A never-ending job for vets

The fair’s more than 2,400 animals are all tended to by one veterinary clinic.

By LAUREN POLINSKY

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

CANFIELD — Veterinarians play a big part in the Canfield Fair’s animal competitions.

Each crowned grand champion and reserve champion animal, for example, must pass a drug test before the results are made official.

It’s up to one Lisbon veterinary clinic to do all the testing.

Dr. Doug Wiley has been the go-to vet for the past 24 years at the Canfield Fair. He has somewhere in the range of 2,400 animals in his care each year at the fairgrounds.

His hectic schedule — at the fair by 6 a.m. and not leaving until 7 or 8 p.m., plus being on-call 24 hours — would not be possible without the help of his colleagues at the Lisbon Veterinary Clinic.

“Being out here totally disrupts my schedule in what I like to call the real world, but I have six doctors in my practice that help me out here and in the real world,” Dr. Wiley said.

Dr. Wiley is in charge of taking urine and hair samples from the grand and reserve champions for pigs, steers and lambs, which can be a time-consuming task.

“You are asking a 300-pound pig to pee in a cup. Sometimes it could take half an hour, and sometimes it could take five hours.”

Dr. Wiley said he has never had a positive drug sample result, even though the competition among families gets pretty heated.

Checks every animal

Dr. Wiley is also in charge of creating the health requirements for every animal that comes into the fair, which means he is also responsible for making sure each one meets those requirements.

“I check all the animals when they get to the fair and then I inspect every animal every day. I also try to go through the barns twice a day,” Dr. Wiley said.

With so many animals at the fair, Dr. Wiley said there are bound to be some injuries. On Thursday morning he was tending to a goat with a dislocated hip.

“Usually I just have to deal with minor injuries and lacerations, but we have lost a few animals here before. Luckily, it has been a very rare occurrence,” Dr. Wiley said.

So far this year there have not been any major incidents.