Dr. Margaret Terhar Eastman of North Pole, AK - 2003

Dr. Margaret Terhar Eastman of North Pole, AK -                    WVMA President 2003

Personal information

       I grew up in DePere, Wisconsin where I lived between dairy farms with my parents and sister. I went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for both undergraduate and veterinary medical school, much to my parents’ delight. I wasn’t the only senior at St. Joseph Academy in Green Bay who went to UW-Madison, but I was the lone applicant to the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and the only one who left five Samoyeds at home. The Fort Howard Foundation Scholarship gave me the means to go to veterinary medical school, and also the motivation to get in as early as possible. As a result, I started my first year at 20 years old…a mixed blessing to say the least.

        As a new veterinary student, I wasn’t sure whether food animal or small animal medicine was the path for me. I gave cows a good hard look, but in the end stayed with the dogs and cats I’d grown up with. My first job was at Companion Care Pet Hospital in Wausau, Wisconsin. Then I moved back home to join the practice my parents had used for years. Dr. George Metzger and Dr. Paul Strong welcomed me back to Bay East Animal Hospital where I spent the next decade as an associate and practice owner.

Involvement in the WVMA

       I started my drives to from Green Bay to Madison as a new member of the Public Education and Marketing Committee in 1998. In 1999 I became the chairperson for this ambitious and active group. With the guidance of Leslie Grendahl and the assistance of Mary Beth Gosling we produced “FOCUS on Client Communications,” a program designed to help position the veterinarian as the principle source of pet information for the public. We produced newsletters, templates, and a guide to help veterinarians interact with their communities through a variety of outlets and provide a more continuous flow of information than a one-time ad campaign could provide.

       I was fortunate to be invited to the Nine States Meeting and Leadership Conference as Public Education and Marketing Committee chair. Those were the places I was first exposed to organized veterinary medicine, and I enjoyed the interactions very much.

       I was nominated as president-elect and ran uncontested in 2002. I remember how impressed I was with the executive board at their first meeting. They were so professional, and disagreements were so civilized! That such a large, diverse group could function so efficiently reflects the caliber of veterinarians in Wisconsin. The years of my terms were filled with challenges, but Leslie, her staff, and the executive board made my job much easier.

Challenges and difficulties throughout presidency

       Wisconsin veterinarians faced a number of challenges in 2003, and in the wake of 9/11, disaster preparedness and emerging diseases were on the collective mind of WVMA. Not long after FMD wreaked havoc in Europe, CWD and West Nile Virus both reared their ugly heads in Wisconsin. At our convention in Milwaukee, not only did I take over as president following Randy Schuett, I also learned to remove the obex from the head of a white tail deer for CWD testing.

       One of the issues we undertook was an offshoot of the FOCUS campaign. Our goal was to promote Wisconsin veterinarians as the primary source of animal health information, yet Wisconsin was one of just a handful of states that didn’t require CE for license renewal. Our clients assumed we were required to stay current to hold a license, and our goal was to live up to our consumers’ expectations. We worked with the examining board and that change became a reality.

       At that time, there was also initiative by a handful of Wisconsin chiropractors to be allowed to treat our veterinary patients without a referral. Leslie worked with the executive director of the chiropractors’ state association, to create an arrangement that would permit veterinarians to refer to non-veterinary health professionals. Our goal was to provide the veterinarian a way to utilize alternative disciplines when no veterinarian with that training was accessible, and to prevent non-veterinary license holders from creating a new discipline and in turn limiting the veterinarian’s scope of practice. Our efforts ended up going nowhere, but so did the efforts of chiropractors to create a new licensing category.

The benefit I appreciated most from being WVMA president was attending the AVMA convention. Watching the House of Delegates in action was enlightening, and spending time with the rest of the Wisconsin delegation was a lot of fun. The people I met at the Nine States meetings and the AVMA Leadership Conferences were so impressive. It’s encouraging now to see their names on AVMA committees and offices – I’m assured our profession is in good hands.

       I moved from Wisconsin to Alaska during my year as past president. Now I live in a state where my license number is in the 400’s and our association has maybe a hundred members. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Governor Sarah Palin appointed me to the Board of Veterinary Examiners.  I’m once again an associate in a small animal practice and live in North Pole, a small community southeast of Fairbanks with my little boy Jack, husband Brian, three dogs and two cats. As I write this, one of our representatives is introducing a bill that will open our practice act. The examining board is not in complete agreement with the state VMA over the wording, but we’re working it out. I’m in a much smaller pond now, but the stakes are just as high for our profession. In times like these, I’m so grateful for the experience I gained as president of the WVMA.