Kath Mertens, Next Chapter: Animal Behavior

 

92-181 Kath Mertens

SPEAKERS

Will Bachman, Kath Mertens

 

Will Bachman  00:02

Hello and welcome to The ’92 Report: Conversations with members of the Harvard and Radcliffe class of 1992. I’m your host Will Bachman, and I’m delighted to be here today with Kath Mertens, who we knew in college as Kath Olman. Kath, welcome to the show.

 

Kath Mertens  00:20

Well, thank you so much. I’m oddly nervous, but I’m really glad to be here. Thank you.

 

Will Bachman  00:26

I’m always nervous too. No, we but we will we will get through it. It’s just a conversation. So, Kath, tell us about your journey since graduating from Harvard.

 

Kath Mertens  00:37

Thank you, Will. I thought you’d never ask. So it’s it’s an odd time to be asking this question. I feel like because I almost feel like my life is coming around full circle, and I’m kind of at that same similar life stage of having finished a major chapter and launching into a new one, similar to how we all were when we were graduating. So I guess the life stage I’m at now is having 120-year-old son who is heading off to be a junior in college. I am divorced. I am single, and I am kind of footloose and fancy-free, and working more or less part-time. So I kind of feel like I’m on the cusp of this new, you know, get to figure out what I want to do with my life phase. So it’s interesting to revisit where we were 35 years ago. My journey since Harvard has taken me, I would say, pretty far away from Harvard. I definitely look back at Harvard very fondly and feel very grateful to have been there with everyone, and it’s been a lot of fun to listen to a bunch of these episodes that you’re putting on, and I really thank you for that. After Harvard, I definitely kind of quote didn’t know what what I wanted to do, but I had always thought that I wanted to be a veterinarian, and while I was at Harvard, there was no pre-vet focus in our day, at least none that I ran into. And so I did all the pre-med stuff, and I and I certainly ran into a lot of bias of, well, veterinarian, don’t you want to be a quote real doctor? So I kind of graduated a little bit disillusioned and not sure what I wanted to do. But I had met one of my friends actually who had been to high school with me and preceded us at Harvard by two years. Had graduated and moved out west and worked doing some sort of horse training, so ultimately that’s what I did. Is I had kind of some friends of friends and connections, and I got in a car with one of our classmates, Michaela McDermott. She joined me for the road trip, and we ended up in Jackson, Wyoming. And long story short, I ended up living in Jackson for the next two years. So my first foray out of Harvard was really just enjoying life as a ski bum. I worked at the ski mountain that I arrived in Jackson in the fall, and I worked at the mountain. I worked at a restaurant that first year and really kind of learned how to ski, and then in the summers I got a job working as a wrangler on a dude ranch. So I was one of the staff members in charge of taking care of the horses and teaching people how to ride and keeping them safe on rides. And then the second winter I taught skiing, and also by the second winter, I had spent enough time in the West, not only on the Dude Ranch with horses, but also with some family friends who were cattle ranchers. And so I’d kind of been reintroduced to, or not even re, but for the first time, really introduced firsthand to agricultural living, and was in an environment where veterinary medicine was, you know, a highly valued and and relevant profession, I suppose. So anyway, I got re-inspired that actually vet med is what I was going to do. I ended up applying to medical school and veterinary school. I think at the same time you can you can see I was a bit all over the place, but anyway, ultimately got into veterinary school and off I went to Purdue, which is of course in Indiana. So by the time I got to Purdue, I’d been living in Jackson for two years, and then also living in Bozeman, Montana, for the following two years, just finishing up a few prerequisites. And then I landed at Purdue, and. Really enjoyed a fabulous four years there. I think a lot of a lot of us have probably had the privilege of going to graduate school, and for me, it really was just an incredibly fun time of being with like-minded people.

