Horse Doctors

The Compassionate, Dedicated and Wildly Talented Equine Veterinarians Who Treat and Heal the Horses We Love

Their boots, tires and floorboards are caked with mud as they sit behind the wheel, focused on the road ahead and their next case. A dusty vet truck is a far cry from a growling sports car, and it’s loaded down with the bandages, vials and supplies they’ll reach for to pull a foal, suture a laceration, wrap a leg or tube a colic. Their day may run the gamut from welcoming new life to gently easing life to an end for the sake of comfort and compassion — and everything between. They spend most days tired from the work but inspired by the outcomes. Despite a calm visage, they feel the emotions of each case. Behind the prepurchase exams, surgeries and lameness evaluations is an individual whose dream was to become a horse doctor: an equine veterinarian with a mind for medicine and a heart to serve.

Many horse owners know veterinarians only from times of crisis. There’s a late night sound we all recognize; it’s the unmistakable battle cry of tires on gravel. We can breathe again when that truck rolls to a stop. They’re here, our horse is in the best of hands and they’ll give it everything they have. The pressure of the moment is passed like a baton. We watch as they wield hands and eyes together with the best in advanced technology to surface answers, devise a plan and attack a problem — all for patients that can’t articulate what’s wrong.

Who are these equine veterinary heroes, and why do they choose this work amidst its challenges?

A Noble Calling

Equine veterinary medicine isn’t simply a profession, it’s a calling that envelopes a person to the point that it becomes a significant part of who they are, not simply what they do. Nights often bleed into mornings without much sleep while days are long and physical. If they make it to their kids’ games, it’s often long after kickoff, wearing scrubs stained from the day’s cases. While the sacrifice is great, the fulfillment can be nearly indescribable. The feeling of triumph after tackling near insurmountable odds is an adrenaline rush like no other. From new practitioners to the titans of the profession, these veterinarians share a cell-deep love of the horse, a tenacious passion for science and a devotion to true service. “This has been a lifelong love affair,” affirms Dr. Kent Allen, a former Olympic veterinarian, industry magnate and founder of Virginia Equine Imaging in The Plains, nestled in Virginia’s picturesque Piedmont region, an hour southwest of Washington, D.C. “It has given me this rich life that I’d never predicted. I’ve filled a passport and had global experiences with experts in the field, incredible athletes and amazing horses. It’s the fabric of my being, and it has been for my entire life.”

When the lead rope is handed over to our veterinarian, the mix of emotions for the horse owner is hard to describe; it’s a swirling concoction of hope, fear, uncertainty and confidence. While we fear the unknown, we have confidence in the professional who is literally and figuratively taking the reins from us. Our chips are on the table, and we’re betting on our vet. “There’s a responsibility,” confirms Dr. Shane Miller, a board-certified equine surgeon and owner of Comstock and Great Basin Equine Hospitals in Gardnerville, a small, horse-heavy town in the eastern flank of the Sierra Nevada mountains in northern Nevada. “We’re responsible for what’s going to happen, and with that responsibility comes a lot of dedication. We had better be passionate, and we had better be compassionate because we’re faced with something new every single day. With everything I’ve given to horses and to my career, equine veterinary medicine has given me way more. Anybody would want to wake up every day and feel blessed that they get an opportunity to serve like this.”

For the Betterment of the Horse

You’ll be hard-pressed to find an equine veterinarian whose story doesn’t start with the horse. These people connect with horses on a deeper level. They understand them, feel with them and can almost telepathically communicate with them. “I strongly believe that we’re given gifts, and we should use those gifts the best we can,” says Dr. Melinda “Mindy” Story of Colorado State University, Fort Collins, a lifelong horsewoman, researcher and veterinarian board-certified in surgery as well as sports medicine and rehabilitation. “I do think I have a gift to understand horses, and I want to give back. There’s just nothing else I could possibly do. I’m grateful every day that I get to spend my days with these amazing creatures and help them feel good. I can’t imagine anything better.”

