How to Educate Clients on Ozone Therapy for Animals

You’ve purchased ozone therapy equipment, and you’re so very excited to get rolling with this new modality. You have a patient (Spot) in mind who you KNOW will benefit from the healing power of ozone therapy. BUT, you have Spot’s mom (Sally) who is not ready to roll with this new modality because she doesn’t realize what ozone therapy is or what it can do. Sally only believes what she’s heard about ozone therapy, which is virtually nothing. She tells you over and over that she refuses to put Spot in danger’s way or have him serve as a “test case” for your new toy. Sally is relentless!

Does the above scenario sound familiar? If so, I am going to help you help your clients understand that the benefits of ozone therapy far outweigh the risks and choosing not to do ozone therapy. And, I’m going to walk you through ways to explain ozone therapy in layman’s terms so that your clients will rave about how magnificent you are and how you worked tirelessly to cure their pets when every other veterinarian and specialist just told them to “say your good-byes.”

I’ve placed myself in the shoes of each of your clients while writing this blog. And, I can tell you wholeheartedly that I have actually walked miles and miles in those shoes before knowing anything about ozone therapy. You can even call me Sally if you like.

Explaining something completely foreign to someone is like baking bread in the 1800’s. You have to start from scratch and take it step by step.

 

#1 – What is ozone therapy?

Taking time to hold a conversation with your clients on what ozone therapy is should be Step One.

You may want to let them know that ozone therapy is a MEDICAL treatment and not just some fad that holistic vets are trying out. After all, you are a licensed veterinarian, and you don’t do fads.

As you’ve learned, ozone therapy is all about decreasing inflammation and increasing oxygen utilization, so explaining the importance that these things play in an animal’s daily life is something you might want to share with your clients.

You can also tell your clients that, like humans, their pets’ bodies wear down as they get older making them more susceptible to pain, fatigue, viruses, bacteria, cancer, etc. Aging is surely not for wimps!! The fact that the cells in older bodies don’t utilize oxygen properly like they did in their younger years is something that can be easily explained. Adding that ozone therapy enables cells to regulate oxygen and then use that oxygen to create energy to heal will further backup your explanation about what ozone therapy is.

Understanding that chronic inflammation is a serious part of many diseases will also help your clients connect the dots.

 

#2 – Why Should They Care?

As a Sally myself, the first thing I would ask my vet if she wanted to do some therapy I’d never heard of before on my pup would be, “Why are you going to do ozone therapy on my dog? Why can’t you just give him a supplement or a shot to make it go away? I’m not okay with this.” But, since I absolutely love my vet, I place my trust in her and know that she will do what’s best for my pet, just as your clients do with you. Love or not, however, I would still need to hear my vet’s reasons for suggesting ozone therapy for my boy.

 

1. Since each of your patients will be struggling with different illnesses, your clients need to know that ozone therapy is a very specific treatment for a very broad range of illnesses. Because it helps modify how the body responds, ozone can safely be used to treat many different conditions on a root level. Being in your clients’ shoes, this would make me think that I’m getting a bang for my buck because ozone therapy could potentially help my dog with several of the issues he has.

 

2. Your clients will be interested in knowing that ozone therapy destroys bacteria, viruses, fungi, and protozoa. Ozone therapy goes in for the kill—literally. And, being a Sally, I’d want to know that, despite my love for all living creatures, ozone therapy could help to detoxify and eliminate whatever it is that is harming my pup.

 

3. Telling your clients that ozone therapy will reduce inflammation in their pets thereby taking away some of the pain they experience should go a long way. For icing on the cake, you can tell your clients that ozone therapy will actually strengthen the immune system by improving immune response. Most of your clients will know that improving immunity improves overall health. To a Sally, this sounds like a no brainer.

 

4. Something else that may really help you to explain ozone therapy to your clients is pointing out that ozone therapy doesn’t just treat symptoms. Rather, ozone therapy improves the body’s ability to destroy the root cause of the problem without damaging healthy cells or further straining the body because of nasty side effects. This is HUGE to us Sallies because we just don’t have the funds to come and see you all the time. To put it bluntly—your clients would love to have coffee with you from time to time, but they’d rather not see you on a regular basis. And, this is EXACTLY where and why ozone therapy enters the picture.

None of your clients want their pets to suffer needlessly. Putting a sink stopper at the bottom of the Niagara Falls won’t stop it from flowing. Likewise, treating symptoms will not make an illness disappear. Anytime you can tell a Sally that you are going to treat her beloved Spot and potentially make the source of the problem go away, you can expect a very long hug.

 

5. Making sure that your clients know that ozone therapy improves circulation, which, in turn, helps speed up wound healing will definitely appeal to those clients who bring a pet in with any type of laceration, bite, gash, burn, abrasion, avulsion, rash, or hot spot.

 

6. It can also be beneficial to tell your clients that ozone therapy can increase mitochondrial function. (A Sally will then ask what mitochondrial function is, so be prepared to explain it.) Ozone therapy does this by improving oxygen utilization resulting in the body’s ability to operate optimally.

