Episode #155 Why You Need ReadyRESCUE with Dr. Glassman

What if there was a more accessible, less nerve-wracking approach to caring for your pet's health? Get ready to transform your understanding of pet care as Dr Matt Glassman from Dr Cuddles shares the ins and outs of his innovative product, ReadyRESCUE. We delve into the pressing issue of veterinary medicine accessibility that has often left pet owners feeling helpless, particularly in the wake of COVID-induced challenges. Dr Glassman highlights the importance of bypassing this anxiety by equipping pet owners with veterinary-backed products and information, thereby turning complex vet jargon into everyday language.

You'll find Dr. Glassman and ReadyRESCUE at Dr.Cuddles.com 

• Free shipping on all $99+
• Free Gift when you spend $40+
• Get a $25 gift card when you spend $200+

**We are an affiliate with Dr. Cuddles. 

Transcript

Amy Jensen: 0:00

This is the Puppy Training Podcast, episode 155, why you Need Ready Rescue with Dr Matt Glassman. This podcast is designed to help you on your journey of becoming best friends through love and learning as you train your own dog from home, and I'm here to help you every step of the way. This is the Puppy Training Podcast and I'm your host, Amy Jensen. Hey you guys, welcome to the Puppy Training Podcast. Thank you for listening. I'm really glad you're here today. I have a special guest with me. Dr Matt Glassman is here, from Dr Cuddles, and he's going to tell us a little bit about his new product, Ready Rescue, and why you need it. So welcome, Dr Glassman.

Dr. Glassman: 0:47

Thank you, thanks for having me Really appreciate it.

Amy Jensen: 0:50

To start off with, will you introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit about you.

Dr. Glassman: 0:54

Yeah, so I'm a veterinarian veterinary surgeon by training. I was born into veterinary medicine. Both my mom and dad are vets, so some of my earliest memories were running around a vet hospital getting bitten and for some reason I decided to stay in the family biz and go to vet school, do an internship, residency, all that sort of thing. So I've been practicing in DC for about 12 years and love it, and probably about four or five years ago I decided to go back to get an MBA, go back to school and in that process met some of my then co-founders that wanted to start a pet brand and at that time that pet brand was going to be really more of a we didn't have a name yet it was going to be really more of a hygiene company leashes and collars that were curated by a veterinarian and over time I started to take more of a leadership role and then eventually took over the business completely and really wanted to shift the business to in a direction that was more what my life goal was, which was to take care of pets better and keep them comfortable, keep them happy and hit on some of the pain points that I saw over the past 12 years as a veterinary surgeon in private practice in DC, pet owners, relative to how we take care of ourselves and our children, really don't have the ability to take care of their pets their pets minor to moderate health concerns, and the medicine is not all that different.

Dr. Glassman: 2:43

And when you look at human medicine, we have you and I have CVS and tons of pharmacies where we spend a good amount of time picking up stuff to take care of this or that. We don't have that option for pets and the result of that is really putting a lot of stress on the veterinary world for things that maybe don't need that sort of expertise, in addition to leaving pet owners with this feeling of helplessness. So really, dr Cuddle's mission is to be a trusted source for veterinary backed products and information and really help people care for their pets better by bringing them those products and telling them really which we have not veterinary medicine in the past told them that they can make decisions about their pet, that they can identify their pet, ate something that they shouldn't has diarrhea, has some of those things and that they don't have to feel helpless when they're caring for their pet.

Amy Jensen: 3:46

I love that. That's so useful. I mean, I can think of so many instances in my own scenarios of raising my own animals that that's come up like oh he has diarrhea, what should I do? Or oh, I'm seeing a little bit of goopy eye, or these minor things that, yeah, like you're saying, if we had a corner pharmacy for dogs and cats, I mean how great would that be.

Dr. Glassman: 4:09

Right, yeah, I mean, we have a medicine cabinet for ourselves. Why don't we have a medicine cabinet for our pets? And that's really our mission is just to make vet sense common sense. That's our tagline and that's really what we want to do is just help people know what vets know when we're taking care of our pets and what they should be worried about, what they shouldn't, what they can use to put a Band-Aid on a problem until they get to go to a vet.

Dr. Glassman: 4:37

And so now, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, it wasn't that hard to get into see your vet. Since COVID and after, it's been difficult. We've seen emergency rooms close their doors temporarily because of their overloaded and not taking cases. If anyone has tried to get into their vet quickly, usually it's about a week or two off. So for someone that has a pet that has is having diarrhea or some other health problem that that they have nothing at their disposal to really do use to fix or address, they end up being super frustrated or they get online and they grasp it straws and they end up giving their pet something like unpasteurized goat's milk to fix the diarrhea and then make it worse and then have a problem on top of a problem.

