Far and Wild: Adventures of the Worldwide Vet with Dr Cliff Redford

Dr. Cliff Redford, known as the “Worldwide Vet,” joined Zazie and Kristi to talk about his adventures and his new book, Far and Wild.

By Zazie Todd, PhD 

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Listen to episode 69 of The Pawsitive Post wherever you get your podcasts, watch on Youtube, and read the show notes below.

Far and Wild: Adventures of the Worldwide Vet with Dr Cliff Redford

We talked about:

•     How Dr. Cliff started volunteering as a veterinarian
•     Dr. Cliff shared some of the stories from the book, including of a monkey that he helped in India
•     The street cats of Athens
•     One-eyed Jack
•     Helping Ukrainians to take their pets with them when they fled at the start of Russia's war on Ukraine
•     What it's like working with a wide range of species
•     Writing about veterinary procedures for a general audience
•     What he's learned about the human-animal relationship
•     The book Dr. Cliff recommended is Cujo by Stephen King

Dr. Cliff Redford, known as the “Worldwide Vet,” has been passionate about animals since childhood. After graduating from Ontario Veterinary College in 1998, he opened Wellington Veterinary Hospital in Markham, Ontario, where he still practices today. Beyond domestic pets, Dr. Cliff volunteers globally, treating wildlife and working with local animal rescues.

Far and Wild: Adventures of the Worldwide Vet is just published and available wherever books are sold.

The Far and Wild website: https://farandwild.ca/

Dr. Cliff on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drcliffworldwidevet/

The conversation with Dr. Cliff about Far and Wild

Zazie: We're all used to thinking of vets as important members of our local community, but did you know that some vets actually travel far and wide in order to help animals in other countries?

We're actually joined today by one such vet, who is Dr. Cliff Redford, known as the Worldwide Vet.

And we're going to learn about some of the animals that he's helped in far flung places. And he's the author of a new book, Far and Wild: Adventures of the Worldwide Vet.

And we're thrilled to have him here with us. So welcome to the Pawsitive Post in Conversation.

I'm Zazie Todd. I'm joined as always by my co host, Kristi Benson. Hey, Kristi, is Apricat with you today?

He is.

Kristi: I think he is around somewhere. He'll show up at an inopportune moment at some point.

Zazie: Then we'll likely hear a sound from Apricat. That would be awesome. So as I said, we're here with Dr. Cliff Redford. Dr. Redford is known as the worldwide Vet. He's been passionate about animals since childhood.

After graduating from Ontario Veterinary College in 1998, he opened Wellington Veterinary Hospital in Markham, Ontario, where he still practices today. But beyond domestic pets, Dr. Cliff volunteers globally treating wildlife and working with local animal rescues as well.

And so his new book, Far and Wild: Adventures of the Worldwide Vet is out soon and we're thrilled to be able to talk to you about it. Dr. Cliff, thank you for joining us.

Dr Cliff: Thank you so much for having me.

Zazie: Please, can I. We can see it behind your shoulder, but please, will you just hold a copy of it up to the camera so that our viewers on YouTube can see it as well?

That's a really gorgeous cover there with I guess sunset photo or sunrise. It's really beautiful.

Dr Cliff: Yeah. Isn't that pretty? It's. It's kind of a Indiana Jones version of a veterinarian story. So I like to joke that just this Indiana Jones is a little bit more bearded and a little shorter and chubbier than, than the movie version, but there you go,

Zazie: so you're a vet in Markham, Ontario, but now you travel the world helping animals. So what made you decide to start traveling as a vet?

Dr Cliff: Yeah, it started 10 years ago in Jamaica and my kids joke that it's a midlife crisis or it was a midlife crisis. And you know, they might be partly correct and that's fine, but the reality is is I wish it was a lot more noble.

A big part of my first trip to Jamaica for three weeks was to film my adventures because I was looking to pitch a, like an advanced adventure travel animal show which never quite happened.

