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Getting to Know Checkout Veterinary with Dr. Greer · Ask The Experts

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  Eight thirty eight, thirteen to ten WIBA and Ask the Experts, joined this
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  morning and studio by doctor Marty Greer of Checkout Veterinary. Doctor. Great to
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  see you. How are you doing this morning? I'm doing great, Thank
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  you. It's good to see you. And you and I have had for
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  folks that don't know you and I have had the chance to talk a bit
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  behind the scenes. But finally today we get to have you on the show.
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  And you are the owner of Checkout Veterinary checkout vet dot com. We
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  got a clinic right in sun Prairie, right on Prairie Lakes Drive. Let's
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  talk about real quick the history of Checkout Vet and what a great concept this
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  is. Well, thank you. The history. Well, we own three
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  veterinary practices in Wisconsin. The first one that we started was forty two years
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  ago in Leamira and moved into a third building there in two thousand and eight.
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  When we did that, we built a garage in the practice for clients
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  to pull into for sick pets, post up care, those kinds of things.
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  And I was sitting at a meeting a couple of years ago before COVID
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  to be perfectly clear, about ten years ago and listening to one of the
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  speakers who was an accountant that was an expert in veterinary the field talk about
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  the overbuilding of clinics and the availability of veterinary teams and all the stuff that
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  goes with that. And while I was sitting there, I thought, you
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  know what, we can make this garage concept into the entire focus of the
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  practice. So, like I said, nine or ten years ago, well
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  before COVID, that was my conception of the process. So I have this.
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  I think a lot of us have this, whether maybe we've experienced this
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  firsthand, seen the dog on the leash outside the vet clinic would like to
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  break pose going and the owner going, come on, come on. Now.
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  Some of us are lucky enough to have chihuahua that they just scoop up,
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  or cats in a crate that are like and they're ready to go.
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  This really alleviates that problem, doesn't it. Yes, there's a whole concept,
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  a whole movement called fear free in veterinary medicine. There's low stress,
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  fear free, all these kind of negative kind of terms that get thrown into
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  that. But this is truly the epitome of the easiest veterinary visit. You
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  could develop your pet for you, for your dog, for your cat.
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  The cats especially are very cool about it. When I developed this, I
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  thought it would be mostly a dog practice because that's what people do is put
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  their dogs in the car and drive around. They go to soccer practice,
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  they go to whatever with the kids and the dog. But we have about
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  a forty percent cat population, and the cats come in. They never go
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  into a lobby, they never go into a waiting room, they never see
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  a dog, smell a dog. Here a dog. They go straight from
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  the vehicle into the exam room, which is adjacent. So it is truly
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  a drive in, drive through veterinary practice. And it's hard for a lot
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  of people to get the hang of that because they're like, what do you
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  mean I drive in? Well, we have four garage bays with two doors
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  on each bay, and essentially you drive up to the door, we pop
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  up the door, you drive in, we put the door down, and
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  then there's an examiner am adjacent. Small dogs and cats or your dog can
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  have their care in the vehicle or in the garage bay itself. If you
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  have a larger dog, and everybody's just a lot more chill. It makes
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  it so much easier for owners, for the for the pets, for the
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  staff. It's it's been very well received. Talking this morning with doctor Marty
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  Greer. Of course, Doctor Greer comes to us from check out Veterinary the
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  website, checkout vet dot com. You should check that out this morning.
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  Check out vet dot com locally clinic or right and Sun Prairie Round on Prairie
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  Lake's Road. Their telephone number six oh eight three one eight sixty seven hundred.
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  That's three one eight sixty seven hundred. Years ago, I had a
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  doctor friend, a vet friend actually described me. They said, if you
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  were to ask like a human to describe a space, they would tell you
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  what it looks like. And he said to me, he said, if
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  you were to ask an animal like a dog to describe a space, they
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  would tell you what it smells like. And when you mentioned especially with little
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  kiddies and stuff, they are very keen to things that as humans we are
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  just completely oblivious to, aren't they? Exactly Years and years ago, many
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  many years ago, I went to a dog camp that Patricia McConnell was providing
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  one of the speaking roles for, and some of you probably remember Patricia McConnell.
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  She was dog's best friend. She is retired now. She's written a
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  number of books. She was on public radio for years every Saturday morning with
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  Larry Mieler. Great show, very wonderful, really bright person. She's a
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  PhD in animal behavior. And at this camp, she set it up so
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  that there was a boombox playing in each of the four corners of the room
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  and asked us all to stand up, take a piece of paper, and
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  she was walking through the room, throwing balloons around that we were supposed to
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  keep in the air, and reciting off a list of words we were supposed
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  to write onto the paper. And the point was every boombox was playing a
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  different song, so you had four kind of audio inputs plus her, plus
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  the balloons bouncing and run in the air. And what was really interesting is
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  she I didn't even realize she was giving us a spelling list until the third
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  word, because I was so focused on trying to figure out what else was
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  going on around me. It was just it was this very discombobulated thing.
