pet connection

When I was in veterinary school, the first two birds I examined bit me. Hard. Blood. Mine. No, a career in avian medicine wasn’t going to take flight for the farm boy from Southern Idaho.

Fast forward 27 years and I’m in front of a live studio audience in the studios of Detroit Public Television to film a one-hour national PBS pledge special featuring dogs, cats and yes, birds. I have a genuine love and comfort around dogs and cats that has provided me a hedge of protection from the time I was a little boy. Didn’t matter if it was a neighbor’s guard dog or a barn cat with kittens, an injured animal on the side of the road or a scardy-cat on the exam room table, I almost never got bitten. But birds, oh-boy, I’d find a way for another veterinarin to see them, refer them, or hope they’d get better on their own (confession).

On the day of the PBS taping there were five cameras, more than 100 audience members and dozens of different live animals in the audience for me to use as live props for demos. We had NO rehearsals, it was all going to be spontaneous and live. If I was going to talk about how to give a dog medicine, I’d crack open Fido’s mouth and show it; when it came time to talk about alternatives to declawing, I’d show Puss-Puss’s claws; and yes, when it came time to talk about pelleted bird foods, the proper size of a bird cage (Home Tweet Home), and “signs of sickness,” I would hold the birds, demo feather luster, put them in their cages, etc. For feathered test dummies, we had a medium-sized male and female eclectus, an blue-fronted Amazon parrot, and a giant hyacinth macaw like the one pictured above.

Working with the dogs and cats was a piece of cake. I looked like I’d been raised by wolves and cats were my homies. But when it came time to walk over and pickup a bird for the first demo, I took a deep breath (I hope they can’t hear it on the DVD) walked over with trepidation, held out my fingers to the bird’s feet and said “step up.” Like magic, it did. When I extended the wing to show plummage, it was a piece of cake. Later in the taping, the male eclectus groomed my sideburns in a visible sign of affection, and the macaw let me show how the cage needed to be big enough to accomodate its whole body including the massive tail. Not only did I not get bitten, the birds seemed down-right trusting and loving with me.

After “The Pet Doctor With Marty Becker” wrapped, several people came over to me and said, “Wow, you have a gift with animals…especially with birds!” I thought about telling them about the veterinary school blood-lettings, how I’d passed client’s sick birds off like hot potatoes, or that the reason the birds reacted like they did around me was because their owners had done an incredible job of socializing them. But in the end I just puffed out my chest a little bit when they talked about “my gift” and simply said, “Thank you.”

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