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This week on Muddy Paws and Hairballs, I'm joined by the one and only Arden Moore, a pet safety guru and pet expert, who somehow makes first aid with your pets sound like the most fun you've had.
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All week We'll be talking pet first aid, behavior quirks and the stuff no one tells you about keeping your pets safe and happy Trust me you're not going to want to miss this one.
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miss this one.
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Welcome to Muddy Paws and Hairballs, the podcast where we dig into the messy, heartwarming and sometimes life-saving aspects of pet parenting.
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I'm Amy Castro, and today we're joined by someone who is a true lifesaver for pets, Arden Moore.
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Arden wears a lot of hats and we're going to get into that in a minute, but she is also the founder of Pet First Aid for you, a master-certified pet first aid and CPR instructor, and the host of not one, but two super successful podcasts Obehave, which I was so honored to have you on the show, because that is literally the oldest pet podcast there is.
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It's been around for a long time and super successful.
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And then her second podcast, Four-Legged Life.
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She has helped countless pet parents and professionals through her training, many, many books and hands-on classes.
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So, Arden, with all those hats and all the things you've got going on, thank you for taking the time to be here on our little old show.
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Hey, pause up, Amy.
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It's an honor to be on your show and I think we both love what we do.
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We're getting to bring out the best in pets and their people.
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Yes, that's what it's all about Living your best life and keeping everybody together in my book.
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So before we launch into the first aid part of things, I want to kind of start with you, because you have built what I believe you're kind of like my inspiration to building this career around pets, pet parenting and saving pet lives.
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So how did you get here?
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What's the path?
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Well, let's start in diapers.
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No, I'm just kidding, I've always been.
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I was a journal.
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I still am a journalist for something called newspapers, daily newspapers for 20 years, major dailies.
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I remember those, and I covered everything from Super Bowls and space shuttles to serial killers.
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I've always had pets in my life growing up.
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First dog was a fat beagle named Crackers and I had a cat that would swim named Corky.
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I didn't know that cats shouldn't swim.
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Corky liked to swim.
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I didn't know that cats shouldn't swim.
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Of course they like to swim.
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And then fast forward after 20 years in newspapers, I went to the publishing world and worked at Rodale Press, which is like men's health prevention magazine, and I got in the book division and they started of pets and my love of writing and communicating.
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And then for the last God, I'm really old.
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For the last 20 some years I have been without the W-2 safety net and I have written over 27 dog and cat books the two shows I love health, I love talking to really good, vetted out sources and I realized, amy, there was a piece of the puzzle missing and that was how do we keep our pets safe?
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So I got into the field of pet first aid and that was back in 2011.
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And now I'm a master instructor, but I'm always a student, always a teacher.
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I work with a team of stellar veterinary advisors.
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I have a pet safety dog Kona and pet safety cat Casey, and together we're trying to save lives, one paw at a time, and we're always improving our program.
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And I don't know if for the people that are going to tune into your shorts Kona, come here, come here, kona, come on.
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Kona is a terrier mix, so cute.
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She's a shelter alum.
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I don't call them rescues.
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She's a shelter alum from the Rancho Coastal Humane Society.
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She's also a certified therapy dog and she is the most intuitive dog I've ever met.
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She knows how to bring up energy, bring down energy, meeting a dog, a cat, a person, and she's my best friend.
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Now this is more difficult, right, amy?
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I have a cat named Pet Safety Cat Casey, who's willing to be a safety cat.
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He purrs like a Mack truck.
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He is a shelter alum from the San Diego Humane Society.
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We call him a feline George Clooney because he charms everyone.
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He's very handsome as well.
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He's also a therapy cat and he has been to 16 states by car and by plane to help me teach behavior and first aid and I call him my BFF best feline friend.
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So there you go.
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You met the team.
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That's a great team.
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That's a great team.
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I need a team like that.
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Mine are all a little bit nuts, but I don't know.
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There might be some potential.
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I need to weed through the seven that I've got floating around the house right now and see if there's somebody who could be a co-host on the show or something like that.
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So you know, pet first aid, I think, is something that pet parents don't think about.
