Episode 5: Interview with Dr. Sarah Hoggan

*Opening Music*  

Listen up, animal care pros, compassion fatigue is real, and I'm here to help you address it. I'm Alissa Hebert-Wallace, an LCSW with over 20 years in the field, and this is Pawsitive Outlooks. On the show we'll take a look at various aspects of compassion fatigue and compassion satisfaction, including general information, mental health aspects, self-directed interventions, and a few guests along the way. 

I want to start by acknowledging that I live, practice, and learn in the traditional unceded homelands of the Acolapisa, Chakchiuma, Choctaw, Ofo, and Yazoo people, who continue to be stewards of this land. I also acknowledge the Houma people who were driven from this territory and on whose settled, unceded land I was raised. I mourn the loss of the individuals and tribes that did not survive the colonization, genocide, and warring of European countries. Finally, I acknowledge that this information regarding tribal lands was primarily taken from colonizers' records. 

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In today's episode, I interviewed Dr. Sarah Hoggan, and of course I'm going to tell you a little bit about her before we get into the interview. 

Sarah Hoggan, DVM grew up in Idaho and attended the University of Idaho and Washington State University College of Veterinary Medicine. She moved straight to California to begin practicing emergency medicine after graduation. Dr. Hoggan continues to work full time at the same veterinary, specialty and emergency hospital that hired her as a very green emergency doctor in 2003. She now shares her life with her fiancé, three cats, a parrot and a pack of four to 15 dogs, depending on the number they're fostering that month. She actually met her fiancé when she saved his dog's life. They share a life punctuated by adventure in an array of rescue animals. 

Well, I have to admit that during this interview I fangirled a little bit because one of Dr. Hoggan's TED talks was part of the inspiration for this podcast. I hope you enjoy listening to the interview as much as I enjoyed doing it. 

*Musical Interlude* 

Alissa So, Dr. Hogan, thank you so much for joining us today. I am so excited to have you. I have been looking forward to somehow, some way talking to you ever since I watched your TED talk on euthanasia. So I am pretty excited about that. 

Dr. Hoggan I am very flattered, thank you. 

Alissa So before we start, would you mind sharing with our listeners just a little bit about your positionality, your social identities, where you are in the world? 

Dr. Hoggan So my name is Dr. Sarah Hoggan.  I have been strictly emergency and critical care veterinarian for 20 years.  I work at a specialty hospital in southern California.  My pronouns, if anyone's curious, are she and her, and I am very blessed to share my life with six dogs, three cats, a parrot, and a wonderful man named Bob, who I met when I saved his dog's life. And-and-and now he's part of my life. 

Alissa That is so amazing. That's wonderful. I did not know that’s how you guys met! 

Dr. Hoggan That's-that's how we met. 

Alissa Well, that's great!  So in your TED talk, you discussed the impact of euthanasia on pet owners and on veterinarians. Can you talk about how euthanasia impacts veterinarians, and how that might play into some feelings of compassion fatigue? 

Dr. Hoggan Oh absolutely. There's it, you know, the reality is-is animals either walk in or are carried into the practice alive, and as a direct result of your actions, they don't.  They don't leave alive, and those acts are an act of mercy and an act of-of kindness.  But it's still difficult, and even when we have that understanding and we have our arms around it, the families don't always.  So sometimes you have families that have a disagreement, like between spouses who one may feel like it's time and one may not. Or you have little kids in the room who don't understand, and, you know, that's really hard.  You can have feelings of guilt on behalf of the family where it may be a fixable condition, but due to financial realities that have to dictate some decisions in their life.  That's why they're making the decision, so then you have a lot of feelings of-of guilt about that.  Or if you've got a geriatric person, and their whole social circle is their dog at this point in time, that's really hard emotionally to know that you're contributing to the isolation of that person.  Even though you're doing it for the right reason, it's still happening.  

