Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: This show is not a substitute for professional counseling and no relationship is created between the show host or guests and any listener. If you feel you are in need of professional mental health and are a UA student, we encourage you to contact the UA Counseling center at 348-3863. If you are not a UA student, please contact your respective counties crisis service hotline or their local mental health agency or insurance company. If it is an emergency situation, please call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: It's six o' clock in time again for Brain Matters, the official radio show of the UA Counseling Center. We are broadcasting from the campus of the University of Alabama. Good evening. I'm Dr. B.J. guenther and I'm the host of the show along with my colleague and producer Kathryn Howell and and in case you don't know, the show is about mental and physical health issues that affect college students and in particular UA students. So you can listen to us each Tuesday night at 6pm on 90.7 FM or you can listen online at WVUAFM UA. Edu. You can also download one of your favorite apps, I like the MyTuner radio app and just type in WVUAFM 90.7. Also, we're a little over halfway into the season. We just do shows in the fall and the spring and we don't do any shows during the summer. So if you have any ideas for show topics, you can email those to me@brain mattersradiobuafm ua edu and of course I'll consider using the topics tonight. I've been really excited about tonight's show because if you've been listening for a long time, you know I have a little poodle and I love pets and I love animals and nature and all that. We've done some shows actually. One of my first shows featured Hand and Paw, which is a program that uses service animals basically for hospitals or any other incidences. I guess you could that there's PTSD involved. And I had an actual golden retriever that sat in the chair and wore headphones during the show while I talked to his handler. And that was just so exciting and fun for me. I've done several shows along those topics, but tonight is a little bit different. If you've ever felt calmer just by sitting next to your dog or cat or any pet that you might have, or less alone because of your pet's presence, you already understand today's topic. Dr. Doug Coward is a veterinarian and author of In Healing Both Ends of the Leash, where he shares how the relationship between pets and their people can be transformative emotionally, mentally, and even spiritually. We're going to talk about how healing our animals often heals parts of ourselves we didn't even realize needed care. Dr. Coward, thank you and welcome on the show.
[00:03:05] Speaker C: Oh, thank you for having me. I've been a fan of University of Alabama since I followed Joe Namath back in the old days.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness. Roll, Todd. Thank you.
[00:03:15] Speaker C: My local team, the Cal Bears, does nothing but lose, so I wanted to follow one winner. So it was Alab.
[00:03:22] Speaker B: We have. I think we have a lot of fans like that, you know, of a certain age that can remember, and still we, you know, even now, we still win. But back in the old days when we had snake stabler, Joe Namath, Richard, Todd, I mean, I could go on and on and on. So, I mean, we could do a whole nother show on sports.
[00:03:41] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:03:42] Speaker B: Catherine knows that I go off on tangents sometimes. Hey, tell the listeners. I gave you a little bit of an introduction, but tell the listeners more about yourself and your credentials and why you were interested in this topic.
[00:03:58] Speaker C: Yeah, I mentioned I'm kind of an accidental veterinarian. That's the last thing on earth I ever wanted to do. I cannot stand to be indoors. And so I vowed never to live in Southern California and never to take an indoor job. I felt sorry for my brother when he got into medical school. It's like, oh, you're going to waste your life inside all day? I'm going to be out in nature, in the Amazon, in the Savannah. So I was interested in ecology, and so. But I was also interested in basketball. I was hoping to play in the NBA. I went to Santa Clara University on a basketball scholarship. And in the old days, they were Gonzaga. They were on the COVID of Sports Illustrator. They had a pretty good program.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: And I think we beat Gonzaga earlier in the year in a tournament. Anyway, that's a side.
[00:04:47] Speaker C: Well, Alabama's got a great basketball team now, too. But in the old days, you know, I was happy to go there, but I bit off way more than I can chew. I majored in biology, which has labs in the afternoon, and there was basketball practice in the afternoon. And I had a lot of conflicts with both trying to keep the coaches happy and my professors happy and then staying up all night cramming for exams. And so I was hurt a lot. And, yeah, I didn't play as well as I'd hoped I would. So when I got done, I applied to grad school in ecology but my coach said, hey, you want to go play in Australia? I said, you got to be kidding.
I'll go play in Antarctica. He said, I thought you'd like the, the outdoors and kangaroos over there. And we played against an Australian touring team. And so I kind of was familiar with the coach. So I went over there and just loved everything about Australia and ended up with a really nice teaching job teaching at a college biology and ecology and coaching basketball team. I was under qualified, but those were the lesser sport over there. Basketball was low on the totem pole compared to Aussie rules football. And then biology was on low end of the totem pole compared to chemistry and physics. So I had a no pressure job and I learned more than the students did try as the plants were different, the animals were different, And I decided to come home the long way instead of. I got hurt and wrecked my thumb after about five seasons. But instead of coming straight home, all the Australians, when they go away, they go away for a long time because they're so far away.
So I went through New Guinea, Indonesia, Nepal, Africa, because there was. I mean, the Middle east was blowing up then, just like it is now. So we couldn't travel through Iran, where my wife's sister had been working.
And so we ended up in Africa instead, but saw tons of wildlife in wild places.
And so I got back to UC Davis in the graduate group in ecology, which is. I thought I was in heaven. I go, this is exactly what I want to do.
And then had a little disagreement with the head of the wildlife department, who at our very first meeting, he just reamed me for my poor excuse of preparing myself for the ecology graduate group. He said, if I was serious, I would have gone to a decent school like UC Berkeley or UC Davis, wasting my life playing basketball in Australia when I should have been studying. And I'm okay for about 10 minutes, but after 10 minutes of insults, that's it.
I let him have it about his Daffy Duck research.
[00:07:36] Speaker B: Yes, yes.
[00:07:39] Speaker C: He threw his chair at me and he stormed out of the room. And there was another advisor I'd never met. He was a veterinarian, Dr. Joe Zinkel. And he said because everybody else left the room, they were so embarrassed at my behavior. His one of the two, but he thought, he thought it was sort of funny. He just said, I'm glad you didn't punch him, which I thought you were.
And he goes, have you ever thought about veterinary medicine? He says, you know, we've got a section in the vet school on wildlife. And zoological medicine. We've got this, you know, really renowned teacher Murray Fowler. And I burst out laughing, and I said, you know, this is.