Maybe it will happen in the future, who knows? But I fell in love with the, the, the world of volunteer travel. And I just started going further and further into more and more extreme places,

sometimes dragging my kids with me.

And it's, it's what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. Like when I retire from my clinic, I'll still be some old gray haired veterinarian traveling the world and trying to help out.

Zazie: Awesome.

Kristi: So we know that you've got a lot of incredible stories in your book, so we're going to ask about a few of them.

Can you tell us about a monkey that you helped in India?

Dr Cliff: Yeah, Little Clementine is what we ended up naming her, and she's a rhesus monkey. And she, we assume she was hit by a car. She was found near kind of like a protected zone, almost like a, a large park where a lot of the monkeys go, the tourists go and feed them.

And the monkeys in India, most of them or most of the time are treated very, very well and taken care of. So Little Clementine was very chubby, she was well fed,

and they found her at the bottom of this sort of mountainous area or this cliff. And she had a laceration on her forehead, she had a broken jaw,

bruised eyes, that sort of thing, and this tiny little injury on her paw.

And this is, look, this is the first time I was dealing with a primate,

which was quite spectacular. It was like dealing with another human who's dealing with a child.

And the broken jaw was easy to deal with and the laceration was easy to deal with. But we ended up discovering that she had some nerve damage to her hand.

So, so things became very, very difficult. Multiple surgeries, multiple complications.

But it really,

it taught me sort of how to, how to work or, or it strengthened my ability to work with these, these people, this animal rescue group in India, in Hyderabad, India.

And we all came together and, and you'll have to read the book, but hopefully it was a positive ending.

Kristi: I think one of the incredible things about vets is that you work with so many species. I think like as someone who's, we're more familiar with the medical field as us, so when you first said you're working with a primate, I just thought, oh, my God, did you get any,

did you get even a single class, a single module in a single class about working with primates? How like, how was that? Just like being thrown into that situation.

Dr Cliff: Yeah. And we'd, we'd had no,

no training for primates. But we do graduate. And this is true for most veterinarian colleges around the world. Certainly true for Ontario Vet College, where I graduated one of the, one of the top schools in the world.

We get a lot of comparative anatomy, comparative physiology,

but I graduated in 1998 and this trip to India was probably 2018,

so 20 years after graduating.

And during those 20 years I had only dealt with cats and dogs. So you, you, you lose, you lose things quite a bit. But I was a very, very good, I am a very, very good soft tissue surgeon.

And prior to the trip to India, because I'd been to Jamaica, because I'd been to Greece, and I'd realized that I was being introduced to creatures we do not see in Canada, and I certainly don't see in my clinic.

I had started volunteering once a week at a wildlife rehab location called Shades of Hope. It was only supposed to be once a week for six months. I did it for seven years because I learned so much.

And while there are no monkeys in Canada, it certainly taught me how to think out of the box and how to work with these non veterinarians.

And the reality is, is if you can fix a broken jaw in a dog, you can fix a broken jaw in a person or a monkey in this case.

We, we do like to joke, or not really joke. We do like to say. Veterinarians like to say if you're stuck on a, on a deserted island for the rest of your life, like Gilligan's Island, and you have one type of doctor to be with you.

I'm sorry, don't pick an M.D., pick a veterinarian.

We are, we are much more able to do a little bit of everything. Right. We're a jack of all trades. So while it was difficult and I did have to rely on some of the experience of the veterinarians there,

that's the beauty of these trips is I get to learn so much and, and they learn from me and we work together, so it's always a challenge, and it still is.

I still do this traveling 10 years later, and I'm still faced with things that I'm not really experienced at, but am able to figure things out.

Zazie: Awesome. So. And you do have some domestic animals in the book because you've worked with street cats in Athens. So I was wondering if you could tell us about that.

Dr Cliff: Yeah, that was a great trip. So I was visiting some friends and family in Athens, and it was really going to be a proper vacation, you know, 10 days there and.

But I just wanted to help out. And there was this nine lives, nine lives street cat rescue in Athens.

And the plan was to just travel with. With Cordelia, the woman that runs the rescue, for a couple hours, two days in a row.

