifetime has been the changing gender balance.

So, like, before I qualified. 15 years before I qualified, 90% of vets were were male. When I qualified, it was 50/50, where it's now moved towards, I think it's 80% female, 20% male, and that's.

Having an impact in, in partly, well, for lots of different reasons, but certainly there seems to be a greater focus on the importance of, of living some sort of balanced life in, in practise, used to be acceptable for vets basically just to sacrifice their. Entire existence to the, to the needs of the profession, you know, so like, you know, when I was a young practise owner, I would head off to work at 8 in the morning, and I wouldn't get back to well after 8 at night. And I'd do that I'd be on call all weekend as well, one weekend and two.

So that kind of, that was, that was sacrificing your life. You didn't see it as that because you were enjoying it at the time. Yeah.

But I think my wife would have said, well, she saw it as that because she was rearing children on her own, and I think. You can do that for a while, but I couldn't do it forever. I stopped and enjoy one of the reasons I started to do more media work was I started to find practise.

The emotional stress of, of practise too, too big, and I, you know, I stopped enjoying being there and I think when you stop, you have to listen to that voice in your head that says, I don't want to be here. And I, I, I had this voice telling me, I didn't want to be in the, in the clinic for those long days anymore. So I think people have cottoned on to that really, and it's kind of well recognised now that you can If you want to have a long career, you have to have a balanced life, and that means that you don't work those crazy hours.

You try to to stick to something that's reasonable and sustainable. And I think that's a great thing. Anyway, you're saying about how, how the attitude of the public, if you like, the profession's changed.

I don't know if it has changed that much. I think we've always been seen as being, you know, money's always been a big thing because good quality vet care is expensive. It requires significant, cost inputs to do things properly, including the cost of vet of professional time.

And so it's expensive. So I think we've always been a bit slated for being, but I think it used to be worse, because I think people used to see vets as being wealthy and arguably, possibly 30, 40 years ago across society, perhaps they were wealthier than than the average Joe Soap. I think that that has changed and you know, if you compare salaries across the.

Different professions, you'll see that vets have lagged behind people like GPs and so on. So, and I think that the word is getting out there, that vets aren't as loaded as, as used to be said, although that illusion still exists. I think it's happening a bit less now.

And but there, there always is an element of cynicism about our motives and so on. And it's, it's, it's strange really to me because I don't know a single vet who went into the profession for any reason. Other than what you might broadly call love of animals, that's what motivates people.

Every vet I know, that's what motivates them to become vets, and I think that that's a message that the public often don't really believe. But it's a fact and so. You know, I, I, I think it's important we keep making sure that they, they realise that fact.

That is why we do this, you know. And I think that's it, you know, isn't it, you know, we're, we're fortunate to do, something that we know and love, but also, and and that's obviously something that I've found with my own career in that. Availability to locum and to, you know, drop in and out as I choose and and be more in control of my destiny in terms of, you know, my clinical work.

You know, I'm, I'm, I'm one of the people that, many question their sanity because I love dentistry. And, you know, for me it's, I get the capability to go into practises to help them with their dental cases. So you know, that's me getting my specific fix about what I enjoy.

And again, you know, the other. Part of me loves consulting. I love meeting people from all walks of life, and you know, we do, I mean, I, you know, we can go from millionaire clients to people who, who, you know, as I said earlier, I haven't got two pennies to rub together.

And and one of the great things, and I, I genuinely believe this about most vets, is that, you know, we do treat our clients all the same, for the most part, you know, of course there's there's odd differences here and there, but for the most part we treat animals based on that patient. And that patient needs XYZ. Now yes, it's great that the guy with the Bentley outside can afford to pay for his TPLO and you know, the, the other people will, you know, potentially, as is the current trend, go and crowdfund to pay for it, but it shows how much those animals mean to those individuals that, you know, I've, I've never met 11 pet owner who wouldn't try and move heaven and earth to do whatever was right for their pet.

And that to me still fills me with hope for the future, for this profession, and I think, you know, the more we engage with clients, the more we, you know, our, our, our advocates for animal health are for. Then, then I think you know the the the brighter the future is for the profession, or at least I hope that that's the case anyway. Yeah, I, I, one of the things that disappoints me, I think, is, is to see how many young vets seem to be becoming disillusioned with the profession.

And that's always happened to some extent, but there's a sort of anecdotal sense that seems to be happening a bit more now, which is, I think, a real shame. And I, I very much think that I, I, I would be a, if you like, a, a believer in what you might broadly call a calling and The word calling is interesting because this vocation is from the same, the meaning is derived from the same word of calling. So that is a vocation, that's what they say.

It is a calling, like it's a, so, so a lot of vets would say they knew, well, I certainly, I would have known by the age of 5 or 6 that I was going to be a vet. It's just, it was something like it was within me to to do that. And you could say, you can call a calling a Some people would call it a spiritual thing.

