Animal Hospital treats ‘All Creatures'

Christine Walters

At All Creatures Animal Hospital & Bird Clinic, located at 1380 Northcrest Drive, Dr. Dennis Wood serves the needs of a wide variety of Del Norte County animals, with the help of his wife Becky and their six children.

Q: What do you do and how long have you been doing it?

Wood: We practice high quality veterinary medicine, surgery and dentistry and have for 27 years in Crescent City. We treat dogs, cats, birds, and exotics such as ferrets, guinea pigs, rabbits, rats, mice, and the occasional goldfish. In addition, I treat all makes and models of marine mammals. I founded the Northcoast Marine Mammal Center in the early '80s and then we built the actual facility there in about '92, so I've been the ongoing medical director there for 20-some years.

Q: What inspired you to go into this line of work?

Wood: My dad always thought I should be a dentist, and I told him that's not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. So I was a zoology/wildlife/fisheries major in college, and I got to graduation day and found that jobs in that field were not all that easy to come by. So I decided that veterinary school could fulfill a lot of my real loves in biology and physiology, and give me an outlet.

Q: How has your business changed over the years?

Wood: This was Northcrest Veterinary Hospital when we bought it from Dr. Hendrix in 1982.

For the first 12 years I was in practice, I did all of the local dairies and most of the horses, sheep and beef cattle and goats and such, but in about 1992 I ruptured a disk and had back surgery. I sold my large animal practice to Town & Country Animal Clinic in '92.

The other big change was the 1993 remodel of the hospital. The practice had grown so tremendously. We more than doubled the size of the hospital and added services such as grooming, cremation and boarding room that we didn't have previously. For all that effort, in 1996 we won the first-runner-up position in the international Veterinary Economics design competition, so we've gotten visitors from many overseas companies and all around the United States.

Q: What are your goals for your business? What are you doing to reach those goals?

Wood: To continue what we are doing and to do it better, and to see our business grow so that it will support two veterinarians in the very near future. Increased number of trained staff and increased services. My daughter is very interested in holistic medicine as well as western medicine, so she's had an interest in acupuncture and holistic therapy, and she shares an interest in wildlife care as well.

Q: What advice could you offer to budding entrepreneurs?

Wood: Really know what you're going into, and learn the skills and the knowledge you need to be the best at what you do. Be honest and give back to your community.

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