KNAPPA — In Clatsop County, a rural region with farm animals aplenty, Dr. Russel Hunter is a household name.
Out of a converted dairy farm in Knappa, Hunter runs the county’s only large-animal veterinary practice, whose reach extends into neighboring counties, and whose patients — the ridable and the edible — number in the thousands: mainly horses and cattle, but also sheep, goats, lamas, alpacas and pigs. Occasionally, he dabbles in diagnosing afflicted poultry populations.
He isn’t licensed in Washington state, so animal owners from across the river bring their livestock to him.
“He’s famous around here,” said Mark Standley, of Clatskanie, who, with his wife, Jan, have been taking their animals to Hunter for about 20 years. “He’s the best vet ever for a community like this.”
On a typical morning, Hunter and his team do lab work, arrange prescriptions and take appointments at his clinic, which doubles as his home. Throughout the day, he and his crew communicate with clients.
The Standleys recently brought in a mare named “Patches” to have her reproductive organs examined so they can breed her artificially. Another horse, sickly and losing weight, arrived later; Hunter saw to the steed while his assistants castrated and trimmed the horns of a pygmy goat from Scappoose.
Then they make house calls, driving to outlying areas. At a homestead in Brownsmead, Hunter took blood samples from a pair of horses and vaccinated them.
Hunter is the primary care physician for these animals, and as daylight hours lengthen, so do his hours of operation.
Now and then, urgencies and emergencies arise: a calving or foaling, a critical illness or injury, sometimes a need for euthanasia — for example, after an animal gets struck by a car. Hunter’s repertoire touches all stages in the large-animal life cycle.
A graduate of the University of California at Davis, Hunter came to Clatsop County with his wife, Molly, in 1973 and moved into their current location in 1977.
Five years ago, Hunter hired Stephanie Ramsey, his associate veterinarian and protégé. In general, speculative terms, the pair have discussed the possibility that she might one day take over the practice when Hunter, now 77, retires. Ramsey, in fact, lives a short distance away with her husband and two children.
Large animal doctors, Hunter said, are an “endangered species” in the veterinary field. The vast majority of aspiring vets choose to treat companion animals like dogs and cats.
Caring for large ones, Ramsey said, is “very physical work. It can be much nicer to be in a nice, warm, cozy, small-animal clinic than to be out in the field, like we are all the time.”
Plus, there is often more money in treating traditional pets — no small consideration when veterinary programs tend to be enormously expensive, requiring many aspiring vets to take on burdensome debt loads, Ramsey said.
Though he works closely with the person who could one day become his successor, when the subject of retirement came up, Hunter quietly protested: “I’m going to die on the road,” he said with a smirk.
The job, he said, is “too damn enjoyable.”
“It’s exciting, because there’s always something new,” he said. “There’s things to learn. Every case is an investigation, or a detective story, you might say” — one in which the vet is always working to identify the culprit — to “figure it out and do the best you can do.”
Now in his 51st year as a veterinarian, Hunter gets to use these detective skills in a community where his expertise is essential — and where other large-animal practices have opened and closed, while his has survived and thrived.
Something he didn’t realize until he joined the profession: Though driven by animal care, the job is often as much about caring for the animal’s owner. “You develop really long term, close, trusting relationships,” he said.
In a profession that can be dirty and dangerous, a veterinarian and an animal owner can experience a lot together, moments of distress and of breakthrough — moments when their happiness is hitched to the well-being of the creature in their care.
One time, when he was living in Eureka, California, he was summoned to a beef ranch in the mountains, where a cow was ready to calve. As he reached the higher elevation, the rain turned to snow. By the end of the birthing, it had snowed 6 inches, and Hunter was hypothermic. “I was in agony,” he said. “I was totally soaked. I was so cold.”
The rancher took Hunter indoors, dried his clothes, helped him clean up and put warm food in his stomach before sending him on his way.
“When that kind of stuff happens, it’s kind of special,” he said. “It’s like you’ve been in the trenches together.”