Lessons I learned from a pigeon hoarder.

There are many interesting people that come in and out of a veterinarian’s life and those people teach us valuable life lessons.  We tend to assume that we are the teachers in the veterinarian/client relationship however clients are often our BEST teachers. Teaching us everything from humility to housekeeping.

There was one wonderful client, who has since passed away, that I think about often.  I think about her mostly when I have a house cleaning or organizing job to do.  I never visited her home, but I always imagined that it was a housekeeping disaster because she was a hoarder - a pigeon hoarder.

Mrs. Poupak (not her real name) was a widow that lived with her adult son in a suburban neighborhood near my veterinary hospital.  She maintained multiple bird feeders in her yard, which she would carefully fill daily. I don’t think that she had a lot of money, but what she did have she spent on her birds. The feeders were well attended and became so popular with the neighborhood birds that the word soon leaked to the neighborhood hawk population. The hawks learned that Mrs. Poupak’s bird feeders were a good place to pick off a pigeon or two if they wanted squab for lunch.

Thus our long veterinarian/client relationship began.   As Mrs. Poupak’s backyard population grew, so did the incidence of hawk attacks.  She did not want to feed the predators, so she took to watching her feeders “like a hawk” and beating back the hawks if they happened to try to pick off one of her precious pigeons. She would chase them down with an umbrella or tennis racket to break the victimized pigeon out of the offending hawk’s grasp.  Once she told me that she chased a hawk for 6 blocks to get it to drop one of her backyard birds. 

The mental picture of this small woman running through her neighborhood with a tennis racket screaming at a hawk flying overhead until she caught up to it, then beating it into submission to rescue a pigeon is priceless.

As she rescued the birds her indoor population of recovering pigeons grew and grew.  She took them in and brought them to me, fixed them up and rarely let any of them go.  She kept upwards of 40-50 pigeons living free in her home and as pigeons will tend to do, they set up housekeeping and started having baby pigeons, adding to her indoor population. She would bring me one bird after another that had either been mangled by a hawk or her new babies with a myriad of issues.  I knew that her health and her bank account would at some point collapse and I worried about her situation, and told her so.  We discussed that fact that she needed to stop collecting birds, but she could not bring herself to let go of her pets and the population started to control her.

At some point, well into my relationship with her, the situation was discovered by her daughter who forced her to give up most of her birds for her own health’s sake. Many of them were released or re-homed and she was allowed to keep only a few of her beloved pets leaving her somewhat heartbroken, but better off financially and physically. She lived the remainder of her life in a much cleaner environment with her children and a few of her pet birds. 

Mrs. Poupak’s hoarding situation taught me three valuable life lessons:

There is an inverse relationship between quantity of things and joy, so let some of your things go.

No matter how much money you spend on a situation, if you cannot see it for what it really is you may spend your life savings trying to fix it.  

Too much of anything is not good.

I think of her fondly as I go about keeping my own house and space in order, and I remember the lessons that her situation taught me.  She had beautiful intentions of helping the birds, but in the end her pigeon hoarding resulted in her home being condemned and her being separated from many of her beloved pets.  

“Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.”  Eckhart Tolle

Dr. Julie Cappel

An Attitude of Gratitude to Carry Us Though Thanksgiving and Beyond

There are days when it just feels that no matter how hard we try we cannot make every client happy.  In some cases we do not even get a smile or a “thank you” for the amazing services we provide.  This may leave us feeling discouraged and dejected.

You may think we don’t deserve a thank you because we are just doing our job.   But I think everyone deserves a smile and some level of gratitude.  It is such an important part of human interaction and makes us all feel better.

I talked about this last week in my blog, but I thought that we should dig into this subject a bit more this week because it is the week of our Thanksgiving holiday.   As this holiday of “thanks” and “giving” approaches, I think we should explore how an attitude of gratitude helps us to have a better outlook towards our clients, our team and our family.

Gratitude is defined as “the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.”

The second part of that definition really gets to me - the “readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.” 

I experienced a lack of client appreciation just this week and it turned into an opportunity for me to be more grateful.  

A client was visiting the office with a young puppy. The technician team attempted to educate him about intestinal parasite control and the importance of fecal parasite exams to diagnosed and eradicate intestinal parasites in young pets.  The team members that were involved in the interaction felt that they had communicated well and were confident that the client understood why we recommend two consecutive negative fecal tests for his puppy.  After the client left the office I discovered that he left a negative review for us on Google. His review basically stated that it was laughable that we should run the same test twice.   He obviously had misunderstood the explanation as to why we repeat samples on young pets. 

When I read the snarky review it took me a minute (maybe more like 10) to find a valid reason to be grateful for the fact that he left us a negative review.  Once I thought more carefully about it, I realized that if he had not left the review, I would have been unaware that there was a misunderstanding about our protocols.   It gave me the opportunity to develop a better system of client education and a new subject for our next hospital blog. He had given us the opportunity to improve.  I was grateful!

In contrast, we have another client that has been loyal to our hospital for many years.  He is one of the kindest and most positive people that I have ever met.  He has a variety of pets that he treats them as his animal children.  He is warm and kind and generous.  He faithfully presents his babies to us for their annual examinations and always shows up with a gift for the team.  He frequently brings us large sheet cakes and coolers full of ice cream as an expression of his gratitude.  He has even brought us presents from his overseas business travels. He is without fail the person that I think of when I think of living with gratitude.

