After 2.5 years as an all women clinic, the Timberlea Veterinary Clinic finally hired its first male employee, Dr. Davis Wood. It wasn’t that we didn’t want to, but male employees are becoming a rarity in this predominantly female field of animal care.
We met Davis as a student on stage in his final year of Veterinary School. As a graduate from the University of Guelph, he fit in readily with the “teamâ€Â. Right attitude, right work ethic, good sense of fun. However, we were already committed to hiring another one of his classmates- Dr. Nina Gauthier. Nina went way back with Drs. Glew and Cote, having volunteered at their previous hospital and even having come in to paint the surgery during the Christmas rush in 2012 to open in early 2013. As a new clinic, with 4 veterinarians within the first 2 years, we could not fathom hiring a 5th.
So Davis learned his early skills elsewhere, and perfected his trade. When approached once again this year, we calculated with holidays, busy season, we could justify 4.5 vets- of course new grads have bills to pay, but we figured we would manage. So we took the plunge and took on our 5th veterinarian in our blossoming clinic. On our first vet meeting (we meet once per month to go over cases, review new treatments etc…) we were happy to have Davis with us. As luck would have it, Nina announced that she was pregnant, which caused a brief moment of concern, then thankfulness that we had taken on the new vet.
“Don’t worry†said Dr. Gauthier with her cheeky smile “we’ve got male!â€Â