 

Kath Mertens  05:13

The Purdue class in those years was only 66 zero students, so we all really got to know our professors quite well in a way that I had not gotten to know professors at Harvard. So, so yeah, four years of Purdue, and during that time, I was really focusing my interest on horses. They’ve just always been an abiding passion of mine, and I went through vet school planning to become solely an equine veterinarian. After vet school, we all is

 

Will Bachman  05:51

there is there like a split between the the the large animal farm animal kind of vet and the small animal kind of pet type cat and dog vets in vet school. Is there like two big things? Or

 

Kath Mertens  06:07

well, that’s such a good question. I would there is no practical split, but there’s historically there has been a huge kind of cultural and maybe even I don’t know philosophical split, and I was bound and determined that I was a you know large animal farm farm slash horse vet and very much not a cat and dog vet and I actually I can remember saying to one of my classmates oh I will never work in small animal medicine in fact I’ll be a drug sales rep before I work in small animal medicine and right now I am I am actually working part time as a small animal doctor, but okay, we’ll get there.

 

Will Bachman  06:45

All right, we’ll get there. All right.

 

Kath Mertens  06:46

Um, so yeah, the so there’s no split in the sense that we all um we all have to pass the same national board exam.

 

Will Bachman  06:56

Okay.

 

Kath Mertens  06:57

But there is a split in the sense that there are elective classes, and so it’s kind of like you can have a you can have an emphasis in vet school on a particular species or set of species.

 

Will Bachman  07:09

Okay, all right.

 

Kath Mertens  07:11

So, so anyway, I went from vet school to my first job out in Portland, Oregon. So how did I end up here? So, way back in Jackson, I had met and fallen in love with a guy who was a fly fishing guide, and he had graduated from college here in the Portland area. So that was his kind of main, whatever that was, his root here on the mainland. He actually grew up in Hawaii, and so we had actually kind of broken up for a bit, and then gotten back together. And by the time I graduated from vet school, he was living in Portland, running a small business, and we got married. And I came out here because he was here. Ultimately, got my first job here, or I mean, graduated with my first job, kind of lined up here in Portland, and it did not go well. I mean, you know, I guess I’m a firm believer that things work out for the best, and everything happens for a reason. In a lot of ways, that first job was kind of ended up in disaster, but in also a lot of ways it set me up for a lot of future success. So, but anyway, my first job was not a dream job. I think it’s I think it’s really kind of it’s really ideal if your first job is with a fabulous mentor, and you know you just kind of have this. I did not have a very confident sense that somebody had my back and was on my side and rooting for me and helping me to get ahead.

 

Will Bachman  08:47

It was without naming the employer. Can you tell us like what was the job? Like what kind of a job was it?

 

Kath Mertens  08:53

Sure. Yeah. So the job was working in an equine only practice, so a veterinary practice that serves horses only.

 

Will Bachman  09:02

Okay,

 

Kath Mertens  09:03

and it was actually a practice where I had interned as a veterinary student,

 

Will Bachman  09:08

but it

 

.

 

Kath Mertens  09:52

But my battery will last. Um. So you were asking. So this job was a yeah equine only practice. I had worked there as an. Interned during vet school, and at that, I think I was rather secure in that role of okay, I’m subordinate, and I’ll just follow directions. And coming back as a licensed veterinarian, it was a bit harder for me to kind of figure out what my role was and what my responsibilities were. And there is no no a bigger pardon in in the state of Oregon. There is a requirement that first year licensees work under supervision of someone, but in actual fact, my boss was not that interested in being a mentor,

 

 

