SpinalColumnRadio

Episode 016 — A Patient Named Fred

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SHOW NOTES

Title: A Patient Named Fred

Episode Number: 016

Host: Dr. Thomas Lamar

Show Date: 07/09/2010

Run Time: 30:45

Description:  In the year 2000, freshly-graduated chiropractor, Kyle Goltz opened the doors of his West Yellowstone, Montana chiropractic office.  Two months into practice he was asked to see a patient with neck pain named Fred.  While at first this may sound like “business as usual,” it’s not. Fred was no ordinary patient.  Fred was a 700 lb grizzly bear.  Join Dr. Lamar as he has Dr. Goltz recount this one-of-a-kind, “extraordinary” story.

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Links:

Meet Fred

— the bear

Meet Dr. Kyle Goltz

— the chiropractor

…An Extraordinary Chiropractor Who Did An Extraordinary Thing!

• Visit Dr. Goltz’s Website

• Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center

• Story on Fred’s Recent Death

More info:

Read Dr. Lamar’s newspaper article on Animal Chiropractic: “A Grizzly Adjustment”

Listen to Dr.Lamar’s podcast on Animal Chiropractic — interview with Dr. Daniel Kamen, Animal Chiropractor, author, and instructor — “Chiropractic.  It’s Not Just for Humans!”

“What’s a Podcast???” page!

Visit our iTunes listing and give us a rating!

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Does your podcast listening schedule need a little backbone? If so, it’s time to schedule an appointment with your podcast chiropractor, Dr. Thomas Lamar.

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Transcript:

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Spinal Column Radio, episode number sixteen.

Coming up next on Spinal Column Radio — A Patient Named Fred.

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[intro theme music]

And welcome back to another exciting and information packed episode of Spinal Column Radio.  My name is Dr. Thomas Lamar, chiropractor and Dad of 6.   And this is the podcast that gets you to think.  To think about your health in a whole new way.  We’re the podcast for your backbone… the podcast with backbone.  Who knew that spinal education could be this much fun?

We’d like to invite you to visit our podcast website at SpinalColumnRadio.com where you can learn more about us, check out our world-renowned “What’s a Podcast?” page, and can access the show notes for this episode.  Also, we encourage you to leave comments and ask questions through our website, or, if you prefer, you can email me using DrLamar AT SpinalColumnRadio DOT com.

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[transitional sound effect]

Okay…. well I’ve got a good one for you today.  If you’ve seen the show notes or if you’ve  read the description of this podcast, bear with me, because you know where this is going.  But for those of you who haven’t…. well, I’ll just let it come out in the interview.

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[transitional sound effect]

But before get to that… I have some recorded listener feedback to share with you.  Which is funny because I don’t even have a dedicated listener feedback line… but, anyway, I had a very special gentleman — just days ago — leave a message on my office voice mail…

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[transitional sound effect]

Dr. Jack Schmitz: Oh, yes.  I was calling for Thomas Lamar.  I guess he’s a… yes he’s a D.C. — Doctor of Chiropractic — and he is star of the AnchorChiropractic.net, or the Spinal Column Radio… any way this is Dr. Jim Parker.  Let me get to the point here.  I don’t know what a podcast is, and I came down here — and I know I’m dead… but anyway, I came down here to find out what’s going on with a podcast — what is that?  We haven’t heard of that.  So I told St. Peter, “Let me get on down there…. Let me give Tom Lamar a talk, and I’ll find out what a podcast is…”  I said, “You let me go, and I’ll give your fifty cents.”  He said, “Fifty cents?  What do I use that for?” … Anyway we had a good laugh because you can’t spend any money in heaven, as we all know.  So that was pretty funny too.  Anyway Tom, I wanted to give you a call to say hello, Happy 4th of July… Jim Parker here… signing off.  (“End of Message”)