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You know, they think I've got a veterinarian or I know where the emergency vet is, and I also think that people don't realize the many, many, and then maybe it's just being in rescue and, having had so many, I may have had over 4,000 fosters come through my house, and that's when I stopped counting.
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So I don't even know since then.
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That was a couple of years ago.
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That's impressive.
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Thank you for doing that.
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Oh hey, it's a labor of love for sure, but the many things that they can get into, that can actually end quite tragically.
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So why is it that pet parents really need to investigate and get smart about pet first aid?
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Well, because we love them, we want to save some money in our wallet and we'd like to have them grow old with us.
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I mean, there you go, check, check, check.
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I tell people what is pet first aid.
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It's that life-saving bridge between the uh-oh and the veterinary clinic.
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Our role is to render aid on the scene, stabilize them and safely get them to the vet.
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I can't make you a veterinarian, amy, in one hour, right, but in a pet emergency, as you know, fostering all the pets that you have, every minute counts, every minute counts.
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So they did a poll, a national poll, and I was surprised about 2% of the American population that have pets only 2% have taken Pet First Aid.
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So I'm on a mission to bump up those percentages because if you can be there and know what to do when your pet is choking or if your pet collapses, and know how to do CPR and then hand over that pet to the veterinary team, you just may save your pet's life.
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Yeah so, so true.
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So you know you mentioned choking.
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What are?
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Because, like I mentioned, I think a lot of people don't realize the many things that can happen.
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What are some of the most common pet emergencies that you think people are unprepared for and where pet first aid training would be life-saving for their pet?
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Well, choking is a big one because there's different types of choking.
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Your dog could grab the chicken leg off your plate and run, crush it and get the broken bones stuck in their throat.
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Or swipe your avocado pit and it's a gooey and slippery and it seals right against the airway, against the throat.
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How you gonna get that that out?
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Or the kitty cat.
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I hate the pictures of kittens next to a big ball of yarn.
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The subtitle to me is kill, kill, kill the Kitty.
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Because with their barbed tongue they can't resist something that's moving like a snake.
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They swallow the yarn.
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It gets stuck in their throat.
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So it happens like this, amy, that's just choking.
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But they can get too hot, they can get too cold, they could slip and fall and break a leg, they could get in a fight and have wounds, puncture wounds, and they could have their heart stopped.
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So we cover a lot of it.
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But I think what makes my class a little different?
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First of all, my, my podcast is called oh behave.
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So strap yourselves in when you're gonna take a pet first class with me, because I have found you shouldn't scare people.
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Scaring people does not open the brain to learn, but if you give them good little jingles rhymes.
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You make it fun and interactive.
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Then guess what?
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When the pet emergency happens, what I've taught you kicks in.
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That's my mission is to make it so that you leave the class going.
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I know what to do.
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Well, it's interesting.
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You know, I am one of those people that I don't know if it's just how I was raised, because my mom was a nurse and you know her philosophy was, if you weren't bleeding from your eyeballs and you didn't have 103 fever, you were going to school.
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So like nothing, really nothing really phased her, you know blood bones, broken bones, things like that, and so that's how I grew up.
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So I don't panic in crisis situations.
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I might flip out afterwards from what I've been through, but I think most people panic and then they become frozen, that's a really good point, because in my class I'm not oprah, so you're not going to get a free car, but I got something better to give you that oprah doesn't, and that is this I give everybody in my class at the start of class permission to freak out later and it really resonates because pets, as my cat casey would say, here comes the bad pun.
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You have to be in the me now to save me.
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You have to be in the present moment.
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You can't panic about what happened unless you're a time traveler and you can reverse the past and you can't have a lot of control of the future, but if you stay in that lane called the present, you really can help your pet and then, when the pet is in the hands of the vet team, freak out, go cry in the shower, run up the street, have a shot of fireball, whatever.
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But if you know that they need you and you can breathe.
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And that's the other thing I learned and I work with a lot of EMTs, paramedics, other first responders they teach me, I teach them, and we get everybody to act like a first responder, a pet detective, and you're going to love this, amy we teach everybody in our class to be a poopologist.
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Yes, please, because what comes out of the mouth and if you're not paying attention could be a medical emergency.
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Yeah, so we teach you how to control your breathing, how to gather what you see, hear, smell, safely feel, how to freak out later.