And I think one of the hardest euthanasia situations to witness, for- for me, anyway, is young men who are probably in their, you know, later teens or early twenties, and this is the dog they grew up with, and they haven't necessarily been taught or been trained or developed the tools to process those emotions just because that's kind of an unfortunate reality, you know, with-with some of the some of the families in the United States.  Boys don't cry.  Boys are tough.  You know, the emotions aren't necessarily show, and, you know, and the other thing is that I feel like it's unrecognized is a lot of boys learn nurturing through caring for animals because it's considered more normal and more acceptable for boys to show affection with animals than it is necessarily to do it with little kids.  Girls are invited to babysit.  Boys typically aren't.  Boys earn their first money by mowing lawns or doing physical things, and so all of those, you know, nurturing feelings that are intrinsic and natural to be there, that contribute to being a really good, sensitive dad, you know, can be a lot of times developed from taking care of a puppy and then taking care of an older dog.  And so when they lose them, you really see it impact them, but they struggle so hard not to cry and not to show emotions and act stoic.  And-and so it's hard to witness that day in and day out. So, yes, I can absolutely see where that contributes to compassion fatigue. 

Alissa So, yeah, thank you for sharing those experiences, and definitely I can see, not only how it leads to compassion fatigue, but also the need for veterinary social workers who not only work on compassion fatigue with veterinarians, but also work through those grief issues with families because there's just no, you know...

Dr. Hoggan Well, and veterinarians aren't trained, I mean psychology, and it’s, I mean, it's just not part of the-the standard curriculum. And the other thing is-is, like, pretend they add it to the curriculum... Okay, if you have one class on psychology, you're not qualified.  You know, even if you're really sweet and really nice and genuinely care and really good at talking, you're not qualified like someone who, you know, has their degree in social work.  I mean, that's just, that's just the reality.  So even if you do your best to help and you want to help, you don't have the tools to be qualified to be as useful and as helpful to those people as someone who-who-who's a trained social worker. 

Alissa And then talk about stacking compassion fatigue upon compassion fatigue.  If you're meant to do all of these things and then be the therapist about it.  I mean that that would be awful, I think.  So, we'll-we'll be partners in that.  The social workers will handle the grief, and you guys will handle the hard things that I probably couldn’t do. 

Dr. Hoggan It’s all important, it's just different. 

Alissa So there's-there's that.  There's the euthanasia issue with compassion fatigue, and then in looking at intersectionality and how a whole person, right, contributes to what happens.  You're a woman, and from what I'm reading, right, I'm not in the field, but from what I'm reading it's increasingly becoming feminized, but leadership is still heavily male.  Have you had any-any negative experiences? Maybe  some microaggressions or outright sexism that has contributed to... 

Dr. Hoggan So it very early in my career, I think I was... I-I think I was a victim of sexual discrimination and-and-and didn't even know it, just because it was the very first place I was ever hired.  I was hired for a set salary, and was told that I had the opportunity to start earning production, but I was hired at a set salary of X.  Out of vet school I had a very good resume.  I was a very strong hire.  I had graduated cum laude.  I had been President of the student chapter of the AVMA.  I had done volunteer work. I had, you know, I was... I had done a internship with the veterinary school's Public Information Officer, so I knew how to speak with the press, so I was gonna be a good addition to-to a veterinary hospital, veterinary clinic.  That... so I was hired, you know, for X amount with the opportunity of earning production in six months.  The very next week they hired, that same hospital hired a male new graduate.  In speaking with him, just chatting about our vet school experience, I discovered that he graduated not near the top of his class, but very much in the middle of his class, so he had a lower GPA than I did.  He had never done any leadership or anything like that, he said.  He just put his head down and-and just got through that school, didn't care about extracurricular activities, didn't care about anything else, which is fine.  He was a... he was, and remains, a good solid doctor. 