Amy Jensen: 5:35

Yeah, I would agree the marketing gets a little confusing as a consumer. If I can't get ahold of my vet it's Saturday night or something then I'm going to go to the internet and then all the marketing. I don't know. You really have to sort through that and, like you're saying, mistakes happen.

Dr. Glassman: 5:51

Right, totally, and so we would like to ultimately five, ten years from now, be that source where people can go and know that all of our products are vetted by veterinary specialists like myself. We have an advisory panel of about 12, 14 different specialists so that they can curate these products and decide what snake oil, what is reasonable and based on their research, or not their own research, but the research in their area, their discipline that they've been practicing in for the past five, 12, 20 years.

Amy Jensen: 6:30

Yeah, what a great idea and so useful. I mean, like you're saying, it would be so helpful to just be able to have a product or a remedy like an over-the-counter for your dog.

Dr. Glassman: 6:38

Absolutely, and so I did a survey, probably about two, three years ago, about 350 vets, and asked them what percentage of cases do they see on a daily basis that they're not admitting to the hospital because they're super sick Do they feel could have been taken care of with an over-the-counter medication, a change in diet or just waiting a little more time?

Dr. Glassman: 7:06

They said about 30%, which is pretty incredible, and when you couple that with the veterinary shortage that we're seeing right now, which is estimated to be 30% by 2030, that right there, if we can eliminate those cases that don't need that veterinarian, we could eliminate that shortage and really kind of save some money for people but also take some of the stress off the veterinarian so that they don't have to close their door from six to nine because they're overworked and their staff is overburdened and they can really help those animals that really need their help.

Dr. Glassman: 7:47

I think that that's one of the things that really pushed me to do this and to shift the company a bit was during COVID. I was waiting for a case that I needed to take to surgery and then wondering why it wasn't there at four o'clock on a Friday and going downstairs and seeing that the emergency room had closed the door so they were trying to get in. And then I looked at the cases that we were seeing, that had been there before that animal that had had a problem, and there were cases like little ear infection, little eye squinting, things that, relative to this animal that needed an emergency surgery, really weren't a big deal.

Amy Jensen: 8:29

I love it. I love this concept and idea. Will you tell us what Ready Rescue is?

Dr. Glassman: 8:34

Yeah, so Ready Rescue is really a first response for home intoxications and it is a second iteration of an old idea. So for the longest time we've had activated charcoal, and your listeners may know about activated charcoal, and activated charcoal is kind of this panacea. It acts as a sponge because when an animal or a human eats a toxin, once they put it in their mouth, just like food, it takes time for that to get digested and absorbed by the body where it would cause damage. And so the idea is, if you give activated charcoal right after an intoxication, activated charcoal can act as a sponge and just hold on to those toxins and prevent them from getting absorbed by the body and therefore doing damage. And so and then it carries, you know, just carries it out and works its way out the other end safely.

Dr. Glassman: 9:33

And activated charcoal works for, really I would say, 95% of the things that pets will eat at home. So chocolate, grapes, raisins, tons of human medications. And when an animal has an intoxication, the period of time in which there's the most absorption is when the concentration of whatever toxin is the highest, and that's going to be right after they eat it, right and as it goes into the intestine. And so, and it's really the first hour, and so if we can get something on board that is going to absorb that, that toxin, prevent absorption into the body, we can significantly reduce the amount of damage that the toxin does and reduce the amount of work that the veterinarian needs to do later or the length of hospitalization for because of kidney damage or, you know, vomiting and those types of problems. So it's a product I'm super excited about.

Dr. Glassman: 10:38

It's a product that I think should be I mean, I'm biased, granted, but like I think should be in every single person's household, and I've been developing this over the past two years, and so I've had tons of activated carbon in my house and I've used it about four or five times for my dogs, you know. Did they eat something that was going to kill them? No, but when my dog ate an oatmeal raising cookie that my daughter gave him, just to take my level of concern from 5% to zero, you know I can give him this and and then feel okay that I'm not going to take my dog to the, to my hospital, and spend $3,000 on fluids. Personally, my decision, you know, if they ate one oatmeal raising cookie, because I think the chance of a problem is low, but there's still a chance and if I want to take it to zero, that's the best way to do it.

Amy Jensen: 11:33

Just this past weekend I had a client reach out because his dog ate some grapes and, as a trainer, of course we refer them to their veterinarian because that's our protocol. But just to have something like this that could ease his worry between the time he's able to call a vet would be great. So what does this product look like and how does one administer it? I remember opening my first bottle of activated charcoal and thinking this is so messy Are you serious that I'm supposed to give this to my dog somehow?

