Parker County Today May 2018 | Page 64

our professionals: TOP VETS Specializing in All Creatures, Great and Small Dr. Jeffrey Foland (Except People and Snakes) Weatherford Equine Breeding Center and Medical Center  Dr. Foland has dedicated his life to protecting the breed • Emergency calls after hours • around to get help breeding the finest horses possible. After business expanded at the Equine Medical Center, the Weatherford Equine Breeding Center, a specialized facility that focuses on equine reproduction, was opened in 2011. The facility continuously endeavors to use the most technologically advanced methods to ensure successful outcomes and healthy horses. The center currently owns around 1,200 mares and screens and quarantines new mares to safeguard their recipient herd against disease. However, many people bring their horses directly to the center. “We have some vets that go on farms that do breeding services there, and then a lot of people that haul mares in either for certain stallions or have specific breeding proce- dures done on their mares. We are a fairly specialized facil- ity in that we have probably if not the most successful prac- tice — it’s called intracytoplasmic (ICSI) — in the country, it’s one of the top ones. We do a lot of routine breeding as well, and stand quite a few stallions at the facility, but we also do a lot of specialized breeding work, too.” •Small Animal •Large Animal •Boarding •Grooming Grote Veterinary Clinic 819 Santa Fe Drive | Weatherford, TX 76086 Riverstone Veterinary Hospital 1421 FM 1189 Ste. 4 | Brock, TX 76087 (817) 594-0216 | Metro: (817) 596-8808 Mon-Fri: 8am–5:30pm | Sat: 8am–2pm (817) 599-8085 Mon-Thur: 7:30am–6pm | Fri: 7:30am–5pm 62 ometimes you just grow up knowing what you want to do. For Dr. Jeffrey Foland, it was simple; when he was 13 years old, growing up in Wyoming, he knew he wanted to become a veterinarian.  “I grew up on a farm surrounded by horses and cattle. A lot of the vets that we dealt with were people that I looked up to, and that’s just what I decided I wanted to do,” Foland said. Foland went to college at the University of Wyoming, then obtained his veterinary degree from Kansas State University.  The Weatherford Equine Medical Center, which first opened its doors in 2002, offers exceptional equine care, including sports medicine, internal medicine, podiatry, diagnostic and regenerative medicine. Prior to the center’s opening, Foland and his dedicated colleagues worked out of different places in 2001 while the center was being built. “We worked out of ... two different barns or farms as we were building the hospital. We worked out of two of our client’s farms and set up ... a surgery room in one of them, and then got this [the medical center] built in March of 2002. Hebbert and I were the original owners of the facility. Ritthaler was a relatively young vet at the time, and he came with us right at the start. He bought in about three or four years later,” Foland said.  The Medical Center focuses on the overall health of the horses. “We do anything from routine health mainte- nance, like vaccinations and wormings, to full emergency surgeries, colics, and orthopedics and fractures, and things like that,” Foland explained. “I love working with really good horses and being around people that have horses … Favorite thing, probably, is taking horses that are injured or colicky and getting them turned around.” After the Medical Center was opened, business contin- ued to develop and increase, and the Center found itself in need of more and more space. “We just kept expanding until we ran out of room here, and then we had to build a breeding facility four miles west of the main hospital. I think that was five or six years ago that we did that,” Foland said. Foland has a real love for his work, and offered advice from the adage, “Find something that you love to do, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Considering how famous Weatherford is for its cutting horses, it’s no great surprise that people come from all S 63