I left that practice after a short period of time because it was not a good fit for me for many, many reasons.  After that fact, I bumped into that same male veterinarian again and was talking about what I got hired at-at a different practice and just was telling him, "wow, you know, it's sure different at this other practice.  I'm getting, you know, probably 25% more pay than I had at the other place, I'm getting production immediately, I've got more benefits.," and was describing what I was getting.  And he said, “Well, yeah, I already have all that. That was part of my first contract.”  So that was really disheartening to me to, you know, and if I hadn't ever sat down and talked with him after the fact, I never would have known.  So by all measures that you would use for an initial contract, I was a stronger candidate and a stronger higher than he was.  You know, he-he was... He was making more money, more benefits than I was, and it wasn't just his base salary that was higher.  It was... He was getting 22% commission on every dollar he turned from the moment he got hired.  So over a year for a lot of veterinarians, that translates to, you know, tens of thousands of dollars, so that that's a big deal. 

Alissa Yeah, absolutely. 

Dr.Hoggan So that that was, you know, really frustrating in that area.  As far as other parts of my career, I was incredibly blessed to be hired at a fantastic specialty and emergency practice that was veterinarian owned after I left that place, and so... Okay, third job I had, where I've stayed for 20 years, and that practice was founded by a group of five specialists, one of which was a-a-a lady named Dr. Amy Carr, and she was my mentor, and she was the medical director at that hospital for 16 years.  So she was very much my immediate boss, my mentor, and was an incredible person to learn from, because she's not only a fantastic doctor--I say-I say "was" in context of the practice because she's since sold the practice, but she's still you know, very much alive-- and-and still, I am lucky to work with her a couple of times a month, because she still does some shifts at the hospital, but she's just an incredible person all the way around.  

And what was different from the way she ran the hospital from any other hospital I'd ever been at is she had some very basic rules--and I don't know if they're necessarily due to the fact that she's a female or if it's just due to the fact that she's an incredible person--but you know, very basic intrinsic rules of the hospital is one you treat everybody with courtesy and respect.  And I don't care if you have a client getting in your face and screaming at you, you are professional above all else, and you treat everybody from the person who sweeps the floors to the person who signs your paycheck with courtesy and respect, and that's all there is to it.  Two is we treat each other like a family.  We share each other's joys and sorrows, and we support each other.  So if somebody had a crisis, we put up a meal list.  Who's gonna get, who's going to deliver food to that family while their person is down or, you know... Or when my first husband had his first heart attack. You know, it happened while I was working an overnight. I had to leave the hospital immediately. She got someone there to take over the hospital so I could obviously get to the hospital to be with Steve, and they rushed him into emergency quadruple bypass surgery within about 12 hours.  And Dr. Carr was the one sitting with me, holding me together while he was in surgery because my mom couldn't get a flight in time. 

So you know, it- that's the kind of job where I learned to be a good doctor, and you know, and to this day, I-I tell her my mom raised me to be a good person, and you're my work mom. You've raised me to be a good doctor, and so do I think that that the fact that she's a female to an extent impacts that.  Yeah, I honestly do. Because again, as-as a female, I-I think there's a level of connection and-and, you know, personal.  I don't know.  Would you call it personal affection or whatever that's allowed and considered socially acceptable without any question of ulterior motives.  So two females can be friends, two males can be friends in a work environment, be very close, be very connected, and there aren't any whispers of, “Gosh, I wonder if they're, you know, fooling around?” or...  You know what I mean?  You're just allowed a a level of freedom where you're close and you're connected and you can take care of each other in-in a way that maybe couldn't be as easily have happened if-if we were of opposite sex. 

And as far as do I see the-the profession being female dominated, absolutely. Sixty percent of my vet school class, and we are the class of 2001 so that's a long time ago, we're females, and the leadership still does remain more male.  And then female like the, if you look at the AVMA officers, it's traditionally been a--AVMA is the American Veterinary Medical Association, the ruling body for vets--have traditionally been, traditionally been men.  There certainly are more females represented, but yeah, historically it-it has been... It's been men. 

Alissa Wow.  I feel like just hearing that about, like, you know, coming in and not knowing and learning later that you were hired as if you were the candidate who is not as good.  I don't... I don't think I've ever gone through that, but I'm a social worker, and we've always been females--traditionally females, and I've probably only dealt with that and didn't know it if I was at a larger agency or something.  I can't imagine that, but I can also imagine that it would be really disheartening to hear that and to realize that even later, even when you're not in that practice anymore. 