That my friends is a man that  I’ve actually mentioned a couple of times on this show before… Dr. Jack Schmitz,  doing his famous Dr. Jim Parker impression.  The late Dr. Jim Parker, for those of you who don’t know, was one of the great pillars in the chiropractic community, and while I never had a chance to see him or meet him, Dr. Schmitz did… And I had the pleasure of working with Dr. Schmitz in the later part of my chiropractic training and for some time past graduation.  So, I’d ask him form time to time about what Dr. Jim was like and well, this voice… the voice you just heard… would just bubble forth.  Dr. Jim was known for putting on the very popular Parker Chiropractic Seminars and was the founder of Parker Chiropractic College in Dallas, Texas.  From what I understand, he was quite a character and had an uncanny way of turning just about t any conversation into a chiropractic one.  Speaking of characters… if you couldn’t tell, Dr. Schmitz is a one-of-a-kind character himself.  Boy… working with him was an absolute knee slapper every day.  Jack, I miss you buddy… you still have it.  And thanks for the good laugh.  And I’m glad to hear that you are listening. My office staff, when they heard the message, they were like, “Who is that guy???”  ….What a treat to hear from you.

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[transitional sound effect]

You know one of the things I like to do here on Spinal Column Radio is seek out chiropractors that have done things that are a little unusual — a bit outside of the box…. you know, beyond the daily “9 to 5 grind” that most of us are used to.  I call them “Extraordinary Chiropractors Doing Extraordinary Things.”

Well, Dr. Kyle Goltz is such a chiropractor… and he became such a chiropractor just two months after opening his office just over a decade ago.

I had the chance to catch up with Dr. Goltz the other day and have him retell this story… a story that he will always remember like it was yesterday….

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[transitional sound effect]

Dr. Lamar: Well, joining us on the telephone today from his office in West Yellowstone, Montana is chiropractor Kyle Goltz. Dr. Goltz I want to welcome you to Spinal Column Radio.

Dr. Goltz: Thank you.

Dr. L: Now you have a story to share today that is definitely… well, how should I say this? It’s outside of the norm. But before you divulge just what that is, I want to set this up for our listeners. You graduated from the Northwestern College of Chiropractic in Bloomington, Minnesota back in November of 1999. Four months later, in March of 2000, you opened the doors of the West Yellowstone Back and Neck Clinic. And then, like most of us starting out in practice, the patients began to slowly trickle in. And so now, you’re about two months into this when you’re asked to see a new patient with neck pain. Now, most people are thinking, “Ok. No big deal.” After all, you are the owner/operator of the West Yellowstone Back and Neck Clinic. But this patient’s name… his name is Fred. But Fred is no ordinary patient. Was he?

Dr. G: No, he certainly wasn’t.

Dr. L: Why don’t you tell us more from there?

Dr. G: It started off… the Grizzly, Wolf, and Discovery Center… the veterinarian from the facility over there came by and she… just kind of a candid conversation and then kind of switched over to maybe some animal stuff and then all of a sudden she says, “Well, what do you think about bears?” And then, “What do you think about grizzly bears?” And then she said, “We’ve got this bear named Fred that’s got a bad neck and everything we’ve done veterinarian-wise hasn’t worked, and we’ve tried all our stuff with muscle relaxers and pain killers and steroids and nothing’s working… And Fred can’t raise his head up off the ground, and the only way he can move his neck is to put his paw underneath his chin and raise his head up to move his head… And he’s been this way for about six, seven, eight days and nothing’s working… And we don’t know what to do, and we think that chiropractic may be the answer to try to see if it will help him.”

Dr. L: Unbelievable! Now just… let’s just stop for a second. In case you didn’t pick up on this, Fred is a 700-pound grizzly bear. And Dr. Goltz has just been asked to adjust a grizzly bear. What is going through your mind at this moment? I mean you’re talking to this lady. Are you thinking to yourself, “Is this for real? Is this a joke?”

Dr. G: No…. exactly because I hadn’t been in town that long and I was like, man is somebody pulling a fast one on me already?

Dr. L: Welcome to West Yellowstone!

Dr. G: Exactly.

Dr. L: Are you kind of looking around going, “Ok where is the hidden camera?”

Dr. G: Exactly.

Dr. L: “All right… ‘Smile! You’re on Candid Camera!’” …That kind of thing?

Dr. G: No, yeah I was. But she was dead serious and I was like… I’m like well yeah I’ll give it a shot. I guess I’ve got nothing to lose.

Dr. L: Well, now here is a good question: Why do you think that Dr. Ford picked you? I mean you did mention that you are right down the street from it but do you think she picked you for other reasons?

Dr. G: I don’t know. I’m the only chiropractor in town which is…

Dr. L: Oh okay.