And we were vaccinating street cats, and it was these colonies, and Cordelia knew the names of all of them, you know, hundreds of cats, and she knew their histories and their names, and they recognized her and they would come up to her when they needed help.

And I was vaccinating them and sometimes treating them for various conditions or she found one that was injured. We would scoop it up into a cat trap box and bring it to a local veterinarian.

But the amazing thing about that trip,

you know, there was the challenge that there was a wildfire that had burned down this community.

So I helped out with that as well. But the cool thing about the street cats rescue is it's right in the heart of Athens. And if you guys have ever been to Athens,

the Acropolis and the Parthenon is right there. And the Acropolis, the, the temple of Athena, which is where Athens gets its name from,

is right there. And that's where Hippocrates, or Hippocrates as my Greek family members call them,

that's when Hippocrates, that's where he created medicine or where Western medicine was founded. So it was very personal to me to, to have. I get emotional just thinking about it.

To have literally above my shoulder, like in the background,

the, the.

The location where Western medicine was created and perfected.

It was like they were watching me taking care of these, taking care of these cats and, and guiding my hands. So it's. I go there regularly and I still volunteer there regularly.

And it gets me every single time. I tear up every time I go there.

Kristi: Now, there's also a story in your book about One Eyed Jack. So who was this One Eyed Jack?

Dr Cliff: One Eyed Jack? You were asking Kristi about working with other species. And this is when I quickly realized how little I Knew, but how much I could figure things out.

When we first went to Jamaica again, our very first trip,

almost our very first surgery, was at the Hope Zoo in Kingston, which is much a sanctuary as, as a, you know, your standard zoo.

And Jack, and we eventually called him One Eyed Jack, which everyone can figure out why Jack is an American crocodile.

And there are no croc. There are no crocodiles in, in Canada.

They do not, they do not like our cold winters and they can't migrate south fast enough. So I think there's no American crocodiles because of the tariffs. I think that's the real reason

Zazie: we

Dr Cliff: don't let's stop at the border. We don't let them know, like, no, no, you're not allowed to come here. Even though our medical system is far superior.

Kristi: I'm just throwing down the glove. All right.

Dr Cliff: I'm a hockey player. Of course I dropped the gloves,

so.

So Jack had been shot in the eye by a frightened farmer and shot with a spear gun. And the eye had become infected and it was causing problems.

So they said, we need to remove the eye. And I said to him, look, I've done an enucleation in dogs and cats before. I've never done one on a, on a crocodile.

I haven't done anything on a crocodile. And they said,

just pretend it's a dog with a dry skin condition and you'll be okay. And the reality is, is by the time you get them sedated, which was an adventure on its own, and put in the nerve block, which was also quite difficult, once you cover it up with that green drape,

the surgical drape,

then you kind of go into this zone. And I could almost imagine that this was a very large, funny smelling dog with a very dry skin condition.

And taking out, taking out body parts or taking things apart is a lot easier than putting things back together.

So Jack became One Eyed Jack. And then when I returned to Jamaica nine years later,

right after Hurricane Melissa, which was about 12 months ago,

I quickly found out that not only is One Eyed Jack still alive and doing well, getting fat at the zoo, but Jack's name is actually Jill.

She was a female.

She was a female. And we didn't know. And you know, so she, she continues to wink at us every day and she's doing very well.

Zazie: That's awesome. And I, I love that she's really Jill.

Yes, excellent.

So you also have some stories in the book that relate to you going to a war zone, which obviously is a very difficult situation. And we're used to Hearing about war zones from the perspective of people, understandably,

but animals also get caught up in wars. And so you went.

Your book sheds some light on Russia's war in Ukraine from the perspective of animals. So can you tell us something about the important work that you did there?

Dr Cliff: Yeah, I ended up going to Ukraine twice.

The first time was right at the Polish Ukraine border.

And we were situated. My daughter actually joined me. It was only about a month into the war. I had heard that Vets Without Borders was going to. But I knew it was going to take them a while to get things set up, and it did.