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And we don't have people putting their nose in a course book during the class.
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It is interactive.
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You get the course book but nobody's going to page 13 reading paragraph four, because if you get to learn in the present moment and other people are talking with you and you're saying the things and not just hearing me going at saying that to you, you actually learn, and that's my biggest mission.
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I want you to know what to do and just do it.
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That's kind of.
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I've been on this mission since 2011.
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That's amazing.
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So can you give us an example of one of your acronyms or memory devices?
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I mean, I don't want you to give away the class, because I want people to actually take it but just as an example.
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Well, one of the biggest things that people think they should do when a dog or cat is overheated is to give them ice.
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And when a dog or cat is going on the bridge of heat stroke, the worst thing you could do is give them the polar opposite to their body, which is ice.
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Instead, they sweat differently than we do.
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They sweat through their paws and by panting.
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They don't have skin pores all over their body.
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You know, you and I are in Texas right now, and it seems like I moved to Texas and all of a sudden, every pore of my body sweats Like what is going on in this state.
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Yeah, right, when you get out of the shower you can't even dry off because you start sweating already.
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I hate it.
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So we teach people that you dip their paws in cool water, you get them in the air conditioning, you don't use ice, you don't put ice cubes in the water bowl because and here's how you're going to remember it All right, this is dorky, but this is me because ice, ice, not nice baby.
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And you say baby, and then everybody in class says ice, ice, not nice baby.
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And what do you think that does, amy, to them, remembering when their kid is overheated.
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It's going to pop right into their heads just like any other song, lyric jingle, whatever it might be slogan that you remember from 1973?
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.
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The other one we do when we do pet first aid and there's new guidelines now for pet first aid when a dog or cat is unconscious and you're going to do first aid, you always position yourself your belly to their back because you don't want to get bit.
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But people are like do I turn them on one side or the other?
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I don't know Well.
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Well, the heart's in the middle, it's okay, all right, for your safety, though you always purposely do.
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The hand that pumps is always closest to the rump.
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So the hand that pumps is closest to the rump because your other hand can go back and slide across the neck and the face.
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If the dog suddenly wakes up, you have an ability to put your hand down to keep that face from attacking you.
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And I say to be a member of the Van Gogh family.
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You don't want to be a member of the Van Gogh family.
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You don't want to lose that ear.
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So the hand that does the pump is closest to the rump and the palm is the pump.
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That's an art and original that now some veterinary schools, according to some of my vet advisors, are now using my rhyme.
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You're just not going to forget it.
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The hand that pumps is closest to the rump.
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Who wants to be in a class where people are using oh, my cat just hacked up a tribosaur.
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I know a fancy word for hairball.
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I don't use big words.
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I say butt, I say rump, because I want it to be practical and and and.
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Everything is approved by the team of veterinary advisors with their big Vanna White initials after their names.
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But I'm here to teach you how to save a life and you teach by having them get to do and having rhymes and easy phrases and and make it common sense.
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And so that's what I, what I build my first day class around.
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Yeah, well, and I'm glad that you're focusing on the safety, because that was going to be one of my questions to you.
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You know, is or or just a discussion about the fact that I remember seeing this horrific video, and it was an after story about a woman who was hospitalized and I don't know if she lost part of her arm or she was at risk of losing her arm because her cat had been in a horrific.
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I won't tell the gory story, but the cat was horrifically injured and she was trying to help the cat but the cat was shredding her and biting her in the process and it's like at what point do you say am I going to lose my arm for this?
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Like?
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So just the fact that you're rolling in things to keep yourself safe because you got to do that too, you can't take care of your pet if you end up in the hospital.
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Oh no, we.
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I'm one of the fear-free certified speakers.
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Dr Marty Becker has started this program and it's all about FAS reducing fear, anxiety and stress.
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So we get into how we approach an injured dog or cat, what we say, what we never say, and we have some practical all right, here comes the pun Mutt-Gyver hacks tips.
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If you don't have a pet first aid kit and the vet is far away, what can you do to render aid on the scene to an injured dog or cat and still keep all your fingers and everything?
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So we use towels, we use sweatshirts, we use six-foot leashes, we even take an Ikea bag you know those blue shopping bags.