Dr. G: …is good for me and good for them. So, I think that was one of the biggest reasons, and she is a chiropractic patient as well so I think she knows the benefit of chiropractic care and what it does for humans and…

Dr. L: Was she a patient of yours?

Dr. G: Not at the time. She has been in the past… since.

Dr. L: Since then, okay. Ok, well I read in some articles about you — obviously this was something that the media picked up on — that you had done a little bit of animal adjusting in the past but really not very much.

Dr. G: Yeah, pretty minor.

Dr. L: Really, you really didn’t have very much human experience to be truthful. Well you just started out.

Dr. G: Exactly.

Dr. L: What’s going through your head at this time? Are you like, “Uhhh…”? I mean…

Dr. G: First thing for me was I need to see a model, or see a spine of this thing, to even see what we’re dealing with. You know, just spinally what they even look like. Or a picture. Or a book. Or you know, anything to give me a little idea…

Dr. L: Exactly.

Dr. G: …of what we might even be dealing with. So…

Dr. L: So that probably… and that kind of answers the next question I wanted to ask you. So, did you accept this challenge immediately and say “Ok let’s get in the car and go” or  did you set up a time so you could go kind of like research this out a bit.

Dr. G: Well, I just said I would do it right off the bat! It took them a couple of days to get kind of organized because this is a pretty big production… because we wanted to try to take X-rays, so they obviously had to put him out and then get him under and then get him moved… and you know it was a big production for them too to try to get him to where they needed to be to timewise and you know…

Dr. L: Sure.

Dr. G: …Try to get him to move.

Dr. L: How do you move a grizzly bear?

Dr. G: They put him on a four by eight sheet of enforced… re-enforced plywood and he filled the whole thing up and we put him in the back of a pickup.

Dr. L: Oh man!

Dr. G: Yeah, so that’s how we moved him and luckily for me they have a spinal… a real life size model of a skeleton over there, of a grizzly bear. So, that helped immensely and it’s… their spine is actually scarily close to a human. It’s very, very close. That helped too. That was good.

Dr. L: Ok. So, like you said, this was a big production and I’m assuming you went over and you were able to witness Fred’s painful movements yourself?

Dr. G: I never saw him in that state. They had him outside and as I arrived they had already… because they wanted to get it… takes a while to get the drug in the system and to put him out. So, they had already started. He was just  getting kind of wobbly when I showed up. And then they had to do their tests or whatever they did to make sure, you know, he was breathing right and heart was normal and all the stuff that they did. But, he was just going under when I got there so I never  did actually get to see him you know with…

Dr. L: Right. So, you never got to like do just kind of a visual…

Dr. G: No.

Dr. L: …examination on him? Ok, so he is kind of “woozy” when you get there… and then he goes down for a long nap, hopefully, and they heft him into a pickup truck to X-ray him.  Is that how that worked?

Dr. G: Yeah! So, they got him strapped on this big piece of plywood and put him in the back of the pickup and tried to bring him over to my office. I’ve got two double doors.

Dr. L: Are you serious?

Dr. G: Yeah and we got him in close to the door and my X-ray is down the hallway and then a right turn and we couldn’t get him to turn. He was too big. We couldn’t get him in the door. So, we actually had to go back over to the medical clinic and they have a big walk-in kind of X-ray bay. So, we actually brought him over there to get the pictures because they couldn’t fit him in my room.

Dr. L: I’m just envisioning this grizzly bear in the back of a Ford F250, or something, driving around in West Yellowstone.

Dr. G: Exactly.

Dr. L: How funny. Ok, so you get him back to the other X-ray and you guys figure out… like this was like a one view or two view kind of thing on the X-ray?

Dr. G: Yeah we tried to take, you know, two… we basically got a pretty good AP view. It was about the only one we got to really turn out, but he definitely had a subluxated C3. It was quite obvious on the film. I mean, it was majorly… big rotation and lateral flexion… so it was pretty obvious. Which was good for me…

Dr. L: Oh yeah!

Dr. G: At least there was something that I could show her and go here’s the…

Dr. L: This is what we are going to do. I have a plan.

Dr. G: Exactly.

Dr. L: Ok. So, you’ve decided, “Ok C3 is where we are going to go with this.” What… did you use an Activator? Did you use your hands? Or how did you want to try to get in there and move this thing?