It took them about six weeks.

Whereas when you're a solo volunteer veterinarian, you literally just text your children,

who are, you know, they're all grown up, out of the house. And I said, hey, guys, this was on a Sunday. I said, hey, guys, I think I'm going to be going to the Polish border in a couple of days to help out.

My daughter text me back saying, I'm in Spain. She was in, like, a European backpacking trip by herself, says, I'm in Spain. Get me a ticket and I'll meet you there.

And on. Within five days, I was in a plane. So I was able to get there really quickly. The thing is, is the reason Vets Without Borders was going and myself as well, is.

And we don't think about this. So people, you know, the. The. The war. The war opens up, Ukraine's under attack, people have to flee.

And of course they want to bring their animals. Their animals are family members.

And maybe the animals aren't vaccinated or people don't have time to grab the vaccine certificate. That's reasonable.

And so they were not being allowed into Poland unless their animals were vaccinated, healthy, not injured, not dehydrated. And a lot of them were injured, sick, dehydrated, or not vaccinated.

So I was able to help people get to safety by helping their animals go with them. Because there are those Ukrainians that were saying, well, we're not leaving if we can't bring our dog or our cat or one.

One woman had her pet slugs.

Snails. No, slugs. It was slugs. She had pet slugs that I had to help treat.

Air quotes. Treat.

Where do you. Where do you give the rabies vaccine? I don't know.

But I was able to help them.

And then the thing is, is I fell in love with the Ukrainian people. We had spent one day in Lviv that I ended up going back four years ago in the summer of 22 but this time without my daughter, because I was going into the war zone.

I went into Kharkiv and for a brief period into the Donbass region.

And I was working with an animal rescue group that had chosen to stay.

The veterinarians had left the city,

but they left. One veterinarian left their keys to the clinic and gave it to the animal rescue.

So I was able to be their veterinarian. And basically military groups would,

like the army, the Ukrainian army, and the allied forces would be going through buildings that had been bombed or communities where there was fighting,

and if they found an animal that was homeless, shot,

injured from the falling rubble,

they would call us up and then we would go pick it up, or we'd have them bring the. The animal to us.

And so I was able to help out that way, but it got. It got pretty hairy. It got pretty dangerous.

You know,

I had some nightmares afterwards. There was a little bit of PTSD afterwards.

But it turned into, by far the most fulfilling, rewarding trip I've ever done and really, really solidified the joy that I have in doing these.

These trips. I certainly would wish that there was no war and I wouldn't have to go and. And deal with something like that. But I'm so thankful for the people in Ukraine for.

For welcoming me and allowing me to help out.

Zazie: I'm so glad you could help. And I saw a clip, actually, on tv. I think it must have been from the first visit, because your daughter was in the clip. You were talking to Cameron then your daughter.

I thought that was very cool that she was able to go there, be with you, and that must have been such a meaningful thing to be able to go and do.

Dr Cliff: Yeah, she's done a lot of these trips with me,

and she's a. She's a chip off the old block. She's very adventurous, like her father.

Sometimes gets into trouble like her father.

But it's always fun traveling with my children, for sure.

Kristi: So having worked in so many places around the world, do you have, like, what have you learned about sort of anything about the universal. The universality of the human relationship with animals?

Dr Cliff: Yeah, the universality is a great way of putting it.

You know, I've been to some. Some places that are very unique, you know, very different from your average North American situation.

You know, different languages, different religions.

In India, I mean, in Hyderabad, India, there are in one city, multiple languages, multiple religions,

very different socioeconomic situations.

Yet at least the people I worked with, which, you know, the majority of the people in all these places, I went to still had that same fascination and same love for animals that the three of us have and your listeners have and your viewers have.

And it's really cool to,

especially, again, to share it with my children to, To. To teach them and to teach the people that are reading the book or, or watching some of my videos on.