Dr. Glassman: 12:00

Yeah. So one of the things I forgot to say is I got all excited about activated charcoal. I forgot to tell you how ready rescue is different than the older activated charcoal. Normal activated charcoal is produced by burning something and taking that basically that coal, treating it and then that becomes activated charcoal. This is a synthetic resin based activated charcoal that is cleaner and more dense than the traditional activated charcoal. So basically, instead of 300 milliliters of a very dirty liquid black liquid charcoal mixture, we can give them a about 68 milliliters or 50 milliliters of a activated carbon which looks like a little hard caviar. So it's not messy at all. You spill it on the floor on the dog, it's not going to be a problem. And that's really where the innovation is is that, because of the different form of the charcoal in this carbon form, it's reasonable to give it home. You can give it to an animal quickly. It's not going to take 30 minutes of you trying to like pour it down their throat and you can give it to them with a little bit of food. Then pick up the phone and call poison control. Call your vet and figure out what you need to do.

Dr. Glassman: 13:27

This product was originally invented to use in dialysis tubing to kind of purify blood if there was a toxin in the blood already and so that's where it came from was my internal medicine specialist, who does dialysis.

Dr. Glassman: 13:42

We were talking about some of our future products that we're coming out with and he said you know, there's this new resin based carbon that could be like game changer for home administration of activated charcoal and you know, let's look into creating that product and that's kind of how that started two years ago and so very excited about it.

Dr. Glassman: 14:06

But you know, I think the thing that I really want to tell people is that you know this product. For me, in the grape situation or the raisin situation that we discussed, I avoided going to a vet because I knew the risks and I knew what was going on and everything. But you know this is not a replacement for veterinary care. This is to provide some sanity and safety while you figure out if you need to go to the vet and then also to reduce the amount of toxin that your vet has to take care of later. And, as we were talking about, a lot of emergency hospitals are closing their door, so you may think that you're five minutes from a veterinarian, but they may be closed and then your next option might be 20 minutes away, 30 minutes away, and by the time they're seen we've got like an hour, hour and a half that's gone by between ingestion of the toxin and when they might start giving activated charcoal or inducing vomiting or something like that.

Amy Jensen: 15:13

I could see this being so beneficial, just to have, say, dr Cuddle's website where I could just have that as my resource. Oh, something happened. My dog ate the cookie. My dog ate the grapes. I could go to Dr Cuddle's, I could find some vet-based information that I know is trusted, as if calling my own veterinarian right and then get those first steps taken care of and then call my vet, like you're saying, all of the stress that that relieves off of a pet family is huge.

Dr. Glassman: 15:42

Yeah, absolutely. And you know pet intoxication is. It's really our fault when that happens, or it was my daughter's fault actually, so I'm not going to take her. So you know it's our fault. And so there's that feeling, extra feeling, that of like, oh, like I hurt my pet and I think being able to have something to help mitigate some of that is important.

Dr. Glassman: 16:07

One of the reasons that we are reaching out to you now is because this is the season where the most pet intoxications happen, because really routines are broken.

Dr. Glassman: 16:18

You know, between now and mid-January, routines are broken with travel, with school being out, you've got family in town visiting, and so that's the time that, first of all, there's going to be a lot more chocolate in kids around, which is a deadly combination, and kids in grapes and raisins.

Dr. Glassman: 16:37

But then also, like you're much more likely to kind of be late for this or that, leave your medication on the counter or drop something and not realize it, or have your which has happened to me a ton. When I have someone come over, they, you know, to stay with us for a bit. They have their medications in a little bag, in their bag which is on the floor in the guest room, and then the dog gets in there and tears it up and there's, you know, a bunch of ibuprofen all over the place, and then you have to worry about that, and so so I think you know this is the time to kind of be prepared and have this on hand and put it somewhere in your pet medicine cabinet that hopefully is forming and you can, you know, use it when you need.

Amy Jensen: 17:21

So, as a veterinarian and you talked about this time of years coming up with holidays what are some common pet toxins that you see the most in your office?