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  The only thing she was missing was popcorn popping, because you could have smelled
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  that, and that would have added that extra layer that we and her point
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  was, this is what it feels like for our dogs when they go into
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  a setting like a veterinary clinic, like a training class, like a lot
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  of these different places, dog parks, daycares, whatever. It's just this
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  on so slot of sensory input that they can't accommodate. Hey, and we
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  think about it as you were talking about the things doctors too, that you
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  know, you guys are trying to to balance all this and it's it's it
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  is. It is well illustrated there, doctor. I've got a guest too
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  with with for your patients, for your for the pets that are coming in,
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  this has got to be obviously less stressful on them, but also for
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  you and the doctors at Checkout Veterinary to treat the animals when if they're more
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  relaxed, I think that's got to be a huge benefit as well. Yes,
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  and like I said, there's been this move we're starting to put more
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  dogs on medication and cats on medication to reduce their anxiety when they come in.
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  But this really alleviates a lot of that. There's less just everything is
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  just less. It's easier for the pet. They're more comfortable, they're more
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  relaxed. They don't feel as threatened. They aren't in a claustrophobic space.
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  They're not being looked at by some big rottweiler that is sort of intimidating.
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  It's just a much easier environment. And the staff, my doctors and my
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  lay staff absolutely love it. They are very engaged in doing this and it's
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  been really fun, yeah, to be able to do this. It's a
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  fun way to practice and it's a fun way for our clients to get their
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  veterinary services. It's really amazing what you guys are able to do at checkout
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  Veterinary and all the great benefits. You can learn more of the website checkout
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  vet dot com. That's checkout vet dot com talking this morning with doctor Marty
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  Greer of Checkout Veterinary. They've got a clinic right and Sun Prairie r on
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  a Prairie Lakes road. To mention the website. You can learn more at
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  checkout vet dot com. I want to ask you about your hours because this
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  is another neat thing. We talk about the convenience and all the benefits of
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  checkout vet and having the drive through another thing you do. And I had
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  to double check when I saw the on the website. I'm looking at your
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  hours Monday through Wednesday nine to five nine am five pm. Thursday's closed,
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  and then Friday through Sunday. I thought that's got to be a typo because
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  it says nine to five. That's weekends. Doctor sure is. It's got
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  to be a real popular option too. It is because people need time that
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  they can get into the veterinary clinic, and we're there now. Checkout was
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  really conceived to be a wellness outpatient care. But on weekends when you can't
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  get into the emergency clinics because they are just swamped with really seriously ill patients,
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  we are there for the less serious things, so ear infections, limping,
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  a little bit of diarrhea, you know, the things that happen on
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  the weekend, and either you need to take care of it on the weekend
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  because the pet needs the care, or you have to work on Monday.
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  You can't really take Monday off to run in. So what we've really been
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  able to provide is that level of service that clients can come to expect.
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  So we have two practices. In some Prairie, we have check in and
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  we have check out. Check In is also in some prairie. It's in
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  the Nature's Preserve office park there, So they're there Monday through Friday, so
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  on Thursdays, we're not leaving you high and dry. You have a place
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  to go on Thursdays, and they're meant to do the more in depth kinds
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  of things like X rays and surgery and dental care and anesesia and lump removals
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  and spas and neters and all the other things that go along with pet care
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  that isn't quite wellness. So wellness we really look at as being the preventive
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  blood work, the stool sample checks, the vaccines, the exams, the
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  healthy pet kind of care with some minor exclusions on the weekends for the people
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  that can't wait till Monday. I feel like I think every pet owners experienced
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  this. It's always a Friday afternoon. Friday afternoon, yes, and it's
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  like and you're a and and there's that struggle of do we wait till monday
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  or do we and and that that's that's something get solved here. We're to
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  talk more with doctor Marty Greer talk about some of the other some things as
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  pet owners. As we we're going to do the show each and every week.
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  And one of the great things going to be is as we go through
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  we'll be taking questions. We'll also talk with some things coming up the news.
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  I know a lot of times certain there'll be a news story, and
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  having an opportunity to actually get in depth with a doctor and get some get
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  some little background on some of these stories is going to be an absolutely fantastic
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  thing. In the meantime, you have been to the website, check it
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  out check out vet dot com. That's checkout vet dot com. You can
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  learn more there. Delphy number six O eight three one eight sixty seven hundred.
