Dr. Mark Richardson is TVMA’s 2008 General Practitioner of the Year
by Lindsey Oechsle
It is a beautiful morning in late march when I begin my cruise through the Hill Country. I’m headed toward Bandera to meet with the TVMA 2008 General Practitioner of the Year, Dr. Mark Richardson. When I arrive his staff is expecting me, and they are extremely welcoming and friendly. In fact, the town of Bandera itself seems to welcome me, and when I stop at a gas station to ask where Bandera Veterinary Clinic is, the smiling attendant replies, “right up the road on the left.”
Dr. Richardson’s office is in the back of the clinic. It’s quite spacious, for an office, but he informs me it was once an apartment. They used to get a lot more interns, so the apartment provided beds and living space. Now they hold staff meetings there, and sometimes use the kitchen.
When I meet him, I immediately feel comfortable. He is tall, and like everyone else I’ve seen this morning, smiling. He has a firm handshake and a warm voice. He asks me to please make myself at home, and immediately I feel as if I am. We begin our time together talking about wildflowers, cedar trees, and my morning drive through the Hill Country.
“We’re kind of in a neat place geographically,” he explains. “We’re on the edge of the Edwards plateau. Bandera County is right on the edge of the escarpment, and it just falls down towards Hondo to the brush country so you can actually see it when you drive in from the coast or fly in,” and he of all people would know. He fulfilled one of his dreams recently to become a pilot. This is something he loves to do, and I’m sitting underneath his private pilot’s license, which he received in September 2006. It shares the wall space with heads of boars, deer, and other hunting trophies of long-range shooting—another one of his passions.
A good reporter is always prepared and has researched their subject, however the biographical information Dr. Richardson provided the awards committee in response to his nomination is brief. I question him about the humility of the information provided.
“I didn’t want to do this at all. Well, not the interview with you of course,” he clarifies with a chuckle. “I’m just not worthy of this. It is humble, but I’m just a veterinarian, and just a normal veterinarian. I’m not somebody who deserves to be on a magazine cover.”
Dr. Richardson is likely the only person who does not see himself as worthy of the award. In fact, it was one of his former associates that submitted the nomination. He admits that upon receiving the letter from TVMA, he ignored it and buried it in this list of ‘to-do’ things, hidden but not forgotten.
“I kept looking at it every now and then. I thought TVMA probably had run out of people to award, so they sent me one. I told my wife and my father-in-law that I had been nominated for the award, and I prayed about it, and finally it hit me that somebody nominated me. This wasn’t just ‘We haven’t given the award to Bandera in a few years.’ I decided it wouldn’t be right to whoever nominated me not to at least pursue this. So I went through and did the minimum. Then I found out that it was a former associate that nominated me. That was very humbling to know.”
Dr. Richardson tells me that as he looks back at his life, one of his bottom lines has been his associates and mentorship. His other bottom line is his family. He and his wife, Kim, have twin daughters that are 13 years old. Pictures of their basketball games flash as a slideshow picture book on his computer screen.
“They’re my life,” he tells me with unabashed adoration in his voice. “That’s why I have more than one associate, because I try to make every event they have. This afternoon they have a tennis tournament at 3:30 in Kerrville. If I have some calls anywhere near Kerrville, okay, I will get out there at 2:00, maybe 3:00. I’m late to a lot of things and I’m dirty at a lot of things when I get there, but that’s my life. All of my free time is for them, and it’s worth it.”
Dr. Richardson is a regular donor to various organizations and in support of his family he is in attendance at many local events. When the local paper in Bandera held a poll, Dr. Richardson was voted Best Veterinarian and Best Veterinary Clinic by his community. When I ask him about this he simply replies that everybody’s a hero in their hometown.
His desire to be of service to his community extends beyond his practice. Dr. Richardson serves as the only veterinarian on the Bandera County Farm Bureau Board of Directors. A few of the members on that board are some of his clients that are fulltime ranching families, “and that’s one of the reasons that I still do large animals,” he admits. Even as he has watched the landscape in his community change over the last 22 years, Dr. Richardson has remained steadfast in his commitment to his clients, saying that dedication to the ranching lifestyle is the most important reason he continues to practice the way he does. He expressed his concern regarding the impending threat facing the future of the large animal veterinarian.
“I’m really worried that the mixed animal and/or large animal veterinarian is an endangered species. I was going to joke when I got my award that the only reason they gave it to me was because there were so few of us left that… ‘Wow, we found one. Let’s give it to him.’ It sounds like I’m patting myself on the back,” which it definitely did not, “But you can imagine that it is hard to be a mixed animal vet where you are prepared to deal with a sheep, a goat, a cow, a pig, a horse, a dog, or a cat.”
He questions where to place the blame for the shortage, and in his humble nature turns that question on himself because he has gone along with some of the advanced small animal medicine that he doesn’t necessarily need. He pauses to contemplate this for a moment before attempting to describe it as some sort of strange self-fulfilling prophecy that as he has allowed myself to accommodate the demands of his small animal clients. As Bandera County has become a small animal commuter community to San Antonio, it seems tempting to leave large animal medicine behind.
Dr. Richardson names having more vet schools, graduating more veterinary students, and government subsidies as options, but he doesn’t know what is right.
“The shortage was economically driven, and truly the rancher caused it. The rancher didn’t want to spend but $30.00 for this animal, and the veterinarian didn’t have enough money to hire an associate. I don’t think veterinarians practice in a way that economics professors intended business to be run, and we can’t.”
Though he practices veterinary medicine, for Dr. Richardson, people are the most important part of what he does. He holds client education and relationships, and the human-animal bond in the highest regards.
“I hope that my impact is more on humanity than it is on the veterinary profession, even though this is what I’m dedicated to doing. I know God wanted me to be a veterinarian. I can’t even imagine doing anything else.”