They might say God is calling them to do something, but you could also call it a genetic thing. You could say you, you have a genetic and, and, well, nature and nurture, you're brought up in an environment where there's animals around you and you discover that your particular interests and skills make you enjoy. Finding out all about animals and then helping them by, by treating them.

And is that, but it doesn't just stop there, that's what gets us to, to vet school, the fact that we have this calling, this sense of our capabilities and our, our, our desires. But Once you become a vet, I think that the, the sense of the, the need to follow your calling continues. And, and that's quite difficult, but because what it means is it means listening to the voice in your head and trying to work out, well, what do I actually enjoy doing most?

How would I spend my time if money didn't matter? What would I actually do? And then trying to find a job that ticks those boxes.

And like you say, some people like dentistry, some people love consulting, some people are really into orthopaedics. Some people like diagnostic imaging, other people love general practise. And I, I, I think that if possible for young vets that the idea is to Keep trying different things until you work out what really floats your boat, what really works for you.

And one of the sadnesses I have is that I've have seen young vets go to practises which I know are second rate, and I, I say that, not being, not trying to judge them, but in the knowledge that they would be. Very stressful places to work, and it'd be very difficult for somebody to get genuine, professional, satisfaction from working there. Kind of places to be clinics where there would be.

There'd be no appointments, they'd just be people. Barging into the waiting room. As a young vet, you'd look out, you'd see a full waiting room you had to get through.

You're told to try and see, get everything sorted in 5 minutes. You were told that only certain medications you could use, only certain workups you could do, you know, all these sorts of things, and it's very obvious to me that that's a highly stressful environment that is not gonna help people enjoy their working life. And, you know, too many people I've seen.

Work in that or something similar, and end up saying vet's not what I expected. I'm leaving the profession. And it's such a shame because there are, there are so many different ways, not just different things you can do with your veterinary career, veterinary qualification, as in, you know, working in industry, working for government.

Doing all sort of working in media, lots of things you can do, but as well as that, even within the clinical side of of life, there's so many other, you know, places and clinics and environments you can work in that may be way more enjoyable than you'd realise. Yeah, and I think that's it, you know, it's, it's a case of, you know, as you've done, as I've done, you know, it's finding a way to get the veterinary profession to work for you, not the other way round. And I think that's probably a, you know, a great point for us to, to wrap up on Pete, and I think, you know, it's it's great to get your insight, it's great to see, you know, how you have managed to get the veterinary profession to, to offer you, you know.

A nice rich tapestry of life, and you know, long may that continue. So thank you so much for your time, thanks for your insight. I know that, you know, hopefully that gives, you know, some young people who are perhaps in that, you know, sort of quandary of, of looking at, you know, giving up and moving elsewhere, some, some hope and actually to say, do you know what, there are definitely ways of, of, you know, not, not having.

Your life completely disrupted by the profession, but actually, you know, using that education, using that experience to your benefit and and carving out, you know, a successful future for yourself. You see, we're we're all like jigsaw pieces and we just have to, have to find the right slot and the jigsaw of life for ourselves. And it's, it's not that easy to do that, but, you know.

Just like when you're trying to fit a jigsaw piece into that puzzle, there's a bit of wriggling around, a bit of looking at it from a distance, looking at it close up, and eventually you can find the right slot for that piece. Well, the same thing applies to your life. You just, you need to be curious and you also need to take risks.

It, it's, it's, and I think risks, risk taking is Interesting thing in our, in our lives because people talk about it as if it's a great attribute. Oh, he's a great risk taker. Well, what you need to remember is that if you take a risk, that means that there's a chance that it might not work out, and you might be left with no money, and, and the situation that you've gone into turned out to be utterly useless, a cul-de-sac, and you would have been better never to go into it.

But at the same time, it might be the most fabulous thing you've ever done. So I think you have to, I think some of the things that people do nowadays like. You know, mindfulness and being very conscious of the present moment.

I've certainly found these very, very helpful for me when I decided to take risks, because if you, if you're doing something that's like stopping working two days a week because you're going to try and make a living in the media, if you do something like that, if you look ahead at the prospect of what might happen, it can be pretty terrible because it might not work out at all. But at the same time, Every day, living in a moment, what you're actually doing is rather fun, and if you can focus on that and not worry too much about the long term picture, well that's what's worked for me. Yeah.

Yeah, one day at a time and enjoying each day at a time, finding it engaging, fulfilling, rewarding. That's what it's all about. Then that's a perfect place to stop it.

Thank you so much for your time, it's great to chat, it's good to catch up as always and and to get some, some of your, you know, your, your really valid points as to how people can get this profession to work for them, so thanks very much for your time, Pete. Thank you, Ben.