 

7. Another point you may want to drive home to your clients is that ozone therapy is synergistic with many other treatments and can improve the effects of vitamins, hormones, herbs, homeopathics, and even pharmaceuticals. This Sally, for one, has her Spot on all sorts of supplements, healthy food, herbs, etc., and knowing that ozone therapy will enhance these just make ozone therapy seem like a full-blown hero.

 

#3– I’m Still Not Convinced that it Even Works

After all that time and effort you just spent explaining the details of ozone therapy, a Sally will now have the gall to ask how you know it’s going to work on Spot.

After swallowing your knee jerk response, you can tell her that ozone therapy is a proven medical treatment. It’s extremely effective and has very few, if any, side effects. In fact, ozone therapy may be a littler newer in the veterinarian world, but it’s no preemie to the human world. Ozone therapy originated over 100 years ago in human medicine.

If you have any clients interested in the science behind ozone therapy, you could share a scientific study or two with them since there are hundreds of them out there. Here are a few links to dozens of studies: https://www.zotero.org/groups/46074/isco3_ozone/collections/73RBSPT3 and https://ojs.uv.es/index.php/JO3T/index

Quite often a Sally can be comforted knowing that other pet parents are using ozone therapy and that Spot isn’t the first test pilot for this amazing treatment. Sharing your success stories with a Sally is both encouraging and reassuring. If your Sally wants further proof of this, O3Vets’ YouTube Testimonial playlist contains testimonials from veterinarians and pet parents alike who have used ozone therapy and can testify that it is truly as amazing as this blog makes it seem.

 

 

#4 – How is Ozone Therapy Administered and Does it Hurt?

At this point, your Sally may be open to finding out how ozone therapy would be done on Spot. Depending on the illness being treated, explaining to Sally the administration method would be the next step. (WARNING—If rectal insufflation is one of these treatment methods, a Sally may start to wig out and tell you that you will NOT be putting ozone gas into Spot via the bum. The best way to handle this may be to tell her that rectal insufflation is considered the best overall administration method AND it is not as costly as some other methods.)

Since your clients love their pets to pieces, one of their main concerns may be that ozone therapy could be painful, especially if done rectally. No, no, and no! Ozone therapy is not a painful treatment. In fact, there really should be zero pain unless it requires the use of a needle to draw blood or infuse ozone into the body.

To further ease the minds of your clients, it may helpful if you show them what equipment and accessories are going to be used for the ozone therapy treatments you administer.

 

#5 – How Much is Ozone Therapy Going to Cost Me?

Unfortunately, money is ALWAYS an issue when a sick animal enters your clinic. An average Sally doesn’t have pet insurance and isn’t going to be able to afford every single treatment and medicine that can be tried on Spot. She WILL ask you how much ozone therapy is going to cost.

The reality is that ozone treatments can run anywhere from $35 – $250 depending on the method of administration that is used and where you live. Helping your clients understand the long-term benefits and how ozone therapy can help to reduce the cost of other treatments can go a long way, but, ultimately, the results are what matters. Heal the pet and the cost will become a non-issue. If you need more information on what you should be charging for a treatment, please email us at info@o3vets.com, and we’d be happy to help you.

 

#6 – How Frequently Do I Need to Come in for Ozone Therapy Treatments?

After learning the cost of ozone therapy treatments, a Sally will start adding costs up in her head very quickly. And, there’s no doubt about it, she will ask you how often she will need to bring Spot in for treatments. You will have to explain to her that no two animals are the same in their response to ozone therapy and that each animal reacts differently, but in general, it’s most common to do treatments once a week.

Providing your clients with a general idea of the number of treatments you believe their pet will need will help them, not only with their math skills, but also with a general idea of the time they will need to allow for vet trips.

If you’re not sure how many ozone therapy treatments a certain illness will require, this Veterinary Ozone Treatment Guide provides general guidelines for treatment frequency, dosing, and protocols.

 

#7 – Are There Any Resources to Help with Marketing and Education?

Speaking from experience, this Sally can hear everything you say to me when I’m at the clinic with Spot, but she can’t retain it all because (a) I’m not a vet, and (b) it’s too much information at once, especially when you speak of an unknown treatment like ozone therapy.

So, before your clients leave the clinic, receiving an “in a nutshell” brochure and/or booklet about ozone therapy and a cost sheet for the various ozone treatment methods goes a step further than just explaining what ozone therapy is and how it works. If you really want to impress them, show them a video containing ozone therapy success stories and hand them a bright lime green “I Love Ozone” bandana for their pet. (You can obtain all those items right here.)

Providing visual and tangible materials to this Sally ensures that I don’t go home and forget about what we talked about or completely disregard everything you said about the benefits of ozone therapy. It keeps ozone therapy directly in front of me. With such materials, I can do a little research on ozone therapy, talk it over with others who have experienced it, discuss it with my significant other, and just digest it all.

#8 – Questions and More Questions

Just when you think the 15-minute consult appointment that has now stretched into 30 minutes is about to end, a Sally may spring additional questions about ozone therapy on you.

If you are unsure of how to answer any of these questions, let O3Vets be your go-to guy. We are here for you and with you when it comes to dealing with a Sally and her companion.