Life & Work with Danielle Grigsby

Today we’d like to introduce you to Danielle Grigsby.

Hi Danielle, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I grew up on a hobby farm about an hour South of Nashville. We had horses, show dairy goats, chickens, and of course dogs and cats. I even had a pet pot-bellied pig that I caught at the local county fair, The High on the Hog. I frequently brought home sick animals or neonatal animals that were found throughout our county, nursed them to health, and then adopted them out. This is all super cliche but it gets better. My entire family is comprised of human doctors, so I am the outlier, to say the least. My parent’s always told me that I wouldn’t be able to become a veterinarian because I have severe allergies to cats and horses.

They were pushing me to become a lawyer or another human doctor. I decided on becoming a lawyer as human medicine always seemed so grotesque to me. If I became a lawyer, at least I could advocate for people who couldn’t advocate for themselves. Nonetheless, after a few crazy professors and a lackluster degree, I got a job at a local veterinary clinic in Birmingham. I started out as a receptionist and worked my way up to a veterinary assistant all the while taking a full course schedule and maintaining a social life. This was the jump that I needed to determine my future. Soon after, I changed my major from political science to biology, transferred to UAB, and was all in on the pursuit of veterinary medicine. I applied to the University of Tennessee School of Veterinary medicine and like a lot of applicants did not get in. A lot of people don’t realize how hard veterinary school is to get into. There are a lot fewer veterinary schools in the United States than medical schools. This was super discouraging. However, I applied to St. George’s University in Grenada, West Indies, and was quickly accepted. I didn’t want to wait another year to pursue my dream, so, I went. If I could do it all over again, I would have made that my first choice. When you get the chance to live in a foreign country and pursue your dream, you take it. I took much more than an education from that island… I earned a fabulous education from a US-accredited school AND lifelong relationships. It was the best and most memorable experience of my life. After spending three years in Grenada, I was blessed with the opportunity to complete my fourth year of veterinary school at The University of Tennessee. So, essentially, I got the best of both worlds.

After my fourth year of vet school, I moved to Nashville to pursue my rotating internship in internal medicine, emergency medicine, and surgery at BluePearl in Franklin. I had every intention of pursuing a specialty in internal medicine, however, plans changed when I met my husband. I didn’t want to spend another 3 years away so we began to lay down roots in Nashville. After my internship, I met doctors Margaret and Jim Phillips, the then-owners of Southside Animal Hospital in South Nashville. I will say that I am so blessed to have met them and to have had them mentor me throughout my veterinary career. They hired me at Southside and took me under their wing. They visited me soon after having my first baby as well as brought me a Ficus tree for my lobby when I purchased my veterinary clinic. Jim told me that his previous boss did the same for him when he purchased his first clinic. I worked for them for 3 years until they sold their clinic to a corporation. The next few years were filled with leadership and mentorship with Southern Veterinary Partners. They entrusted me with the role of Lead Veterinarian. I was also responsible for mentoring students from Lincoln Memorial University as well as preceptors from Auburn University. After several developmental years in leadership roles I decided to undertake my ultimate dream, practice ownership. I must have been in the right place at the right time to have found Dr. Russell Anderson and Fairview Animal Clinic. Dr. Anderson entrusted me with the clinic that he built from the ground up. I would like to say that the last 2 years have been some of the best years of my career. My goal is to focus on creating a team that loves what they do. Treating our patients like they are our own is what we strive for. Also, I strive to create a team that loves working together.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
No, it hasn’t been “easy” but it has been worth it. Getting into vet school at my picture-perfect idea of a school was a struggle at the time but there was that silver lining. If you’re a believer then you would agree with the statement that, “God gives you what you need, not what you want.” That’s what it was for me. It is what I needed. It gave me a whole new perspective on life. Being in a third-world country will really change the way you look at life.

Getting into an internship, working 80-hour weeks with very little pay- again, not easy, but so worth the knowledge gained. Working with people in general… Learning that some people aren’t so nice. Dealing with euthanasia. Dealing with euthanasia when it is something preventable. The list goes on. This career will never be described as easy. There is a shortage of veterinarians for a reason.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I would say that I love the people aspect of my job. I love getting to know my patients. I love their families. I love watching them grow as well as their pets. I think that this is what makes me good at my job- I invest in them. My patients become part of my family. This can all be best described by this sweet little mixed-breed dog that I met soon after I started at Fairview Animal Clinic. I’m going to change her name to Flower to keep her anonymous. Flower had all the things that an older dog could have; endocrine diseases, heart disease, autoimmune disease, etc. You name it, she probably had it. She was the sassiest little angel.

She would bark at every other dog in the clinic that walked by her to make her presence known. We ALL grew to love her. When her owners expressed that it was her “time” I closed my clinic, locked the doors, and turned the phones off. We all gathered with her owners in our treatment areas, loved on her, and shared our most cherished moments with her. We all cried, laughed, and let her cross that rainbow bridge in the exact way that she should have- surrounded by all of us who loved her. Her owners loved us enough to share that moment with me and my staff.

We all have different ways of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
I define success by the lives that I have saved, the people that I have educated about preventable diseases, the relationships I have made, and the knowledge that I have passed on to my students.

– I recently hired one of the students I mentored 4 years ago. This is my proud “mom” moment.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.fairviewanimal.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fairviewanimalclinic/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Fairviewtnanimalclinic/ 

Image Credits
Allison Elefante Photography