Dr. G: So they brought him back, after we took the pictures they took him back to their office — or to the back to the clinic into the bear den… And what we did from there, they put him on the ground — which hindsight I wish they could have had him up so I could of had some leverage — but I just started palpating first and he had so much muscle mass that… I mean it was… and there was definite swelling involved going on and it was hard to feel to start with. Which, but you could definitely feel the vertebrae and palpate that. That was fine. But, the rest of it… it was just kind of a “feel thing” and you could feel the C3 vertebra was rotated. And I brought my Activator, you know, trying to go through four or five inches of muscle, you know, I don’t know if it was that, that worked or… The thing that I tried to do is I tried to almost do a lumbar roll on his neck because it was just that big.

Dr. L: Oh man.

Dr. G: And his head was just dead weight. It was… I don’t know what it weighed, but it was eighty-five pounds, maybe ninety pounds so it was just dead weight laying there and you certainly couldn’t do a cervical rotary break or a cervical adjustment. So, I actually kind of did a  almost a lumbar…

Dr. L: Like a side…

Dr. G: …on his neck to try to get it to move.

Dr. L: Sort of a side posture adjustment.

Dr. G: Exactly. Down on my knees trying to get his neck to move.

Dr. L: Did you have an assistant trying to maybe hold the head so, cause you said it was dead weight?

Dr. G: I did, yeah there was a guy helping me trying to push it over. I mean, he was pliable but trying to push his head over to get some of that rotation to try to get him to lock out, but… I did a couple of different things just trying to get that C3 to move.

Dr. L: What’s it like? So, you’re working with this, you know, muscle mass, and there’s hair, and it’s thick, and you can feel the muscle spasm… but all the while you are with this bear and he must be like breathing heavily?

Dr. G: He was!  …And that was the scary part!  He was breathing perfectly normal, and I’m six inches away from this guy’s mouth.  And I asked her, I said “Hey, are you sure he’s under? Because I need my hands for a long time here. I don’t want him to magically wake up and think I’m lunch.”

Dr. L: “I still have student loans to pay off! I just started! Oh man!”

Dr. G: Exactly! That’s exactly right…. But she guaranteed me he was way, way under. But he was breathing perfectly normal which was kind of freaky for me.

Dr. L: Oh I imagine!…. Now, I imagine that this would have been kind of a “one-hit-wonder” adjustment. You know? You’re going like, “We’re going for a home run here.”

Dr. G: Exactly.

Dr. L: “No follow-ups.”

Dr. G: That’s all I could do.

Dr. L: “We’re not doing any follow-ups here.”

Dr. G: Yeah I would have loved to follow-up but I guess the risk-to-benefit of putting a big animal like that under is quite great and she didn’t want to…

Dr. L: Sure.

Dr. G: Since he did recover very nicely she didn’t want to put him out just to see what I could feel.

Dr. L: So, why don’t you tell us a little bit about the recovery itself? How did Fred take to the adjustment? Was it an immediate thing or did it kind of take some days?

Dr. G: Well, he woke up. He was pretty groggy most of the day. I went back to work and then went back to see what he was doing. He came to probably six, seven o’clock at night. And as he kind of came to… he, you know, was pretty groggy… but he came out of it and he wasn’t holding his head up with his foot — which I thought was pretty cool right off the get-go. And then next morning when he was kind of back to himself he was actually almost fully normal. He didn’t have his… he had range of motion in his neck… and he didn’t have to use his paw to push his head up… and he was looking around and able to move. So it worked out actually as good as possible.

Dr. L: That’s got to make you feel pretty good.

Dr. G: Yeah it was good.

Dr. L: You’re a brand new practitioner and you just adjusted a grizzly bear.

Dr. G: Exactly.

Dr. L: Now, you mentioned that… okay you adjusted the bear and then you went back to work for  a little while and you came back… Did you go back… were you telling all of your patients at that point?

Dr. G: Yeah! I mean I… you have to!

Dr. L: I know I wouldn’t be able to contain it.

Dr. G: Yeah! I mean yeah you have to. I had a couple friends over and they were taking a bunch of pictures. So it was good.

Dr. L: That’s so cool! Now, next question here. You certainly don’t have to answer this in detail… but I’m sure adjusting a bear is not your “standard office charge.”

Dr. G: Yeah, no… no…

Dr. L: Did you work out…

Dr. G: All I want is good karma with his buddies in the woods. That’s all I ask for.

