Dr. Jim Lowe

You’re going to Walmart this weekend?

Kaylee Hillinger

No, I just went this morning.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Wow. That’s a habit.

Kaylee Hillinger

It’s not usual. We all know that I’m an Aldi shopper. But I had to panic buy a bunch of dance stuff because I’m now a dance mom.

Dr. Jim Lowe

She’s three.

Kaylee Hillinger

Not even.

Dr. Jim Lowe

The issues are bigger than Walmart.

Kaylee Hillinger

So I bought a bunch of stuff. Of course, get it delivered, because who would just, like, willingly walk into Walmart unless it’s something that you need.

Dr. Jim Lowe

You could have bought it from Amazon.

Kaylee Hillinger

I could have. Walmart had it cheaper this time. I shouldn’t say- I willingly go into Walmart when I need things. I just don’t like to go into stores in general. But then I like to go return stuff and get money because then it’s just like girl math is the new tik tok trend.

Kaylee Hillinger

I go to return something I already bought and then it’s basically free money.

Dr. Jim Lowe

It’s strange math, but okay.

Kaylee Hillinger

I don’t even have a tik tok but I’ve heard girl math references. I’m like “Yeah, I could get on board with that.” Like, if you have a gift card, it’s basically like you bought nothing at all. I’m sure you have some farm math.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Don’t spend money.

Kaylee Hillinger

Oh, not as fun.

Dr. Jim Lowe

No, no, no. What are we going to talk about today?

Kaylee Hillinger

We’re going to talk about Walmart.

Dr. Jim Lowe

The Wally World.

Kaylee Hillinger

Yeah, and pet telehealth. And the fact that Amazon and Walmart keep chasing each other’s businesses. So I know you heard, but for our listeners…

Dr. Jim Lowe

I’m super cool. No, sorry. That wasn’t what I heard.

Kaylee Hillinger

Where’s the button. (Music) No wrong button.

Kaylee Hillinger

(Laugh Track) So for our listeners- it won’t stop.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Hit it again. See, I mean-

Kaylee Hillinger

How do you stop a joke? Amazon considers offering veterinary telehealth as it looks to compete with Walmart. That was the big news, which basically means that Amazon’s already decided to offer veterinary telehealth in competition with Walmart. I feel like if it’s news, Amazon isn’t considering it. They’re already in the pipeline.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Game on.

Kaylee Hillinger

Game on. All right. Tell me about Walmart and their pet telehealth.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Well, it’s interesting, right? So I was kind of bit off guard by this, hadn’t been paying that much attention. And so we’ve been talking a lot about telehealth, right. And virtual care.

Kaylee Hillinger

And that’s kind of our things.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Those things. Yeah. And so and there’s a lot of interest and money and people in that space today and part of that coming out of the pandemic, because we had human telehealth being a thing and then we had to kind of do veterinary telehealth. And let’s be clear what telehealth is. We’re talking- we’re talking about video or chat or combination thereof to do medical things.

Dr. Jim Lowe

So formalized face time is what I like to call it.

Kaylee Hillinger

Yep.

Dr. Jim Lowe

So I can have- you can have a chat with me as a veterinarian over the phone and maybe I can look at your pet or I can look at your pig. And there’s some ways to track that. And we keep that in the medical record. And in some states, that’s a legal way to have a veterinary client patient relationship.

Dr. Jim Lowe

You can actually do it that way. And that’s true in humans now as well. And so it’s care delivery at distance. I think it’s maybe the best way to define it. And it’s been a thing and it’s a hot topic of conversation. And there’s these people who don’t like to go to stores and want to shop online. Sorry, Kaylee, who would also prefer not to drag their fractious cat to the pet, or just want to do it conveniently at night, or actually, in some cases we can provide better medicine because if the cat’s-

Dr. Jim Lowe

A little wigged out about going to the vet. It may not show you it’s lame. So now it’s in its own house and is limping around and I can see that.

Kaylee Hillinger

Yep. Or you live, somewhere where there’s like no vets.

Dr. Jim Lowe

All that’s true. All vets are way far away.

Kaylee Hillinger

Yeah.

Dr. Jim Lowe

And so. And we’ve done that a long time. We’ve done that a long time as pig veterinarians, right? And so once we figured out we could use face time or Google Meet or whatever it was at the time, instead of me driving two and a half hours to go look at some pigs and walking around for 20 minutes and driving two and a half hours home, we’d have the person, the caretaker pop his phone on and we’d have them walk around the barn with a camera, turn around so we could see that we’d talk to them, look at this and show me that.