Equine vets give their all to each patient and not just because it’s the right thing to do. There’s a commitment, a need to unearth answers and to discover new paths forward. “They’re the most athletic, biological machine God ever made,” says Dr. G. Marvin Beeman, a lifelong horseman and perhaps one of the most iconic practitioners to have ever donned a stethoscope. In his over 65 years in equine practice as co-founder of the famed Littleton Equine Medical Center, in the milehigh city of Littleton, 10 miles south of Denver, he’s watched equine veterinary medicine evolve from the days before inhalation anesthesia to take on an entirely different shape today. “I never cease to be amazed,” he says with a vibrant spark in his eyes. “When I got out of school no one knew what DNA was (the double helix structure of DNA wasn’t identified until 1953) or what stem cells did. That’s what’s so intriguing to me; I wonder what’s on the other side of the page that we haven’t read yet.”

While passion and talent come together with evolving science and cutting-edge medicine to improve patient outcomes, it’s still the veterinarian who ultimately drives the case. Empathy gives them an edge, a grit and a level of try that artificial intelligence could never replicate. They know their clients and the very real emotions wrapped up in every case because they are their clients. They own, ride and love horses just as their clients do, and they fully grasp what’s at stake with every tough decision. They outwardly remain poised and stoic in times of crisis, but we’re not the only ones carrying the weight of our ailing horse. “For me, it’s always been about the horse,” says Dr. Laramie Winfield, a board-certified internal medicine specialist with Steinbeck Peninsula Equine Clinics in Salinas, California, and an eventing rider in her own right. “I know that what I do every day matters, and that I deeply care about what I do. When I see a horse’s personality start to come back as I help them feel better, there’s just nothing that beats that for me.”

Driving Impact

Immense progress and vast innovation has been pushed forward by veterinarians seeking better ways to treat, heal, prevent issues and serve these stunning natural athletes that captivate them so wholly. Staggering advancements have taken diagnostics, surgical techniques, regenerative medicine, technology, rehabilitation and nutrition to new heights and levels of impact. “I’m so excited about where veterinary medicine is going,” says Colorado State’s Dr. Story exuberantly. “Innovations are allowing us to take the next step into the cellular mechanisms of disease. Collectively as a profession, we’re energized by what we can discover tomorrow, the next day and beyond that. The potential for progress is endless and so is the potential benefit to the horse.”

The collegiality of the profession combined with a raw love of the horse and rapid-fire advancements in technology continue to make the profession an exhilarating place to be. “It’s a passion. It’s not a job,” affirms Dr. Cooper Williams of Equine Sports Medicine of Hampstead, Maryland, about 35 miles northwest of Baltimore. The former professional polo player is a board-certified sports medicine and rehabilitation practitioner. “I never felt like it was a job. I get up every morning, and I want to go do what I do.”

That’s also a feeling Dr. Troy Herthel knows well. He’s a board-certified surgeon at Alamo Pintado Equine Medical Center in Los Olivos on California’s Central Coast, a practice his parents — famed equine veterinarian Dr. Doug Herthel and his wife, Sue — founded over 50 years ago. “I love the fact that my kids get to come home after school and watch surgeries or go with me on farm calls just like I did with my dad as a kid. Anytime I get a late-night colic, my daughters want to get out of bed and go with me. It’s fun for me to have them there because I remember how bad I wanted to be there with my dad. He felt a huge commitment to the horse. That was the most important thing to him. He passed that down to me, and now my girls have that same love of horses. When my dad started, he had a stethoscope and a thermometer. That’s about it. Today, I look around Alamo Pintado Equine and we have so many amazing innovations that have evolved throughout the years — nuclear scintigraphy (bone scan), CT (computed tomography), MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and PET (positron emission tomography). These innovations help advance the way that we diagnose and treat. But, I think back to how much he accomplished with so few tools, and I’m amazed.”

Equine veterinary medicine is a place where men and women from every background share a core-level love of the horse, a voracious appetite for science and medicine, and a fighting spirit. They are warriors for the horse; they’re soft and compassionate, strong and focused, and thoughtfully pointed toward progress in each case they treat. While their patients can’t communicate with them in the traditional sense, these practitioners understand far more than we’d imagine, absorbed through a keen eye and an innate connection to the horses they treat.

It’s a profession that, despite its challenges, brings veterinarians immeasurable joy through the impact they make. “I always thought a good life and career could be measured by the memories and the stories you can tell,” says Virginia’s Dr. Kent Allen. “It’s like a line from a Jimmy Buffett song, it’s all about ‘the stories you can tell.’ I can tell stories from my career that have taken me around the world with some of the best people I’ve ever known while working on horses I greatly admire. That’s a good life.”