Arrowleaf Veterinary: Meet Daphne Johnson

In the past couple of decades, she’s seen an influx of women going into veterinary medicine, though historically, most clinics are owned by men. “So that’s been, in my opinion, a fun shift — to see more women as entrepreneurs in this profession,” she said. “It is one of the few medical professions where, as a medical practitioner, you can be an owner.”

Johnson said she always knew she wanted to work for herself, and she and Morelos wanted to create a practice where people enjoyed coming to work. Today, they have six employees.

“That was a really big core value of ours, and something that we felt was going to be more successful, opening our own practice rather than trying to do that in somebody else’s practice,” she said.

Johnson grew up in Virginia riding horses before graduating from Oregon State University’s vet school and then completed an additional year of training in equine medicine outside of Seattle. From there, she moved to Hood River, working at various practices until opening her own. The most exotic animal she’s ever treated was a Zonkey — a cross between a zebra and a donkey.

“I decided to become a veterinarian for a few reasons,” she said. “One is I wanted a relatively stable employment. And I also wanted to work with animals, and I saw the sciences in general as a challenge — I love challenges — and thought that would be a good way to focus my energy. And I also really like talking to people, and that’s a lot of veterinary work. While it is all about the animals, talking to people is the majority of the job, so that really appealed to me.”

The philosophy at Arrowleaf is to partner with people in making their pets healthy, and not be someone who professes what a healthy pet is.

“It’s mostly trying to figure out how we can enable owners to get what they want out of their relationship with their pet ... People want their pet to be as healthy as they can be, so our job is to figure out how we can help them do that, and I think that is kind of fun in the work. Is really figuring out how we can be an ally to people in that role,” said Johnson.

Arrowleaf Veterinary also does house call appointments.

“We do offer that service. I will say that scheduling the logistics around it can be a little bit tough because those do take more time than your normal appointments, and we have to schedule them out in the future,” she said. “But particularly for euthanasia ... saying goodbye to their pets. That is a service that we offer, it just requires some advance planning.”

The Gorge has seen a lot of smoke from wildfires this season, and Johnson has advice for local pet owners: “I would say that the probably best thing to do if you have climate control in your house is to bring them inside,” she said. “We have also seen the community rally around providing spaces for people to go with their pets if they don’t feel safe in their home or if their home is not really habitable during wildfire season ... which has been heartwarming.”

Arrowleaf Veterinary is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 2920 Cascade Ave., Suit 103, Hood River. For more information, call 541-436-4116 or visit www.arrowleafveterinary.com.