Dr. Jim Lowe

And is it as good as being there? No, but it was better driving a lot.

Kaylee Hillinger

Right.

Dr. Jim Lowe

And it also meant we could go faster. It also meant we didn’t have to worry about tracking disease around because we can, you know, right? Just sit in our office. And so that space is going on to get a lot of companies doing that. In the pig space probably the biggest one is EveryPig. And that was really probably kind of before everybody else.

Dr. Jim Lowe

And they’ve done that just for pigs. The feedlot health group out of Canada has done that with mortalities for a long time in cattle. And now you’re seeing a lot of this in the small animal space. And really too many names to name. So lots and lots of those. And so you get all this stuff going. And so the debates then about how do we deliver care and people like this and it’s convenient.

Dr. Jim Lowe

And the other big trend that’s happened is that people quit buying pharmaceutical products only at their veterinarian. So I go to see the vet and then I wanted a script so I could order from 1-800-petmeds or I could order from Chewy.

Kaylee Hillinger

Get it in my Chewy box with my monthly thing.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Oh, those are subscriptions as well.

Kaylee Hillinger

I think so. I used to live by someone who would get a chewy box delivered.

Dr. Jim Lowe

And so Chewy’s just online- it’s the Amazon of dog stuff, right. Of the pet stuff.

Kaylee Hillinger

Does someone own them are they…?

Dr. Jim Lowe

That’s a good question. I have no idea. And so that space has been really profitable. And I think retailers would tell you, big box stores would tell you. And if you kind of look at the floor space, it continues to be allocated to pet food and pet things. That’s some of the most profitable square footage in the store. So a dollar per square foot of margin is really high in those areas.

Dr. Jim Lowe

And the thing is right, a bag of dog food is not that different than a bag of pig feed. A bag of pig feed is like $4. A bag of dog food is $32. And I realize there’s a little more cost in the packaging. It looks fancier and the kibble is a little harder to make. But the cost difference might be 18 cents. I’m exaggerating but right, really profitable products and people and that’s a shift societally.

Dr. Jim Lowe

And so coming out of this pandemic, we have all this demand for increase in veterinary care and it’s really not more pets and a few more pets, but it’s really people demanding a lot more care for each individual pet. So the vets are overwhelmed and they’re saying, What can we do? So you’ve got this kind of increase in demand.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Veterinarians struggling to keep up, margin, leaving veterinary practices and going to the Chewy’s of the world so I can get my pet meds, plus my dog food, plus the dog treats, plus the dog bed or whatever else I’m getting for the dog. And so they’ve been in that space making money. There’s these online companies are doing it. And so it was pretty natural that Wal Mart and then Amazon got in the pet food space, in the pet treat space.

Dr. Jim Lowe

And now if I’m going to order toilet paper, I might as well order the dog food.

Kaylee Hillinger

Right.

Dr. Jim Lowe

And I think everybody is aware. Right. Walmart Plus is a direct response to Amazon and trying to compete directly with Amazon and subscription service. And so those are kind of the two behemoths going at it in that space. And now we’ve got them saying, listen, and Walmart just carried- I don’t know how long. It seems like a long time. Like you could get your prescriptions filled for the dog there.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Just as easy as if you get them filled for yourself. They’re doing both.

Kaylee Hillinger

I didn’t know that. Well, I knew that they started the vet clinic piece in there.

Dr. Jim Lowe

And so all of this is kind of starting. So this comes out and, well, Walmart hauled off and bought a telehealth company.

Kaylee Hillinger

Right.

Dr. Jim Lowe

So, Pawp. P-A-W-P.

Kaylee Hillinger

P-A-W-P

Dr. Jim Lowe

Probably butchering the pronunciation of that.

Kaylee Hillinger

We did not learn how to say it.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Again we don’t need to be accurate. We don’t want to ruin our reputation. PAWP the spelling is correct and so they’re a telehealth firm and so what since early this year or early 2023, they’ve been offering that free to Walmart-

Kaylee Hillinger

To Walmart Plus subscribers.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Walmart Plus subscribers.

Kaylee Hillinger

Which I think is like 60 bucks.