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Yeah, we cut it lengthwise, we leave the handles and if you have a large dog, you just got yourself a $2 gurney.
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And it rolls up and I keep it in the car.
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There's been times I've seen dogs get hit by cars and I've had to use it.
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But I'm a daughter of an engineer, so if you roll the dog in a towel or a blanket and you have to drag it across carpet or a rug, it's really hard.
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But if you put them wrapped in a slick plastic, slick Ikea bag or something similar, it doesn't rip and it has no friction, so it glides.
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Plus, you have handles.
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So we show things like that in our class.
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That's amazing, that's yeah, that's, that's so awesome.
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Just be able to improvise with what you've got, because we always have stuff in our car.
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As a matter of fact, I always say to my daughter if we ever get pulled over by the police, we're probably going to jail because I mean, we've got syringes, we've got.
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You know, sometimes it's just leftover stuff, but you know, it's amazing the things that you have around you, if you have the wherewithal and the knowledge of how to put them into play, how you can make those work to your advantage.
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I mean, you draw strings on a hoodie is a great makeshift muzzle.
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Yeah, absolutely, or a leash, you know something like that for sure.
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Yeah, we show a lot of MacGyverisms because I want you to leave that class going.
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I got this, and the other thing is I learned from veterinarians.
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I give up a night every few months and spend it in the ER and I'm always learning more things because I want to share it and this is something that veterinarians have told me that I want to pass on to all of you listening who love your pets, and for those in the foster and the rescue world.
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You've got to be practical and don't beat yourself up.
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That's easy to say, but they taught me to tell you you have to do the best you can in the circumstances.
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You're in with the skills you have, right.
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So you take a pet first aid class.
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I tell everybody you just walked in the store.
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When you walk out of the store and get your two-year certificate, you're going to have more knowledge, you're going to have more skills, you're going to have a better chance of saving that pet's life.
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But even veterinarians can't save every pet.
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But I want to empower you and tell you this is going to be a game changer of a class for you and that's how we approach it.
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Well, and I think, from the standpoint of peace of mind for the pet owner, from the standpoint of peace of mind for the pet owner rescuer, foster, whatever it might be I know for myself I don't feel the anxiety and guilt when an animal passes that somebody else might, and part of that I'm sure I can attribute to the fact that I've seen a tremendous amount of animal suffering and death.
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At the same time, I feel like I'm well equipped and by the time it gets to the vet and something in, let's say, the poor animal passes away, I know I've done everything that is humanly possible for Amy Castro to do.
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So I'm not going to beat myself up over it, but it's because I have acquired the equipment, or the mudgyvering it, and the knowledge and the information, so that I've got as many tools as possible to help in as many situations as I can.
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So I feel like I'm, you know I've done my best along those lines.
00:19:20.724 --> 00:19:34.766
But I think where people get into trouble is when they, when they realize it's something that maybe they could have easily prevented or easily, you know, administered some type of aid that could have made a huge difference, and they didn't do it, didn't know how.
00:19:34.766 --> 00:19:37.540
And that's where you start knocking yourself over the head.
00:19:37.560 --> 00:19:39.946
Well, yeah, and you bring up a good point.
00:19:39.946 --> 00:19:54.499
I mean, I'm one person, even though my last name is Moore, but I also team up with a company called Pro Pet Hero, in addition to my Pet First Aid for you class, and my job is to teach people to become Pet First Aid instructors.
00:19:54.499 --> 00:20:00.200
It's a 16-hour course, two days, eight hours, and you're like what, but it goes like that.
00:20:00.200 --> 00:20:08.826
And we keep the class enrollment to a small handful, five or six max every month, and we've been doing that since 18.
00:20:08.826 --> 00:20:19.326
And I have now trained over 400 people to be pet first aid instructors, and they're in daycares, they're in rescues, they're pet sitters, they're vet assistants.
00:20:19.326 --> 00:20:22.881
So Arden's Army's out there, and that's my.
00:20:23.020 --> 00:20:29.520
If I had to have a legacy, my legacy was she's the chick that made it so that more people took pet first aid.
00:20:29.520 --> 00:20:39.308
Yeah, I know, it's not a big thing, I didn't win the lottery, but if I get to go to heaven knowing that's my legacy, I'm happy.
