Dr. Neal Rose has retired after 50 years as a veterinarian. He sits with his dogs ( L-R) Chloe, a Havanese; Jolee, a Boston terrier; Rayban, an English terrier; Lucky, a Havanese; and Nic and Georgia, both English settlers. Photo was taken at Rose's Charles City County home Monday, May 16, 2022.
Dr. Neal Rose, Broad Street Veterinary Hospital, photo 5/13/08.
Retiring after 50 years as a veterinarian has presented a bit of a challenge for Dr. A. Neal Rose.
“I’m having a hard time getting used to it,” Rose said recently, not quite three months since retiring in February. “When you do something for 50 years, it’s a big adjustment.”
He and his wife, Betty, a dog trainer, have six dogs and two cats at their home on the Chickahominy River in Charles City County, so it’s not like he’s out of the caring-for-pets business entirely. But it’s a long ways from showing up every morning at Broad Street Veterinary Hospital, where he first went to work in 1972, weeks after graduating from the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine. There, he cared for other people’s pets, all day, every day.
He loved his work, and he managed to avoid the burnout that affects so many others in the veterinarian field. A 2018 study by the Centers for Disease Control found veterinarians are at an increased risk of suicide with risk factors including long hours, work overload, educational debt-to-income ratio and poor work-life balance.
“It’s just so much pressure … emotional pressure and physical pressure,” he said. “People being upset over their animals, and you feel like you can’t do anything.”
For Rose, every day was different, and most days were full. “Not a lot of slow days in 50 years?” I asked. Rose laughed. “Very few. I can probably count them on one hand.”
And yet, he never regretted waking in the morning and going to work.
“A big accomplishment,” he says.
Rose, 75, came by the job naturally, if not altogether typically. The inspiration for his career probably was his grandfather, a farmer who was not an actual veterinarian but who played one in real life outside Columbia, S.C. His grandfather died when Rose was still an infant, but the stories about him were ever-present as Rose grew up.
“He had no degree, but everybody called him to treat their animals,” Rose said. His grandfather employed homespun remedies; Rose recalled hearing how his grandfather successfully treated a case of milk fever in a cow with a goose quill and a bicycle pump.
When he was older, Rose helped his uncle, an agriculture teacher, vaccinate dogs for rabies, filling a community need because there was no one else to do it.
“I’ve loved being around animals my whole life,” he said.
Despite all of that, Rose was far from convinced he could make the grades to attend vet school, but he eventually did, a testament, he says, to the notion “if you dedicate yourself, you’re going to be smart enough.”
Toward the end of his time in vet school, he met Dr. Taylor Rowe, founder of Broad Street Veterinary Hospital, who came to Athens to interview prospective new vets. He was interested in hiring someone from Virginia, but he wound up more impressed by Rose and offered him a job.
He arrived in Richmond, and, as time went on, “Everything worked out great.”
Rowe had founded Broad Street Veterinary Hospital, at the corner of Broad and Roseneath, in 1938. “It was probably one of the most advanced veterinary hospitals at that time in Virginia,” Rose said.
When Rowe had opened the practice, Roseneath was still a dirt road and streetcars ran on Broad Street, recalled Dr. Buford Philpy, who came to work at the hospital in 1941.
“Some people told him he had built too far out in the country,” Philpy said in a Times-Dispatch story in 1992. At that point, Rowe had retired, selling the business to Philpy and Rose, and Philpy had worked more than 50 years at the animal hospital. He would retire in 1997 after 56 years in the business.
When Philpy retired, Rose bought out his then-partner and became the sole owner of the hospital
Over the years, patients have come from all over central Virginia and beyond, Rose said. Generations of them.
He and his colleagues have treated mostly dogs and cats – early on, Rose determined treating large animals was not for him; “A cow can run by you and kick you at the same time,” he says with a laugh -- performing a wide range of medical care but always “knowing my limitations” and not thinking twice about referring animals to specialists, which are far more common now than when Rose first came into the field.
One long-time client, Bruce Tyler, who has taken his pets to Broad Street Veterinary Hospital for more than 40 years, described Rose as “intuitive” and “insightful” when it comes to dealings with animals, but also pretty good with his two-legged clients.