Dr. Jim Lowe

I don’t know. It’s probably like Amazon Prime. It is like Amazon Prime, it’s a competitor to Amazon Prime.

Kaylee Hillinger

I actually bought it to deliver a phone charger to my grandma when she was in the hospital one time. I was looking for a way to get it there to her within an hour or two.

Dr. Jim Lowe

And Walmart plus-

Kaylee Hillinger

And that was the easiest way.

Dr. Jim Lowe

To make it happen.

Kaylee Hillinger

Yep.

Dr. Jim Lowe

So Walmart Plus subscribers now can use their telehealth service, so get a veterinarian. You’ve got a question about things. Now Amazon’s saying, “oh, we’ve got to get in that game.”

Kaylee Hillinger

Mm hmm.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Interesting.

Kaylee Hillinger

Interesting.

Dr. Jim Lowe

And I think it says a lot about what could happen to the veterinary profession.

Kaylee Hillinger

That’s really what I want to talk about. Like this is- I get it, Walmart’s in it, Amazon’s going to get in it. But that means the rest of the industry needs to change or continue to evolve.

Dr. Jim Lowe

I might suggest that they’re better at business than the average veterinarian.

Kaylee Hillinger

Well, that’s part of the ask is how do you keep competitive? It’s the same small business question, right? My husband’s family owned an auto business and people can buy all that stuff from Amazon. So how does a small business stay in business to be able to compete with that?

Dr. Jim Lowe

Yeah, I think it’s- so if we look more broadly at the- we’ll get back to telehealth in a second. But if you look more broadly, there’s a lot of capital flowing into veterinary care right now Particularly in the companion animal space. And that capital is buying veterinary practices. And the largest practice owner in the country is M&M Mars. And Mars happens to be a large pet food company on top of making candy bars.

Dr. Jim Lowe

And so they’re plowing money in and building vet clinics and now venture capital flowing in and buying practice groups up. And there’s various business models for those things going on. But you’re starting to see the really corporatization of what was historically very much a small business realm, right? If you had three or four doctors, that was a big veterinary practice.

Kaylee Hillinger

General, a generational wealth business.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Yeah. And now it’s corporate.

Kaylee Hillinger

Yeah.

Dr. Jim Lowe

And it’s not all corporate and I know, but there’s a lot of capital coming.

Kaylee Hillinger

And it’s not all bad. It’s just different.

Dr. Jim Lowe

That’s right. And just that’s the facts. And so what’s interesting is all that money is flowing in. A lot of the historical point of profit, which is product sales is being transferred away from the vet clinic into corporate entities. So Chewy and Walmart and Amazon and Menards. Right. You go into Menards and huge pet area in there now.

Dr. Jim Lowe

It’s a hardware store that well, it’s really kind of a pet food store with hardware on the outside.

Kaylee Hillinger

You can also buy groceries there. I love Menards.

Dr. Jim Lowe

I know what-

Kaylee Hillinger

It’s my favorite.

Dr. Jim Lowe

It’s so- I don’t know.

Kaylee Hillinger

Derek would rather go to Lowe’s all day and I’m like-

Dr. Jim Lowe

No, no, no. Menards is cheaper, low cost.

Kaylee Hillinger

And we can buy some snacks.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Yeah, that’s true. And motor oil, all at the same place. But so. You see this kind of general shift happening around money flowing in and profitability, you know, what does that mean? We’ve got a generational shift in veterinarians who no longer espouse the desire to work 60 hours a week, seven days a week and take all their own emergencies, which just means they’re smarter than I was.

Dr. Jim Lowe

So we have emergency clinics, right? On the companion animal side today. So basically at 5:00, all the animals go to the emergency clinic. You don’t see emergencies after hours or on the weekends. And if it’s really a complicated case, we refer all those today. It looks very much like human medicine. And now we’re separating out like human medicine.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Again, those product sales don’t occur in the practice. And so a lot of money, a lot of things chasing. And now the two big gorillas show up.

Kaylee Hillinger

Ready to party.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Yeah. And so, like, you think M&M Mars has money or Banfield has money. They got money.

Kaylee Hillinger

Not like Walmart Amazon.

Dr. Jim Lowe

They ain’t got Walmart money right. And so like whoa, okay now we’re ready to go. So Walmart hasn’t said they’re going to get in the vet care space except for this one company purchase. And so it’s not directly- you can go on their website you don’t see “it’s a Walmart company.”