Seems odd, I'm laughing, but I met a French wildlife veterinarian in the jungles of Nepal, where I was volunteering to do tiger research. He and I are riding around on elephants.
True story. We're riding around on elephants because you couldn't walk through the grass because the rhinos would charge you and kill you anything that moves. So he and I got put up in opposite trees to lower netting to trap these deer that the tigers like to eat.
And this deer got all tangled up. And he says, go kneel on him like a horse. I'm going. I'm from Berkeley, California. I've never kneeled on a horse.
[00:08:50] Speaker B: Tiger bait.
[00:08:52] Speaker C: I try to be brave. You know, when your name's coward, you don't want to admit it too much.
[00:08:55] Speaker B: So I didn't think about that.
[00:08:59] Speaker C: It was a sambar deer, about 800 pounds. He nearly killed me. The guy jumps down to the tree, runs over, kneels on him and holds him still. Then he starts asking me, you got any vitamin C or vitamin K? I go, I got a backpack to my name. That's it.
[00:09:12] Speaker B: That's it.
[00:09:13] Speaker C: So anyway, when he finally came up and we walked back and I said, where did you learn all this stuff? And he says, I'm a veterinarian. He says, I didn't want to work on pampered poodles in Paris. I'm my real job. He's a elephant rehabber in Thailand. Wow. And he said, what are you doing, Doug? I said, I'm going to UC Davis. Before I could say ecology, he goes, UC Davis.
They have the best wildlife vet in the world, Murray Fowler. I've read all those books.
[00:09:40] Speaker B: Wow, full circle. Yeah.
[00:09:42] Speaker C: No, I'm not going to vet school. I'm going to. Anyway, when Dr. Zinkel mentions Murray Fowler, I know that name, you know, and it's a long story. So anyway, he takes me over to the vet school the next day.
And the first thing that happens, I'm greeted by some guy, says, doug Card, what are you doing here? I look, I didn't recognize him.
And he had a mustache, and he was bald. And he was my arch rival since seventh grade in basketball.
We played on opposite teams all the way through college. And my last memory, he stole the ball from me. Went to Cal Berkeley, he stole the ball from me and my coach. I could hear him scream, get him out of there. And I'm on the Bench. I thought, if I ever see Bob Hagler again, I'm going to kill him. So here he is.
I said, what are you doing here? He said, I'm trying to get in vet school. He goes, what are you doing here? I said, I'm trying not to go to vet school. But Dr. Zinkel said, such a nice guy. He brought me up here to see what it's like. So anyway, they're all so nice, and in my brother's profession, when I would tag around, tag along with him at his rounds, they treated the interns and the students like dirt. I couldn't believe it. So I'm expecting the vets to be just the same. These vets are so nice. Oh, Doug, you ought to go to vet school. It's so much fun. So I go off to them, and it was seeing all these animals that I'd now seen in the wild. So it was kind of fascinating. And the last thing was, we were working on an Asian elephant that had a clogged duck. First of all, they said, what elephant is this? And nobody answers. I kind of raised my hand. I go, it's an Asian elephant. And I go, well, how do you know that, Doug? I said, well, I wrote them.
[00:11:20] Speaker B: Yours are different, right? Yeah, yeah, right.
[00:11:23] Speaker C: And I said, I ran from them in Africa. You know, they got the big ears that look like Africa, and the. And their manners can be the African elephants and the Asian elephants are like horses working.
So then we had to flush the swollen eyelid. And when they got done, they said, it's your turn, Doug. And I go, I've never done this. And the vet students go, well, we haven't either. So they give me a lacrimal cannula, which is a sterilized turkey baster.
I climb up the ladder and I put it in the eyelid of the elephant, and he kind of looks at me, I look at him and I go, this is my destiny. I'm going to be a wildlife.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: That's how you knew.
[00:12:02] Speaker C: That's how I got interested. And then I was lucky enough, and so was my. My rival. We both got in the vet school the following year and went through four years together and played a lot of basketball. But that's the last thing I ever would have dreamed of doing because I hate being indoors. So I figured being a wildlife vet or a zoo vet will keep me outdoors all day. Well, I didn't bother to look into the job situation. There were zero jobs, really, in wildlife and vet medicine. There was an internship at the San Diego Zoo and me and 5,000 applied and I didn't get it, not to my surprise. And then my wife found a advertisement labeled in the wrong section in a journal was under mixed animals, which usually means horses, cattle, goat, sheep, you know, rural. And in it, she found a job working for wildlife, exotic animals at a dermatology specialty clinic for wildlife in Long Beach. So I applied, and it was an internship. So long hours on low paying. I would have paid them to give me a job.
[00:13:08] Speaker B: But how different is that? I mean, I don't know if I've ever known anybody. Why would I know anybody that done anything like this? Most vets don't do stuff like this, right? I mean, you know.
[00:13:20] Speaker C: Yeah, well, most of them will. Do you know what animal they. They love growing up. So small animals.
[00:13:26] Speaker B: Small animals or farm.
[00:13:28] Speaker C: Farm boys do the farm animals. And then there's a few of us who haven't looked into job security, go into exotic animals or wildlife. Now there's a lot more jobs.
[00:13:40] Speaker B: I've got to ask you before we go to break, did you catch a tiger? Did you see the tiger?
[00:13:47] Speaker C: You know, in the week I was there, I never saw one tiger, and I was even all night looking for him. So I saw tiger footprints, but I've yet to see one in the wild.
[00:13:59] Speaker B: They're so elusive, aren't they? Yeah, yeah, I've read and seen the videos on YouTube about the man eating tigers. That's a whole nother set. That's a. That's a whole other show, in case you're.
[00:14:10] Speaker C: I wanted to see one.
[00:14:12] Speaker B: Oh, I would have, too, in the wild. I mean, come on, let's take our first break, and when we come back, I want to talk to you about your book and what the whole topic of the show's about healing our pets and healing ourselves, too. So we'll be right back. You're listening to brain matters on 90.7, the capstone.
[00:14:39] Speaker C: Wvuafm Tuscaloosa.