Kath Mertens  12:24

So my first year out of vet school, I was working for a guy who legally had to mentor me, but unfortunately, I think philosophically did not want to mentor me. And so his ambivalence, along with my kind of insecurity, being a new graduate and not knowing how much responsibility I was capable of and or legally allowed to have, just it became awkward. So ultimately, I left that job under not good terms, and I did spend the next year and a half working as a small animal vet. There were a limited number of equine practices in the area, and I guess also I probably was under the limit of some sort of a non-compete clause, although I probably could have fought that. But anyway, the path of least resistance was certainly just to join a small animal practice. So I did that for about a year and a half, and it was there that I well, I mean, I surprised myself by actually enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would. I really, really love surgery, and so I just-I mean, I was doing very basic surgeries, just you know, a lot of spays and neuters, and maybe small mass removals and stuff like that. But definitely loved loved my time in the surgery suite. But will I may have been very hard to get along with in those years. I don’t know, but my second job also did not go well. This time, my boss liked me just fine, but my coworkers had complained about me, and my one of my problems in those years, and perhaps still, but was just kind of being rather outspoken, and I think I would almost call it-you know-I’m an animal person, so I kind of almost describe it as like fear aggressive, which is a concept in animal training, which we can get into. But when you think of a dog who’s aggressive, a lot of times that aggression is actually based on fear. So if the dog is for some reason feeling very defensive, they might, you know, they might think, well, the best defense is a good offense. So I feel like so that’s kind of what happened with this with this job. My colleagues were so it was interesting. I’d had my my annual review. You and my boss was like everything’s great, we love you, you’re fantastic. And then, but they’re like, oh, but sometimes there’s an impression by so and so that you’re not pulling your weight, and I was like, oh my god, that’s horrible. Like, you know, tell me more, or is this true? Am I not pulling my weight? And they’re like, no, no, you’re doing great. You’re meeting your goals, blah blah blah. So then, rather than be a little diplomatic about it, I went back into work the next day and was like, “All right, guys, which one of you thinks I’m not pulling my weight? And that went back to the boss, and the boss just came in and was like, “Kath, you’re out, more or less. So definitely, I, it’s I don’t know. I’m still learning my communication skills, I guess. But I think I definitely had a lot to learn in those days. So there I was, out of my second job, but I think I can’t remember if like they were paid me a little bit of a severance package or what. Like they, and they were willing to write me a good letter of reference. So it was kind of a, it wasn’t quite the same terms of dismissal as the first job.

 

Will Bachman  16:20

All right,

 

Kath Mertens  16:21

but anyway, ultimately, I was trying to figure out what to do, and I ended up. There was maybe the possibility of working for another equine practice. I definitely wanted to go back into equine medicine, so I interviewed with another equine practice in the area, but they were basically not hiring, or they wanted someone who was also willing to work on cattle and sheep and goats and that kind of thing. And so ultimately, what I did was I opened my own practice. So again, talk about things you never thought you were going to do, I know. Back in veterinary school, we had at that time we just had one like a one semester class on, you know, the business of veterinary medicine, which has changed diametrically in the past 25 years. But I remember in that class being just so annoyed that I had to take the class because I didn’t care anything about business. I was definitely not at all interested in business at Harvard. Probably stayed as far away from Econ 101 as I possibly could. Although in retrospect, I would love to take that class. So anyway, I was the kind of person who was like, “I will never run a business. This is stupid, and ultimately ended up running my own business, and it was great. I mean, it was quite a journey. I feel very lucky that I was able to do it. It afforded me what it didn’t pay me in finances. It paid me in time and flexibility and autonomy. So that was fantastic. I mean, it did. You know, it it it. I would say the business the business was profitable and paid me a pittance, but it was certainly not. We we were certainly relying on my husband at the time for dual income. So I had my own practice for about 22 years.

 

Kath Mertens  18:26

And yeah, and at the end of that time was it took several years of kind of deciding to make the change. But just it’s been four years ago this summer that I actually scaled my own practice way way back and took a job working part time as a small animal veterinarian for a national veterinary chain, I guess called Banfield Pet Hospital. They’re all over the country, so some of our some of our classmates might even take their pets to Banfield Pet Hospital, but yeah, it was kind of a long and circuitous route that brought me here. But here I am.

 

Will Bachman  19:11

And why did you decide to wind down your own equine practice?

