🐶 World Veterinary Day 🩺
In honor of World Veterinary Day, we interviewed Dr. Zonram Liao - a veterinarian from the Southern California area. We're so excited to share more about his story and about veterinary care in general in today's blog post.
MEET DR. ZONRAM LIAO 🧑⚕️
To start, we'd love to know a little bit of your background. Who are you and where are you from?
Dr. Zonram Liao: Hi, I'm Doctor Z. Thank you so much for having me and coming all the way out here to interview me. I'm actually a local Southern California kid - born and raised in Diamond Bar/Buena Park areas. I just opened my veterinary clinic, Sunshine Veterinary Care, a few months ago here in Diamond Bar, California. I'm also the owner of Wellnergy Pets Pet Products - straight from the vet to your pet.
WHY DID YOU BECOME A VET?
Of all the career options - of all the doctor options - why did you choose to become a vet?
Dr. Z: Everyone has their own origin story. A lot of veterinarians have wanted to be vets since they were kids, but I was a little bit of a late bloomer. I didn't know I wanted to be a veterinarian until I was 24 years old - just after college.
I was a little bit of a loser; I'm not going to lie. I came out of UC San Diego with a 2.4 GPA. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. There's a Galleria supermarket down the street and I was there stocking frozen fish making $11.25 an hour.
At the time, my aunt and my uncle were out of the country and I was taking care of their golden retriever, which essentially was my golden retriever for a while. My golden retriever got really, really sick. It was about 10:30pm and we found out she had a tumor that was growing on her neck. After taking x rays and seeing how sick she was, the vets saw that there wasn't just a tumor there, but there was a big tumor on her liver as well. So at that very moment, I had to make some really, really tough decisions as a 24 year old kid by myself.
Coming out of that experience, I decided I don't want any of these local kids like me - parachute kids without our parents - to have to go through a decision like that. I'm going to be someone who guides them during these tough times. And I said, hey, I want to be a veterinarian.
WHY ARE PEOPLE IMPORTANT IN VETERINARY CARE?
You've mentioned in other articles that it's important for veterinarians to care equally about people as they do about animals. Why is that such an important philosophy to you?
Dr. Z: The reason why I became a veterinarian was to make sure that kids don't feel the way I did - where they have to go through hardship with their pets without any guidance. So for me, it's really about the people. I love pets, of course; I wouldn't be in this if I didn't love dogs. But we have to understand that all these pets come attached with an owner. A lot of these decisions - medical decisions, health decisions - for these pets are not done without owner consent or without their family situation in mind. We all wish we could do gold standard stuff where you run all the tests, but not everyone can afford a $8,000 MRI for their pet. So it's just as much about working with pet parents, understanding their situation and having empathy for them - understanding their situation and treating the pets accordingly, and always keeping the pet parent in mind because they're important.
HOW DO YOU BECOME A VET?
What does the process look like to become a vet? How long is the schooling?
Dr. Z: It's definitely a long process. Before you apply for veterinary school, get some experience. Hang around the veterinary clinics, experience the nursing dynamic, watch veterinarians work on sedated pets and angry pets. Is that something you enjoy? Make sure this is something where you can contribute and take pleasure in dealing with every single day.
Next, make sure you have your prerequisites. You definitely need a bachelor's degree. Take your organic chemistry, your cell biology, bio chem, all those classes. Then you take your GRE test. Make sure you score really well. And then after that, you apply for vet school. You want to finish your applications by September. You go through a program called VMCAS, and you start around spring time. Make sure you get three good reference letters from professors, employers, things like that. And then you sit back and after you apply, you pray - put some good juju out there.
Most programs are four years with summer breaks. After those four years, you can start working. Unlike human medicine, you don't need to do an internship to become a veterinarian. But if you want to specialize in cardiology, neurology, surgery, etc., you have to do a year of internship and then three years of residency, just like we do in human medicine. However, if you want to come out as a family practitioner or general practitioner like me, you're coming out after four years of veterinary school.
WHAT ARE SOME OF THE PROS AND CONS OF THE FIELD?
What are some pros and cons of being a vet - from their your personal experience or the field in general?
Dr. Z: Honestly, from my experience, I almost don't see any cons. I love the field so much. I love being a veterinarian. The last eight years where I've worked in veterinary clinics as a veterinarian, not a single day has felt like work. In the beginning, I was grinding maybe 21 days in a row, 28 days in a row, no breaks. And still none of it felt like work. I love seeing the pet parents and bonding with my community over here. Seeing the pets go from babies when I first started out as a veterinarian to now, me and the dog are both eight years into this and we're all a bit more gray.
But I know the veterinary field is not always like that for everyone. Despite how happy I am and how much I love all of this, veterinarians still hold one of the highest suicide rates in the United States. It's pretty tough. The student loan ratio in comparison to our salaries, it doesn't match up really well. We're often blamed for things that are out of our control.
In comparison to human medicine, insurance is commonplace, but in veterinary medicine it is not. So when it comes to the cost of pet care, people see it more readily and they feel the financial pressure of it. So there's going to be backlash when people feel that pressure and we take the brunt of it. It's just an unfortunate part of our field.
