Marty and Laura tackle the high cost of vet care, everything from WHY the cost is so high to pro tips on ways you can help keep costs manageable.

Laura said, "I ran across (an article) in a magazine called Money Wise, and it says that half of America's 87,000,000 pet owners have decided against vet treatment. And it it continues that for many Americans, the cost of caring for their pets has become unbearable. A Gallup poll found 52% of US pet owners say that they've had to put off veterinary care because of the cost. A whopping 7 in 10 also say they forego pet care due to financial. Reasons. That's scary."

"There's a few things that have played a role in this," Marty said, "and certainly one is the corporatization of veterinary medicine. I think we should talk about the overall cost of pets. It's not just veterinary care, but it's also the overall cost. How much are you spending on your pet food? How much are you spending on your other stuff? Doggy daycare? Another thing that I thought was a really important thing for us to talk about, it was mentioned kind of briefly in this article, is that veterinarians can do more for pets today, but those machines and those processes and those tests cost more money.

"About half of the veterinary clinics now are corporate and that means the other half are still owned by your local small practice owner, your small business owner.

"You don't have to go to a veterinary clinic that's corporate owned. There are lots of them out there that are. And it doesn't make them bad, it just makes them different. And it means your prices are probably going to be higher.

"They have protocols that they're required to follow. So if your dog goes in with diarrhea, they have a specific protocol they're supposed to follow instead of being able to craft the kind of medicine that is based on what your pet needs are what your needs are.

"In our practice, we have a guarantee, like our guarantee is that we will provide you a care plan that fits your needs and your pet's and your resources. So we don't have to go through an algorithm where we say these are the things we have to do. If you look at me and say I can't do that, then we come up with Plan B and Plan C."

The Marty & Laura Show is produced by Pure Dog Talk Inc., with sound design and editing by Premium Audio Services.

Summer vacation with dog as co-pilot, as Marty and Laura discussed last month, is well under way. Today they bring important information to help keep your pet safe in the late summer at various locations around the country. Whether it's foxtails, blue green algae, poisonous snakes or alligators, your pet can encounter a variety of environmental challenges.

Skunks and porcupines also get rolled into this wide-ranging conversation about what to avoid and what to do if you can't avoid some of these dangers for your pet.

Keep your dogs safe from foxtails and other potential injury with an Outfox mesh hood.

The Marty & Laura Show is produced by Pure Dog Talk Inc., with sound design and editing by Premium Audio Services.

Marty and I talk a lot. Like we talk pretty much, maybe not daily, but we talk every week. And I interact with people on a daily basis who work in veterinary clinics. I think it's really hard, sometimes, for us as clients to appreciate what's going on in the veterinary clinic. 'The receptionist just snarked at me. I've been sitting here for 45 minutes, like, what the F?'

So I thought it would be really great if Marty would talk to us about what the F? Like what's going on? What's a day in your life like and your staff? And if perhaps we as clients can then come with that extra grain of compassion that knowledge should bring. I think that that benefits everybody.

"Clients pull in, they may see one or two cars in the parking lot, but they may not know that that means it's a C-section with 14 puppies, which is what we just did on Friday. Or they may not be aware that there's a hit by car or a bloat or, you know, some really terrific trauma that's happening or something really awful that's happening.

"And if we only have one doctor working, there's only one place the doctor can be in at a time. And so it may not look to you as a client that it's very busy. It may look like they're just sitting around having coffee and gabbing in the back. But in reality, there's probably something pretty significant going down if you're having to wait, and that's the important thing.

"We don't have HIPAA on the veterinary side. But from a confidentiality perspective, I'm not going to walk into the exam room and say what just happened. It may have been a euthanasia. It may have been a critical diagnosis of something that's really terminal, and we had to do some counseling for the client, it may be a litter of puppies that are being born. And quite literally, we'll have sometimes 16 or 17 puppies in a litter, which means all hands on deck. It means everything else gets dropped. And in our practice, because we do a lot of reproduction, C sections are a priority, but so are major traumas. So are bloats.

"It may not look to you like as a client's perspective that there's that much going on, but if you're waiting, either they forgot about you, which doesn't happen very often, but I'm not going to tell you it's never happened at any veterinary clinic or something bad is going down. And you probably should just like sort of sort of chill a little bit."

The Marty & Laura Show is produced by Pure Dog Talk Inc., with sound design and editing by Premium Audio Services.