 

Kath Mertens  19:17

Yeah, good question. Several reasons, and there’s one reason I I would like to focus on because I think it just would be helpful, or if it could help a classmate listening, I would love to share this, and that’s we’ll get back to this and that. But I think it’s important to me to share a discussion of imposter syndrome, but more than that, several things. So, for one thing, I-it’s hard to know what the biggest reason is-but one very compelling reason for me was my interest in animal behavior. And as an equine vet, I began to get more and more frustrated that I was. Taking care of, you know, the physical, basic needs of the animal, but really overlooking a lot of their kind of fundamental, maybe behavioral or training, or you might even say mental health needs. But I don’t want to get too soft. That’s kind of a soft science talking about the mental health of animals. But, but for example, I would go and vaccinate a horse, and let’s say this is a horse who’s terrified of needles, and so they won’t stand still for the injection. So the owner has to over those the horse and kind of use leverage and force to try to hold the horse still. We get the injection done, and meanwhile, the owner is telling me, you know, they’re embarrassed, and they’re telling me how naughty their horses, and blah blah. And these are horses who, you know, they’re not standing still for my needle, but they are highly trained to jump show jumps or you know, gallop cross country and jump obstacles, or herd cattle, or whatever it is. So I just felt like I was more and more coming up against this predicament of animals that were just completely misunderstood, and there was just a huge gap in kind of just behavioral Awareness. So it turned out I’m not sure what brought me here, but I ended up going to probably the only class member of the class of ’92 to go to the International Donkey Wellness Symposium, which is hosted every year at UC Davis, and I went there for some reason. I mean, obviously because I’m interested in animals, so I ended up at the Donkey Welfare Symposium. I guess you know you know why because horses are one thing, but donkeys are actually a whole different entity, and as a horse doctor, you do occasionally run across a donkey or a mule, and so I wanted to go and just hear as much as I could about kind of how to manage a donkey on the job. They are not only are they behaviorally quite different, but they are medically different enough to be exciting. So when I so this this lecture included some or this symposium included some very good lectures on donkey behavior. And I asked a question at one of these lectures. I said, “Hey, you know I’m a horse vet, and I feel very confident going up to any horse and kind of stepping back and doing an assessment and figuring out you know what the horse knows, what the horse doesn’t know in terms of how to interact with me, like how how safe the horse feels with me, another and which directly informs how safe I will be with that horse. Um, I said, but I really don’t necessarily know how to read donkey behavior and how to you know how to figure out how the donkey’s feeling. So, so anyway, after asking that question, some members in the audience came up and talked to me, and they said, “Hey, we we are positive reinforcement trainers, and we’re looking for veterinarians who are interested in this. Can we talk? So I was like, “What do you mean, positive reinforcement trainer? And they introduced me to the fact that, well, let me just go back.

 

Kath Mertens  23:34

So we have this image of me trying to vaccinate a horse, a domestic animal, beloved, well trained, but cannot handle basic husbandry procedure, and they were telling me about how large non-domestic animals in zoos, for example, are trained to stand and volunteer for venipuncture. So, like, literally, one of the classic videos is like of an African wild dog, for example, coming up to the the fence of of its enclosure and extending its head up in the air and exposing its jugular groove and voluntarily presenting that for the veterinarian to insert a needle and take blood.

 

Will Bachman  24:21

Wow!

 

Kath Mertens  24:22

So these are you know non-domestic, not trained animals that you could actually train to participate voluntarily in you know noxious, somewhat aversive procedures, and that is all accomplished through positive reinforcement training. And I was Absolutely fascinated, and that conference was, I think, in 2017 or 18, and basically since then I’ve just been completely obsessed with studying and practicing positive reinforcement training in horses.