“The other aspect about Neal, which we’ve always greatly appreciated, is you just feel comfortable with him,” said Tyler, who formerly served on Richmond City Council. “He’s never met a stranger. He’s just down-to-earth and pragmatic and straightforward.”
Tyler told me about the time he and his wife had lost their cats and Rose connected them with a couple having to find a new home for their cats – “We went down, picked them up and didn’t even think twice about it,” Tyler says – or another time Rose gave him sage advice on how to pick the right puppy out of a litter or the time an anxious Tyler placed a worried call to Rose on a Saturday when Tyler was dog-sitting his daughter’s dog who got into some chocolate.
“Neal said, ‘How much [chocolate]?’ and I told him, and he said, ‘How big is the dog?’ and I told him, and he said, ‘You’re OK,’” recalled a relieved Tyler. “You can’t say enough about Neal. He didn’t have to take the call.”
Another long-time client and friend who trusted Rose with his dogs and cats for 50 years said Rose had not only the medical knowledge for the job but the empathy for it. He saw it on the routine visits when Rose administered basic treatment, on a phone call when Rose talked him through birthing a litter of his English setter’s puppies that wouldn’t wait and on the wrenching times over the years when a sick and aging animal had to be euthanized. “He had as many tears in his eyes as I did,” the man told me.
“He really is tremendous,” the man said.
My friend and former colleague Paul Woody and his wife, Janet, took their pets to Rose starting in 1975. The Woodys remember the time their first cat was so sick they showed up at the animal hospital on a November night, and Rose showed up, too. “He always showed up when we needed him,” they said. He also always made them feel “as if he was absolutely thrilled to see old friends again.”
I’ll let the Woodys more fully describe their years knowing Rose:
Whenever we had a sick pet, we always felt better after Dr. Rose performed an examination and prescribed a course of treatment. And when one of our pets was so sick that no treatment would make things better, we relied on Dr. Rose’s guidance and advice to help us make a heartbreaking but humane decision.
Dr. Rose was with us to the very end in those situations. He would start the final visit with, “It’s for the best, really. You don’t want them to suffer,” and end with a solemn, “It’s over.” Then he would quietly open the examining room door that led to the street so we could walk directly to our car and not have to fight back tears as we walked through the lobby.
A few days later, a card would arrive from BSV, signed by the entire staff, with notes of sympathy from almost everyone, the longest always written by Dr. Rose. It made us feel as if our pets had been special not only to us, but also to the people who had examined and treated them for years, sometimes 17 or 18 years. That kind of compassion starts at the top.
Rose has witnessed a lot of changes: better and safer surgical techniques, advanced diagnostic tools (“When I was in vet school, we didn’t know what an ultrasound was,” he says).
The advent of 24-hour-a-day emergency veterinary hospitals has been another positive change for veterinarians and animals. He was among a group of local vets who banded together in 1981 to start Veterinary Emergency and Specialty Center on Cary Street, reducing the need for vets to make middle-of-the-night visits to their office to handle emergencies.
On the business side of things, Rose watched the trend of corporations acquiring veterinary practices – a 2017 study by the American Veterinary Medical Association found corporations own about 10 percent of general companion animal practices and as many as half of specialty practices – particularly as an exit strategy for aging hospital owners unable to find other willing buyers but wanting their facilities to continue operating after they retired. He sold his Broad Street practice to PetVet Care Centers a few years ago.
Through it all, one thing that hasn't changed is this: "Pets are family," Rose said.
In retirement, Rose still enjoys his own personal slice of the wild kingdom on the Chickahominy. Besides their dogs and cats, the Roses enjoy the eagles and osprey and, in general, “plenty of wildlife,” he said.
I wondered, in 50 years of dealing with animals for all types and temperaments, how many times Rose has been bitten.
Three times, he said, but only once when he was officially on the job.
“That’s a pretty big accomplishment,” he said with a laugh, “but they’ve tried to bite me more than once.”
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Dr. Neal Rose has retired after 50 years as a veterinarian. He sits with his dogs ( L-R) Chloe, a Havanese; Jolee, a Boston terrier; Rayban, an English terrier; Lucky, a Havanese; and Nic and Georgia, both English settlers. Photo was taken at Rose's Charles City County home Monday, May 16, 2022.
Dr. Neal Rose, Broad Street Veterinary Hospital, photo 5/13/08.
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