Dr. L: That’s right! Did they at least give you Grizzly Bear Discovery Center passes or anything like that?

Dr. G: Yeah, I’ve been back a few times and they have kindly let me slip through the line.

Dr. L: You’re kind of a “celebrity” there.

Dr. G: Yeah, you know and it… as it came out, the papers got it and the media got it. It ended up being, I mean quite a big deal. Which was good. Good for me anyway…

Dr. L: Oh yeah! So, obviously Fred has impacted your practice quite a bit. If you go to Dr. Goltz’ website which… what’s the website?

Dr. G: WYBackAndNeckClinic.Com All one word, and all spelled out.

Dr. L: Ok. And we’ll go ahead and we’ll put that in the show notes if you want to go to his website, but if you go to his website you’ll see, and it’s pretty prominent — THE BEAR.  I mean the bear has been with you for over a decade now as far as the story.

Dr. G: Yeah and it’s so funny that… I mean people still come up with it and ask. And I’ve got pictures up in the office. And just the article from the newspaper, you know, and everybody is asking about it. And then every once in a while… you know, the press got crazy. I mean, not crazy, but it got big and actually went on a game show and so people every once in a while would catch a rerun of “To Tell The Truth” that I was on. And they’ll say…

Dr. L: Really?!

Dr. G: Man I saw you on T.V., you know on Game Show Network again, or whatever. So, it turned out to be pretty funny.

Dr. L: Now here we are a decade out now, roughly, from the bear adjusting experience… And, you know, now you are on a podcast for it: Spinal Column Radio…. Has it kind of died down or does it just keep coming?

Dr. G: It’s definitely died down. You know I haven’t had anybody mention anything really, you know, interview-wise now since probably, you know, four or five months afterward…. you know every once in a while somebody will call up, or they certainly want to take the website for their chiropractor to see, and it’s been pretty cool that way.

Dr. L: Are you kind of known around town as the “Bear Chiropractor?”

Dr. G: You know, that’s the way it was kind of to begin with but…

Dr. L: Yeah.

Dr. G: …everything kind of settled in which is good too. So…

Dr. L: That’s true. You don’t…

Dr. G: Life is normal.

Dr. L: You don’t want to necessarily be tagged as a “Bear Chiropractor”…

Dr. G: Exactly.

Dr. L: …for the rest of your life.

Dr. G: Right.

Dr. L: Have.. I guess that would be a good follow-up question… Have you adjusted any other bears? Or been asked to? Or any other wild animals for that matter?

Dr. G: No more bears. They’ve actually… they brought a couple of wolves by and I’ve worked on them just a little bit and the one needed a couple of X-rays but they’ve actually… part of the same… the Center has wolves too and they’ve brought… I think they have two of them come by. I worked on the one, one day while we had them out and then taking an X-ray of one’s leg, or I believe it was the leg, one other time. So…

Dr. L: You know, hats off to Dr. Ford for, you know, thinking of a chiropractor in this instance.

Dr. G: Yeah, because I mean she very well could have said “Well there, nothing is going to happen.” and you know, who knows?

Dr. L: Well, yeah!

Dr. G: Maybe they’d have to euthanize him. I don’t know. But, no, I’d give her all the kudos in the world for at least trying something alternative and looking towards something different.

Dr. L: My opinion here: I think she is brilliant.  But, I’d say you know — and I know you’d agree with me — the overwhelming majority for colleagues would not have connected the dots…. “Oh let’s do a chiropractic consult.”

Dr. G: Yeah, no, I think she was probably in the rarity side of that too. I would agree with you fully.

Dr. L: Now, you mentioned a lot of press and everything. Did any negative press come out of this at all?

Dr. G: You know, there was one letter to the editor that came from an M.D. up in Bozeman which is… They ran two big front page stories in the Bozeman paper which is a daily paper. And one, of course, “M.D.-Nay-Sayer,” claiming you know just the typical, “Well it wasn’t the chiropractor that helped it. It was probably just being under the anesthesia…” And then a fellow chiropractor in Bozeman, whom I don’t even know, rifled back that you know saying that it’s pretty obvious that… “What else could it have been?”

Dr. L: Right.

Dr. G: And then it simmered down. But that was the actually only negative thing that came out of the whole thing. If you call that negative.

