Back in 1981, Vineyard Vet Clinic’s two veterinarians were enough to serve the Island year-round, but they needed extra help in summer. The recently minted Dr. Michelle Gerhard (later Jasny) took the position –– mostly because she was wondering if she’d chosen the wrong profession, and a three-month gig seemed a safe way to test the waters. She arrived to scope things out in February when, as she recalls, “everything was boarded up except for six pickup trucks outside the Ritz.”
More than four decades later, she’s still here.
It was actually a twist of fate that kept her on the Island: Near the end of that short-term stint, a horse kicked her and broke a vertebra. Laid up on workmen’s compensation, she stayed through the winter. Once she’d healed, the Vet Clinic hired her for a couple of days here and there; she would also travel off-Island to do relief jobs. By 1984, she was here full-time, knew she was in the right vocation, and felt ready to strike out on her own. At first she maintained a house-call practice, and rented a cottage in Vineyard Haven, but then, “I bought this house [in West Tisbury] in 1990 with the intent of having a home-based practice. Part of the reason was, I wanted to have kids, and I wanted to be around them.”
She started the practice on a shoestring. Her mother worked for the Norwalk, Conn., board of education: When their office threw away old furnishings, she scored a conference table that is, to this day, her exam table.
The year after she bought the house, she met Max Jasny; they married in 1994. In 1997, Lila came to them by way of domestic adoption, and three years later, Sydney. “When my kids were really little, I had a bassinet in the exam room and a bouncy chair on the table — but that only worked for a little bit,” she recalls.
Jib Ellis, one of Dr. Jasny’s early patients, was working at The MV Times at the time, and suggested she write for the paper. For the next 30 years, she never missed her biweekly deadline, even writing from her hospital bed while recovering from surgery. She recalls on one occasion, while on vacation in a tiny village, “trying to find a fax machine in the snow” so she could make her deadline.
“My first column was a very generic piece about Christmas hazards, like tinsel, and don’t let your dog touch the electric cord,” she recalls. “Sometimes it would be a James Herriot sort of story, sometimes it was an interesting medical thing.” She was continually learning and continually sharing her new wisdom with her many devoted readers. “There were some columns about other things, under the guise of veterinary advice,” she acknowledges. After 9/11, inspired by someone whose racism shocked her, “I wrote a column about aggression between animals, but it was also about getting along.”
Although still extremely busy with her practice, Jasny retains her love of writing. As well as contemplating authorship related to her profession, “I’ve also thought about non-animal-related things. For instance, as the mother in a transracial adoptive family with an autistic child, there’s all kinds of things to say.” At one point she also contemplated a murder mystery series featuring a veterinary sleuth, with titles such as “The Chappaquiddick Chihuahua Murders,” or “The Vineyard Haven Vizsla”: “But I never got very far with that.”
Dr. Jasny has such a full load that “I haven’t officially taken new clients since Sydney came along. I had to try to keep a work-life balance, and the model of constant growth is not one I agree with in life in general. I just wanted it to be sustainable for my clients and my family.” Most of her new clients are family members of existing ones. “I just love the long-term connections I have with people and their pets. I have adults coming in with their babies who first came to the practice in baby carriages themselves.” This element of Vineyard life means a lot to her: “I may never see them anywhere except over their animals, and yet I feel so deeply connected to them over the years, and part of it is just small-town living. You know who lost a family member, you know whose mother has Alzheimer’s, you know who dated who, and the animal community does sort of tie it all together.”
Because there are fewer vets here since Sea Breeze and My Pet’s Vet closed, Jasny is acutely aware that it’s harder now for pet owners. It is also difficult for the remaining veterinarians. “It’s hard to set boundaries in a small community when you’re in an outward-facing profession,” she says, but she suspects that it’s especially difficult for vets, “because we must love animals above everything else, and how can we prioritize anything more than that? Work-life balance has always been hard for vets in general, but particularly here, because there’s no easy access to a 24/7 emergency clinic.” Jasny’s husband Max used to joke about getting her a hat that read “Off-Duty.” She says, “I just hope that people will appreciate the vets who are here, who are trying the hardest they can to provide services.”
A couple of years ago, the Island vets collectively founded a telehealth vet triage service that people have to go through before the client can speak directly to a veterinarian, which has reduced the emergency load by 60 percent. “Some people were complaining, but the reality is, all the vets are getting older, and it’s been hard to get new vets here.
“When I was coming up,” she recalls, “we were still at the tail end of veterinary medicine being agricultural. Over the past 40 years, it has increasingly modeled itself on human medicine –– high-tech diets, rigid protocols –– and there’s been a lot of [medical] advances, but sometimes it puts regular vet care out of reach. Poorer people deserve to have the love of an animal if you can provide for it.” She believes in a practice that offers a spectrum of care, giving people realistic options.
As for the future, Jasny riffs on Mark Twain: “Reports of my retirement have been greatly exaggerated,” although she has gently begun to limit her practice –– for instance, she no longer performs surgery. While the Vineyard is now not a place that can make do with 2½ vets, it’s still a community that sustains her, and which she still helps sustain.