[00:14:42] Speaker A: This show is not a substitute for professional counseling and no relationship is created between the show hosts or guests and any listener. If you feel you are in need of professional mental health and are a UA student, we encourage you to contact the UA Counseling center at 348-3863. If you are not a UA student, please contact your respective counties crisis service hotline or their local mental health agency or insurance company. If it is an emergency situation, please call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
[00:15:19] Speaker B: You're back listening to brain matters on 90.7, the capstone. I'm BJ Gunther. We're talking tonight with Dr. Doug Coward, who is a veterinarian and also an author. We're going to talk about his book in just a minute. But if you're listening and you have any ideas for show topics for the show, please email those to me at Brain matters radio at WVUAFM UA edu. And of course, I'll consider using your show topic. Dr. Coward, you wrote and I'm assuming, is this your only book? It's called In Healing Both Ends of the Leash. Is this your first and only book?
[00:15:53] Speaker C: First and maybe only book. Well, actually it's going to be two books because when I finally got my 17 pages of journals typed up, it was 590 pages. So I got an editor to help me. She said, this is two books. One's going to be to educate, the other is going to be to entertain. All the interesting things that go on a vet clinic.
[00:16:14] Speaker B: I mean, it sounds fascinating and one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show, but, you know, you've seen thousands of pet owner relationships. What patterns have you noticed between someone's emotional health and their pet's well being?
[00:16:31] Speaker C: Animals bring out the best in people. That's the main thing I've noticed.
We can get some really difficult people.
[00:16:39] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:16:39] Speaker C: You know, I hate to use an example of a lawyer, but my dad was a lawyer.
They hear about all the problems of the world and these lawyers would come in and they were just the nicest, most loving humans with their pets. And that happened to my dad as well later in his life.
And everybody says the same thing, you know, this is the best member of my family. I have a gal come in with her three kids. He's a wonderful mom and all that. She says, I love this dog more than any of my kids. And the kids go, she does, she does.
[00:17:15] Speaker B: They're okay with that.
[00:17:18] Speaker C: My dog never has a bad day. He's the first one to greet me, the last one I see at night. And every day's a good day with my dog or my cat or my parrot or my turtle. You know, we see all kinds.
[00:17:28] Speaker B: Was there a particular case or moment, you know, in your career that made this connection, like, undeniable for you?
[00:17:39] Speaker C: Yeah, there was, you know, just lots and lots of examples where, you know, I was slow to learn, you know, that animals have a purpose and one of their purposes is to take care of us. And I had a very, very driven, professional woman who owned a business come in, a German woman, and it turns out she'd been born with the ability to communicate with animals and people. Her parents beat the people part out of her because she would mention things she probably wasn't supposed to.
[00:18:15] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:18:16] Speaker C: But she said she always regained the ability to communicate with animals, and I didn't know any of this. She came in and my own cat that I'd rescued, a stray cat who lived at the clinic because she would sleep on my head at night and I was allergic to her. I couldn't sleep sneezing, so she had to live at the clinic. So she'd waddle up in the day, and she'd sit in front of this cheese box a client made for her and just hang out.
So I was shocked. At age 12, she passed away of mesothelioma, which is unheard of in cats.
[00:18:47] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:18:47] Speaker C: And I was.
[00:18:48] Speaker B: I've never heard of that either in animals.
[00:18:50] Speaker C: Never heard of it since.
And I was bummed. I thought, I'm a vet and I can't even keep my own cat alive.
12 years. She's supposed to live to be 20.
[00:19:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:00] Speaker C: So anyway, this German lady comes in, a client, and she had quite a few different animals, said, oh, I'm so sorry, Dr. Coward, about Brittany passing away. But she loved her job like a what?
She said, oh, animals all have a job and a purpose. And Brittany was a healer. She tried to heal every single patient that came in here.
And I'm thinking, one of us is crazy, but this woman's got such a big deal job. She was the creator and owner of a pharmaceutical nutraceutical company.
And. And she was, you know, so totally normal, professional. I said, maybe it's me who doesn't get it.
So she said, you know, I have this gift. Most people don't. My husband doesn't, but animals let me know what's going on. And they all have a purpose and a job, and there's nothing worse than them to be unemployed. She said, Brittany loved her job. She said, but she gave all her energy away. She said she died happy to be a helper. She said, I don't think you should bring your new puppy to work. So I just rescued a puppy, says he's going to want to do the same thing. I go, how am I going to explain this to the family?
[00:20:12] Speaker B: So I do believe that. I do believe it. I've had people tell me. I've had clients tell me they relate to animals better than they. They like animals better than they do people.
[00:20:22] Speaker C: Absolutely. I hear that every day.
And the people that attract to a vet business often are the same part of the reason I stayed indoors is once I started working in that hospital, I found out they had the most kind, loving, caring people in the world working there who just couldn't think of anything other than working around pets. And it made for this really happy environment, you know, unlike human hospitals in the old days. Nowadays, human hospitals have really tried to, you know, be more.
I've noticed in the few times I've been in there. But pet hospitals, everywhere I go, it's the same thing. People are just happy, loving the animals. And it's an incredible environment to work in.
[00:21:09] Speaker B: I mean, for the most part, it's fun, you know, I know there's some hard days. I know it. But for the most part, it's gotta be fun.
[00:21:15] Speaker C: I mean, come on, my kids go. All you do is go surfing in the morning and play with dogs and cats all day.
[00:21:21] Speaker B: What a life.
[00:21:22] Speaker C: It's a happy bubble. I said, you're welcome to join.
I agree.
[00:21:27] Speaker B: I'm curious. Sidebar. Sidebar. Have you ever worked with bears?
[00:21:33] Speaker C: Only in zoos. And we. I remember going with Dr. Fowler again, who's the greatest in the world? And we had to work on a polar bear, and so we would.
We would blow gun them, and I'm ready to charge right in. The polar bear lies down and. And get to work. And Dr. Fowler goes, Something's not quite right. And I'm going, he looks asleep to me.
[00:21:58] Speaker B: Nope.
[00:21:58] Speaker C: But it turns out, you know, Dr. Fowler knew these so well. He knew for some reason that that bear was faking it and was just looking forward to eating a vegetable thing. So we had to redart it. But we did work like that, where we'd be looking, seeing why they're not eating. We'd look for dental infections.
[00:22:17] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:22:18] Speaker C: And then do blood tests. A lot of times they had a toothache and they couldn't really tell us, but they didn't eat. And so we sedate them or tranquilize them. And then I remember helping out at the San Diego Zoo, where they actually did a root canal on a tiger. I was doing something insignificant like listening to the heart or monitoring the pulse oximeter. But I was fascinated with this dentist with all these specialized tools, working on the tiger.
