Stowe vet moves to former Foxfire

Dr. Gregg Goodson, the stethoscope and kind manner behind Stowe Veterinary Clinic, knew it was time to expand. His clinic at the Stagecoach Road home he shares with his wife, LeeLee Goodson, had just one exam room for three veterinarians, and it did double duty as a surgical suite. Another room was the X-ray room, the on-site laboratory, the pharmacy and the grooming area, all in one.

“We needed more room,” Goodson said. “It’s been pretty crowded in the old place.”

The clinic, now on Pucker Street where Foxfire Inn once was, has five exam rooms and 5,000 square feet of floor space, compared to the 950 square feet on Stagecoach Road. It has two surgical suites, and separate spaces for X-rays and lab work. Medications are stored where the walk-in fridge was. The new clinic can hold 10 dogs per day.

The building had to be completely rebuilt, Goodson said. Every window was replaced, as was the roof. Walls were put up to separate exam rooms. Upstairs will be an upscale cat boarding area, a meeting room, and a place for vets to sleep if they need to stay overnight with a struggling patient.

After the retirement of Dr. David Stevenson, a Hyde Park vet, Stowe Veterinary Clinic acquired his equipment, his staff and many of his clients, so the practice is booming, making this the perfect time to expand.

The Goodsons had been looking for a new clinic site for two or three years, Goodson said.

“We were lucky enough that this became available,” he said. They bought the building from Bob and Kate Neilson, who’d run Foxfire until it closed down about four years ago. Before the Foxfire, in the 1950s, the building was a Tyrolean lodge owned by LeeLee’s uncle, Gregg said. Then, it housed a Chinese restaurant before Foxfire moved in.

Goodson’s career is a fulfillment of a childhood dream.

“I was one of those kids that always wanted to be a vet,” Goodson said, from sixth grade on.

He attended the University of Vermont and graduated from the Tufts University veterinary school in 1991. He worked for Sequist Animal Hospital in Morrisville for a few years before opening Stowe Veterinary Clinic.

He loved his time at Sequist.

“He’s a role model for everybody,” Goodson said of Dr. Dave Sequist, who recently retired.

When he got out of veterinary school, Goodson thought he’d like to work with large animals, and at first he did, but as the practice grew and the clinic space stayed the same size, Goodson had to stop treating large animals. Now that he’s relocated, he’d like to expand his practice to horses, cows and other large animals, too.

“It’s rewarding seeing animals who are sick or injured and being able to fix them,” Goodson said. “Our pets now are part of the family.”

He has what he calls “three and a quarter” dogs, counting LeeLee’s 4-pound Chihuahua, five horses and eight chickens. He’s “between cats” at the moment, but the Stowe Veterinary Clinic just got an office cat — Abbie the fat tabby.

When Goodson opened his clinic at the family’s home, he had two young children, a daughter and a son. His daughter, Kelsey, was particularly helpful to her father growing up.

Goodson would wake her up and say, “‘Kelsey, I need you to hold this dog’” while he picked out porcupine quills, he said. He remembers asking her to hold puppies as he delivered a litter via Caesarean section in the middle of the night.

It wasn’t all hard work and no play to be the daughter of the town’s vet, though; there was glamour, too. Kelsey had living Halloween costumes.

“She was famous for that,” Goodson remembered. Once, his daughter trick-or-treated as a garbage can, with a pair of the family’s pet rats, one on each shoulder.

Another time, the family dog, Angus, a Newfoundland-St. Bernard mix, was a Holstein cow for Kelsey’s costume.

People love the Stowe Veterinary Clinic’s new digs, Goodson said, although “they have been asking where our chickens are.” The family chickens used to prowl about Stagecoach Road, not getting out of the way for people bringing their animals in, but since the new clinic is so close to Route 100, Goodson keeps his chickens safely at home.

They’re missed, but Goodson says people love the new space, especially the bright, springy colors, which he said are LeeLee’s aesthetic choices. There’s still some work to do in the upscale cat boarding facility the couple plans to open upstairs, but overall, Goodson is excited to see his practice grow.