MOUNT PLEASANT, Pa. (AP) - Dressed in a gray jumpsuit, looking more like an auto mechanic than a veterinarian, Richard Fondrk unfolds himself gingerly from his truck near Dusty and Karen Kerber’s horse barn in Mount Pleasant, Westmoreland County.
He plants his cane in the dirt, and three dogs cluster around his legs.
Karen Kerber studies the doctor closely, her head tilted. He’s the vet who, just out of school, began tending her husband’s dairy cows. At one time they had 500 and supplied milk for Norwin area schools. Now the Kerbers own four horses and board two.
Their farm, and the one he visits the same recent afternoon in Youngwood, are among a dwindling number of stops Dr. Fondrk is making these days. He is administering shots and medication, listening to lungs, taking blood and advising, but the heavy lifting is over.
His cane has supported two arthritic knees recovering from surgery since November, but the news he got this summer explained why he was losing strength.
“It is with a heavy heart,” he started a letter to “Dear Friends” last month. “. the diagnosis is bad. I have Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. All my troubles over the last three years all make sense now.”
On his rounds, people slip him cards, touch his arm. A client in Clairton wrote a letter that started “Well done thy good and faithful servant!!” underlining each word.
“One client asked if she could give me a hug,” he said. “She gave me the biggest hug.” He goes silent and dabs at his eyes. “It’s been an emotional time.”
Dr. Fondrk makes his way into the barn. He leans the cane against a stall door and puts his hand against the satiny auburn neck of Smoke, a 17-year-old Missouri Fox Trotter suffering chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Ms. Kerber holds Smoke’s head as the vet sets his stethoscope on the rear flank.
Smoke forces his breath out in jolts.
After a few more breaths, the doctor tells Kerber, “He’s slightly better but not where he needs to be.”
They consult awhile, then the 63-year-old vet is back in his truck, en route to Youngwood. “I’ve been these guys’ vet a lot of years,” he says. “I’m not going to say goodbye, but I sort of am.”
In his letter, he recommended another equine practice. Horse owners have veterinary options throughout the region, but few doctors answer calls for goats, sheep, cows and chickens anymore.
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“I have one-third the clients I had in the ’80s, and the old guy before me had triple the number I started with.”
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Of several goat keepers in the area, Gavin Deming, co-founder of Allegheny GoatScape, says he takes his herd to a practice in Kittanning. It’s the closest one to him but is outside the practice’s range of house calls.
“I have one-third the clients I had in the ’80s,” Dr. Fondryk said, “and the old guy before me had triple the number I started with.
“All vets come out of school with training to work on all species,” Dr. Fondrk said, “but most are trained well in what they’re interested in,” mainly dogs and cats. That’s where the most demand is, and you can stay relatively clean and keep hours that allow for a life.
As he drives, he points to one meadow after another: “That used to be a dairy farm, that place had horses.”
It’s become hard for a large animal vet to make a living because it’s become hard for his clients to make a living. Fewer small farms means more driving distance. Milk prices “are about what they were in the ’60s,” Kerber said. “All our friends have sold their dairy cows.”
Small dairy farmers who remain may buy the animals others sell off, Dr. Fondrk says, but most animals are auctioned for slaughter.
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Dr. Fondrk grew up in Jeannette and lives there with his wife. Their two grown children live in Pittsburgh. His practice lives packed to the brim in the back of a red Dodge truck.
He keeps an office in a storage shed at the West Newton Animal Clinic, where he was mentored by two doctors who left him all the work he wanted. He would like to have mentored someone to take his place but there have been no takers.
The large-animal vet is on call seven days a week from March to mid-July, the usual birthing season. It’s heavy work, and it’s dirty, he said, “but it’s so interesting.”
As he drives, he reminisces about 38 years of getting up at dawn, sometimes working past midnight for emergencies. He has helped many cows deliver calves, “a horrible job that can take from 10 minutes to four hours, usually in facilities that aren’t sanitary,” sometimes crawling through piles of manure, sometimes reaching in to attach a chain to a calf that’s been dead for days. He has had clients whose animals wouldn’t fetch the cost of a procedure but he treated them anyway and took a sum that was “good enough.”
He has no favorite species, he says, but he had one favorite chicken, “the nicest chicken you’d ever want to meet,” a snuggly bird named Goldie who once stowed away in his truck unbeknownst to him. Its droppings gave it away. “She must have hopped out somewhere, but the owner never saw her again. It’s hard for a chicken to be cool, but she was.”
Some calls stand out for their novelty.
“Guy had the zebra on a halter and it was trying to bite him,” he said. “He said, ’You know how to castrate a zebra?’ and I said, ’Well, I never have but it looks like a striped horse to me.’”
He took calls for the zebra and a kangaroo from Critter Country Animal Farm in Smithton, which keeps a range of wild animals.
“The kangaroo had an infection in its foot. I said, ’Can you hold the thing?’ He basically got it in a bear hug. It was bouncing around a little, but I was able to give it a shot in the haunch muscle.”
Critter Country Animal Farm is now looking for a regular veterinarian to replace Dr. Fondrk, said volunteer Jane Daugherty. “So far we haven’t found anyone. But the owners will take the animals wherever they need to” for vet care.
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Dr. Fondrk guides his truck down the long pebble-covered drive leading to Fay Marie’s 14-acre farm in Youngwood. She emerges from the barn in knee-high rubber boots as the doctor climbs from the cab of his truck.
“I brought you a stool to sit on,” she says, pointing to a red metal stool just inside the barn. “That way you can sit and I can bring her (the horse) to you.”
After he checks the horse he is there to see, he gives Marie advice about another, a mare that hates the trailer.
“Is there anything I can give to just relax her?” she asks. “She plants them feet and just won’t move and I ain’t into beatin’.”
He suggests acepromazine, a mild sedative.
Afterward, the doctor settles onto his tailgate to do a video for this story, and Marie leads each horse to a pen.
“I’ve used Rich since the ’80s,” she says. “We’re lost.” She chokes back a sob.
She knows there are equine vets who would take care of her goats and donkeys, “but when you’ve known someone for over 30 years .” She stares into space. “I’m heartbroken.”
Before Dr. Fondrk leaves for his next call, she tells him, “You need any help, you call me. I can help hold horses.”
He says he may do that.
“I wish it were something else,” she says, welling up.
“I do too,” he says, “but we’re going to play the hand that’s dealt us.”
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For 30 years, Dr. Fondrk was the veterinarian at Round Hill Park, an Allegheny County park that is also a working farm. Park supervisor Chris Roland has other veterinarians lined up, he says, “but Dr. Fondrk is really going to be missed.”
He had a knack with the public, he says, explaining why he was doing what he was doing, explaining why an animal looked the way it looked. Several years ago, one old horse attracted public concern and Dr. Fondrk explained in a posted letter that the 31-year-old retired county police horse named Big John was hobbled by arthritis and going downhill “fairly rapidly.”
“He is thin by all accounts, but he does eat well, and his blood has been checked for signs of organ failure. . He is at the end of his shift in this world. He still gets out to pasture, interacts with his herd mates, enjoys his meals, enjoys the visitors he gets . for now, his old-timer life is better than the alternative.”
The afternoon sun is lengthening as he turns his truck onto Route 31 back to West Newton. He says his daughter is getting married soon.
“We are trying to pick out the best father-daughter song,” he says. “We have it down to 20. I hear one and think, ’That’s it!’ Then I hear another one and think, ’That one’s better.’ Finding the perfect song. That’s the task at hand now.”
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Information from: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, http://www.post-gazette.com
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