[00:22:43] Speaker B: You've just really had the opportunity that most people don't get, you know, to be up close and personal with these. Not just exotic animals, but, you know, domestic animals, too. You know, people's pets that they care for and they love so much. It's just a fascinating field that you've been able to cover so much of. I'm. I don't know if you've ever seen. You probably have seen the show, the TV show on pbs, All Creatures Great and Small.
[00:23:11] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, it's fantastic.
[00:23:12] Speaker B: You know, who's the. Who's the vet? Dr. Jim.
I've just gone. It's been a long day. I cannot remember his last name, but he's a fan.
[00:23:21] Speaker C: I made it a long day because I couldn't connect.
[00:23:23] Speaker B: It's.
He's famous. He's written many, many books. And this show is based on his life as a rural British. I can't say that. Rural British veterinarian. And it is a. It is a fascinating show about just daily life of a rural vet. You know, it's interesting.
[00:23:42] Speaker C: So funny you say that.
It's another sort of long story, but I wanted to look at orangutans. I'd read about an orangutan research project out in wilds of Borneo, and they happen to be UC Davis students. I'm living in Australia at the time, and I found this journal about them in New guinea where I was giving basketball clinics. So I write to them and they write back saying, yeah, we're going to be up there. You know, come on up.
And then There was like 8 pages instructions I didn't bother to read. So we're on a plane from Bali to Jakarta, and I finally look at the letter and it says, you need to speak Indonesian.
[00:24:20] Speaker B: Oh, gosh.
[00:24:22] Speaker C: And I'm going, you got to be kidding me. I guess I should have read this long ago. So I look around the plane and on the plane there's one Caucasian man.
And I go back and I said, do you speak English?
And he goes, are you Doug?
I said, yeah. He says, I'm Peter Rodman. You're going up to my sanctuary. I'll be happy to take you. I go, wow, we almost died on that trip. We got nearly swept overboard on a little boat. And anyway, we get up there and they.
The his students go, do you got any books to trade? I said, yeah, you can have online. And we said, we have this one about a vet. You probably aren't interested. I said, I'll read anything. And that was a James Harriet book. James Harriet, What a Wonderful, wonderful.
[00:25:11] Speaker B: Yeah, wonderful. In your book. In your book in Healing Both ends of the leash, do you have some. Do you tell a lot of these stories that you're telling us now? Do you have some of those stories in there?
[00:25:24] Speaker C: That's for book two. There is room. So those are all going in the second book, which is more of weird stuff that has happened to me.
[00:25:31] Speaker B: People want to hear that, though.
People want to hear that because it's the only way some people are able to understand and relate to animals. Even, you know, because I've had some students who. Their parents have not allowed them to have animals growing up. They don't understand the love of an. Of a pet to be.
[00:25:50] Speaker C: I had that as a. I was teaching in Australia and at a college called Hayleybury College that I stumbled into that job. But I noticed some kids weren't allowed pets, and they also were a little bit difficult.
And so I brought in. They have parrots everywhere in Australia.
Cockatoos, galahs. So I bought a little parrot for $3 at the grocery store, which probably would have cost 3,000 here, but.
[00:26:14] Speaker B: And I bet it lived for 50 years, didn't it?
[00:26:16] Speaker C: Oh, they lived forever.
And I'd let the students, like, take them home when I was gone. You know, they talk their parents into letting them have them for a week or two, then they'd give them back, or they'd play with them. And they went from being difficult students to friendly students over the mutual love of this parrot.
And that was my first observation as a teacher, that some of these kids are, you know, their families deny them a lot of things that I think are necessary. But as a teacher, you know, maybe we can help a little bit, let them have access to some kind of living thing. I've noticed a lot of schools do have classroom pets that the kids can bond with.
[00:26:56] Speaker B: They do. And, you know, my first. I mean, my first experience working here at the counseling center with dogs.
Working dogs in a service animal capacity. We had. I hate to bring this up, but we had a mass shooting at one of our colleges in north Alabama. And we were sent up there because it was part of the University of Alabama system.
And we were sent to that location.
And some of the service dogs came with a group at the time. I think it was called the Delta Society. Have you ever heard of that?
And they had flown all across the country to be there to help the students when they reincorporate back into the school, because the school was closed down for about a week.
So we were there talking to the students because they didn't have a counseling center that was as large as ours. So all of our counselors went up to help out. And they were staying. The Delta Society dogs were staying in the same hotel. Hotel we were. I remember a Harlequin.
Help me. Marmaduke, Great Dane. A Harlequin Great Dane running up and down the hall like a pony. You know, you could hear it outside the door. But when we got to the school to watch the interaction between the students who were actually in some of the classrooms with the dogs, it was really stunning to see. And if you've never really witnessed that, I hate that what happened, happened. But that was a unique, you know, you kind of understand how these dogs are working. Really?
[00:28:38] Speaker C: Yeah. And they are happy to be working, too. I saw it happen with my aunt and uncle. They were, you know, quite old, in their late 70s or 80s, but they would take their golden retriever to a school in Silicon Valley.
They lived up close to Stanford University.
And the principal said, the only thing that will get those students off their phones and computers was their dog. He said, can you bring that dog every day?
And then another sad story also involving, you know, my aunt and uncle is. My uncle loved dogs, you know, like you love Lynne Nestle. And he was a computer, you know, aeronautical engineer, nerd. But his hobby was that dog. And unfortunately, when. When she died, he was beside himself. And he was a, you know, he's an engineer. Kept it all inside. So my aunt called and says, your uncle is not doing well. He said he feels more guilty about losing Cece was the dog's name than his own mother. And he feels he is a bad human because of that.
And so he's obviously not going to talk to nephew Doug. You know, I'm just the fun guy in the family. But UC Davis started a crisis center, and it all started because there was a really nice older gentleman whose dog was on chemotherapy. And we'd all see him. He was so nice to his students. He'd bring his dog in for chemo.
And unfortunately, this four dog did pass away.
And he wrote the nicest note to the students and the staff.
And he said, I just can't imagine living without my dog. And he committed suicide.
And so Davis started up a program where they got trained professionals like yourself to answer the phone for people who were feeling off centered after pet loss or something similar. So I told my aunt, you know, here's his number. Have Uncle Ron call him. And so my uncle called up and the person he spoke to said, gosh, how much time did you spend with your dog a day? And he said, oh, you know, probably. Oh, yeah, every day. But on weekends, you know, I.
