The Last Show with David Cooper
Animal and Human Prescriptions: Not So Different After All
21 Feb 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Turning headline news into punchline gold. Five nights a week. The Last Show with David Cooper. Hello? It's Vet Talk or Pet Talk. Dr. Cliff Redford is here to talk about the amazing drugs that animals can be prescribed and what he recently prescribed a pet. You won't believe what happens next. Is that good clickbait, Cliff? I don't know. Yeah, that's a good stand-up joke there. I love it.
It's all things animals. Okay, my kitty was on an anti-rash dermatitis medication. Worked out well for him. By the way, I never thanked you. I sent you horrific pictures of my cat's rash, and you're like, yeah, he needs medication. Yeah. So we took him to the vet. Thank you. I think your vet should thank me.
Chapter 2: What surprising medication did Dr. Cliff Redford prescribe to a dog?
They should be giving me like a referral fee or something, right? Probably. That's how it should work. I go to a great vet. He's called the, I'm going to give him free advertising. It's called the cat practice. And it's a cat only vet in Manhattan here.
and they love cats there they just because my old vet i think this happens no one talks about this they're like oh we treat all animals but i think there's some vets that are biased for dogs that they really like dogs biased positively for dogs and it's not that they're gonna like harm your cat but they just like don't have the patience and the love for kitties that they do dogs and as a cat owner you don't want to go to a vet like that
The emotional side of it, the EQ side of it, the bedside manner of dealing with a dog is very different than dealing with a cat. If you snuggle up to your average cat patient and rub their bellies and give them soft noogies to the head, they're going to rip your face off. But the dog, that's amazing, right? If a dog is being a little bit aggressive... you can kind of say, hey, settle down, sit.
You do that to a cat and it launches into your face. Yeah, if it's a little aggressive, you got to give it space and make it feel safe. Yeah, very, very different. I'm just saying certain vets don't have the patience for cats. And we were going to one and we had a bad experience every time. And then we started going to this guy.
And yes, our cat's bad at the vet, but they're very patient about it and they understand. And that's all he does is cats. It's called the cat practice, Cliff. He's not treating bunnies. Why is he practicing? Shouldn't he be doing? He shouldn't be practicing. Is this your doctor and veterinarian joke? Why are doctor's offices and veterinary offices called practices? That's a great question.
Yeah, I practice medicine. No, I do medicine. And legal. I'm like, I don't want my lawyer practicing. Do a good job here. This is the real thing. I might go to jail. So there are cat-specific clinics.
They actually have a special certification here in Ontario because they need different tools or they don't need as many tools or they don't need a large dog run, let's say, if you're a cat-only clinic. And yeah, some cat owners prefer that for good reason. I mean, I go to a doctor that only treats people for good reason. I don't. Oh, okay. Well, clearly not. He treats me.
okay let's get to some of the things that animals can be prescribed i'm on a medication as a mood stabilizer and sleep aid called gabapentin i believe it's prescribed to me by my my psychiatrist off label it's typically used for nerve pain in people that's the on label use but it's used in psychiatric context as well it's one of my antidepressant whatever but uh Pets use gabapentin.
This shocked me when I saw my kid. I picked up a script for my kitty and I'm like, you're taking the same thing as me, bro. Yeah, yeah. We commonly write prescriptions for human drugstores.
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Chapter 3: Why is it important to choose a vet that specializes in cats?
And of course, everyone always says, oh, can I put this on my medical coverage plan? No, you can't do that.
uh i've never heard that joke before gabapentin is used to kind of calm down at a much lower dose calm down pets i believe you can do it for calming down pets probably the most common usage is for pain for neuropathic pain for spinal arthritis for pain in cats with diabetes they get pain in the what's called a peripheral neuropathy We prescribe insulin, human insulin for cats and dogs.
We prescribe antibiotics and, you know, amoxicillins and fluoroquinolones and whatnot. I recently prescribed a drug called... Sedanafil. Everyone, standing ovation. Sedanafil. And what is Sedanafil's trade name when taken by human beings? It is a little blue pill called Viagra. Why on earth did you prescribe a dog Viagra Cliff? That is patient veterinary confidentiality, David.
I can't have this conversation. Is that real? Yeah. There's definitely a, we call it a VCPR, vet-client-patient relationship. So I have to have some level of confidentiality towards my patients and towards the pet owners. But primarily it's the person you're protecting. Primarily, primarily. So Viagra was originally... It was started out as a drug to treat blood pressure.