Kaylee Hillinger

Yeah you do.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Oh does it?

Kaylee Hillinger

It does.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Way down at the bottom.

Kaylee Hillinger

There’s pet care, there’s pet insurance. A couple other things that are branded with Walmart.

Dr. Jim Lowe

No, I’m saying you don’t get on PAWP site and find it’s a Walmart company. Walmart, yes. Has pet insurance now. Has pet care things. All right, so Walmart’s very much owned-

Kaylee Hillinger

Yeah, okay. I see what you mean.

Dr. Jim Lowe

But they’ve eased into that, into the care space, right. You would assume if Amazon’s heading there now they’re all looking at the tea leaves and going “well if M&M Mars can own it, why can’t we own it.”

Kaylee Hillinger

Yeah.

Dr. Jim Lowe

And so right. And I think that’s coupled with- And this could all be doom and gloom. I think it’s all fantastic. Any industry with a lot of capital flowing into it’s great. Opportunity. Stuff is going to happen. There’s opportunities for everyone, right? We’re going to make care better. We’re going to make it better for veterinarians. We’re going to make it better for the animals.

Dr. Jim Lowe

It’s just not going to look like what it did. I think the interesting thing and we heard this at our animal health symposium here a couple of weeks ago, right. For us to think about implementing kind of the next generation of remote care delivery or really advanced technical delivery. We’re not talking millions of dollars or tens of millions of dollars.

Dr. Jim Lowe

We’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars. And so maybe this is the beginning of that capital that it’s going to take. To really revolutionize how we provide care. What we provide is very different than ten years ago and certainly different than 30 years ago. But the how we provide isn’t very different yet. It’s still a brute force thing.

Dr. Jim Lowe

I show up, I see case. Dr. Klein, do the work.

Kaylee Hillinger

Do the administrative paperwork, get the billing, follow up, chase the money.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Yeah. And we’ve done as veterinarians, we’ve added a little bit of paraprofessional help, but nothing like the human side has seen.

Kaylee Hillinger

Yeah.

Dr. Jim Lowe

We don’t have that in our licensure today. I mean, that’s the big debate that’s going on. Should we have nurse practitioner model. A nurse veterinary model who’s a practitioner. Pros and cons to that. You know, some people will say we have to have it, others we don’t. So you’re seeing that on the what we do side. But the big gap is that if we finally have some serious capital, Amazon level capital, Walmart capital, you now can start to see, wait a minute, maybe we can figure out how to really leverage technology and skip that developmental step of nurse practitioners that happen in the human health care space.

Kaylee Hillinger

So let’s talk about that because we define telemedicine in the way that we’ve known it, used it in the livestock world. It’s trickled into the pet space where you can text pictures and have video calls, but then somebody still punches in the information and punches in the billing. And nothing’s really that automated other than-

Dr. Jim Lowe

I think some of these-

Kaylee Hillinger

You get your telemedicine from a distance

Dr. Jim Lowe

Some of these care delivery from a distance is pretty automated on the billing today. And it’s getting better right.

Kaylee Hillinger

Because it’s through an app that’s taking times or…?

Dr. Jim Lowe

Yeah, it’s got an app that’s got it and it’s into their thing and so that’s improving, right? So they’re not using face time, they’re using a dedicated app. And those apps do things like, Hey, who is it? And How long were you on the phone? Or How many messages or how do we bill for that care? And they’re getting better, right?

Dr. Jim Lowe

We had some presentations, a lot of work in the space of generative AI to capture transcripts of discussions. And so okay, that’s getting put in the medical record. And that’s all great. I mean, that’s fantastic. That’s not overly revolutionary. That’s kind of nibbling at the margins of efficiency.

Kaylee Hillinger

So when you talk about all of this capital being pumped in, is this where we like really dive into this base of wearables being accessible and genetic testing, yielding decent predictions into animal health?

Dr. Jim Lowe

I think that’s hard.

Dr. Jim Lowe

That’s hard, but I think wearables are not hard.

Kaylee Hillinger

Okay.

Dr. Jim Lowe

And I think. All right, we both got an Apple Watch is sitting here looking at us. So we’ve got heartbeats. And, you know, Garmin might even be ahead in that space. And there are some challenges with the dog to do that because, you know. But that’s just an engineer solving a problem. Everybody’s like “oh they have fur”. No, no, no we’ve got some smart people in this world that’ll solve that problem.

