Alert your community! You’re the first veterinary practice owner or manager to solve the alien abduction problem and you’re holding an open house to reveal your secrets!

You know the story: Mommy is busy so you decide to nap for several hours. At first, you think it’s all a dream – until you realize that it’s not. The spacecraft arrives, and you’re forced aboard against your will. The aliens are all wearing white coats. Everything is cold. They have weird instruments you’ve never seen before. You have no idea what they’re saying. And then one of them decides to take your temperature by …

Down with Alien Abductions!

“Imagine you’re from another planet,” Dr. Lisa Radosta explained to DMV360. “You go to a place where people are always dressed the same way. You don’t speak the language. They do things to you that are extremely personal. And the entire experience is uncomfortable and painful.”

From a pet’s point of view, that might sum up a visit to the veterinarian, and since pet owners know it, they also fear going to the vet. And according to the doctors trying to do something about it, the fear and anxiety a pet feels at the vet are health hazards for both the pet and owner.

Radosta and others have started a “Fear Free” office visit movement that’s really catching on. According to Dr. Gary Landsberg, moderator of the video linked to above, veterinary businesses that have implemented Fear Free practices over the last five years have seen dramatic increases in net operating profits.

And they need them, especially since a recent government study reported that veterinary service prices rose 15% from the beginning of the recession. With that, the Feds may have added an economic incentive for pet owners who already don’t want to go to the vet.

Industry analysts believe the government’s numbers are completely wrong. Another study done by Purdue and Nationwide Insurance found that veterinary prices actually dropped a point over the same time frame.

To clarify things for your prospects, you might display this graph at your open house:

Many successful veterinary practice owners and managers who struggled to stay open during the worst of it are more than ready to expand their practices now.

And addressing the alien abduction problem may be the ticket, since pet consciousness has also entered the mainstream.

Hurray for Pet Consciousness!

It might have all started with the Swiss toymaker Nina Ottosson, who began selling “food puzzles” twenty years ago.

These were the first pet toys that required the pet to figure something out, with the instant-gratification reward ingeniously built-in. Some pet owners with what Ottosson calls “Albert Einstein” pets give them nearly every meal in a puzzle, and the Einsteins love it. For the “Forest Gumps” of the pet world, letting them work through a puzzle a few times a week, for an extra snack rather than sustenance, helps keep them sharp. (As soon as a pet sits there barking at it, you know you’ve given calculus to a finger-counter.)

In the decades since Ottosson introduced her innovation, an entire industry has arisen around pet consciousness. There are the gifted intuitives, such as Cesar Millan, who amassed a $25 million fortune through his psychologically penetrating videos. And then there are the academics with Ph.D.s from universities as excellent as our own U.C. Davis, about sixty-five miles from our corporate offices, who sometimes command exorbitant prices for their advice.

Since there’s a market there, you might consider incorporating it into your practice, and the Fear Free movement may be the perfect entre.

Pet Meditation

We all know that exercise fundamentally changes brain chemistry and is the only way humans and animals can reset all their neurotransmitters to optimize their performance.

We also all know that meditation – where you breathe deeply and try not to cling to any thoughts – can have such a positive effect on mental health that the U.S. military has fully embraced it as part of its training program. In fact, the meditations offered by the U.S. Navy may be good ones to recommend to curious humans.

But probably the most useful aspect of meditation is that it can dramatically reduce stress, which may give you a way to help both prospects and their pets prepare for their Fear Free check-up.

“When the pet and the guardian are entering a stressful environment, such as a veterinary visit,” explains dmv360.com, “invite clients to use deep breathing while they simultaneously guide and reward their dog for doing the same with attention exercises. Many times, after only a minute or two, both the animal and person are more relaxed.”

The owner should put the pet in a comfortable position and keep eye contact while breathing slowly and deeply. The pet will follow suit. As soon as they’re relaxed and pliant, experienced vets say, you can gently begin your examination or procedure without too much disruption.

Expanding Markets for Relaxed Vets

The two biggest expansion opportunities for veterinarians may be good ones to incorporate into your open house, especially with your Fear Free mission making visiting your clinic more pleasant.

First, let everyone know that you love cats, because you’ve met fewer than a third of them in your area and practically all of them need you. Picturing your classic cat owner, can you imagine a better way to get one to agree to bring her pet than to offer to meditate with it before the exam begins?

And be absolutely certain that your open house makes it perfectly clear that you’re an expert at elder care, and that you’re willing to go to extraordinary lengths to take care of aging pets. As they age and need procedures or medication more often, many owners find it very difficult to care for them properly. If the procedure is the least bit uncomfortable – a shot, for example – many owners will not want to tarnish their final months with their beloved with anything even slightly painful.

Some veterinarian offices have turned this into a profit center by sending technicians to the home to handle the procedures or injections for the owner. Combine that with breathing exercises before anything happens, and you may create a whirlwind of support for your clinic.

And stay relaxed yourself. It’s been a rough few years, but we’re coming out of it now, and that means more competition may be coming your way. Staying ahead of the curve by making sure your clinic is the easiest one to use can help.

So can making sure your clients can afford the care they want and need for their companion. One of the simplest ways to do that is offer a multiple- or hold-check option that allows them to write a series of checks to be deposited over time. Incorporate it into your pre-exam meditation: there will be no credit check, there will be no financing, there will be no interest, there will only be checks cashed in synch with your client's cash flow.

And you can breathe deeply, too, knowing that no flying saucer is going to abduct money from of your cash flow. Because if you follow your service agreement, we’ll guarantee the revenue from those checks, same as we would for a credit card purchase.