Pfizer was doing these studies, and it was doing a good job reducing blood pressure in their study cases in the people, but it was doing a great job doing something else, and that was helping men with erectile dysfunction. I love that there is just like clinical trials, a bunch of like sample patients with high blood pressure or whatever, low blood pressure.
They go in, they take this medication, then they go home at night to spend time with their beloveds. And they're like, whoa. And that was like an accident. Yeah. We all of a sudden know which one's getting the placebo and which one is not. Baby, this has never happened to me before in reverse. So yeah, we actually still use sidenafil.
And I imagine they still use it in people, but they definitely use it in dogs for pulmonary hypertension. So hypertension, increased blood pressure, specifically in the lung cavity and the thoracic cavity. And people, I warn people, I'm like, look, I'm going to prescribe Sidenafil. And every once in a while, you'll see the guy's eyes kind of go up and you go, okay, you're aware of this product.
Let's be professional here, too late. And I'll say, look, And I give them the whole story about how this is originally treated for high blood pressure, et cetera, et cetera. I have this one older client, which just makes it funny. She's a widower. She's a widow, pardon me. And her dog for years, he's now passed. Her dog for years was on Viagra, was on Sidenafil.
And every once in a while, she'll call me up and she'll say, Dr. Redford, they made fun of me at the pharmacy again. Because apparently they were like, okay, Mrs. Smith, this is for your dog, right? Sure it is. So talk about... One, unprofessional for the pharmacist side. Second, hilarious.
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Chapter 4: How do veterinarians prescribe human medications for pets?
So there you go. Pretty simple. So I guess fear, even if it's like instinctive, can be unlearned by early intervention? Yeah, that's exactly what they figured out.
So they had realized that for whatever reason, all across different societies, and there's stories and there's legends about snakes in all different kind of cultures and religions, and the snakes always seem to be the bad guy or the bad it. Certainly in Judeo-Christianity, in the Bible, Adam and Eve, people don't like that snake. Yeah, exactly. It's just an apple. Or a pomegranate.
I think they determined it was actually a pomegranate. I thought it was an apple. That's what they say, but I don't think there are apples back then. And pomegranates apparently have aphrodisiac properties. They do, yes. We could talk about that, too. Anyways. So snakes culturally have a very negative sort of connotation and people are almost born with it.
And there may be a fact that, hey, if you're afraid of snakes and you're living in the jungle and there's poisonous snakes, you're less likely to get bitten by a snake. So you're more likely to pass on the genetics of being afraid of snakes. So there is a genetic component to it. But basically, kids are malleable. We can warp them into proper or negative sensibilities.
So start using positive speak with your children when it comes to snakes or any other creatures. Just be kind to animals. Yeah, or any kind of negative stereotypes teach children that they're not there. Yeah, yeah. I mean, unless they're true, like radio podcast hosts, they're just a pain in the rear. That's me. Yeah, yeah. That's right. It's not just a fact. It's not really a stereotype.
Just you, not me. Yeah. Radio host named David Cooper that air on the station who, whatever anyone's listening to right now. Whatever you're listening to. Yeah. Whatever you're hearing right now, people doing that show suck. Other than the guests. Other than the guests. Yeah. Yeah. Yikes.
This last story I want to cover real quick because it kind of goes into like criminal justice and having a pet testify in court is obviously not, it's like a fantasy that's never going to happen. We don't call Rover to the stand. But there are like criminal cases where pets can get involved. DNA of a pet can rub off on a suspect. What role can pets play in the criminal justice system?
apparently uh a pretty good role apparently the role of a silent witness can you imagine oh i love that term so you know what this this makes sense and it's more of a of a conversation that you know a little shout out or a little warning to all the bad guys and girls out there that the uh justice will get you eventually so if i'm robbing a bank and there's a cute golden retriever between me and the vault i shouldn't stop to pet it is what you're saying
You should not stop to pet it because basically you get transference of some of your DNA material. We're just going to say skin cells and hair. Your DNA material onto this golden retriever and they can pick up on it. And they can later detect it on that golden retriever. And originally this was like crazy CSI. It's never going to happen. But I'm waiting for it to be on the next episode of Dexter.
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