[00:30:43] Speaker B: 24 7, just about, yeah.
[00:30:45] Speaker C: Said, well, you know, Mr. Marks, how much time did you spend with your mom? Said, well, she lived, you know, quite a few hours away, but I went up at least every other weekend and you know, saw her and every time she needed anything. I mean, he was a good son. Well, they said, Mr. Marks, your grief will be in proportion to how much time you spent with a living creature, whether it's your mother or a dog. And he goes, really?
[00:31:07] Speaker B: Yes. Made sense.
[00:31:08] Speaker C: Then suddenly he was normal. Thanks to that person with your skills and training. It completely sent him back to normal. He got another dog immediately afterwards. And I am so grateful to your profession for my uncle.
[00:31:25] Speaker B: Well, I feel really embarrassed and ignorant. You mentioned this when we were communicating a little bit about the suicide rate amongst veterinarians.
And I did not realize this. Like we do a lot of training on suicide prevention and I have heard about the medical field, of course, but I really, I don't know if I've ever heard that that was, you know, the highest suicide rate amongst medical providers is vets.
[00:32:00] Speaker C: Yeah. And it's, it's the last thing I ever would have thought of. Me too, to be honest with you. And I did have a, a classmate in, in a wildlife class and he was an older guy. I mean I was probably older than chronologically, but he already had his degree in veterinary medicine. He was doing a PhD with Dr. Fowler and he had his act together. I thought, I want to be like this guy. And then one day he didn't come to class and, and Dr. Valor comes in kind of teary eyed, said Dr. So and so committed suicide. So I just assumed it was over a woman or something like that. I never thought the professional.
[00:32:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:35] Speaker C: Then in 1991, I was then a vet for like five or six years kind of. We all got word to come to a emergency meeting among all those local vets. We're in the settle, what's called the Saddleback Valley area of Orange County. There's a big famous church there. Saddleback and Orange county housewives are from. Oh yeah, real housewives, real whatever they'.
And so I go to the meeting and six vets in Southern California committed suicide in a very short pattern of time. All were men.
And so the guy was leading the discussion, was asking has anybody ever thought of it? And half, not half third of the group raised their hands. I'm going, this is the greatest job. I've ever heard of them. And I taught for many years. Nobody really ever says thank you or you know, even for doing fleet prevention. I get people bring a cake or cookies. I've never been thanked so much in my life as a vet. I couldn't understand it. And all of Them were guys who owned their own practice, so they had other parts of the job to do, running the business, payroll and all that, trying to make ends meet.
But we, so we started meeting as a group quite often. There hasn't been a suicide since. But lately there's been a lot of, of really wonderful, perfectionist women veterinarians who are just fantastic veterinarians. And they get bullied now on social media, which is really hard to take.
I've never met a bad veterinarian. They're all the same mode. They just love animals, want to help, and the burden is we lose so many of our patients. You know, my brother, that's what it is.
[00:34:20] Speaker B: I think it's tremendous pressure.
[00:34:23] Speaker C: Yeah. I call up my, all my relatives who are doctors, you know, aside from my cousin who's an oncologist. They don't lose patients often, but we lose sometimes three a day.
[00:34:33] Speaker B: I know.
[00:34:35] Speaker C: And you're filled with self doubt. You know, what could I have done? Could I have done more? Some have died in my hand.
Sometimes one of the vets I know, they don't want to work on birds or stuff. They send them to me. And birds don't act sick until they're ready to die. They're usually sick for three weeks before they show any sign of illness or they get eaten in the wild. If they looked out of whack, I'll touch the bird, hold on my hand. They die. They go, oh, geez, you just killed my bird. If Dr. Mannix had only seen him, he'd be alive. You just squished.
It's sort of funny now, but at the time, I don't know what to say. I don't want to go into this long lecture like your bird's been sick for three weeks. It's like telling them you're, don't you know your bird's sick? But oh yeah, you honestly cannot tell.
[00:35:19] Speaker B: Don't you think there's like a happy medium in certain professions? Like, for instance, I can kind of relate in my profession. I think there's some therapists who go into the profession because they want to help people and they have such empathy. But then it's also kind of like not good too, because those people hurt the most when something happens, you know, Same thing with the veterinarian. I think that a lot of vets go into the field because they have such a heart for animals. But it doesn't prepare you for when you lose somebody or some an animal. How can you ever be prepared for that?
[00:35:59] Speaker C: You know, we learned you know that at that meeting, compassion fatigue, I couldn't get it. But it's. You're just burn out on. Yeah.
[00:36:07] Speaker B: It's real.
[00:36:09] Speaker C: And I have to be honest, you know, if I didn't have a family, if I didn't surf every morning before work and I could just lose myself at that practice, you know, it's bad.
[00:36:18] Speaker B: It really is.
[00:36:19] Speaker C: We could be here seven days a week, 24 hours and never get it done. But you know, I had a family to go home to. Young kids, you know that they certainly didn't want me to bring my tragedies home with me.
[00:36:30] Speaker B: Well, you have to learn to compartmentalize a little bit too.
[00:36:34] Speaker C: Yeah. And that's not easy. And also had a lot of failures in life. Unlike most people, you know, I played sports, I struck out when I needed to hit a homer. I missed free throws. I sat on the bench in front of 20,000 people in college being so humiliated, not playing.
But truly, nothing prepares you for the death of a patient and having to go and greet the family and tell them there is nothing like it. There were holes I wish I could have crawled into. Especially if I think if I hadn't done surgery, they'd still be alive today. And that's hard.
And you either become a person of faith or you hit the bottle pretty well.
I chose the other route. I just go. I agree.
[00:37:18] Speaker B: We'll be right back. You're listening to brain matters on 90.7 the capstone.
[00:37:33] Speaker C: Wvuafm Tuscaloosa.
[00:37:35] Speaker A: This show is not a substitute for professional counseling and no relationship is created between the show host or guests and any listener. If you feel you are in need of professional mental health and are a UA student, we encourage you to contact the UA Counseling center at 348-3863. If you are not a UA student, please contact your respective counties crisis service hotline or their local mental health agency or insurance company. If it is an emergency situation, please call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
[00:38:13] Speaker B: You're back listening to brain matters on 90.7 the Capstone. I'm BJ Guenther. We're talking tonight with Dr. Doug Cowart. Listen, can you take a email question? It's kind of an unusual email question, but I wanted to get. There's a couple of them if you're willing to take these.
