Country Veterinary Clinic

A Country Vet For Your Country Pet

Soapy, my dad, and I sat on the back porch, discussing what to do next. I was in my late 50s, telling him I had enough life left to conquer one more big hill. We daydreamed about this and solved many of the world's problems on that back porch. He was always good about coming up with ideas. We were trying to figure out something for me, and he came up with the idea. We talked about them: a storage business again, or strip mall or apartment, but we settled on maybe one of these local butcher shops. Since COVID had caused a food shortage and meat was vital, we thought it would be neat to build one of these just local butcher shops. It just seemed logical. Everything was fine, and we went on our way. By the following day, I came to our back porch meeting, and he had my coffee ready and everything. By then, he was a little bit upset. He said 'You know, son, I ran a butcher shop for years, and if you'd have thought of this sooner, I could have helped you, but I can't.' He couldn't stand up by then and said 'I can't help any!' Most of all, what frustrated him, though, he said, 'For you to even consider anything other than a veterinary clinic, you're wasting your time and effort.' He said 'I spent too much time working and money sending you to school to get you educated.' He would talk to me this way, you see, and he made it well known that he wanted me to open another veterinary clinic. He wasn't backing up. He wasn't giving up. He wasn't backing down at all. We were down at Becky's Diner for our Thursday morning breakfast meeting a few days later. Daddy was the 'CEO' at the round table at Becky's on Thursday mornings. On the way home from breakfast, he's still fuming. He said 'Son, pull in here by the dollar store.' So I whip the truck in there by the dollar store. He said, 'You see that for sale sign? Take that number down,' It was somebody we knew. We wrote down his number. He said 'You buy this lot right here and build a clinic. It should look like a barn. You need to build a clinic.' Of course, the rest is history. That's how we started it. That got us going, and it's a long time coming. It's been slow in the process. Daddy unfortunately passed away on April 13th, 2022. He'll see it from glory