One of five in the Nation and one of thirty-five in the World

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” author unknown

Wednesday, July 8, 2020

Dr. John Kuenzi of Waukesha – 1979



Dr.  John Kuenzi of Waukesha – WVMA President 1979








Photo:  Courtesy of Dr. John Kuenzi


Personal information
       I was born and raised on a farm in Nebraska and went to Kansas State University where Igraduated in 1956. Following graduation, I went into the Army Veterinary Corp and was stationed in Kentucky, and then came to Wisconsin after that to join Dr. Glen Downing and Dr. Howard Cook in Waukesha, Wisconsin. We had a very good relationship and a very good thriving practice.
       My wife, Valeta, and I have six children. Three of them are biological and three of them are adopted. My two oldest sons are veterinarians and they are in practice with me. I should say, I'm in practice with them I'm an independent contractor and they own the practice. So I don't ever have to sell out. I have a daughter who has a Master's Degree in Christian education. Another daughter is a nurse, and one is a hairdresser. Unfortunately, one of my adopted sons who has major problems with alcohol and probably will never get his life together totally. At this point, I'm lucky enough to have nine grandchildren.

WVMA
       I became a member of the WVMA Executive Board in mid 70s and was elected president, and served in 1979 as president.
      During the time that I was president, Wisconsin managed to establish a veterinary school, and I was on the AVMA Inspection Team that did the first inspection on the basics for the school. There were no buildings, all there were just plans at that time.
       We were also involved in starting the first PAC (Political Action Committee) for the WVMA, which really never took off or did too much, but it was something that I felt would be good to have a little more political clout on the state level.
        As president-elect I traveled around Wisconsin, as did all presidents-elect of the veterinary association. I took a lot of flack over the fact that we were having a veterinary school.  I always said that in the 30 years or so that they were trying to start it, as soon as veterinarians became opposed to it, we would get a veterinary school. And that's basically what did happen. I think the School of Veterinary Medicine has been a great asset to the state of Wisconsin. It's been a personal asset, in that two of my sons have graduated from there. I am in practice with them, a daughter-in-law and two other veterinarians, in Waukesha. I feel they got a very, very good education. As I see these young people coming out, I continue to be impressed with the Wisconsin graduates.
        Bill O' Rourke is often a much maligned executive secretary. I found Bill to be absolutely delightful to work with. He didn't try to tell me what to do. I felt that the people who were against Bill were basically the ones that didn’t want to take the initiative and be leaders, and so he filled the vacuum. And I think that him filling the vacuum is what kept this association going like it did and continued to do up to his retirement. If people were willing to take their leadership part seriously, and do what needed to be done, that he was nothing but supportive and was always on hand to help out.

American Animal Hospital Association
        I was the Member Representative for the Midwest for the American Animal Hospital Association for 10 years. While in that position, I was on the Management Committee. I was Chairman of the Student Membership Committee of AAHA and helped develop the program in which Hill's sponsored talks at all the universities in North America in the development of management. Along with Ray Pahle, we published a booklet about planning your veterinary career, and have had many veterinary students say that it was a very helpful book to them.

Veterinary practice
        Veterinary medicine has changed very dramatically: We have gone from the stage of phenobarb as an anesthetic to the present day of propofal, which can be given intravenously and the animal be awake in about 10 minutes after you quit giving the drug. My sons are very much involved in ultrasound and endoscopic laparoscopy. So the technical advancements have been unbelievable in the last 30 years.
       In 1958, when I came to Waukesha, the office fee and examination was $3. Vaccinations were $2, ovariohysterectomy, which I think we were probably the highest in the area at the time, was $40 for a dog.
       Today, ovariohysterectomy in our practice usually goes out for about $125 to $130 for a normal dog. It has often been said that you could compare the analogy of an office visit being $3 and a postage stamp being $.03 and now that the postage stamps are $.32, theoretically, we should be getting $32 for an office visit and an exam. In our practice, we are presently only getting $24.50, so we have not kept up with inflation, if you consider that.
       For vaccinations and office visit we charge $6, a wellness exam of $14, and for a distemper, hepatitis, lepto, the whole works, is only $12. For a rabies shot we only charge $8, but we do get the exam and the office visit.
       Our practice was the tenth practice to use the Oshkosh system, which is now ImproMed. That was in early 80s. To operate when a computer goes down is like cutting your arm off. You miss a lot of charges and it really slows you down in filling prescriptions. We get so much more very essential management information. The reminders to get people out for vaccinations are done automatically.

Veterinary school issue
       When we were trying to get the veterinary school, the Milwaukee Journal was in opposition to the veterinary school. Bill O'Rourke and I and someone else went in and sat down with the editorial board. We talked with them for better than an hour and, after that, we got two favorable editorials about the veterinary school, which I do think helped influence the legislature.

Final thoughts
       We have seen more and more of the franchised veterinary practices. I believe the reason that they are becoming popular is because some of the very good big practices have so much capital involved that young veterinarians cannot buy in. They look to sell it to a corporation which manages it, and hires new grads who are so far in debt that they want the security of having a job, a retirement fund and health insurance. They are not really the entrepreneurs we were when we started out. However, most of us weren't quite that deep in debt as the new graduates are.


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