[00:38:28] Speaker C: Absolutely, yeah.
[00:38:29] Speaker B: The first one is, are there chemicals released in the body when we care for our pets?
[00:38:34] Speaker C: Oh, absolutely, yeah. They say, you know, oxytocin, love hormone.
We touch them, they give it to Us, and we give it right back to them. So there's a mutual exchange and cortisol. I was even read in a book called the Forever Dog.
It's a great book that dogs can stress our. Our stress just in our sweat. And they actually half heartedly said, you know, vets, when they come home, need to take a shower and wash their clothes or our dogs get stressed and then their cortisol goes way up. And certainly all of us, at least all of us vets, know of dogs who've died of a broken heart. You know, either their. Their owner dying or another animal, another animal. They mourn like crazy. So they certainly experience stress. And even, you know, sometimes I actually can lose my temper over one of my children doing something, and my dogs know it. They just slink out of the room like, what's going on? Why is Happy Doug yelling at my favorite person in the world, my daughter? So they absolutely.
They know it better than we do. And they also. What the animal communicators, which I never knew existed, tell me is they just read our brains. They know exactly what's going on in our brain, and they don't even need to vocalize it. They just go, whoa, he's mad at the daughters and I'm getting out of here.
[00:39:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I had a question about that.
When you talk about pets, knowing whether or not you're distressed, is that like instinct for them or do they respond? Whatever they respond, like you said, they slink out of the room. Is that intentional or is it instinct?
[00:40:13] Speaker C: Well, I think their survival mode is written into their DNA. I mean, we're basically, you and I are both hunter gatherers in disguise, living in this 20th century environment. But our DNA is to be a hunter, gatherer, herdsman, and dogs are the same way. They were a prey species. And so they have to be really sensitive to what the leader of their pack is telling them. And, you know, they communicate non verbally, so to speak, so they really have to be tuned in. So they are super sensitive or they wouldn't survive.
You know, they. They also are predators too, but they are a prey species just like we were. You know, they're. I'll tell you, when I was in some of these places, I'll never forget, we were hitchhiking in Kenya and we got picked up by a wildlife photographer. And I'm going, boy, this is the best person who could pick me up, you know, so we hung out with him for three or four days, but he had to drop me off in the middle of a game park.
And you're not allowed to be in a game park by yourself. It is illegal.
And so that night there were lions roaring and my wife goes, would we taste good?
[00:41:22] Speaker B: I mean, yeah, probably.
[00:41:23] Speaker C: What are you saying, Nancy? And I'm armed with a Swiss army knife. And I literally every sense that I could bring awake was on high alert.
And fortunately nobody ate us that night we walked three miles to get to us a civilization, so to speak, where there was a tent set up. And they go, what are you idiots doing? And apparently some, some researcher had hopped out of her jeep to go investigate something a week earlier and they never found her. So we are built in to really be sensitive, but nothing like a dog or a cat or a bird who communicates, you know, non verbally. So they, they are very, very, very much aware of everything.
[00:42:06] Speaker B: Another email question. Are there pets that tend or mental health than others?
[00:42:13] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a really good question.
And it depends on the person. Like if you're, if you need to get calm, get a Labrador golden retriever. They are just mellow.
No bad days. Labradors are the only dogs that like to come in the clinic. They come and wagging their tail, hey, give me a couple shots.
Give me some attention.
[00:42:34] Speaker B: My little poodle knows the word, she knows spelling, she knows the smell. I mean, yeah, she's pretty smart.
[00:42:42] Speaker C: If she detects you're even driving your vet's office, she may go, mom, turn around. We're not going here.
And then there are the working dogs. They need to work. And I lived in Queensland, Australia, doing playing basketball two seasons and working at a research lab. And they had these mean brahma bulls, the meanest dogs.
[00:43:03] Speaker B: They're the meanest. We had them. Yeah, My dad grew up on a cattle farm and he's talking. They're horrible.
[00:43:11] Speaker C: Well, the dogs that work, work with them, love their job. I mean, they're near death. They are tougher than anything, these Queensland healers. But when people say they want to get one as a pet, I go, you're gonna need to run that dog.
[00:43:25] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:43:25] Speaker C: For eight miles every day or he will destroy your home and your yard. So for people who are already high strung, you don't need a Queensland healer unless you need a dog to get you out for eight miles a day. You know, get out loud.
[00:43:38] Speaker B: I've heard the same about beagles too. Is that true?
[00:43:41] Speaker C: I had a beagle.
They're very accurate because I'll destroy it. There was an interesting MD who I met and I sought her out for holistic care because nobody could There were no such thing as autoimmune doctors, which I had autoimmune disease that no one could quite help me with. So I went to her office and she had a poodle underneath her desk. And the poodle said hello, and I felt its coat. And I said, what do you feed that poodle? And she's getting all nervous because she's afraid I'm going to condemn her for feeding. I knew that she had to be eating real food that good. And she says, well, I try to sometimes give him what I eat. I said, he's eating real food, I can tell. She says, you're okay with that? I said, no. That's what I tell everybody. Give them real food.
[00:44:27] Speaker B: Boiled chicken. What else? Boiled chicken, egg whites, maybe green beans, sweet potatoes. Right.
[00:44:35] Speaker C: Everything that we should eat is good for them. But this dog was a perfect therapy dog in her office, just like yours. Nestle a mellow sweet. I mean, people relax in the presence of these dogs. So she actually wrote a prescription for a woman that was the most unusual I've heard of. The woman was probably my age, old timer, horribly depressed, bad heart, all these problems. And she wrote a prescription to go adopt a small dog.
[00:45:06] Speaker B: Oh, yes, I've done it. Well, I can't write prescriptions, but I know exactly what you're talking about.
[00:45:11] Speaker C: Well, the lady thought she was crazy. She comes in two months later, glowing, wraps her arms around her name is doctor and says, thank you, thank you, thank you. She says, I had no idea that's the best medicine on earth. And people. Now she has to get her outside. People ask her about her dog. She loves talking. She just. No medicine, just a dog. Just.