Dr. L: Right. Well, that’s going to come no matter what.

Dr. G: Exactly.

Dr. L: So, one more question along these lines. You know, are you the only one that you’re aware of that’s adjusted a bear?

Dr. G: I don’t know of anybody else.. to date anyway. I haven’t heard of anybody. So, as far as I know I think I am.

Dr. L: Well, I guess you’re a “club of one.”

Dr. G: I guess so.

Dr. L: Perhaps… If anybody knows of any other chiropractors that have adjusted a bear, why don’t you let us know by sending us a comment. That’d be kind of fun.

Well, Dr. Goltz, I have to admit that my heart sunk a bit as I was putting the finishing touches on our interview here, and I stumbled upon the news on the Internet that our beloved grizzly bear, Fred has passed away. April 9, 2010. Were you aware of that?

Dr. G: I am aware of that… and as a side note it is kind of interesting he — from what I’ve been told from the curator over at the Discovery Center where Fred was, and then he got moved to Buffalo,  New York — is that he had lower thoracic, upper lumbar, tumor or lesion that caused his back end to go into paralysis… and they put him down from that… or for that. And there was actually another bear here at the Discovery Center within two weeks that had almost the identical symptoms and then ended up having to put that bear down for almost the identical symptom. So it was kind of ironic, I guess, that one of his old mates got put down within two weeks of him too, for almost the same reason…. which is just kind of interesting.

Dr. L: Yeah. I was reading that the typical life span for a grizzly bear is about 20 to 25 years old and Fred was 20 years old.

Dr. G: He was.  And I think in captivity you know they can certainly live a little longer, but he was… and he played rough. You know, that’s why I think he got the neck injury to begin with is because he was out with a 1,000 pound bear. And they were always fighting and goofing around and he probably got smacked around in the head real good and got whiplash from his bigger buddy to cause the whole trouble to begin with.

Dr. L: When you… now Fred was moved to Buffalo, as you said, in like 2002, I believe it was.

Dr. G: Pretty close to that.

Dr. L: Yeah, did you visit Fred after you adjusted him, like you know, six, seven months afterwards or anything?

Dr. G: I did. I went over a couple of times just to see… and a couple times I got taken back behind which was kind of cool to see him, you know, just interacting in his cage too. I went over a few times just to see — you know just curiosity — to see how he was doing. He did really well afterwards and no trouble since that I knew of.

Dr. L: I was reading about Fred, I don’t know if you are aware of this, but apparently Fred was brought to,  your neighbor  Center there,  because he was becoming a nuisance in the Denali National Park up in Alaska… and I guess he was kind of a “Yogi Bear” of sorts. He liked to get into human trash and garbage… and so they transfer him to the Discovery Center in Montana, and I guess he was commissioned by some of the local campground equipment companies to test out their equipment to see if it was “Fred-proof.”

Dr. G: They do. He was a wizard at picking dumpster locks and garbage cans and other stuff so they do. They put him to the test over there and you know I think while he was there I don’t know if any dumpster truly passed the test so…

Dr. L: Well, you know on the Internet — with Fred’s passing and whatnot — it was very obvious that Fred is going to be missed by a lot of people.

Dr. G: Yeah. He was a ham too, you know. A lot of the pictures that have been taken you know he was a ham. He’d always be laying on a rock and posing and so definitely he will be missed for sure.

Dr. L: We’ll go ahead and will put the article about Fred’s life on the show notes as well. Well, Dr. Goltz is there anything you want to add to kind of wrap us up here?

Dr. G: Nothing that I can think of.

Dr. L: Covered most of the bases? Well, you know, I want to thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to join us here on Spinal Column Radio, and I want to commend you for stepping up to the plate — especially as just a brand new practitioner  –to do something that almost… well probably no other chiropractor will ever have the opportunity to do…. To deliver health and healing through chiropractic to a 700-pound grizzly bear named Fred. It is such a cool story.

Dr. G: It is. And I thank you for your time and getting me on here and you know it certainly  to me just shows the power of the adjustment and what that can do. You don’t have to be telling anybody what’s going on to see what the power of that adjustment certainly does.

Dr. L: Absolutely.

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[transitional sound effect]

Thanks again to Dr. Kyle Goltz for his extraordinary, one-of-a-kind, story.