Dr. Glassman: 17:29

Yeah. So the thing that we'll see the most are the things that are most accessible, and so chocolate is number one. Pets have to eat a good amount of chocolate to to have the you know effects of the methyl xanthine and the caffeine that are in the chocolate, and in general, the darker the chocolate, the more concentrated those methyl xanthines are and the caffeine are. So chocolate is something to be careful of. The grapes and raisins, like we talked about those types of foods. But really I think the big one that can do a lot of damage with a little bit of volume is is human medications, you know so nonsteroidal anti inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen and naprison or a leave, those, if ingested, you don't need a lot to cause some irreversible or very serious kidney damage. And the the internal medicine doctor that that helped develop ready rescue with me you know that was something that he was seeing a lot because he was doing dialysis on a lot of dogs that were getting into a bit of a leave or ibuprofen and needed help detoxifying their blood of those kind of toxins that the kidneys normally will clean out until the kidneys could recover from that sort of insult. So so thank Acetaminophen or Tylenol aspirin, antidepressants One that always makes me laugh is ADD medications, because you know it's a stimulant, but also they're probably the most likely to be left out by accident, because that's the nature of ADD and also sleep aids, birth control pills, heart medications don't need a lot to do. You know, a beta blocker in a for a human? You don't. You don't need many pills to to really cause a problem with your Yorkie. So those types of those types of medications, cholesterol medications so you know pretty much everything I will say. You know the thing, the couple medications or a couple of toxicants that ready rescue is not great for is xylitol, so that sweetener in gum and in some peanut butters, in addition to something like a cleaning substance that can be, you know, cause some burns and stuff like that.

Dr. Glassman: 20:11

So what's important to know, though, is that ready rescue or any activated charcoal, giving it in those cases does not make it worse. It's just not going to bind as well because of the size of the molecule and the polarity of the molecule. So there's really no situation. Even if you are giving ready rescue, you think you need to give it, and then you find out. Well, that ibuprofen bottle was empty. You know, my husband, my wife, my partner left it over there and you know that's why they were chewing on it. Even if you were to give it in that situation, it wouldn't do anything. It would just not have anything much to bind and go right through them. So it's incredibly safe and that's also one of the reasons. In addition to it being compact, clean and easy to administer, it's one of the reasons why I think it's a great product to have at home, because it's almost foolproof.

Amy Jensen: 21:10

Definitely something that sounds like we need in our newly put together animal medicine cabinets that we're all going to put together right.

Dr. Glassman: 21:17

Absolutely, absolutely. And we do have some other products. At drcuttelscom we have a line of Heal at Home products, so including a wound gel if your animal has any cuts, scrapes, redness, hot spots. It's a very gentle antibacterial. It's not an antibiotic, so almost like a hydrogen peroxide much more gentle though. And then we have an ear flush and an eye flush. So it's not uncommon. Those ear infections, eye squinting your dog gets something in their eye those are not uncommon issues that sometimes very difficult to get into the vet. For that. You might be able to get into the vet in a day or two days, in which time whatever's going on in the eye or the ear could be getting worse. So having something at home to clean the ear out, clean the eye out, just makes a lot of sense, and we've got a bunch of other products coming out next year that I think will be similar to ReadyRescue. That will be significant game changers in terms of what people are able to use at home to take care of their pets.

Amy Jensen: 22:37

My next question is a little bit off topic, but I'm curious. I know you have a family, some young kids and two dogs. Right when you have a day off and you have some downtime, how do you guys spend that?

Dr. Glassman: 22:52

So I have two Cavalier King Charles Spaniels and one six-year-old daughter, one three-month-old daughter. So if I have a day off right now I'm pretty much sleeping, However, but normally what we will do is my mother, who's a holistic, retired holistic veterinarian, has a farm about an hour and a half outside DC, and so we'll go there and go do a little fishing, do a little riding around on the ATV, say hi to the cows, the pigs, the chickens, the horses, the donkeys. I always joke with my mother that she's the only one that works on that farm, because everyone else is a freeloader, except for the chickens. Chickens produce eggs, but everyone else, even the cows, are just hanging out.

Amy Jensen: 23:45

so Sounds like a dream farm, actually.

Dr. Glassman: 23:48

It's actually pretty awesome so.

Amy Jensen: 23:50

Well, before you go, let people know where they can find you. How do we contact you?

Dr. Glassman: 23:55

Yeah, so we're on all the social media platforms. If you wanna follow us, so, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. You can find us at drcuttalscom, so d-r-c-u-d-d-l-e-scom. We're also on Amazon, and then we're getting set up right now with Chewy, and so you'll be able to find us in several different locations.

Amy Jensen: 24:18

Awesome, that's amazing. Thank you so much for what you're doing.

Dr. Glassman: 24:21

Absolutely my pleasure and feel free to reach out. If anyone has any any anecdotes about their pets getting into stuff, feel free to email hello at drcuttalscom. Let us know what about those anecdotes. Any products that you wish were available and we can, me and my advisory panel can see if we can put something together for you.

Amy Jensen: 24:48

Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it and all of the information you were able to provide for us here on the Puppy Training Podcast. So you guys know where to find him now. You can go to drcuttalscom. I'm sure the links for social media are there as well. Go check it out and again, we appreciate it, dr Glassman.

Dr. Glassman: 25:06

Awesome, appreciate it.

Amy Jensen: 25:07

All right, you guys have a wonderful rest of your week and happy training. If you have a question about anything you heard on this podcast or any other Puppy Training question, visit my site backsterandbellacom to contact me.