On the news,

that no matter how different these people are around the world, we have a lot of similarities. And it. It really does bring us together, you know, so hopefully Kristi and Zazie, hopefully the Canadians and the Americans can find that, that uniqueness, that togetherness, and forget about how we're different and.

And remember how we're similar.

And maybe it's the love of animals that bring our two countries together. Who knows?

Zazie: I think the love of animals definitely brings lots of people together.

So you've been talking to us about some of the vet procedures that you did, and in the book, you go into some of those and you talk about the ways that you were able to diagnose issues and treat the animals.

And some of that is kind of a bit technical, but you're able to explain it like you just explained things to us brilliantly.

So what was it like writing about the technical vet side of things for a general audience?

Dr Cliff: Yeah, that's a great question. I mean,

when I wrote the book, I was basically going back to my journals. That's how it started.

So I had been journaling well before the Jamaica trip, and so I was able to go back and just sort of relive these moments.

And when I got to a point where I had to describe a procedure or a disease or something of that nature, where it got technical,

honestly, I would imagine I'm talking to one of my pet owners, one of my clients,

and I've been a Veterinarian now for 28 years.

As you can tell, I'm very chatty.

So I've learned to simplify it.

And although two of my three children are probably going to be entering the nursing field,

no one in my family right now has any sort of medical background other than me.

So it's just like being at the dinner table and explaining to people,

you know, and we do talk about surgeries at the dinner table sometimes.

So it was. It was kind of routine for me to be able to do that. Now, the editor, ECW Press, my publisher,

and Jen, my editor,

did do a great job in saying, I don't fully understand this, or this word's a little too technical. Could you maybe put in brackets what it means?

Or I would actually break the word down into its original root meanings, that sort of thing.

But I think,

I think it's, it's reader friendly, you know that you don't have to have a high level science background to, to pick up on it. And, and the reality is, is I'm too old now to try and sound smart.

No one questions that I'm a little, I don't look like a little boy anymore like I did when I graduated. So I can speak in regular English and people still know that I'm the old guy in the clinic.

Kristi: Did you have, was there any stories that your editor was like, this is just too gross.

Dr Cliff: Yeah,

nothing that was too gross. But I did. So when I, I had gone to, to find different publishing companies, sort of the big four, big five, and they all turned me down.

I almost got one of them, but they all turned me down. And then I found ECW, but by the time I found ECW, my book was written and at least first draft was written, which I think really impressed them and, and they thought it would be easy then.

Problem was it was 330 pages and now it's 270.

They were, they basically said it's too long and we got to cut a bunch of this stuff out.

And that was tough. That was because I, I was so emotionally attached to so many of these stories. It's a very personal story, very personal book.

But you know, they ended up not having me cut out medical stuff or gross things.

I did have to cut out some of this stuff regarding the Ukraine Russian war.

I did come from Ukraine with a bit of a,

let's say a very opinionated opinion or a very opinionated mind about the Russian army. And I shouldn't have that because they're being forced to do this as well to fight.

But there were some comments that I had to remove. The other thing too is again,

that first trip was about trying to get this TV show going.

And so the first draft of the book,

there was a lot about that. There was a lot about doors being slammed in my faces, so to speak, and, and TV companies saying no and the frustrations and, and, and the heartbreak I was, I was feeling.

And they actually said, we're going to take this out. We're going to recommend you take out most of this side story. Let's just focus on the animals. But other than that, they were,

they were fine to have me talk about broken bones and,

and, and you know,

pus filled abdomens and you know, eyeballs coming out of crocodiles and even the size of the testicles on little itty bitty bats.

I still talk about those.

So, no, they were pretty cool about all of it.

Zazie: Well, I think maybe the book will open doors for a TV show because you've got such amazing stories and I know everybody's going to love reading the book and it would definitely work,

I think, on tv. So fingers crossed.

Any case, you found an amazing Canadian publisher to go with, so that's good.

Dr Cliff: I'm very, very happy. And we now say, forget about tv. We've got to know who's going to play me in the movie.

Zazie: That's excellent. Are you gonna do.

Kristi: Do you have like a list of, of contenders?