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  That's three one eight sixty seven hundred. Welloksend you our conversation with doctor
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  Marty Greer of Checkout Veterinary. We will do that next as Ask the Experts
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  continues right here on thirteen ten wu I B I thirteen ten WU I B
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  A and Ask the Experts talking with doctor Marty Greer from Checkout Veterinary. The
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  website check out vet dot com. That's checkout vet dot com. Del phone
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  number six oh eight three one eight sixty seven hundred. That's three one eight
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  sixty seven hundred. And as we talk about the concept at checkout vet.
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  How you guys have been in practice with this concept now a number of years
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  right check out, it's been there three years. Check in. We purchased
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  a few years before that with the expectation of opening the drive through, so
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  we purchased that before COVID knowing that this is something that we wanted to do.
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  But the original practice that I'm in we started I started in nineteen eighty
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  two, so forty to almost forty three years ago, so we've been in
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  practice that long in the community and we're still family owned. It's myself,
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  my husband, one associate, and we're adding two new doctors to our ownership
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  as well, so it's locally owned. And that's I think really important to
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  a lot of people. Corporate medicine is changing the face of veterinary practice,
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  and for people that are concerned about that, we are still family owned.
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  We still make individual decisions based on what your needs are, so we guarantee
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  that we will come up with a treatment plan that's suitable for you and your
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  pets needs. And I think that's a really important feature for people to recognize
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  that it's not cookbook medicine. It's not this is what we're told to do
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  by corporate and this is how we're going to practice, So that's a big
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  deal to us. It's interesting when you mentioned that. I sometimes think some
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  of that's hidden the corporate side and for obviously on there for their persecutivities who
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  want it to seem as local as possible. Knowing that the VET that you're
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  seeing is actually that is a local operation is really important. People. I'm
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  going to ask you about scheduling. How does that How does that work with
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  checkout veterinary? Can you schedule online call? What's kind of the process for
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  getting your pet in? Sure? So you can go to our website and
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  request an appointment through that, or you can give us a call. We
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  do take walk ins, but that doesn't always get you the fastest service,
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  so you're better off to call ahead. We have four garage bays, we
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  have the capacity to see multiple patients at the same time, and enough laystaff.
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  And I'll tell you my assistants are amazing. They're very devoted to this.
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  They absolutely love it. And like I said, my doctors are great
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  as well. So we have four doctors that are in practice there, plus
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  myself, and then we have a number of laystaff because we have two locations,
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  so we have a whole team of people that are really devoted to making
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  the best care for your pet possible, Doctor Greer, have you seen pet
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  owners? I think we're all kind of guilty of this is sometimes because of
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  in that in that kind of that model of having to take your pet physically
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  into a into a building, and that in that interaction maybe sometimes hesitating to
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  get in for some routine things like whether it's heartworm for for our rabies,
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  I've got to guess you see a much higher rate of animals actually staying on
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  on course for things that are you know, some of these wellness wellness checkboxes
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  right. And we also have our prisis published online because it's sort of a
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  black box for people. They don't know exactly what it's going to cost them
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  when they go in. And there's always an exam which we are required to
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  provide that care so that we are familiar with the pet's health before we do
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  anything else. But the heartworm preventives and the flee and tich preventives and the
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  heartrom test and all those things. It's sort of a mystery at most veterinary
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  clinics how much it's going to cost you when you go in, and we
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  want to make sure that you know in advance and that we help you select
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  the best products and the best services for your pet. So I think that's
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  really important that that you're made aware of that in advance. It shouldn't be
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  a secret, it shouldn't be something that you're not aware of. Talking this
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  morning with doctor Martin Greer of Checkout Veterinary, the website checkout vet dot com,
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  that's checkout vet dot COM's got an email while you were talking email or
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  share, he says, I've taken my cat to see doctor Greer for years.
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  Our cat is thirteen. Yeah, really good. Yeah, I probably
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  have been seeing it for a long time. Yah. Is there any kind
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  of for pet owners in general? Is there something that if you could tell
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  you this your general pet owner, something that's really important that oftentimes is overlooked
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  to help with their longevity. So they're kind of like one kind of key
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  piece of advice or like a golden rule for a pet owner just to keep
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  in mind. And it's just like for us, preventive care is really essential.