The other day, I had a client come in and his dog jumped out the back of his truck and got hit by another car. They came in and the person said, "Hey, if you don't save my dog, I'm going to kill you." And I said, "I'm going to save your dog. I'm going to try my best, okay? But don't talk to me and my staff like that." But some veterinarians take these experiences really personally.
It can also be hard to go straight from rooms where they are doing euthanasia to puppy rooms; that transition can be tough, especially if you're doing it 13 times a day.
There are cons to veterinary medicine, but I don't like to harp on it too much. Despite all that, at the end of the day, you're helping people. You're helping people and their pets in your community. If it's your passion, you can find love in that. I can go into a room where people are letting their pets go, and give the family peace of mind that their pet will no longer be in pain. I can introduce myself to a new puppy and tell the family what the next year or two is going to look like: chewed up shoes, chewed up bags, purses.
WHAT ARE SOME THINGS ALL PET PARENTS SHOULD KNOW?
What are some basic 101 things or hidden secrets you feel that pet parents should know?
Dr. Z: So basically 101 stuff is preventative care. They say an ounce of prevention equals a pound of care. Make sure you're up to date on vaccines - distemper, Bordetella, upper respiratory - especially going to pet hotels, dog parks, things like that. These situations when they're dealing with one infection at a time is okay, but when they're dealing with a number of infections that's what we call comorbidity. That's when it can be dangerous for your pet. The reason why we do prevention is because they're so hard to treat.
Another thing - I just mentioned pet hotels and dog parks. I didn't think of this as much before I was a veterinarian, but now that I'm a veterinarian, I would not take my dog to a dog park. I would say 60-70% of my dog bite cases come from dog parks because not all dogs get along. They don't have the self control that we have. Just keep your dog on a leash. Do nice slow introductions instead of a dog park where it's just open and dogs are being chased around. It can be a bit more unpredictable and scary at times.
The last thing I would mention is for summer time. When the weather heats up, don't walk your dogs in the middle of the day. Make sure there's lots of shade and water during the hot summers. If you're going to take your dog out for exercise, keep it early in the morning or late at night when the sun has gone down so they don't burn their feet. You don't want them to go hypothermic or overheat.
WHAT IS WELLNERGY PETS?
We know that you're not just a veterinarian at your clinic, but that you also have a company called Wellnergy Pets. Can you tell us a little more about that?
Dr. Z: Thanks for for bringing it up! It's something that I don't really talk about much. Wellnergy Pets is my pet supplements company. It's something that I started for the community. To understand why I started Wellnergy Pets, I have to talk a little about myself.
When I grew up in this area, in Diamond Bar, I grew up as a parachute kid. When I was 16 and able to drive and care for myself and my sister, my parents left the country and went to Taiwan. They can have better jobs there since they speak the language and provide for us and send us money to live here more comfortably. During that time, the people in this community helped raise us. The boba shop owners, the restaurant owners - they would take us in after hours and let us do homework for hours and take up a table. Gym owners would let us shoot around until midnight so we'd stay out of trouble. Those are my people. They kept me safe and helped raise me. So when I became a veterinarian, I knew I had to come back to this area and give back to the community that helped raise me.
Fast forward to 2020, Covid hit. And when Covid hit, veterinary visits were backed up for 4 to 6 weeks at a time. The people in my community were reaching out to me. For example, I get a text message that said, "Hey, Doctor Z. My dog is having diarrhea. What can I do?"
So Wellnergy Pets was born out of the idea of trying to help these people take care of their pet issues at home while they wait for a veterinary visit, or hopefully they can avoid a veterinary visit altogether. I started creating these products: probiotics, antidiarreheals, wound care, things like that. I was very lucky that something that started at the back of my clinic with my nurse kind of took off online. We sold in online stores and other third party retailers like Amazon and Walmart, and now we're in retail stores that CVS and Lowe's. I don't know how we got here, but it's been an amazing journey.
WHAT MAKES WELLNERGY PETS DIFFERENT?
Obviously, there's a ton of pet supplement companies out there, so what makes Wellnergy Pets stand out?
Dr. Z: What we're focused on is empowering parents to feel like they're in control of their pet's health. For example, if you have diarrhea, you don't go straight to the doctor. You reach for Pepto-Bismol and it'll stop in 20 minutes. For pet parents, historically, all they've been able to do is pray that it stops or take their dog to the vet. We're trying to redefine home care for pets where they can grab something off the shelf and over the counter to give to their pets.
On top of that, all of our products are created by me. I see 30 pets a day, six days a week. That's over 6000 pets a year. I'm bringing ingredients that we use in the clinic itself to over the counter for pet parents. This is something I use every single day.
And that's it!
We are so thankful that Dr. Z agreed to do with interview with us for World Veterinary Day. Hopefully you guys learned a little bit about veterinary care, the process of becoming a vet, and how to take better care of your pet.
You can find Dr. Z on Instagram and you can find Wellnergy Pets on Amazon, CVS, Petco, Chewy, Walmart and on their website.
You can also visit Dr. Z at Sunshine Veterinary Care (20935 Golden Springs Dr, Diamond Bar, CA 91789).