[00:45:36] Speaker B: That takes me back. One of my first students here, I mentioned that to him, just, just casually, like, have you ever thought about a pet? Because he lived alone and literally in the next two weeks he ordered an Italian greyhound that was flown into the Birmingham, Alabama airport. He met it at the airport. He named it Miles. I'll never forget it. And it changed his life. It helped his social anxiety. It helped his loneliness.
It is amazing. So it works.
[00:46:06] Speaker C: I've heard thousands of stories like that. I knew now what I did then as a very shy, skinny little 16 year old, I would have gotten a dog and walked around the neighborhood.
[00:46:17] Speaker B: You'd have met a lot of people.
I hear that.
Talk about your book some more.
How many chapters is it? What are some of the titles of the chapters? What did you want to get out of writing this book? What do you want people to get out of reading the book.
[00:46:35] Speaker C: Yeah. The main thing is our health and our pet's health is really in our hands. We have the ability to make life better for them or, unfortunately, worse just by our choices.
And I was seeing just unbelievable results just using real food.
I was trained to be a wellness wildlife doctor, keep wildlife well. And so when I ended up in a. In small animal practice or exotic animal practice, you know, I had that same mentality. So I immediately was telling people, feed real food. I had seen a dog at a winery in Northern California who was the healthiest dog I had ever seen. I'm like, one year out of vet school. And I complimented. Turned out to belong to the wine pour. And she said, if the stupid vets have their way, that dog would be dead. So everybody points their finger at me, and I confess, what did we do wrong? And her dog had totally, totally malaligned hips, hip dysplasia, ridiculously painful, and they suffer.
And the treatment for it is to get new hips when they're older, which is quite painful and.
Or euthanasia. And so her veterinarian said, I think you should trade this dog into your veterinary, and I'm sure they'll give you a new one. It was a lab, and. And the breeder said, I'm so sorry. This has never happened. Of course we'll give you a new dog. She says, well, what will happen to. To Brody? She says, well, we'll take him out of the breeding program, which meant euthanasia. So she grabbed Brody back and. And again, this. In the 80s, there's no Internet, but this was up in the wine country, Paso Robles. So everybody has animals, farms, rural. Nails told her about a chiropractor in Monterey who had a gift for this human chiropractor. So I called her up just to see what magic she worked with her hands to get these hips in. She really let into me. She said, I get them off the stupid food, you stupid vets feed them, then you do surgery that makes them worse. Then you got them on drugs that is crippling, and you ruin their lives. That's insane.
And I go, I'm sorry. I just graduated from Davis. It's supposed to be a good school. I didn't learn any of this.
Can you please tell me more? Then she felt sorry for me. I sounded like a pitiful human being. And she said, I just give them people food, you know, what you would be eating. And it was a little more scientific than that. You know, it was real food.
And I said, that sort of makes sense. You Know, all the wild animals I saw eat wild food and they never get these conditions. So I thought about it and I thought, if I can find a book about this, you know, I'm all in. And so of course, I find a book at the local library. Keeping your dog, your pets healthy the natural way. And it talked about a holistic veterinary group I'd never heard of. And there were names of a bunch of vets in there. So I hand wrote them all these letters, you know, I'd like to try this diet. Would it work? And. And they all were very nice. One, even Dr. Gene Dodds, the most famous of all, calls me up. Welcome to the dark side, Doug. This is going to be a lot of fun. And, you know, it was just really getting food that they'd been eating for 20,000 years. Living with people in little villages was nothing new to their system. What was new was this ultra processed kibble that they'd been eating every single meal of their life.
[00:49:59] Speaker B: It took me a long time to realize that my little nestle had pancreatitis right when Covid started. And that opened my eyes to so much. And everything changed after that. We started to. I started taking her actually to the only naturopath veterinarian doctor in Alabama that I know of is in Birmingham.
Dr. Natalie Blackman is her name. And I got Catherine actually to start taking her on dog there because she does, she does employ a veterinary chiropractor, which I'd never heard of. And Dr. Blackman titers my dog. So that's the choice I've used is titering. Look it up if you're listening and don't know what that is, but it's just a different way. It's a different form of thinking. And a lot of people don't know. They just haven't educated themselves on a different route that you can take, you know.
[00:50:52] Speaker C: Well, back to your question. That's why I wrote the book. And my clients and families were saying, this is in the 80s, you got to write this down, that whoever tells us to feed real food, everybody says, give them scientifically formulated food, no table scraps. And I said, you know, one of these days, you know, I was busy raising kids, the practice was busy, and there was so much to learn doing all these species. I went to so much continuing education. And thankfully, my wife was the first remote worker. She ran the business out of our living room so she could be a mom full time.
And so about the time I decided I'm going to write this book, my health fell apart. Big time. With autoimmune disease.
People would tell Nancy, doug doesn't look so good. I go, I feel fine. I surf every morning. Thirteen cups of coffee, and I'm good as new.
So finally I went to an aerobatic doctor. She was my old yoga teacher from Australia.
[00:51:50] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:51:51] Speaker C: And the first thing she did, I hadn't seen her in probably 12 years, 15 years. She'd go, doug and Nancy, what has America done to you? You look horrible. But she had a little grin to her, says, ayurvedic will fix you up. I go, what's that? And she goes, it's only the oldest health practice in the world. And the very first veterinarians were Ayurvedic doctors. I said, I didn't learn that one at school.
So she does a Ayurvedic exam on me, the longest and most pleasant exam I've had. She picked off right away that my digestive tract was. Something was really wrong. Just looking at my nails, and she looked at my tongue, and she's shaking her head. She goes, you aren't sleeping at much. I go, well, I'm busy, you know, I got to get up and surf. And I get.
By the time the kids are in bed and I've written my 20 sympathy notes of all the pets that have died, it's one o'. Clock. And she goes, oh, you Americans are so stupid. That's why I didn't go there. So England was too cold, Americans are beyond repair, but Australians are just right.
So she gave me a list of foods to eat, told me, don't eat late at night because I was eating at one in the morning sometimes. Just stupid.
And I was already surfing early in the morning, which is very healthy. I do yoga on the beach before. I've been meditating since I had to take a course. I was forced into taking.
Course. I had a basketball scholarship at a Jesuit school, Santa Clara University, and I had to take religious studies courses to graduate. So I took weird ones like mysticism, east and west, psychology of religion, things like that. And I had to meditate for one class. And all of a sudden I go, boy, I feel better. And I'm doing better in school, I'm doing better in sports. I'm going to do my senior thesis on this for my physiology class. And I found out all these remarkable benefits from meditation. So I thought, maybe there's some people who, you know. Once I got well with autoimmune disease, I finally was able to heal. At one point, I was so crippled, I couldn't Go upstairs. I had to crawl up. I couldn't lift a book.
