At Piedmont Equine, It’s All About the Athletes

At Piedmont Equine, It’s All About the Athletes

By Leonard Shapiro

So what’s a fellow with an English degree from William & Mary doing in a place like the Piedmont Equine Practice (PEP) between Marshall and The Plains.

Dr. Joe Davis is doing exactly what he’s always loved since his mother put him on a pony at the age of six. Now in his fourth decade as an equine veterinarian, he specializes in sports medicine and treating lameness as one of four partners in the practice he joined in 1997.

Dr. Joe Davis

Photo © by Leonard Shapiro

Two of his partners, John Nolan and Paul Anikis, were his classmates when all three were in vet school together at the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine at Virginia Tech, graduating in the class of 1991. The fourth, Sean Bowman, also graduated from the same school in 1995.

And why did Dr. Davis abandon English in favor of dealing primarily with horses fitted with English saddles?

“Actually I wanted to be a vet when I was in high school,” he said, adding that after college, “I thought to myself that at some point I was going to have to make a living.”

Horses have always played a significant role in his life. The son of a Navy man, Davis and his family moved to Warrenton before he began ninth grade at Fauquier High School. He likes to say he was probably the only kid on his team picked up after football practice and taken to a riding lesson.

Over the years, he’s competed in dressage and other equine disciplines, fox hunted and been a pony club dad for his two adult children. He also admitted that as a young fox chaser, he wasn’t especially enamored with going tally ho because it wasn’t particularly competitive and far too social.

These days, he and his wife, Pam, a vet in Piedmont’s small animal practice, are hunting with Old Dominion twice a week. “I like it now because it is non-competitive and social,” he said. “I don’t need the stress of being competitive.”

He deals daily with hugely competitive four-legged athletes at Piedmont’s six-acre facility. Treating the lameness of horses competing in three-day eventing, show jumping, steeplechase and flat racing and all those fox chasers is a huge part of his practice.

The facility has a variety of surfaces on its six acres to judge a horse’s gait, including asphalt, grass, packed blue stone, and arena footing. There are 14 stalls for overnight stays and two isolation stalls to assure that ill horses will be kept away from the general population.

In addition to the four partners, PEP also has four associate vets, two surgeons and four interns to deal with just about any equine problem, including emergencies. They also are very much into using regenerative medicine, treating horses with stem cell and platelet rich plasma among other cutting edge techniques.

“Many times were dealing with professional athletes,” Dr. Davis said. “They get aches and pains and sometimes worse from the demands of their sports—joint inflammation, soft tissue issues.

“This part of Virginia is an eclectic area as far as horses are concerned. You go to Kentucky or Florida and it’s pretty much all Thoroughbred. We get a much bigger variety here, and that always makes it interesting.”