Now you did say something that I found interesting, and that I hadn't planned to talk about, but you talked about production and I had no idea that this was a thing.  I-I knew from our previous conversations that production like, like billable hours was a thing, but I didn't realize how much it affected your pay.  I also know from doing the research that I've done on compassion fatigue, that part of what goes into that is there's some financial stress.  There's a lot of school debt coming out of school for a lot of folks, maybe not everybody, but for a lot of folks, there's a lot of school debt which is comparable to human medical school debt. 

Dr, Hoggan Right. 

Alissa But your pay is not comparable to human doctors and I would assume that getting that production is a big deal.  Is it something that.. I'm trying to phrase this question right... Is it something that also keeps you from taking time off because you.. Like an extended period of time off or a.. time off for some CE's or time off for anything that you need time off for is because you've got this financial issue. Does production keep you from, of course, adding to your stress, but, like, does it keep you from taking time off that you might otherwise take to maybe take a day to decompress or something? 

Dr. Hoggan Well, I think it can. My... The-the way that-that I, you know, with the way Dr. Carr structured our hospital was a little bit different.  She did not like production environments at all because it facilitates competition between coworkers, and it rewards adult bullies.  You tend to see people, um, you know, like a big case had come in, and-and somebody would grab it, and-and, you know, and be like, "screw you. I'm taking this one," and um... Which, which is really terrible.  So the way she wanted our hospital to work was very much teamwork.  So, how I've worked for 20 years is shift pay, so I show up, and I get paid my shift, and it doesn't matter if I see five things or 5000 things, I get my shift pay.  So-so from a production standpoint, that hasn't impacted me for 20 years, very much by design of the of the hospital that I worked at.  But I do know for people that-that work on a production based pay, you know, it does become very hard.  It-it's typically a huge part of your salary, because the way that they tend to structure it is... I think it's a little bit like how people that work in service industries that get tips are are compensated, where maybe you get a lower amount initially, but they anticipate that your-your compensation will increase based upon your production.  So, that tends to, you know, to make a-to make a difference.  And like at my own practice where we just get shift pay, you know, we had, we had one doctor that we had hired who we love to very much enjoyed our practice and was a huge part of it, and he was hired away.  He was basically poached by another hospital who knew he was a good fit for them, and-and they said, “OK, you're making X. Here's what we're gonna do.  We'll pay you X for your base, and then we'll pay you production on top of it.”  You know, and his whole goal, he and his wife wanted to move back home to the other part of the country where their family was so they could start a family, because they were newlyweds, but they didn't want to start a family until they had paid off all of their student loans because they were both doctors.  So between them, you know, they had almost ___ dollars in loans, so that was a deal he couldn't, you know, it was an offer he couldn't refuse because that was his entire goal. “I'm gonna work here until I can pay off my student loans, and then I'm gonna go back to the state where I grew up so I can be around my parents and my wife's parents, and we're gonna start our family.”   So I don't begrudge him making that decision at all.  I 100% understand it. 

But it's very frustrating and disheartening that, you know, I-I guess the phrase is all's fair in love and war.  I think that also equates to business.  And if you had spoken with that company, they'd probably say, “hey, it's business.  You wanted to keep him?  You should have paid him more.”  And so I think what's incredibly hard for a lot of people that also contributes to the compassion fatigue is, you know, you get into this, I think you get into this occupation because you love animals.   I mean, if you don't love animals, you're really setting yourself up for some hard days.  Like, so when-when your motivation comes from-from your heart to do the right thing, and then you're suddenly thrust into the reality that this is a business, and you have to be profitable to stay open... It-it-it just changes things, and it makes it really hard.  And then when you-you know when-when you're a lot of veterinary medicine now is corporate owned.  That's the reality.  The days of the mom-and-pop shop are kind of disappearing.  And when you're owned by a veterinary corporation, and they talk to you about the bottom line, um, it-it-it-it kind of dulls the shine on having your dreams come true. 

