By KATHLEEN O’CONNOR/YachatsNews
“Never enough!”
That’s how Larry and Linda Occhipinti answer when someone asks how many animals they own.
Occhipinti is a veterinarian who lives along Oregon Highway 34 about 18 miles east of Waldport and practices at the small veterinary hospital he built there. Because he and Linda own five acres they have room for lots of animals — a mule, two mini-donkeys, three lamancha goats, two cats, eight dogs, many chickens and quail, and a few reptiles – but no snakes at the moment.
Growing up in San Francisco, Occhipinti was the kid who always had animals following him home. As a 10-year-old he saved all his paper route money and bought a Cocker spaniel puppy.
But there was no way that a puppy could be raised in the small flat where his family lived, so it had to be returned. Occhipinti was utterly dejected and vowed that he would fill his life with animals – starting by working at a pet store and volunteering at the San Francisco Zoo as soon as he was old enough.
Occhipinti graduated in 1983 from the veterinary school at the University of California-Davis. His first job was at a large, busy small animal clinic in Fremont where he got to see all kinds of animals with many different problems and gained experience quickly.
That’s where he and Linda met. She was the lead veterinary technician in charge of managing 10 other technicians, doing the scheduling for all the veterinarians, and raising three daughters as a single mom.
The two married and decided they would prefer to have their own business, and in a giant leap of faith they started a practice in Patterson, a small town in the San Juaquin Valley. The practice flourished, but in 2004 they had to make a change because Occhipinti’s mother needed full-time care. They looked for a location that would allow them to retire, with a home that would accommodate everyone in the family.
Question: What caused you to change your mind about retiring early?
Answer: Getting settled in Tidewater took some time, especially since we were adapting to taking care of my mom, but it didn’t take long before I knew I wasn’t ready to retire at all. I started working as relief for two veterinarians in Newport: Dr. Brown and Dr. Bauman. I also realized that there are a lot of people living along Highway 34, and they seemed to all have pets. It made sense to set up this small veterinary hospital to serve them and the communities along the coast.
Q: How do you arrange your workdays?
A: As a general medicine veterinarian, I can diagnose and treat almost all conditions that small animals might have. I take care of wounds, remove tumors, spay and neuter, vaccinate, and prescribe medicine for any number of diseases. We refer orthopedic, pulmonary and intestinal problems to the larger clinics in Corvallis.
We’re only open on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Each day we have one or two surgeries scheduled and four or five routine appointments. We always try to leave enough space in the day to see one or two emergencies. Linda and I joke that we are dinosaurs. There are very few solo practice veterinary clinics anymore, and certainly there aren’t many who keep only paper records. But it works for us, and it is a genuine pleasure to have a place in our community and to provide this service.
Q: Do you treat other animals besides small mammals?
A: In the last year of veterinary school, one must choose a specialty. I chose zoological medicine because I wanted to study all types of animals, and I thought I would one day become a zoo veterinarian. That didn’t happen, but I did learn to treat all types of birds and reptiles and unusual animals. Blaine Brown, who owns the Newport Discovery Zoo, brings all his animals to me for their checkups … the most unusual have been a kangaroo, a kinkajou and a porcupine. People will occasionally bring in their pet parrots, snakes, lizards, or rabbits.
Q: What are some of the most interesting cases you’ve seen?
A: I had one right here just a few weeks ago. One of my chickens got a huge lump of straw stuck in her crop and we had to perform a “cropotomy” to remove it. She has recovered but isn’t quite ready to go out in the cold yet. Once in California a woman rushed in with her big dog, a Chow Chow. A teenager had accidentally shot it off the back deck of his home, and the bullet had gone all the way through its windpipe — he was not breathing. We had to re-attach his trachea in a hurry.
Foxtail grass is common in California and its burrs are dreadful. I once had a man bring in a dog with about 100 foxtails imbedded in his fur. He had been chained outside in 105-degree weather for who knows how long. The man wanted me to put him to sleep. Instead, I kept him and over the next year I gradually got all the foxtails out and restored his health. I gave him to a friend, and the next time I saw that friend he was married. He had met his new wife while out walking the dog. This chain of events made me so happy!
Q: What do you like to do outside of being a vet?
A: Our favorite hobby in the past was showing dogs. Our daughters and I have shown many Bull Mastiffs and a few French Bulldogs. Training dogs for shows requires a lot of work. They must learn all the basic commands, and how to be posed, and how to act in a show ring. We don’t enter our dogs anymore, but we still love going to the shows.
Over the years we won quite a few medals. Our first winning dog’s full kennel name was Meghan the Guardman Punch and that’s why the official name for our hospital is Guardman Veterinary Hospital. She was an absolutely gorgeous dog.
Tell us a secret.
We owned and bred so many Bull Mastiffs that I became a Bull Mastiff Breeder of Merit with the American Kennel Club. One of our dogs, Guardman Tower of Power, had some of his semen sent to Finland to impregnate a winning female Bull Mastiff. From there his progeny are all over Europe.
Info: Guardman Veterinary Hospital, 17988 Alsea Highway, Tidewater, Ore. 97390; 541-528-3877
- Kathleen O’Connor is a Waldport freelance writer who can be reached via email at kmoc8916@gmail.com
Larry is one of the two great veterinarians I have had in six decades.