Retired veterinarian to donate his time & talents

After half a hundred years, and more than a quarter of a million patient interactions, Dr. Donald MacDougall, DVM, is stepping away from veterinarian medicine in Valencia County.

“I looked at my life and I’ve been doing nothing but veterinary medicine for a half a hundred years,” MacDougall said.

After hearing the “Asleep at the Wheel” song by that name, MacDougall said, “I thought, OK, I don’t know how, but God put that in my life. He sent me this note that said ‘half a hundred years. That’s enough.’”

Born in Denver, Colo., and living throughout the Southwest, MacDougall said he decided to become a veterinarian when he was 16 years old after watching a vet stitch up one of the family’s horses.

“I was just enamored. I told my parents and my teachers and everything. That’s what I was going to do,” he recalls.

While MacDougall was enamored of his chosen profession, he didn’t get the support he’d hoped for. People were, frankly, discouraging, he said.

“They said you can’t get into vet school. It’s one in a 100 people that do that. You’re gonna have to have straight As. You’re going to have to be connected. It’s so hard to get in. You don’t want to be a veterinarian. My (school) councilors and even family were all kind of like, ‘Oh, that’s probably not going to work.’”

At the time, MacDougall said there were thousands of people applying for hundreds of slots available at the Colorado State University School of Veterinary Medicine — a 20 to one shot of getting accepted.

So he went to his school councilor and asked what he needed to do to give himself the best chance at success. Take Latin for the medical terminology. He’d have to learn, calculus, biology, physics and any animal science class he could take. Oh, and get straight As.

“So, I did,” he said.

MacDougall graduated high school and got a rodeo scholarship for riding bucking broncs and steer wrestling, enrolling in Northeastern Junior College in Sterling, Colo. He graduated with an associate degree in general science with a 4.0 grade point average, the valedictorian for the class of 1978.

MacDougall earned his Bachelor of Science in veterinary sciences with a major in wildlife biology in 1980 from CSU, and received his doctorate of veterinary medicine from the university in 1983.

He was accepted to the veterinary program on his first application, “which you’re not supposed to be able to do,” he mentioned.

He was 20 years old at the time, making him the “baby” of the class and the youngest veterinarian to graduate from CSU at the time, at the age of 24.

After college, MacDougall worked at a mixed animal practice in Rapid City, S.D., for two years, getting his feet wet, testing his skills and figuring out what he ultimately wanted to do.

“In 1986, I shopped all over the Southwest — California, Arizona, New Mexico. Those were the only places I wanted to live because of the weather,” he said, with a chuckle.

He found a job opportunity in the village of Los Lunas, working for a veterinarian by the name of George Parker, who was more than ready to retire. Parker offered MacDougall a deal — come work for him for a year and he’d sell MacDougall the practice.

“At some of the other jobs, I was going to be like one of nine veterinarians. I was never going to be the owner. So I took a job at Los Lunas Animal Clinic knowing that I was going to buy it.”

He purchased the practice in 1988 and, in 2002, moved the practice to its current location on N.M. 314. The structure it occupies was designed by MacDougall himself, and is an award-winning building.

While his focus has been his Los Lunas practice, during the last five decades MacDougall has served on the New Mexico Veterinary Association Executive Board, has been the attending veterinarian for Wildlife West Nature Park in Edgewood since 1993, was the medical director and co-owner of PetER in Los Lunas from 2005 to 2020, and is a wildlife veterinarian at Wilderness West Veterinary Adventures, which provides professional wildlife capture and handling.

There’s even more accomplishments on his curriculum vitae but, in the last few years, MacDougall said he began to slow down. A tipping point came in 2020 when veterinarian services shut down during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“It just crushed me.”

Only able to offer curbside service, which forced pet owners to send their companion animals in for examines and procedures unaccompanied, MacDougall knew he needed to stop.

In 2021, he sold his practice to a conglomerate called Western Veterinary Partners that owns about 200 veterinary practices in the greater Western U.S. The deal was to have MacDougall work full-time for a year, then continue full-time for the second year but without having to be on call, then in the third and final year of his contract — this year — work part time.

Dr. William Thompson, who has been with the practice for more than 20 years is now “running the show” as the medical manager, MacDougall said, and veterinarians Dr. Melissa Rigdon and Dr. Emily Payne have been hired.

“This last year, I’ve mentored these young veterinarians. They’re good but it takes some time to get up and going. There’s a learning curve in every profession,” he said.

While he is retiring from mixed animal practice in Valencia County, MacDougall isn’t retiring completely. As a wildlife veterinarian, he will still be at Wildlife West and taking on what he calls “pet projects.”

Certified in net gunning, darting and restraining buffalo, he will have the chance to work with tribes in the Southwest that own buffalo herds and need assistance in relocating and treating the animals.

He could also take on projects with New Mexico Game and Fish, such as putting new bighorn sheep herds out on the mountain ranges. MacDougall is certified in chemical restraining and handling of wildlife, “and I think I’m probably the only one in New Mexico that has this training.”

But he could always say no to a job. Instead of a week-long project in Utah, he could just go fishing.

“I feel a little blessed and spoiled right now. Everybody has problems. We have a few of ours, but when I look around at everybody else, my life has way less,” he said.

One passion project that will get more attention from MacDougall is his work with Christian Veterinary Mission, a non-profit mission organization that provides veterinarian care around the world.

“It’s true missionary work. The connection is what we have with animals. We’ll fix their horse and we’ll let them know the good news about this guy named Jesus. It’s very low stress, low key,” he said. “We’ve helped thousands of animals and, with retirement, I’m going to do more.”

MacDougall is also “going around the world very slowly. I went to New Zealand last winter and Africa this summer. I’m going to Alaska for the first time later this fall, hopefully. I’m gonna take a couple trips a year and go to all the places I ever wanted to go. So, that’s what retirement is.”