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  This past year, we've seen a huge uptick in the number of lime
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  disease anaplasmosis and ailiquia cases, all the tick born diseases, and that's something
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  that when we do a heartworm test, we test for all three of those
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  along with heartworm, and being able to diagnose those early and get those pets
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  on antibiotics before they're clinically ill can be really critical. We've seen labradors get
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  really sick from kidney failure due to lime disease. We've seen a number of
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  different disorders that go along with it. So don't overlook that that it's just
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  a tick. It's a big deal. The ticks not only are on your
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  dog, but they can come into the house on you. Two weeks ago,
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  my husband, who practices with me and Lamira, he's also a veterinarian,
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  had three ticks on him that had come off of a dog that he
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  was doing an exam on. So obviously the dog didn't taste very good,
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  and he was probably going to taste better because he wasn't taking flee in tick
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  preventives. But those are really important things. People don't think it's that important,
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  and they don't think it needs to be year round. But for instance,
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  this year, in January, we had a couple of really cold days
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  and the rest of January was pretty mild, so we were seeing ticks even
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  in January, and people don't really expect that. They're just like, oh,
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  well it's cold, I'm fine. No, we need to go year
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  round with our heartworm and flee in tick preventives. We need to keep them
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  up on their vaccinations because there's so much we can do to prevent. Dental
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  health is another really important aspect. And although we don't do dental cleanings at
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  check out, we can't assess them for whether they need a dental cleaning and
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  schedule them for check in. And people overlook the importance of dental health.
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  It's not just bad breath, it's what else does it do to their organs?
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  What does it do their kidneys, to their heart, to their livers.
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  Super important that we have good dental health. Talk this morning with doctor
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  Marty Greer this morning. She is from checkout Veterinari. The website checkout vet
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  dot com. That's checkout vet dot com. You can make an appointment right
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  online. The telephone umber six so eight three one eight sixty seven hundred.
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  That's three one eight sixty seven hundred. As we get bigger, are we
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  seeing our pets get bigger, sedentary lifestyles, poor diets. Do we see
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  that reflected in our pet sticky? Oh boy? Yeah. But it was
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  kind of interesting during COVID because the dogs were getting out on walks far more
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  often. So we got a lot of phone calls the first couple of months
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  of COVID as my dog went from having two stools a day to having four
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  stools a day. So we'd go through the history and talk to them,
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  and it turned out that mom would walk the dog in the morning before she
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  started work, and then the kids were home from school, so they would
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  walk the dog in the middle of the morning. The afternoon, the dad
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  would walk the dog in the evening, and so the poor dog was exhausted.
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  So we did have I think a better health with our pets during that
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  time period because we were focused more on getting out and walking and doing some
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  of those things. But yes, absolutely it is critical that our pets stay
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  in good body condition, and we do talk about that as well. We
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  can weigh them in if you want to come in once a month and pop
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  your dog on the scale and just see how am I doing? Are we
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  heading in the right direction? We're more than happy to have those things and
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  of course there's not going to be any charge for that. If you need
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  to see how much your puppy has gained weight so that we keep them on
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  the right dose of heartworm and free and take medication. Bring them in,
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  we'll put them on the scale, we'll make sure that the doses of medication
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  are correct. So, yes, we're more than happy to participate in that.
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  And doctor, does the type of food you're feeding them make a different
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  I wish we were on a camera right, yes. Yes, And that's
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  one of the things I talked to every single client about is what do you
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  feed? I asked three questions, what do you feed? What else do
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  you feed? Because we all know that you're cheating, that you're giving something
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  off the table, and it's okay to do some of those things as long
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  as we have some limitations on it. And then what supplements are you giving?
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  Because I think those are important for us to know as a general health
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  question. We see pets coming in on CBD oils and those can interfere with
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  other medications. So those are the things we need to know as veterinarians to
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  make sure that what we're medicating your pet with and what food they're on is
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  appropriate. So yes, they make low calorie dog foods. There's some really
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  great products on them market. With some help, we can do those things.
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  But I feed my dogs for treats. My dogs don't get dog treats.
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  I don't go to the store and buy those. My dogs get fruits
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  and vegetables with the exception of grapes and raisins, and they love them.
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  Carrots, candilo, broccoli, lettuce, almost anything other than citrus. Dog
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  dogs can eat citrus, but most dogs don't like it. So you're absolutely
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  fine to give that as long as you're feeding ninety percent dog food and less
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  than ten percent other things off the table. There is nothing more entertaining than
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  watch a dog. Watching a dog devour a carrot or cherry tomato that they
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  chase around the floor or how do they you know, you scoop out the
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  candle up seeds and then let them kind of gnaw on the inside of it.
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  It's pretty entertaining. Do not let your dog have corn cobs because those
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  will cause bowel obstructions. So you have to be careful if they get corn
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  that they just get the corn and not the cob itself, because sometimes throwing
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  it in the trash isn't good enough. The dog knows how to open the
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  trash can lid and get in there. They're pretty they're pretty sharp. Dogging
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  this morning with dog Marty Greer. Today's day. If you've if you've been
• 19:02
  looking for a vetter, looking to start that conversation. More information at checkout
• 19:06
  vet dot com. That's checkout vet dot com. You can also make a
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  boyman right online Delvil number six O eight three P one eight sixty seven hundred.
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  That's three one eight sixty seven hundred, Doctor Greer, Great talk with
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  you this morning. Beford to do it all again real soon. Thank you.
• 19:18
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