 

Will Bachman  24:55

Okay,

 

Kath Mertens  24:55

and that that is what I do. So in terms. Of stopping my practice, I was becoming more and more interested in that, and I didn’t want to starve. And I felt like I was unlikely that I would make money studying this passion. So, so it the economics today are what they are. I can make I can literally make money four times faster as a small animal vet than as an equine vet. I mean, I’m working half as much and making twice as much, so that comes out to four times more efficient, I think. So it was really kind of a financial decision to say, hey, if I go work for this small animal practice two days a week, that’s going to free me up to spend the rest of my time studying horse behavior, and so that was the that was really the big thing. Just kind of the economics that having this other passion I wanted to pursue, and then just the economics of what was going to allow me to pursue that passion.

 

Will Bachman  25:54

And and okay, so tell us when you say you’re studying it, explain what that means. Is it like an academic rigorous study? Is it is you know yeah yeah what’s that look like in practice? What’s that mean?

 

Kath Mertens  26:10

Yeah, good question. I would say it looks relatively casual, and and maybe this is what I mean in terms of like I’m here. I am back at that stage in life where I’m trying to figure out exactly how to go about this thing that I’m very interested in. So, what it looks like really, I’m not doing it through any academic institution yet. There is a there’s a couple options for that within veterinary medicine. There is a specialty you can become board certified as a veterinary behaviorist. So that would be one option. Would be to you know go through that sort of academic training and come out as a you know board certified veterinary behaviorist. Another option which I’ve thought about is returning to graduate school and doing some kind of a PhD in animal behavior, and then the third option, which is really what I’m pursuing in the meantime, is just I have I acquired a horse who was an extreme behavior project, and I’ve been dedicating a lot of time to just using these really non-invasive positive reinforcement methods to retrain this horse. So it’s really just been a lot of personal experience and documentation of of how I’m going about it with this horse. And in the meantime, I have a small handful of other people that I teach, and so I’m just kind of learning by doing.

 

Will Bachman  27:43

Say more about the economics of those two paths. Like, what would be an example of if you go out and do a site visit for Equine Health, and I don’t know if you know what would be typical? You’re giving shots, or just doing an emergency visit, or like what would what would the cost of that be? What and what would I mean? What would the price to the horse owner be for that compared to your time, like you know, in the cat and dog hospital?

 

Kath Mertens  28:12

Yeah, good question. I mean, I think, and I’ll I’ll get back to that more specifically, but I think it’s really a question of volume and efficiency, and you can just see so many more patients per day in small animal. So the costs. So typically, like again, it’s been like four years since I was doing this kind of full time. But if I was going out to a farm to vaccinate a horse, it would be probably, let’s say, 100 to $150 for the vaccines, which may be an annual, annual or biannual event, and then I would be mobile, so I’d be driving my truck around to various farms, and that would incur a trip fee of about $60, you know, plus or minus any other supplies or things that come up. So, if I’m going out to a farm, I it is a you know more or less a $200 encounter, and I would say that the oh sorry,

 

Will Bachman  29:16

that’s it,

 

Kath Mertens  29:18

that’s it, my fair Harvard classmate, wonderful high pressure person.

 

Will Bachman  29:27

No, I mean that sounds that sounds like super cheap, right? Like you can’t you can’t do anything. You just as a as if you go to a human doctor, you know, see the if you go to one of these minute clinic things. I mean, you walk in; they’re not coming to you. You know, talking $300 or $400 or something, right?

 

Kath Mertens  29:48

Yes, absolutely, absolutely will. No, and I beg your pardon. I think you know this part of this is probably my own naivete of maybe never charging enough, but and you know this is what. I can make so much more when someone else is running the business because maybe they’re charging appropriately. But, but no, I would say it’s certainly typical to have if you’re having a vet come out to your farm just to do vaccines. Sure, 200, 250. Whereas if now that I’m in the clinic, if a patient is coming to me at the clinic, like I say, it’s a whole different paradigm because they are. It’s much more of a volume proposition, and they’re just like rather than seeing six to eight horses in a day, I’m seeing literally like 20 to 25 cats and dogs in a day, and a lot of these pets at the clinic I’m at are enrolled in so-called wellness plans, which are basically like payment plans for just preventative healthcare. So their actual out-of-pocket costs on the day not may not be that much, but Banfield, being a huge corporation, will track you know how much money I’m producing with each visit, and the typical what they want me to produce per patient on average is about $250.