So I think that's hard for a lot of people, and I think that also contributes to compassion fatigue because a you have bills to pay, that's a reality. You're working your-your fanny off, and maybe what you really want to do is be able to sit down and talk with that family for 30 minutes about how hard it was to euthanize their pet and how sorry you are, but the reality is-is that's cutting into your paycheck.  Because the less you see, the less you earn, if-if you're on production.  So you're keeping your eye on that, taking time off, you know, everybody's given vacation time, you know, you get a set amount of vacation time. That's reality being a full-time employee, but are-are you less likely to take that time over the holidays or during the summer when the kids are out of school?  (Because those are the busiest times in emergency medicine.) Yeah, you know, or you're more likely to work the holidays because you get paid extra, just like everybody else does on holidays.  So that impacts your family life a lot.  You know, I spent a lot of holidays with my CVS family and instead of my biological family, because that's the nature of emergency medicine.   So I think that there's a lot of things that can contribute to it, but the-the fact that money is-is a part of it makes it hard.  And it's different than human medicine, because we don't get any government subsidies. So if somebody comes in who is incredibly poor and has a fixable pet but doesn't have money, it puts you in a very difficult position, and you can talk with them about applying for care credit, which is like a veterinary credit card, and there are some charities that are very good that will help, but, just like everything else that kind of requires charity, there's never enough to meet everybody's needs and it.  You know, you have to apply for a lot of those charities because they want to help people that need it as opposed to just helping people that want it.  Like if someone said, "I just went on a two-week trip to New Zealand, I can't afford taking care of my dog."  Well, that kind of sounds like maybe that was a bad decision on your part.  So-so they're less inclined to help people like that than somebody who says, "I'm working three jobs. I’m-I'm working hand to mouth. You know I'm living hand to mouth. I’m working my guts out," and-and southern California is a prohibitively expensive place to live. 

Alissa Yeah, you just keep bringing up all of these things that I've researched to write this dissertation that I'm writing!  You talked about folks who... you talked about not being able to spend time with folks because it cuts into your production, and you talked about folks who come in with a pet that is fixable, but they might not have the funds for, and so, from what I read, obviously I've not experienced this, but that leads to some feelings of maybe some powerlessness, and maybe some ethical and moral decisions that you have to make and wrestle with, which are also contributing factors to compassion fatigue and the things that come along with it.  So I guess what you were just saying is that what I read is correct. 

Dr. Hoggan Yeah, unfortunately.  Well, you know like, you know you've seen, like I said, I have six dogs, three cats, and a bird.  So the parrot was a package deal with Bob, so she came with Bob, but the other, you know, all my other animals... And-and all my pets for the last 20 years that I've had, every single one of them came from my work in-in one way or another. The lion’s share of them came into me for euthanasia for fixable conditions, and I didn't have the heart to put to sleep an eight-week-old Dachshund puppy for something that was fixable, so I'd tell the family,  "give it to me, and-and I'll fix her, and I'll find her home."  And guess which home?  You know, and-and that's how I got five of my current six dogs, the one dog that wasn't relinquished to me came in as a stray.  She'd been found on the side of the road, wolf-packed, mauled by multiple dogs, and the shelter brought her in, you know?  Found her on the side of the road.  Animal Control did... said, "either fix her or send her heaven.  Well, you know, we trust your judgment."  We fixed her.  She legally had to go back to the shelter, so I told the shelter after I'd taken care of her for three days, “She's a great dog. You know, if-if nobody adopts her, let me know. At least I can foster her or something you know?”  She's... Advocated for her, so of course three days later, we're near that shelter hiking, and Bob and I went to check on her and do a status check, and they recognized me when I walked in and said, “thank God you're here. We were getting ready to call. She's not eating. She's not drinking. She's laying in her mess. We can't get her meds in. Her wounds are reinfected. Either you take her now because she's utterly despondent in this environment, or we are sending her to heaven now. Those-those are the choices."  And they weren't being jerks. They were being humane because, you know, she was utterly despondent and she had shut down.  So of course we took her and decided, you know, we had her for a week, and then it's like there's no way she's going to the shelter.  She'll just become ours.  So we saved her, saved Maisie.  And then two weeks after that, we discovered she was pregnant.  So then we had eight chocolate lab puppies running around the house.  So for a while we had 14 dogs. 