00:20:39.308 --> 00:20:41.118
Yeah, amen to that for sure.
00:20:41.118 --> 00:20:50.726
And you must have feline energy, because my cat, casey, is purring into the microphone and he is like flirting with you on the table.
00:20:50.726 --> 00:20:51.488
So there you go.
00:20:51.914 --> 00:21:01.890
I'm definitely a cat whisperer, for sure, because the vast majority of the animals that come through our rescue, purely because of logistics over the years, have been cats.
00:21:01.890 --> 00:21:11.166
I mean, we get the occasional dog, maybe 15 or so a year and some years more, but for the most part it's dozens and dozens of cats.
00:21:11.166 --> 00:21:13.095
So yeah, we definitely, and you learn a lot.
00:21:13.095 --> 00:21:19.270
You learn a lot about the mischief that those animals can get into and the signs and symptoms the poop don't.
00:21:19.270 --> 00:21:22.739
You wouldn't believe how many pictures of cat poop I have on my phone.
00:21:22.739 --> 00:21:25.884
What do you think about this?
00:21:25.884 --> 00:21:27.188
What do you think?
00:21:27.188 --> 00:21:28.596
Or my fosters will send me a picture.
00:21:28.596 --> 00:21:33.127
You're being a poopologist, I am a poopologist In my class.
00:21:33.355 --> 00:21:45.240
I actually tell people I saved Casey's life when he, about four or five years ago he went into the litter box and he just sat and I'm like, dude, you're reading a novel, what's going on?
00:21:45.240 --> 00:21:57.903
And all of a sudden you guys know this sound and I went and he's a big, long orange tabby and there was a little bit of urine and it had red in it blood.
00:21:57.903 --> 00:22:00.616
So of course it was a sunday night.
00:22:00.616 --> 00:22:04.430
You all can relate right emergencies only happen on holidays.
00:22:04.530 --> 00:22:08.922
Right before your vacation, you know where you can pay more money at the er.
00:22:08.922 --> 00:22:13.717
But he's my man, he's a certified therapy cat and he's my best feline friend.
00:22:13.717 --> 00:22:23.662
I took him him that night to the vet ER and they manipulated his bladder and he released a river of urine on that table.
00:22:24.304 --> 00:22:25.125
He had a blockage.
00:22:25.646 --> 00:22:25.867
Yep.
00:22:25.867 --> 00:22:32.060
And the thing was this they said we're going to keep Casey overnight, we're going to check him out, make sure.
00:22:32.060 --> 00:22:39.155
And I remember what the veterinarian said in the morning when I picked up Casey with a clean bill of health.
00:22:39.155 --> 00:22:51.515
She said had you waited, arden, until Monday to try to work him into your regular vet, there's a very good chance he would have died of a urinary blockage, urinary toxicity, yep.
00:22:51.515 --> 00:22:57.808
So she said it's always, always better to be a little too soon than a little too late.
00:22:57.808 --> 00:23:02.626
I think it's better to be a little bit more proactive than wait till it gets worse.
00:23:02.626 --> 00:23:11.388
And so, in this case, I tell people that boy cats, boy dogs, they're urethra.
00:23:11.388 --> 00:23:14.904
I call it the pee-pee pipeline it is.
00:23:14.904 --> 00:23:25.461
It's like a road rally race, more so than females, so there's more curves that stones and crystals can come in and block the flow.
00:23:25.461 --> 00:23:31.310
So if your cat isn't going, that's a medical emergency, same for our dogs.
00:23:31.510 --> 00:23:46.126
And so, had I waited until Monday, I may not have Casey right here next to me yeah, that can happen so fast and well, because most of the time, by the time somebody discovers that the cat's having an issue, it didn't just start with that urination.
00:23:46.126 --> 00:23:52.688
It's something that has been building up or going on for a little bit, and we may not want to tell us, because they're both prey and predator.
00:23:52.708 --> 00:23:53.690
They're like I feel great.
00:23:53.690 --> 00:23:56.835
Sure, my leg is dangling, but I'm good.
00:23:56.835 --> 00:24:02.894
The dog will be like you know, I think I stubbed my toe, yeah.