Dr. Dennis J. Carr of Montfort – 1972

Dr. Dennis J. Carr of Montfort  – WVMA President 1972

Dennis J. Carr, DVM 

 Photo: Courtesy of Dr. Dennis Carr

Editor’s Note:  Dr. Carr served the WVMA and the State of Wisconsin well over his professional career. He received the WVMA Meritorious Service Award in 1979, was on the AVMA Executive Board from 1974 to 1981, served as the Wisconsin State Veterinarian from 1988 till 1992, served on the Veterinary Examining Board in the late 1960s and received the WVMA Veterinarian of the Year Award in 1989.

During my presidency

       In 1972, and that's been a good number of years ago, we were more focused on a fire engine type practice. Now, with the vet school in Madison, our practitioners are becoming more herd health oriented. Much more of a professional veterinarian, if that's the right word to use. When I started in practice in 1956, the vast number of veterinarians in the state were of the mixed practice type who were a jack-of-all-trades and, essentially, maybe not a master of anything. They could treat any species when I graduated from Iowa State in 1956; we use to think we were well based in basic medicine. You could treat an elephant or a canary. But the breed of veterinarians now are much more narrowly focused, whether it be large animal, small animal, swine health, equine medicine, or whatever, and even getting into the aquaculture now.

        Being WVMA President was an excellent experience. We toured like they do now. We visited the different local veterinary associations and I might say, that the Coulee Valley in those days was one of my favorites, next to our Southwest Veterinary Association, as far as the congeniality and the type of a veterinarian that I could relate to. But it was a challenge to get around and to meet the various segments and also, at that time, the president was the alternate delegate to the AVMA convention. And that was a highlight of my term in office.

        At that time, we were trying to get more veterinarians involved in the local association, as well as the state associations. Dr. O'Rourke was our executive secretary, and I know he worked very hard getting these committees to meet on a routine basis. We tried to get more people involved and try to explain the benefits of organized veterinary medicine to the general practitioner to get them more closely involved with their colleagues.

       It seemed we were more concerned with lay practitioners than we are now. One of our challenges at that time was trying to hold lay pregnancy diagnosis down to a trot so to speak. The University at that time had had a training program to research pregnancy checking and they developed two or three so-called experts and all through the years, they tried to expand their lay pregnancy. And at that time, it was one of the challenges we had. Legislatively, I can't think that we had anything else. We always fought for support of the rabies vaccination program to be more closely related to the practitioner, rather than turn it loose to the general populace. At that time, brucellosis and to some degree TB was still one of the things we were trying to keep a handle on and trying to generate money from the legislature to our state veterinarian's office. Government programs use to be a very nice pa11 of our practice. It seemed like for a number of years, always vaccinated for brucellosis for most calves in May. I don't why that was...but it just happened. But that was nice money in those days.

WVMA Executive Board

      The board met three times a year, plus during the state convention. We met most of the time in Madison, although occasionally we'd get up to the Wisconsin Dells for a meeting. Of course, we met in Milwaukee generally for the state meeting and had a board meeting then, but we didn't get around the state quite like they do now. I appreciate the fact they're getting out and moving around the state where it's been such a burden for some of the people that are coming in from a long drive, like the people in northeastern and northwestern part of the state. They get a chance now to meet half way to those destinations sometimes.

Veterinary Examining Board

       I served on the Examining Board I believe in the late 1960s. I served with Leonard Winn and Dr. Metzig and Keith Downy. It was a gubernatorial appointment. I served on a panel one time in that era on the prophylactic use of antibiotics and I remember I ran into a buzz saw. There were people there from some of the drug companies and, of course, they were wanting to promote the prophylactic use of antibiotics and I was of the opinion they should be strictly related to the therapeutic use.

      I enjoyed the experience. It was quite a challenge trying to stay ahead of these young graduates or even to stay even with them. And I was impressed with their abilities. We all had a few little trick questions, and I was impressed...the kids were coming through. They were pretty well educated. At that time, I always wondered in my own mind what our credentials were that we should be up there quizzing these young people that were coming out of school. They had been quizzed by experts, professionals, and we were trying to come up with questions to trip them up. I wondered the sound basis of that.

       I always figured our job was to sort out the square pegs and keep them out of the roundhole situations, but as far as trying to trip them up on veterinary medicine, I thought that we weren't qualified to do that, being a bunch of old practitioners, so to speak. And since the national exams have come along, it's done an excellent job of evaluating these candidates for licensure.

State veterinarian

       Being state veterinarian was very positive experience. The state veterinarian job at that time, which evolved more so now due to budget cutting, was a lessening of staff. A bigger challenge because we had less people to fight diseases and still had the issue of rabies. TB surfacing in the elk and red deer population. We had our work cut out for us and, consequently, it's more of a challenge now than it was back years previous. But, I say it was a positive experience, and it was certainly quite an experience for an old practitioner to get into the bureaucratic set-up and do business with civil service employees and try to keep them happy and keep things rolling.

       When I was state veterinarian, we had several requests for importation of animals from other countries and other states. Some of the different ones I can remember were really exotic. They had hissing cockroaches from Egypt. They'd perform in carnival acts. And then there was a request from Alaska. A guy wanted to bring in some octagon gnu, I believe, is what they call them. We didn't allow it. If they got loose, that would be a terrible problem. They were native to the mountain ranges of South America. And this guy in Alaska wanted to bring one into Wisconsin. Another time, a fella from Ohio imported some reindeer from Alaska sold part of them to his partner here in Wisconsin. We found out that they were infected with Brucella suis, so we had to shut that importation down in Wisconsin. One crated one fell off of the conveyer in Seattle and killed a bunch of them, so that was less to worry about.

AVMA Executive Board

      One of the more interesting jobs I had was being on the executive board of the AVMA representing Wisconsin, Indiana, and Illinois form 1974 to 198 I. That was an excellent experience. It always brought back the fact that Wisconsin had some of the best educated, most professional veterinarians in the country, and possibly that's due to the type of practice these people are in. The dairy practice is prone to be very professional, and so is small animal. I always figured Wisconsin had the best veterinarians in the country and, with the advent of the vet school, I'm sure they've been updated that much more.

       It was an excellent experience, because you got into the nuts and bolts of organized veterinary medicine, into the different programs, and also the relationship with the federal government, legislators, and so forth. So it was quite an interesting program.

Final thoughts

        If I had to stress one thing, I would stress for the young veterinarians to get involved in organized veterinary medicine. It's been a great joy for me and a great stimulation for practice. Get involved in your local association and try to get involved in some of the other entities ...the examining boards, and executive board and you'll always get rewarded ten times of what you put into it.