Which was lovely but challenging, you know?  The reality is the choice we made saved nine lives, and yeah, that's what contributes to compassion fatigue.  Because when you look at a dog like that, if-if I had said, "I'm sorry, I just can't."  You know, that decision would have-would have been it.  So it does absolutely become a very difficult weight to bear, and the way-the way I deal with it... For the longest time, I would have animals relinquished to me when I couldn't save them and I would-would find them homes.  I, you know, I happen to live in a community at the time that had a lot of geriatric people and I'd be like, "you know what you need? You need this cute little dog," and then I'd be walking around the neighborhood on a leash and people would be like, “Oh my God that puppy's so cute. What a deal.”  You know, and-and find permanent homes, like not irresponsibly, would make sure they were a good quality, permanent home.  But you know, I-I can't do that anymore, and I honestly saturated that market to the point that people would see me walking a dog and they'd like, zoom-zoom because they were afraid that like I’d try to be a puppy pusher.  But you know it-it just it just-it does eat at you sometimes... 

And what I've had to do for myself, this is how I got my arms around it, is-is two things.  One, I truly do my best to-to live like a dog.  I live in the moment.  I take every opportunity, you know, for joy that I can.  And two, I know that, you know, when I die, I-I mean, there's gonna be a great big scroll that has names like King, and, you know, Bella, and Mitzi, and Pepper, and those are all lives that-that I-that I took and, for myself, for my own psyche, I will be able to stand up and defend every euthanasia I did, because it was an act of mercy.  If it's not an act of mercy, I won't do it.  That's, you know, that's how I've learned to cope with it, but that's me, and-and I think it's a 100% individual thing.  Some people probably don't worry about that scroll.  Some people probably don't think about it. I-I do, so I had...for my own self. 

Alissa So that coping with it, and-and the things that you do brings me to what comes next.  How have you, other than living like a dog--cause that's amazing... I think that dogs can teach us so much about just like you said, being present and-and being there.  How do you address or combat or decrease compassion fatigue in your own life and in your own space? 

Dr. Hoggan I have figured out multiple, you know, multiple things, and-and for some people there may just be one thing that works.  For me, I need multiple things. One thing I really enjoy doing is I like to collect things, as you can probably tell by looking at my library... 

Alissa So jealous. 

Dr.Hoggan So yeah, I like to collect things. So on days off I go to thrift stores, or I go to estate sales, or I go to garage sales, and, you know, find something that-that-that I enjoy that I'm interested in, but, you know, just some little thing that that makes me happy.  And you know the-the cool thing is about things, as long as you keep it in context, is that, you know, they-they never-they never let you down.  Like this metal fortune cookie that I found.  I thought this was really cool, and I can hide a little note in there, or do whatever I want with it, you know.  It's a little trinket box that's a fortune cookie.  This will always be a little metal box that's a fortune cookie.  No matter what happens, it's always gonna be a little metal box that's a fortune cookie.  So if I have one, you know, I can-I can pick it up, and I can relive the-the moment that I went to that garage sale, and it was a nice Saturday, and I had a nice warm Starbucks in my hand.  But it was kind of cold, so I had my favorite sweatshirt on that I probably bought at a garage sale and found it on the table for a dollar, and I thought, "you know what? A dollar is within my budget, and for a dollar you can come live at my house and live on my desk and make me happy."  And I can relive that little moment of joy.  So that's one thing I do. 

Another thing I do is I-I know myself well enough to know I have to spend some time outside among nature.  That fulfills me and refills me like nothing else, and it doesn't matter if it's necessarily the beach or the ocean or my backyard among the trees.  That's really important to me. 

