StemCell Therapy

For as long as she can remember, Goochland Animal Clinic founder Dr. Margaret Washburn wanted to be a veterinarian.

She knew it as a child growing up on her parents farm in Charles City County, where her earliest memories involved chickens, horses and cows, and she knew it as a teenager spending her summer hours as a veterinary assistant at a clinic in Ashland.

I often think back on how lucky I was that my parents always told my siblings and I that we could be whatever we wanted to be, Washburn says, and for her that would ultimately mean enrolling at Virginia Tech and eventually the nearby Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine, graduating in 1979.

What would follow would be decades of hard work and long hours in a profession known to be both physically and emotionally demanding. Yet even now, just a few weeks after retiring from the practice she built alongside her husband Richard in Maidens, she says she would not have changed a thing.

Simply put, I love veterinary medicine, Washburn said, explaining that getting to work with animals is just part of what drew her to the field. Washburn said she also loves the relationships she has been able to have with clients, and I always told young people who were considering going into veterinary medicine that that was an important part of it. You really have to love people.

Washburn founded Goochland Animal Clinic in 1991, after several years of honing her skills in other practices. She had learned early on that, while she enjoyed being able to work with both small and large animals, it seemed like a wiser choice to narrow the focus somewhat. She had also realized that she felt ready to strike out on her own, so when she found a house for sale on Maidens Road that could, with a little elbow grease, be converted into an animal clinic, she Richard decided to take the leap.

Over the next three decades she would build her practice slowly, relying largely on word of mouth at first to bring new clients to her door. As her list of clients grew so did her young family, and Washburn remembers what a joy it was that she could have her children nearby as she worked.

Though Washburn has always loved the work, running the practice also required an immense amount of work and time. Not long ago, knowing that she was perhaps ready to begin stepping back from the day-to-day rigor of being a full time veterinarian, she and her husband made the decision to sell the practice to veterinarian Dr. Brandi Layton and her husband Buck, who joined her at Goochland Animal Clinic in 2011.

It is clear from listening to her former clients that Washburn leaves behind a legacy of love and compassion.

To some, it was the encouragement Washburn gave to young clients who expressed an interest in becoming veterinarians themselves. To others, it was the way Washburn cared for their cherished family pets in the last days of their lives.

I will forever be grateful to Dr. Washburn and the care shes given our beloved pets, said Angela Allen, a client of Washburns for over 20 years.

Allen recalls experiences ranging from the best of times new puppy or kitten checkups to the worst of times: mercifully euthanizing an animal to relieve its suffering when the time came. Her dedication, compassion and love for pets and their families will truly be missed.

For her part, Washburn says she could not have asked for a better community in which to work, or a more fulfilling career.

Its just joyful every day to be able to work with these animals, she said. Ive been so fortunate to be able to have these wonderful relationships, both with pets and with people.

Original post:
Local vet leaves legacy of love for pets and people - Richmond.com

This entry was posted on May 9, 2020 at 5:44 pm and is filed under Veterinary Medicine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |