By Kate Proctor

I recently attended a retirement party, a relatively new experience for me. For people working in the pork industry through the last 50 years or so, Dr. Doug MacDougald would be a familiar name. For those of you outside of the industry, I hope your industry has someone like him.
 We walked into the venue and Doug was the first person we saw. Some may hear the words “retirement party” and picture a dusty, old, tired person,  ready to hang up the towel and ride off into the sunset. Not so with Doug. Standing beside Doug was like standing next to a fire. He is the kind of person who emanates a powerful positive energy that is impossible to ignore.
 To say he changed the pork industry in Ontario would be a big understatement. He went from working out of his own car, with supplies in his garage, to helping build what is there today – a collaboration of 14 specialized swine veterinarians, with a staff of 70 people. He changed the model of veterinary practice – from one of the vet coming to tend to your sick pig, to a more business-focused, holistic approach. How do we look at your whole operation, and set you up to succeed?
 Doug is a numbers guy. He focused on keeping meticulous records, and using the data to figure out how to not only prevent disasters from happening, but also how to manage your way through when they inevitably do. Especially in the pig business. With all the emerging diseases, world markets, and labour challenges, the next disaster is always just around the corner. But Doug helped people in the industry manage that.
 One of the big diseases that we worked through during my time in the barn was “mystery swine disease”, which we now know as Porcine Respiratory Reproductive Syndrome (PRRS).  If that name sounds big and unwieldy, it is because the disease is big and unwieldy, affecting all parts of the barn, with multiple different strains that continue to pop up and create disasters – from abortion storms to 50 per cent pre-wean mortality, to figuring out that your most profitable pigs were the ones that died during the first 10 days of life because those that survived were so compromised you could hardly feed them enough to ever get them out the door.
 The Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea (PED) virus that is so decimating to baby pigs was discovered in 2014 to be transmitted through feed by-products, something that was caught and contained early thanks to the meticulous recording keeping and collaboration of vets. Doug’s philosophy on managing through these diseases saved a lot of farm families.
 Doug is also a people guy. What makes him special is his focus on people and bringing them together in a way that strengthens everyone – the whole is greater than the sum of its parts (Aristotle). The pork industry sometimes gets painted as a huge industrial complex. The term “factory farms” comes in part from our big modern pig barns, that from the outside, do kind of look like a factory. Until you step inside where it is nothing like a factory. Every farm, every animal is unique, and nothing is predictable except change.
But most farms in Ontario are still family owned and run. These businesses are about people. Doug saw that – and he was able to challenge people, igniting their desire to do better, to be better. As one of my former employees said after a herd health visit, when Doug focused that steely eyed gaze on you – you couldn’t help but want to do better.
 He looked at the entire business, not just on a sick animal. On a family farm, focusing on the business means you are dealing with a family, because our farms are where we work, live, and raise our kids. Changing the model to consider not just pig diseases, but how to make that farm work as a business changed the lives of the farm families Doug worked with. That was evident in his retirement speech when he talked about working with families through two or three generations over his career.
 Doug was the spark that got people working together and pulled those up around him. He is not a one-man show still working as the local vet; his vision helped create South West Vet Services, “We are – veterinarians, innovators creating solutions for real world problems across all facets of pork production; communicators connecting you with training, knowledge, and analytic tools. We are better together.”  (https://www.southwestvets.ca/). Working together with other vets and always bringing more people into the tent made the veterinary practice stronger, which in turn made the entire industry stronger.
 Doug has also been a strong supporter of a variety of charity organizations, especially Sleeping Children Around the World (https://www.scaw.org/). He regularly travels to countries where the organization is active, most recently Rwanda, to distribute bed kits to children in impoverished areas. The kits contain a mattress and bedding, school supplies, clothing, masks, and a mosquito net to combat diseases such as malaria, Zika, dengue fever. The organization is structured to ensure that 100 per cent of donations go toward buying bed kits in the local area where they will be used.  It targets countries specifically that have a Gross National Income of less than $6000 (USD) (https://www.scaw.org/).
His enthusiasm was contagious as he talked about continuing his work with SCAW, more family time, and other projects. It was inspiring to hear how Doug’s plans for retirement sound more like a change of focus rather than really giving up anything. 
For me, it was another lesson in aging gracefully. ◊