And the third thing is I have... At-at different points in my life, well, I always have a really good support system.  I-my family very much was raised to process things verbally, so I have, you know, a-a wonderful mom, and a wonderful dad, and a great step mom and-and that I can talk to.  I have three siblings that I can talk to, and at different times in my life, off and on, I've had a therapist that I can talk to and, you know, it-it just it makes a huge difference.  And the reason that for me having a therapist was so important is, you know, I-I have a wonderful circle around me, and, you know, and it's my family and Bob, of course I can come home from work and talk to and decompress.  But having a therapist makes a difference, because she is 100% objective, and her only investment in my life is to make me feel better, to help me, and you know, and-and she's objective.  So if I complain to my mom about work or something like that, you know her-her thing is, you know, "maybe you just need to work in another hospital. Maybe you work too hard. Maybe you know you're good at writing. Maybe you should just be just quit veterinary medicine and write about veterinary medicine. That'd be, you know, that'd be better for you,"  And-and she's coming from a place of love and support, but it-it's, you know, it-it's like, "okay, thanks, mom. Love you."  But it's just, it-it's not objective advice, and-and the-the therapist is objective advice.  And so talking with her it is... It-it just makes it-just makes a big difference for me.  And there are times where I say, "okay, I need to talk to you in a month." or there are times where it's like, "this has been a particularly sucky stretch of days. I'd like to talk with you today, and can I make another appointment to talk with you next week, because I think this is going to be rattling around in my head longer?"  And, you know, and-and what I like about having a therapist is not only is she 100% objective, but, you know, I do pay her for those services, and you know what?  I look at that money and I say this is an investment in myself, and I'm worth this money and reaffirms that I'm on the right track.  I am doing something just for me. 

Alissa I think I'm going to cut that and put that in a commercial, because I... look, listeners, I promise I didn't ask her to talk about therapy.  I didn't know she was gonna talk about therapy.  I'm glad she talked about therapy, but that last bit about paying for the services and it being an investment in yourself is what I I just wish people would learn that about therapy.  That but you were helping yourself.  You're only helping yourself.  You're not helping me when you come into my office.  You're... I'm here for you... And so I might send you a little agreement for that little spot!

So, we are getting to the end of our time, and I am so thankful for you being here with me.  I always love talking to you and so glad that you decided to be on my podcast, and before we leave... Do you have anything that you would like to tell our listeners about any cool stuff you're doing, anything that you want to tell them, where to find you, tell them what to do?  Tell them where they can hear that cool podcast (oops...TED talk!) that I love so much. 

Dr. Hoggan Well, I've done two TED talks.  People obviously you know, want to-want to see them. They're online and they're free. Just search Sarah Hoggan, TED talk, and they'll pop up.  One's about euthanasia, and one's about pet loss.  I did put in an application to do a third, so maybe-maybe a third one will come along.  I don't know if you know, and even if I don't get to do a third one, I'm-I'm proud of the two that I did. So that's all good news. 

I do also write a blog for Psychology Today called Fluent in Fur, and it talks about the emotional connection between animals and humans and why they're such an essential part in our life.  And you know, if-If I can ask you to do anything, I would ask you to spend some time today, and if you can every day, with your pet telling them either verbally or in affection how much they mean to your life.  Give them an extra cookie, take them for an extra walk, make them popsicles out of chicken broth, or just sit down and have a really good cuddle with them, because it makes such a huge difference in their life, because what they live for is you.  So I just would ask that you put that into the universe, because I think that-that does everybody in the world good. 

Alissa Thank you so much, and I'm going to go do that right now.  I'm gonna go spend some extra little cuddles with my pup before I go on to my day job.  Thank you again so much. 

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Compassion fatigue can have a detrimental effect on our mental health. If you need mental health assistance, please contact Not One More Vet at nomv.org. If you need to speak with someone right now or feel you are having a mental health crisis, please call the US National Crisis Line at 988 or visit nomv.org/crisis-numbers outside of the US. Please seek immediate assistance by calling 911 or your local emergency number if you feel unsafe. 

This has been Alissa Hebert-Wallace with Pawsitive Outlooks. If you enjoyed the show, hit that follow or subscribe button, tell a friend, and leave a review wherever you access podcasts. Also, your feedback is always welcome, just click that link in the description. 

Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time. 

*Closing Music*