 

Will Bachman  31:09

Wow! So okay,

 

Kath Mertens  31:10

so the actual numbers aren’t necessarily all that different, and proportionately, I would say large animal medicine is significantly less expensive than small animal medicine. I mean, the animals are much bigger, but we’re generally charging a lot less. But you know, historically, this is part of the huge culture shift between the large farm animal medicine and the the pet medicine. Historically, veterinary medicine was you know we were catering to Agriculture and it was much more of kind of maybe a commodities type business, or you know, we veterinary medicine really originated to to start caring for the horses who were the machines that were running the farms.

 

Will Bachman  31:53

Yeah,

 

Kath Mertens  31:54

and whether or not you treat your horse that’s pulling the plow or your cow that’s producing the milk depends upon how much that animal costs, and you know certainly farmers love their animals. It’s not it’s not a matter of how much they love the animal; it’s a matter of you know needing to keep the farm running. So

 

Will Bachman  32:13

it’s like you’re a track. You’re like a tractor mechanic, basically. I’m a

 

Kath Mertens  32:16

tractor mechanic. Yeah, for really really cute tractors.

 

Will Bachman  32:18

I got a question for you.

 

Kath Mertens  32:20

Yeah,

 

Will Bachman  32:21

I um I saw this statistic a while ago, and I just looked it up again, and I was kind of surprised by it. But help me understand what’s what are the trends driving this? I just looked up online here while we’re chatting. It says 87.3% of veterinary school applicants identify as female, and about 80% of current veterinary college students are are women. What what’s driving that that you know big shift towards women just dominating veterinary medicine?

 

Kath Mertens  32:56

Yeah, that’s a really good question, and certainly one that is talked about a lot in the industry, and I don’t think anyone is credited with knowing the answer. I mean, I think part of the trend has been this idea of-I was going to say of women kind of coming in maybe as secondary earners in the household, I don’t know that that really makes sense, but somehow, yeah, I don’t know. Somehow, I feel like, I mean, I think there’s been such a, and again, talk about my naivete, but there’s such a gender gap in terms of pay, pay equity, pay expectations, and somehow I think I think there really was a sense that women were willing to work for a little less than men. Possibly, it’d be fun to go into that rabbit hole with some some economists. Is it your sense

 

Will Bachman  34:01

that, like veterinary medicine, particularly if you’re working for more corporate on the small animal side, is it maybe more accommodating for women who want to pause for, you know, having kids than like being a medical doctor? Doctor,

 

Kath Mertens  34:20

yeah, perhaps it is. Perhaps it is, and I don’t. You know, none of this. I was going to say none of this means that it’s okay. I mean, I feel like my I have my college roommates are much more adept and skilled than I am in terms of talking about gender equity, and and I feel like it’s yeah. It shouldn’t it shouldn’t be the case that it’s hard for women to fit into you know whatever career they want to fit into. But I think perhaps veterinary medicine is like I say. There’s something about it that maybe has been easier for women to step into as well as continue that kind of gender. Norm goals of child rearing and something like that, but yeah, I think I mean part of it, you know, maybe also women are I don’t know we’re caregivers. We’re naturally you know tend to be more nurturing caregivers, and so it really the shift changed in kind of the early ’70s is when women started trickling into veterinary schools, and you know I don’t know what other socioeconomic changes were happening, but women were entering the workforce, and and vet med was a workforce that they enjoyed.