Dr. Jim Lowe

But all right, that’s just to do as implants or whatever it is. But I think when we’re saying how do you scale virtual care or distance care, I’m really talking about predictive care. So how do I put a gizmo on a dog and know when the dog is going to be sick? Not after the dog is sick.

Kaylee Hillinger

Yes.

Dr. Jim Lowe

How do I know? How do I put a rumen bolus in a cow that monitors a rumination and body temperature and tells me when she’s going to start calving and more importantly, when she’s starting to have difficulty calving. Which is before you can see the calf not coming out, we normally just wait. It’s like a time thing.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Like when you’re calving cows, you’re like, okay. Looks like she started calving and 2 hours later, nothing’s happened. Maybe we ought to do something here. Like we can predict that very early. I think if we had better monitoring. So you can start to say, well, why do you leverage that? Well, instead of having to have a veterinarian that runs out after the cow’s in distress, I have a monitor on that dispatches the truck to go get her.

Kaylee Hillinger

Yep.

Dr. Jim Lowe

And she’s already got a collar. And there’s a fancy color like Vence makes a collar today- V-E-N-C-E like fence with a V- that’s a beeper and it keeps her in electronically. Well, I can just beep her to where I want her and back the truck up and load her and I take her to the hospital to do that.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Calf fine. She’s fine. I just know. Right. And we do this in Human Med today, right? High risk pregnancies. We put them in the hospital and we monitor mom. Well could we do that remotely on a cow? I don’t know. It could technically be done, right? I don’t know that there’s money in it. And how do I figure out the dog- I’ve got big dogs that have GDV and how do I predict when that is going to happen?

Dr. Jim Lowe

And I’ve got right. You can start to see that we have sensing that actually gives the owners some confidence that what’s going to happen, not what is happening.

Kaylee Hillinger

Right.

Dr. Jim Lowe

So that I can be proactive and get that in and that radically changes care.

Kaylee Hillinger

Yes.

Dr. Jim Lowe

So step one of that will be: I can figure out what is happening. Step two is I can figure out what’s going to happen and that’s a harder piece. But even if I knew what is happening, like how much would a pet owner love it? If I could pick it up and say, “Hey, Susie. Fluffy, the cat looks like something’s going on and I need you to bring Fluffy in.” Even if it’s that simple today.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Like, I have to pick up the phone and call them, right? Text them or whatever it is or “Hey, can I look at Fluffy?”

Kaylee Hillinger

Yeah.

Dr. Jim Lowe

But instead of them telling me what’s wrong, I’m telling them.

Kaylee Hillinger

My mother in law’s got one of those robotic cleaners. For the cat. Tells her when it goes in and out.

Dr. Jim Lowe

It doesn’t clean the cat.

Kaylee Hillinger

Oh yeah. No, it’s a litter cleaner. Yeah, yeah. So it goes in and out so when she doesn’t see on her phone when she’s visiting us at our house like “Oh I wonder if Hoot’s okay.” Need something else. You need another, another piece of data itself that feeds the owner or veterinarian to say-

Dr. Jim Lowe

Yeah and it’s a common- And so I think that’s kind of the forefront of what we’re saying. And so instead of saying I need to see Fluffy every year for 15 minutes, which makes Fluffy mad and I get to spend 15 minutes and can’t see a sick dog because I’m seeing Fluffy, because I need to see Fluffy to see if Fluffy sick or not.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Right.

Kaylee Hillinger

You’re not going to buy Fluffy’s heartworm or anything else from me.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Well, I might though. If I’ve got a monitoring service, you might buy it from me.

Kaylee Hillinger

Okay.

Dr. Jim Lowe

But now I am monitoring Fluffy all the time and I don’t have to see Fluffy. So instead of seeing 400 pets, I can now have 800 pets. More of them than those numbers. 400’s probably not nearly enough. Right. But I can double the number of pets that I’m seeing. And the pets that I’m seeing. I’m actually ahead of the treatment curve instead of waiting for them to bring it in on until it’s on death’s door because they didn’t know what was wrong and everybody’s happy. It unlocks new business models.

Dr. Jim Lowe

I’ve got a subscription service now. I kind of like a subscription service. That’s a nice way to get paid as a veterinarian.

Kaylee Hillinger

Yeah, you could tack a lot of things on a subscription.