Hey, I later asked Dr. Goltz little more about his game show experience on “To Tell the Truth.”  And in case you are unfamiliar with the show, Wikipedia has a pretty thorough write up on it.  The show has aired intermittently since 1956 and has had a total of 25 different seasons with many different variations.  The show’s last recorded stint from 2000 to 2002 didn’t do very well… certainly not because Dr. Goltz was on during that time — actually he probably had one of the more interesting episodes.  But overall, the ratings didn’t pass muster.

The basic premise of the game show was that there was a panel of celebrities (say four or five) that attempted to correctly identify a described contestant who typically had an unusual occupation or experience…. for example a chiropractor that had adjusted a grizzly bear.  The central contestant — Dr. Goltz in this case — was joined by two impostors who pretended to be him.  So in other words three “Dr. Goltz’s” were presented to the celebrity panel.  The panelists would then question the contestants.  The impostors were allowed to make things up, but the rule was that the central contestant — the real Dr. Kyle Goltz — had to “tell the truth.”  Each celebrity panelist then had to make the decision as to who was actually “telling the truth.”  If they were wrong…. the contestants won money.  [cash register sfx]

So my follow up email question to him was, “How did you do?”  His answer… “Not too bad!”  Apparently 4 out of the 5 celebrity panelists got him wrong, which meant a $4000 split between him and the two impostors,  for a total of 1,333 bucks a piece.  Fred would have been proud.

Dr. Goltz had a hard time remembering exactly who the celebrities were, but he did remember that one of the five was Paula Poundstone and another was Stephen Baldwin.

One more thing before we wrap up.  Many of you might recall our last episode — episode 15, take a listen to it if you haven’t heard it.  In this episode, I interviewed renowned animal chiropractor, instructor and author, Dr. Daniel Kamen.  Well, he’s adjusted a number of different animals, but I failed to ask him whether or not he had ever adjusted a bear… so I shot him an email and asked him.

Well, he responded as only Dr. Daniel Kamen can.  He said, “I’ve never adjusted a bear, but back in 1984 I did adjust a Cub– catcher Jody Davis.”[rimshot sfx]

So there you have it.  Dr. Kyle Goltz just might be alone on this one.  Although I bet some of the doctors that have experience working with exotic animals in the zoos, might also be in this exclusive “Bear Club.”  Drop us a comment if you know of any chiropractors…. or vets for that matter, that have rolled up their sleeves to correct the spine of bear.  And no, the AdjustaBear teddy bear doesn’t count.

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[outro theme music]

I just love that story.  Thanks again to Dr. Kyle Goltz.  Hey, by the way, in the Animal Chiropractic article that I authored back in 2000, I used Dr. Goltz’s story as the “hook” to introduce the subject.  You can check that out at SpinalColumnBlog.com.  It’s called “A Grizzley Adjustment.”  I’ll put the link in the show notes.

Spinal Column Radio would like to remind you that true health comes from the inside out — not outside in.  As such, the content of this particular podcast, along with the show notes and related links, is not intended to cure, diagnose, treat, or prevent any disease in your bear. But, instead, is meant to inform and inspire you in asking better questions when it comes to the health of your bear. Since the circumstances surrounding your bear’s situation are unique, you are encouraged to consult with Drs. Gayle Ford and Kyle Gotlz.

Next time on Spinal Column Radio, we’re going to revisit our Chiropractic Radio History Lesson that we presented back in episodes 005 and 006…. Stop the music for a second.

You know folks, as fun as those episodes were to research and produce… I pretty much thought that we closed the book on the radio history thing…  but something pretty awesome just happened the other day.  It’s so incredible that I want to tell you right now… but I’m not.  Because that would ruin the whole “teaser thing.”  Now, normally, our next podcast would schedule to come out the last Friday of the month… which would be July 30th…. three weeks away.  But I can’t wait that long, I mean, I might pee in my pants.  I have to get this out…. Okay, go ahead and start the music….

So we’ll see you next week for this for this very exciting episode.  So, until then, for my son Logan, tweaking the knobs on the mixer board, this is Dr. Thomas Lamar, your podcast chiropractor.

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Spinal Column Radio is a production of Spinal Column Communications in conjunction with AnchorChiropractic.net.  Copyright 2010.

Download a PDF version of these Show Notes

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