Dr Cliff: You know, you know, it's funny.

Everyone assumes they gotta look like me, right? Like, if I'm like, what about, what about Ryan Reynolds, A good Canadian boy? And they're like, Ryan Reynolds, they don't have to look like me.

That doesn't matter. I. I just want somebody who can act because this is a very personal, very emotional, emotion driven story.

And I would say whoever gets to act in it,

if this ever happens, no one's ever actually said this is going to happen. So I don't want you guys to think that this is a deal, but,

like, this would be a good role for Ryan Reynolds. It could get him out of the comedy,

sort of goofy side of things.

And he can still have an action role.

There can still be some humor, but he can be crying,

you know, at the bedside of a rhesus monkey in India or dealing with a abandoned puppy that's got parvovirus in Egypt. You know, like, this is a, this is a gritty, dramatic role that they could definitely win an Oscar for, I think if they do it.

If they do it right. Or it could be a female, it could be a female. It doesn't have to necessarily be a male. So it doesn't really matter. The animals are the real stars of this story.

Kristi: My mind did hop too. Oh, this would be an interesting role for a woman. So, yeah, it would be.

Dr Cliff: I think it'd be very. I think it'd be very, very good. And it would, it would bring out the feminine side of my story, which would be great.

Kristi: So we always ask our guests to recommend a book that they've been reading. So do you have something?

Dr Cliff: I do share.

So this, I've been getting into, like, older books recently, and while I've never read this, this is definitely an older book. It's kind of funny that a veterinarian is reading Cujo by Stephen King.

I'm not really A Stephen King fan in the sense of. I don't really read horror books. I don't find this. This scary.

I do find it tragic.

The poor dog, all the dog needed was a rabies vaccine and he would have been fine.

So people need to vaccinate their animals or else the Saint Bernard becomes rabid and becomes a monster in this community.

So. But I'm. I'm getting out of this book's amazing. I'm getting out of this book a lot different things than what I think most. Most readers get because I'm. I'm mostly feeling bad for the dog.

I'm not. I'm not worried as much about the people. I feel bad about this poor dog that just wasn't protected by his owners by getting a rabies vaccine. But it's excellent.

I encourage anyone, unless you have a St. Bernard, don't read it if you have a St. Bernard.

But any other. Any other pet owner I think could read that book.

Kristi: I think Stephen King. Didn't Stephen King write a style guide? I went through a phase where I just read, like, writing style guides.

I think he wrote a style guide, and I think it was really good.

Like, I.

If I remember, if I'm thinking of the right, like, popular fiction author, it was really. It was very interesting and well done.

Dr Cliff: Yeah, I mean, the guy's. The guy's a genius. He's doing books and books and books a year. Like, it's just he. He ended up writing so many books that he started writing books under a pseudonym,

under a new name,

simply because he didn't want people just grabbing the book because it was a Stephen King book. And of course, those ended up being bangers as well.

So. He's super talented, but I do curse his name every time I read this book because of what he's done to this poor dog.

Zazie: Yeah.

Well, that's awesome. And Stephen King is also on a roll on this podcast in terms of recommendations from people,

so that's fun.

So your book, Far and Wild: Adventures of the Worldwide Vet,

I think that will be out now by the time this podcast goes out, so people can rush out and buy it and read about all these amazing stories. We've loved hearing about the book.

Thank you for telling us about it. If people want to know more about you, where should they go?

Dr Cliff: So they can check out the book's website, which is farandwild.ca and then that has links to my regular website. And then if you're on Instagram,

drcliffworldwide vet. Dr. Cliff worldwide vet. Any of those would be good.

Zazie: So I'll put those links in the show notes for people.

And before we go, I'd just like to give a special shout out to our listeners in Victoria, BC. Thank you so much for being with us. And wherever you're listening from, I hope you've enjoyed this show and if you did, please tell a friend friend about it so that they can enjoy hearing all these adventures too.

Thank you and we will see you next time. Bye bye.

Kristi: See you later.

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