 

Will Bachman  35:42

All right. Let’s see. So you’re now kind of the new chapter. Tell us about. Let’s turn back to college. Tell us about any courses or professors you had at Harvard that continue to resonate with you in some way,

 

Kath Mertens  36:01

yeah. Good question. I’ve listened to our classmates answer this question, and my my first response or thought was, “Oh my gosh, I don’t know that I remember actually any of my courses or professors from Harvard. But there’s two things I will mention. So, in terms of professor, I don’t even remember this professor’s name, but he was a chem. Was it chem 25? I have no idea. It was an organic chemistry class. Okay. Um, and I loved, loved, loved organic chemistry, and I had just a full on academic crush on this professor who was probably in his 30s and so good and so intelligent, and it was just so much fun to study this fascinating science. And I went to his office hours, and again, that was just so intellectually invigorating. And then the first exam came along, and I got you know C minus or something. Who knows what? But I was so mortified by how poorly I’d done on this exam that I never went back to office hours, and so that’s something I remember very clearly as a you know a lesson to learn from. Like I you know my my wise my I wish I could go back and you know keep going back to office hours and figuring out figure out how to thrive in that class and not not be so concerned about whatever my my external grade implying that I was a failure and not worthy to be there kind of thing. So I remember that experience very well. And then another thing that sticks with me most powerfully from Harvard is, and again, I’m afraid I can’t remember this woman’s name, but I can picture her very well. I played ice hockey on the varsity hockey team, and our we had an athlete. The team had a dedicated athletic trainer who was just fantastic, and she. I remember, at some point she sat us down. I guess we were all seniors or about to move on or something. And she sat us down, and her advice was to please, you know, as you go on in life, surround yourself with people who love you. And I remember at the time I thought, well, that’s weird. Like we should be challenging ourselves and trying to do the hardest thing, and you know, it’s all about accomplishment and achievement, and you know, competition and winning and being, you know, pushing yourself. Not this. That just sounds awfully soft, and to just surround yourself with people that love you. What? That’s that’s just. I don’t know. It was nothing I had heard before, I guess. But as the years have turned, I feel like that’s that’s really some of the best and most useful advice that I have ever heard, and I credit her entirely. And I know my teammates listening to this will remember exactly what her name is, and and yeah,

 

Will Bachman  39:02

and. how have you put that in practice?

 

Kath Mertens  39:06

Surround yourself with people who love you. Well, I think you know I alluded briefly earlier to imposter syndrome, and that was one thing. It weighed on me heavily as a independent practitioner. So I was a solo practitioner. I was me in my truck, and occasionally a veterinary technician that was with me. But I spent a lot of time by myself driving to farms and taking care of animals, and driving to the next farm again by myself. And I was alone with my own thoughts. I was quite cruel to myself, and spent a lot of time wondering what you know, wondering what I had done wrong, or trying to figure out how. Just really doubting myself, I guess. Really questioning my abilities on the job, and this didn’t, honestly, it didn’t. It doesn’t pan out to any objective thing. I mean, my client’s feedback was. I mean, obviously, you can’t please everyone, but generally, it was a successful practice, and clients love me, and blah blah blah. So, but I spent a lot of time just being really-I have spent a lot of time being really, really hard on myself, and it’s been incredibly important to just my mental health and kind of cognitive behavioral well-being to just realize how inappropriate that negative self talk is, and you know, surrounding yourself with people who are going to lift you up, not beat you down. And I guess you know the the most important person that was beating me down was my own self. But surrounding yourself with people who love you is is a helpful antidote.

 

Will Bachman  40:42

All right, so classmates who love Kath Olman, now known as Kath Mertens, how can they reach out to you? What’s the best way to find you online?

 

Kath Mertens  40:54

I have a very weak social media presence, but I am on. I do have a Facebook page, Cass Mertens. But the best I really am not on Facebook. But if they went through Facebook Messenger, they could probably find me. My business name is Merton’s Mammals, and there is an Instagram page, Merton’s Mammals, which has a few training videos that I’ve been doing, and probably the best way to reach me would really just be directly to my email and or cell phone, which I’m happy to put those details in the notes if you would like.

 

Will Bachman  41:32

All right, we’ll include those in the show notes. Kath, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you.

 

Kath Mertens  41:37

Thank you so much. Well, thank you so much for doing this project. I appreciate

 

41:40

it.