Back to a Virginia Future for Dr. Adams

Back to a Virginia Future for Dr. Adams

By Leonard Shapiro

Veterinary surgeon Dr. Norris Adams would like to think he’s back where he belongs, living and working in surroundings he and his wife Chris, also a highly-skilled equine veterinarian, have always adored.

On Oct. 1, he returned to Virginia Tech’s Marion duPont Scott Equine Medical Center in Leesburg after a year of practicing in Unionville, Pennsylvania. He’s listed there as a clinical associate professor of equine surgery, and the chance to focus virtually exclusively on elective surgery at the Virginia facility where he had previously spent 13 years was simply too good to pass up.

A native of upstate New York and known to one and all as “Norrie,” Dr. Adams earned a bachelor of science degree from Cornell University in 1988, and a doctor of veterinary medicine in 1992 from Mississippi State University.

After receiving his DVM, he completed an internship at the Alamo Pintado Equine Medical Center in Los Olivos, California. He then entered private equine practice and spent a year in Saratoga Springs, New York, and a year in western Pennsylvania, before completing a residency in large animal surgery at the University of Minnesota in 1998. He achieved Diplomate status through the American College of Veterinary Surgeons in 1999.

In Leesburg, Dr. Adams, 56, will be working with horses involved in all manner of athletic pursuits.

"It takes time to build up the expertise for this kind of elective surgery, especially bone and joint issues, correcting conformational flaws,” he said. “The surgery I’ll be doing will have a real impact on the quality of their lives, and that’s very rewarding.

“I do a lot of young animals in development, removing bone chips associated with growth and assuring their life as an athlete later on. It’s racehorses, show horses, Three-Day Eventers, a lot of fox hunters. Virginia has such a diverse population of equine athletes, and that’s pretty darned exciting.”

The affable Dr. Adams has always had a faithful following, so much so that many of his clients in Virginia transported their horses to Pennsylvania so that he could continue treating them there.

“That just didn’t seem right to me,” he said of another reason to return to the Commonwealth. “Coming back allows me to see so many loyal clients more efficiently. Half of my practice in Pennsylvania were people coming from Virginia.”

He and Chris have moved back to the Aldie area on a far different property than their last Virginia residence in Waterford, where they had a farm and raised cattle and sheep.

Their son, 21-year-old Darby, now a senior at Penn State studying mining engineering, also helped out on the farm, but the family has now moved to a mostly wooded property.

“Moving to Pennsylvania was partly a desire to downsize,” he said, adding that he’s now thinking about getting a sawmill, “and that should keep me pretty busy.”

BY THE NUMBERS

Marion duPont Scott Equine Medical Center Leesburg, Virginia

• Total number of veterinarians: 15 (8 faculty, 3 residents, 3 interns, 1 fellow)

• Total staff: 60

• Total caseload for the past year: 2,101

• Total surgery cases in the past year: 338

• Total ER cases in the past year: 692

• Over 100 foals have been treated during the 2022 foaling season