Category: HVMA Updates

The three main academic routes at Stanford University send a student to law, business or medical school. While at Stanford as an undergraduate, Joe Herzog was on the path to medical school. An epiphany crossed that path and convinced him to be a doctor of many species rather than one.

Veterinary school at the University of Wisconsin–Madison introduced Joe to the animals of America’s Dairyland. Not wanting to spend a lifetime in rubber boots, eating cheese curds, Joe became a small animal emergency vet. As an ER vet, he was willing to see any animal that could be brought into the emergency clinic, including exotics.

A desire to see “all creatures, great and small” led Joe to a part-time gig at the Santa Barbara Zoo and then the San Francisco Zoo. It was there that his patients really qualified as exotic. His largest patient was an African elephant that weighed approximately 3000 kg. His smallest was a 5g Jackson’s chameleon.

An odd, memorable case from Joe’s internship involved a female mixed-breed dog that had been hit by a car. She came in with inspiratory dyspnea and no breath sounds in the caudal thorax. Dogs like that often have a pneumothorax, which requires expedient thoracocentesis. The chest tap easily yielded 12 mL of watery tan fluid. There were a few different things he expected from a chest tap; tan watery fluid was not one of them. Quickly to radiology to reveal: pregnancy and diaphragmatic hernia!

Joe moved to Oahu in 2007, when spouse Brenda Machosky became a Professor of English at UH-West Oahu. He no longer stays up all night to take ER cases. But, to spice-up the routine cases of skin, ears, ears and skin, Joe teaches an online Medical Terminology course at Windward Community College. He taught Pharmacology and Large Animal Clinical Procedures in the Vet. Tech. Training Program for several years prior.

As a cancer patient himself for the past 5 years, Joe has special regard for his cancer patients and their owners. He has surgically removed cancerous growths from some of our affected Green Sea Turtles. He monitors the healthy young sea turtles at the Mauna Lani Hotel and prepares them for their annual release every 4th of July, which is Turtle Independence Day.

Music and biking provide a welcome distraction from the work world. Joe sings with the Windward Choral Society. He also sang in the chorus for the Hawaii Opera Theatre production of Romeo and Juliet last year. He bikes 100 miles on a Sunday in late September with the Honolulu Century Ride. Now working part-time at Surf Paws Animal Hospital in Hawaii Kai, he relishes the opportunities to treat multiple species, and still avoids cheese curds.

Joe Herzog, DVM

Past HVMA President Jed Rogers shares a memoir of his time with HVMA and what he’s been up to since then.

Greetings fellow HVMA members,

I enjoy keeping in touch with HVMA through newsletters, emails, and trips to Hawaii. In a recent email exchange with Jill, she asked me to share some of what I’ve been up to since I moved back to the mainland.

After six great years in Hawaii and a lot of memorable experiences with family, friends, and colleagues at VCA Kaneohe Animal Hospital and beyond, I had the opportunity to move to Denver, a city I had visited before but didn’t know very well. The opportunity was a veterinary technology company, and although the ideas and technology were solid, we were a little too far ahead of the industry’s comfort zone. From there, I went back to VCA for four years to help guide a recently purchased hospital. Once I had that practice stabilized and growing, I decided it was time to forge out on my own. So I opened Firehouse Animal Hospital in central Denver in 2004. We grew quickly, so my business partner and I raised money from a private equity firm and bought 7 other hospitals, merging 2 of the smaller ones into two of the bigger ones. We built 4 facilities in 6 years, and all of the hospitals were doing well, but when the financial crisis hit in 2008, our financial partners wanted out. So in 2010, we sold the practice group to VCA.

For the next year and a half, I focused on doing consulting for two shelters: Denver Dumb Friends League, and Hawaiian Humane Society, which enabled me to come back to Hawaii frequently.

In late 2011, I started another group of Firehouse practices in the Austin, TX area, with a veterinarian partner, John Faught. After the Denver experience, I had decided to not take private investments anymore, and not to acquire hospitals, but to start them from scratch instead. That means slower growth but a lot more independence for us as business owners and as practitioners.

While we were getting the first Firehouse hospital open in Austin, I was approached about taking a position at ASPCA in New York City overseeing all of the organization’s veterinary operations. In late 2012 I accepted that position. So from the end of 2012 to the end of 2016, I traveled back and forth between Denver and NYC to oversee a group of 400 employees (including 100 veterinarians) in four groups: Animal Hospital, Spay/Neuter Operations, Poison Control Center, and Humane Alliance (spay / neuter training). As the only veterinary representative in the senior leadership of the organization, it was a truly unique experience.

By the end of 2016, Firehouse needed me full time again, so I returned and have been focused on that ever since. We are now up to 5 hospitals, with a 6th in development and hopefully a few more on the way. Our goal is to create an independent group of hospitals that benefits from some economies of scale but is able to focus on patient care and client experience delivered the way we like. My business partner and I used to say that there were 100 little things that make Firehouse what it is, and he had the great idea to actually write them down here: https://firehouse.vet/100-little-things/

Along the way, I have had personal ups and downs too. In 2013, I lost my wife Maia to breast cancer. She was diagnosed in 2002 and went through an 11-year journey. My kids (born in Hawaii) are my joy. My daughter Caitlin graduates from Colby College this year, and my son Eddy is a sophomore at the University of Denver. I recently married a college friend, Susanna Nemes, and we are now a blended family with 4 kids (all in college) and 6 cats.

I cherished my time in Hawaii. You all know just how unique it is. Where else could a haole learn to make a mean spam musubi? I’ve had the opportunity to travel around the country and the world, and there’s no place better! Hope to see all of you again sometime soon.

Jed Rogers, DVM

Dr. Aleisha Swartz graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine in 2002. After beginning her career in small animal private practice, Aleisha transitioned to shelter medicine in 2010 and since that time has worked with a variety of shelters, rescues, and spay-neuter programs.

Aleisha currently serves as the Outreach Veterinarian with the Shelter Medicine Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine to work with shelters across the country to increase their lifesaving capacity by supporting implementation of best practices, managing outbreaks of infectious disease, and maintaining an online resource library for shelter professionals and the public. She seeks to improve the level of care for animals in shelters and those living in the community.

Despite working for UW, Aleisha is still very happy to call Hawaii home! She enjoys working from home when not traveling and continues to pursue opportunities to make contributions locally on Oahu. Aleisha has volunteered on the board of the HVMA since 2013, serving as an Oahu delegate and Vice President in an effort to give back to the local veterinary community. As the incoming HVMA president, she hopes to find ways to add more value to membership and increase member engagement.