It was miserable.
I can't imagine the rest of my life. And all I had to do was stop eating certain foods I thought were healthy. I had to stop eating all the grains, the eggplant family.
I'd already been vegan, but the weird thing is I had to start eating meat. And I hadn't eaten meat since I started yoga training class.
And I like meat. But she said I couldn't be in her yoga training class. This was back in the 70s in Melbourne when I first met her, unless I stopped eating meat.
So I was wasting away.
I just couldn't keep weight on. So I have to eat meat now. But I gained the weight back and. And I pretty much healed from three autoimmune diseases. And so I thought, you know, I'm going to include people on this, you know, because I'm sure there's a lot of people who get joint replacement, who, if they just ate differently, they'd feel 100% better.
And if I can help some people with their dogs, get them eating real food, and then help people with their illnesses, it'll be worth spending seven years doing it. But then I ran into addiction, which is your line of work. I would be so anxious to help people with cancer or very serious autoimmune disease. I'd say, gosh, you know, here's healthy foods to eat. If you eat them, you won't need any.
Any drugs or any medication, or with cancer people, it could extend your longevity by decades. And some people go, I'm not giving up pizza and beer. I'm not giving up my sweets. And I thought, are you kidding? In my condition? I had celiac disease. Either I stopped eating gluten or I was going to die. So that was easy. It was like, I got a lot to live for.
But if you have some of these mild autoimmune diseases, it doesn't kill you right away. And so, you know, they don't see the need to change. So I had to go into addiction. And I found it was a real difficult subject. And I found out I was a sugar addict because I did like eating sugar. And I didn't realize that I'd been enjoying it all my life because my mom was a baker. And so giving up sugar was stressful for me, but I had to do that to survive. So part of my book goes with and with addictions, and I do refer them to people like yourself, deal with it. But it's. It's easy to give up addiction if you kind of know where to look in the right place. Yeah.
[00:56:28] Speaker B: And you have support for it, too. I mean, we're talking tonight with Dr. Doug Coward, and his book is In Healing Both Ends of the Leash. It's fascinating. Can you buy your book? Where can you purchase your book? Is it on Amazon? Do you have a website?
[00:56:42] Speaker C: Yeah. I was clueless. I never looked any of that when I wrote it. But a neighborhood who I helped with their dog, you know, said, oh, I got a friend who will hybrid publish it. So it's hybrid published. So it's available on Amazon right now.
[00:56:57] Speaker B: That's cool. Thank you so much for being on the show. Once we got started, it's just hard to cut this off because it's just you've got so much, not just the experience of being a vet, but just life experience and then writing a book on top of that. I just don't see how it doesn't mesh with mental health issues, too. You know, you were worried a little bit about how we were going to talk about how it relates to college students. How can this not relate to everybody, what we've been talking about for the last hour?
[00:57:26] Speaker C: Well, for college students, the only drawback is they can't have probably dogs in their. In their dorm room sometimes.
[00:57:31] Speaker B: Yeah. The freshmen are required to live on campus. Yes. Unless they have like a letter, an emotional support animal letter, or a service therapy, you know, a therapy dog letter to justify why they're needing the animal, then they're probably not going to be allowed in the dorms. Definitely. But I see so many students who live off campus and they do have animals. Most of them have either a dog or a cat.
[00:57:57] Speaker C: Oh, thank goodness.
[00:57:58] Speaker B: I had one that had two rats.
And while I was seeing him, one of his rats died. And it was. It was just emotional for him. Just like, you know, it would be for me if a dog died.
[00:58:11] Speaker C: Well, they're like miniature golden retrievers, so they grieve the same. And if anybody has a difficult time, it's a college student. That probably be the most important time when so many things are happening. And I'm guessing a lot of schools have therapy dogs where you can just borrow a dog for the day and play with them and return them like they do.
[00:58:33] Speaker B: We have, at our local, local animal shelter, they have a program where you can do that.
[00:58:37] Speaker C: Oh, that's fantastic.
[00:58:38] Speaker B: You can literally rent them for the day. I forgot what they call the program. And I've had them on as guests, too, to talk about that because there's a lot of students who come from homes where they have pets and they're not allowed to bring them here and they miss them. You know, they.
So thanks again for being on the show. If you'll stay on the line, I want to talk to you after I. After I. Oh, absolutely.
[00:58:59] Speaker C: It's been a pleasure and an honor and real tight.
I always follow Alabama. They're a winning team, unlike all the ones in California.
[00:59:08] Speaker B: Well, UCLA is doing pretty good in basketball, especially women's basketball right now. I think they're number one. If I'm not correct, if I'm not wrong. Yeah.
[00:59:16] Speaker C: Like the old days. Yeah. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
[00:59:20] Speaker B: Stay on the line. I want to talk to you. Don't forget, our shows are recorded and podcasted on the Apple Podcast, Spotify audio pod, boom. Voices ua.edu. you can just type in Brain Matters and you'll find some of our past shows. There's also a link on voices ua edu 2 voices ua.edu on our counseling center's website, which is counseling ua edu. I'd like to thank a few people who have helped me create this show and do the show every week. As always. Our executive director here at the counseling center, Dr. Greg, Greg Vanderwaal, my producer and director, my producer and co worker Katherine Howell, my colleagues here at the Counseling Center, Gareth Garner, who edits our shows every week, and the WVUA staff, and of course, my guest tonight, Dr. Doug Coward. Don't forget, we're on every week at 6:00 clock on 90.7, so you can join us next week. And thanks again for listening. Have a good night.
[01:00:23] Speaker A: This show was not intended as a substitute for professional counseling. Further, the views, opinions and conclusions expressed by the show hosts or their guests are their own and not necessarily those of the University of Alabama, its officers or trustees. Any views, opinions or conclusions shared on the show. Do not create a relationship between the host or any guest and any listener, and such a relationship should never be inferred. If you feel you're in need of professional mental health and are a UA student, please contact the UA Counseling center at 348-3863. If you are not a UA student, please contact your respective county's crisis service hotline or their local mental health agency or insurance company. If it is an emergency situation, please call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
