Former GP’s clinic swaps humans for pets!
For nearly 30 years, generations of Barna families went through the surgery in Truskey West of Dr Ann Gibbons – the village’s well-liked and respected General Practitioner.
Now, just over ten years after her passing, there’s hustle and bustle back in the former GP clinic . . . with sick mammals of a different sort!
Because the late Dr Ann’s eldest son, John Mulligan (36), has opened up a veterinary clinic in the very same building his mother cared for and treated so many people.
Barna native John and his business partner, Sara Roche, the daughter of dairy farmers from Kylemore in Abbey near Portumna in East Galway, set-up West Coast Vets a year ago.
And it’s been thriving – the pair officially launched a new dedicated ‘small animal’ clinic recently, too.
John’s family always kept animals at their home in Truskey West, including poultry, horses, cats and dogs and for many years he had it in mind to return there to set up a veterinary clinic in his mother’s clinic. “It definitely was always in the back of my head,” he said.
After completing his Leaving Cert at Garbally College in Ballinasloe, John studied Microbiology at UCG (now NUIG), and used that degree to get onto a Veterinary course in the University of Glasgow.
It was during this five-years course he met Sara, who was in the year below him in the same course, having studied Biomedical Science in Galway first.
John graduated in 2011 and worked in the north of England in the countryside of Northumberland, an hour from Newcastle; and when he returned to Ireland he worked firstly in a veterinary clinic in West Donegal and then in Kilcormac, a village in rural Offaly between Birr and Tullamore.
All those places were what John calls “proper old fashioned mixed practices”, just like West Coast Vets in Barna.
“A lot of people in my class haven’t seen a cow since they graduated. Other lads were vice versa and never wanted to chat to a dog or cat owner again and concentrated on dairy cows. I love the mix. I might see a cat in the morning, a horse in the afternoon and I might be up in the middle of the night with a calving cow,” he said.
The clinics catchment is wide – it takes in Barna, Moycullen, Furbo, Spiddal, Knocknacarra, Galway City and Connemara – which offers that mix.
“People are delighted that we’re this side of town. If you want to pop in for penicillin for a sheep, you don’t have to drive the far side of town with the traffic, which would be a two or three-hour trip from An Cheathrú Rua,” he said.
John is fluent in Irish, which is another bonus in Connemara. “A lot of the old timers, and some of the young people as well, prefer to speak Irish. It’s the day-to-day working language of a lot of people.”
And there’s no shortage of work, John insisted. “There’s plenty of work if you want it. There’s nobody in Connemara with 150 dairy cows, but there might be 150 lads with two cows, and they need to be looked after. They’re very attached to their animals and their animals probably get better individual care than some of the animals I’ve seen on massive big farms.
“They’re getting properly minded and properly individually fed. On a small Connemara farm where you might have 10 cows, the lame cow is looked after properly.
“The other thing you have in Connemara is the pony, the Connemara pony. There’s so many different farms with one mare or two mares and they all have a foal every year and they need minding. Then there’s such a growing population in Barna with cats and dogs. So it’s a real mixed job and it’s busy,” he said.
More than 120 mostly clients and some friends attended a barbeque at West Coast Vets’ first birthday celebrations last weekend.
“It was like the loaves and the fishes! We had a side of beef, 40 beef burgers, 50 venison burgers, 60 chicken pies, and a suckling pig, a salmon and a dozen mackerel! We were celebrating the fact that we’ve a year under our belts and we’ve just opened a dedicated small animal clinic. And it was just a way of saying ‘thank you’ for all the support we have received since opening,” added John.
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