It was a help wanted ad tacked to the bulletin board at college that brought Douglas Hart to Pine Plains in 1967. His graduation from Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine was coming near, and Dr. Webster at the Pine Plains Veterinary Hospital needed a vet. The two met when Hart drove the five hours down from Ithaca one Saturday.
They got along well during the interview, particularly after Don Webster mentioned the names of his wife and children: Dora, Dawn, Debbie, Deirdre and David. It seemed natural that a Doug would fit right in.
Dr. Doug Hart moved to Pine Plains after graduation, becoming the second veterinarian in the practice, and has been in the town ever since.
His choice of occupation was not surprising. As a child growing up in White Plains, New York, he says, he and his brothers “were always surrounded by cats and dogs in the neighborhood.” Like many children, they would sometimes bring a stray home, though their parents discouraged this.
Hart worked on a small dairy farm while in high school, and continued to be more oriented toward farm animals, which helped draw him to the practice in Pine Plains. At that time, there were many dairy farms in and around the town.
The vets would go out on farm calls in the early-morning hours, coming back to the clinic for an hour or two of appointments with small animals before heading back out to the farms in the late afternoon and evening.
At times the owners were as much a curiosity as the animals. Hart recalls one call from Lou Wells, a Gallatin farmer, requesting a visit but asking if the vet could come either before or after that night’s TV broadcast of “Little House on the Prairie.”
Arriving near showtime, Hart recalls having to sit through the television show before seeing the patient. “In the beginning, we might visit 10-15 different farms a day,” he said.
Hart’s particular professional focus was on reproductive health and practicing preventive medicine. He regularly visited farms to do a herd check. He kept watch on how a cow was faring after having a calf, and whether a cow was pregnant after breeding. If not, why not?
Several years ago, the Pine Plains veterinary hospital sold its large-animal application to Dr. Isaac Angell of the Bentley Veterinary Practice in Stanfordville. Hart confesses that he “misses the people with big animals,” who depend on their livestock to make their living. For him, that work was “fulfilling, and also heartbreaking,” he says.
Hart acknowledges his practice sometimes encountered financial difficulties when farmers were unable to afford the costs for their animals’ care. But the question also reminded him, laughing, of another crack from Lou Wells, who reportedly said, “One of these days I’m going to pay up, and tell you what I really think of you.” (Wells always paid his bill, Hart hastened to add.)
Hart, 80, has reduced his hours at the veterinary hospital, but he continues to treat the dogs, cats and other small animals that need his help. It is eminently apparent that he means it when he says, “I enjoy being useful to people and the animals they care for.”