My point in contrasting these two very different veterinary interactions is to demonstrate that we have a choice when it comes to living with gratitude. We can choose to feel just as grateful for the first client as the second. 

As you enjoy your Thanksgiving holiday with your family try to remember to be grateful for every interaction.  Even something that appears negative on the surface can lead to positivity if you can just manage your mind around it.    

“Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.” – Brian Tracy

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Dr. Julie Cappel

Do I really matter? It takes one small thing.

I spent the better part of last week at a veterinary gathering in Dallas Texas.  The program was designed to be uplifting and informative - teaching the participants everything from human resource laws to gratitude and self-awareness. There were many different speakers with differing approaches presented, but they were all aiming at the same goal in some way:  aiming at self-care for veterinary professionals and encouraging a gratitude mentality. 

This subject is my passion and the main reason that I started this blog. 

The one event that I found particularly enjoyable and meaningful at the conference was the “charity” activity.  The entire group of over 1000 veterinarians, hospital managers and veterinary technicians were gathered into a room and separated into teams.  We were then given supplies and challenged to make blankets, build doghouses, birdhouses, and dog beds for a variety of animal and human charity organizations in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. 

The collective energy in the room was so positive it was electric.   Everyone in that huge ballroom was engaged and motivated.  Why?  We were giving back.  We were focused on doing something to better another.   The activity caused us to focus on the power that each of us has to overcome the negativity of the world by doing one small thing.  

On my team I met a veterinarian from Los Angeles who was such a sunny personality that I immediately felt great about my profession and my life.  She was the kind of person that sees the glass as half full.  She had a fantastic life outlook and gave our team added energy.  She focused her energy outward and affected us in a positive way.

This is something that you can focus on everyday to make your own life better.  You have the power to improve your attitude by focusing on someone else.  Giving back to the universe for what it has given to you.  It is a positivity super power that is always available to you.  

Start each day by feeling grateful for one small thing in your life.   It can be something as simple as your warm bed, your cup of coffee or the roof over your head.  Write it down as a way of seeing it in a concrete way.  Then spend a few minutes thinking about something you can do for another person today. It doesn’t have to be as complex as giving money or time to a charity organization.  It can be as simple as happily letting someone merge into traffic on your way to work. It can be something as simple as being positive for your team like my new friend from Los Angeles. It can be something anonymous. In fact anonymous random acts of kindness are often the best things you can do to make yourself feel alive.    

  

As veterinary professionals we do a lot of giving and it can make us feel depleted.  However, we have the power to use giving and gratefulness as a way of improving our outlook and feeling energized. By using the tools of gratitude and living openhandedly you will feel the difference and realize that every little thing you do really matters in this world.

Do one small thing.

You do matter.

 

Dr. Julie Cappel

Taking Baby Steps - How to get things done.

This weekend I was on a scrapbooking trip with my girl friends.  We always have so much fun working on our scrapbooks, eating and talking.  As I sat at my table looking at the piles of paper, photos and scrapbooking supplies that were laid out in front of me, I began to feel overwhelmed.  I could spend hours thinking about what I wanted to do with all of it.  I needed to start working. Working on my daughter’s wedding scrapbook, but there were so many beautiful photos and I didn’t want to ruin any of them.  The thought of getting started gave me a little anxiety and kept me frozen in inactivity.  Then I thought of a book I love called, “ The Slight Edge”.  It is a book about the concept of just taking little baby steps towards a goal.  Taking one small action at a time each day will eventually get a large task accomplished.  I began to work.

There are so many things that we want to do in our lives and we continually put them off because they seem so large.  We want to make more money, go on a fancy vacation, or learn a new skill.  We keep saying we want to do it, but the goal never materializes because we are caught in an inactivity/fear loop. 

If we spend too much time thinking about what we want to get done, we will idle and never accomplish anything.  If we wait for the perfect idea, the perfect job offer, the perfect deal for our vacation, we will never move.  Our brains get in the way of our goals.  Our brain brings up all the negative things that we think might happen if we step out of our comfort zone.   The negativity scares us into inaction.

I see this idle tendency so often with my clients.  I ask a client to brush their pets’ teeth.  They say, “there is no way doctor, he will never let me brush his teeth!”  I talk to them about the power of the “baby step” or “slight edge”.  Get the toothbrush, show it to the dog then give him a treat.   The next day place the toothbrush gently on one tooth, then stop and give him a treat.  The next day swipe at one tooth, then give him a treat.  You get the idea.  One tooth at a time keeping it positive until that dog loves getting his teeth brushed.  The goal is accomplished!  It becomes easy when you break it down into baby steps. 

How do you take baby steps and get this concept to work for you?

Focus on one project at a time and take one small step at a time.  Break the goal down into little bite sized chunks and write them down.  Make a list of baby steps.  Take each step until you get that project finished before switching to another.  Don’t multitask.  Your brain cannot do more than one thing at a time and if you allow yourself small chunks to focus on you are more likely to continue to move forward.  

Have no fear.  Nothing you want to do in life is out of your reach.  You want to learn to dance?  Take one dance lesson at a time.   You want to write a book, one page at a time.  You are perfectly capable of doing more than you think you can do.  Push through the fear and take a step.

One baby step.

Dr. Julie Cappel