Dr. Jim Lowe

That’s right. When we’ve seen people like to that. Right. And it’s hey, what do I get? I get that. No, get this. So I think we’re at the forefront of when we think about virtual care, we think about distance delivery. It’s really about veterinary innovation. And we’re saying, how are we going to innovate that care delivery process? I think it’s a tremendously exciting time around that space.

Kaylee Hillinger

Tickle.

Dr. Jim Lowe

So I think we can either shake in our boots that the two big retailers are in the game or we can go Yahoo! The financial cavalry has arrived.

Kaylee Hillinger

Yep, I’m going yahoo.

Dr. Jim Lowe

So I think it’s tremendous for all of us that finally we’ve attracted the kind of capital we’re going to need to really advance what we’re doing. And the sad part is, I kind of miss the idea of the small local practice, but the small local practice, unfortunately, is going away on its own.

Kaylee Hillinger

Yeah.

Dr. Jim Lowe

And that makes me sad. I don’t like that. I’m not celebrating that. But if there’s a positive that comes out, the positive is we’re going to get some capital to really do some cool new things, which I think makes it more exciting to be a veterinarian.

Kaylee Hillinger

Yeah, better animal care attracting new talent, kind of making that little bit of veterinary care attractive again. Because there’s the burn out and I don’t know.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Yeah, I think that anything we can do to advance it, make it better, or more intellectually stimulating. I mean, let’s be clear. If I’m seeing healthy Fluffy all day and I’m doing is giving distemper shots… Oof

Kaylee Hillinger

What a day.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Oh, man. And so that’s not very attractive either. Right? So part of the burnout isn’t physical work burnout. Part of the burnout is just boredom, you know? Right. Yeah. People above average intelligence, professional school. Right. They’re doing this. They’re inquisitive, they’re bright. And they become a factory worker in some respects. And I’m expected to do that every 8 minutes or something.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Right? Like it’s just tsch-tsch-tsch-tsch all day long. And maybe there’s some “Can I go back to thinking?” And we all love the job once in a while when you just go get work done. I still miss working cattle because you do that once a year for a farmer and when you’re done, you’re done and you check the box and you go on.

Dr. Jim Lowe

But the thought of doing that 365 days of the year, I’m like “Buhhh” So how do we make it more intellectually stimulating and how do we engage? And hopefully that keeps some veterinarians in the profession.

Kaylee Hillinger

Yeah.

Dr. Jim Lowe

And hopefully attract some different people to it. And I think that that’s good for us over the long term.

Kaylee Hillinger

Well, since we moved, we did not move our veterinarians yet. And we have our two dogs.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Do not bring them to our house please.

Kaylee Hillinger

No I would never.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Okay.

Kaylee Hillinger

I would never cross that-

Dr. Jim Lowe

Okay. We like your dogs. Your dogs? That’s a bad-

Kaylee Hillinger

Oh, no, no, no. I’m not taking them to you as a veterinarian.

Dr. Jim Lowe

They can come visit but yeah- No, no, no. Bad idea.

Kaylee Hillinger

That’s not what I plan to do. I loved my veterinarian in Bloomington and he was a friend. I have a friend in Champaign who’s a veterinarian. But the options out there, I’m not- don’t worry, Nancy. I’m going to bring my dog to you. But the options just keep growing and expanding and evolving.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Next thing you know, you won’t be shopping for dance clothes at Walmart. You’ll just take ‘em to Pete.

Kaylee Hillinger

Oh, he would love- No he wouldn’t. I took him to Lowe’s once and he peed on the curtains.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Why not?

Kaylee Hillinger

Pete is not intended to go into stores.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Don’t buy that curtain. Here’s the lesson don’t buy your curtains at Lowe’s.

Kaylee Hillinger

Do not buy the display curtains at Lowe’s.

Dr. Jim Lowe

Yes.

Kaylee Hillinger

Anyway, cool. Well, I’m excited to see what happens next.

Dr. Jim Lowe

And an exciting next four or five years.

Kaylee Hillinger

Please subscribe and tell your friends about the Round Barn podcast available on any of the pod catchers of your choice. In addition to this podcast, we offer a wide range of learning opportunities, including a master’s of vet science degree. We’re accepting applications for spring of 2024 semester. To learn more about this program, please visit vetmed.illinois.edu/MVS

Kaylee Hillinger

Thanks for listening.