A bit of history

After graduation I practiced for a short time in an excellent hospital in Washington, DC. That was a great place to be at that time as a young single doc. So much to see & do. But I missed family & home. So I came back.

For 6 years I practiced in two different & large hospitals in East Brunswick (New Jersey). Both practices carried very large & diverse case loads. Hence I was afforded the unique and excellent opportunity to participate in an extraordinarily wide & deep breath of medical, surgical, and exotic cases. You need to remember - it was a different time & place.The whole world was different then. There were few veterinarians,  &  it was before the era of the (current) veterinary megahospitals. Extraordinary training opportunity. Probably never to be repeated. I virtually saw it all & did it all. Hundreds of fracture cases. Hundreds of heartworms cases. All sorts of infectious disease cases that we no longer see (thank goodness) because we now have vaccines to protect against so many of these diseases. Parvovirus infection – national problem, poorly understood, & countless deaths.  Exotics species – I saw & treated:  lions, tigers, barn owls, ospreys, other raptors,  coatimundis, caimans, squirrel monkeys, woolly monkeys, margays, raccoons, skunks, and more. There was so much opportunity - to learn, to advance veterinary knowledge & to help animals. I know that I lived through a special & unique time, the likes of which will probably not be repeated.

Wendy and I spent 1-2 years looking all over New Jersey (and Maine) for the right place for us to live and practice. We sought a semirural environment with a laid back lifestyle. Flemington was so very much quieter then. We are so happy that we selected this area. We have loved living here and working here these past 30 years. We continue to love it. We feel fortunate to have been given the opportunity to live and work here.

We saved the wedding money, and we scraped together every penny we had. We bought the building we still practice in today. It took not one - but 2 mortgages. And some of you will remember that was the time of 18% mortgages, Oh boy, & wow!  We opened this place in the sweltering heat of mid August of 1980. It was so quiet here. Route 523 was quiet.

We lived here the first 10 years. Wendy continued to work in Woodbridge, because we had no business and no money. Wayne was the single doc. The tiny ‘hospital’ was just 3 rooms – waiting room, 1 exam room, & treatment/surgery.  It was home and practice.Then over time, the practice grew & evolved. There was no room for us, so we moved out.

The practice remains busy. It "keeps me off the streets" - as my mother used to say.