Patricia Hogan, AG '87, never met a horse she didn't like. And, so, she became a veterinarian, and because she did, the Horatio Alger of horses, Smarty Jones, had a career.
Smarty Jones is the first racehorse in 27 years to enter the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes unbeaten and remain that way until the third jewel in horse racing's triple crown, the Belmont Stakes. In the Belmont, he far outraced every horse on the track but Birdstone, who beat him by a length and caused his first defeat ever.
Smarty Jones never would have starred in this Cinderella story if it hadn't been for Hogan's passion for horses.
An equine surgeon, Hogan first saw Smarty Jones last year when he reared up in the starting gate at Philadelphia Park, smashing his skull against an iron bar and causing so much damage that his attending vet, Don Hans, thought Smarty would have to lose an eye. The horse was sent to the New Jersey Equine Clinic in Clarksburg, N.J., where Hogan works, as an emergency eye removal patient.
Hogan was to perform the operation. The clinic prepared the operating room and the instruments to remove the horse's eye. When Hogan saw him, the eye looked as bad as had been described, she says, but it's her practice to examine her patients before doing surgery. After running a series of tests, especially an ultrasound, Hogan decided to treat Smarty Jones' injuries and hold off on removing the eye. The horse healed exactly as she hoped he would, she says, and Smarty Jones went on to become the phenom he did.
"I love horses," Hogan says. "I'm always thinking about what's best for the animal, what will allow him to be happy." She says her priority is not what is expedient but what is best for the animal. It was that devotion that saved Smarty Jones' eye, allowing him to reach his full potential and capture the heart of a nation.
Hogan says she has loved horses all her life. "From the first moment I can remember, I've loved horses," she says. "I drew them. I cut their pictures out of magazines. I just had an affinity for them."
She grew up in Edison, N.J., one of seven children. Her mother encouraged her insatiable appetite for anything horse-related, helping her clip magazines when she was too young to do it herself. When she was 10, she got on her bike and rode to the harness-racing track not far from her house.
"I begged them to let me work there," she says. They let her clean stalls and walk horses for the next five years.
When it came time to choose a college, she says she was looking for the best pre-veterinary school in the area. "I heard UD was a good school and that the ag college had a first-rate animal science program," she says. She applied to UD and was accepted. She worked her way through school, mostly with jobs not related to animals, but Paul H. Sammelwitz, now professor emeritus, gave her a job as his teaching assistant, making it easier for her to work and attend school.
Hogan says she remembers Sammelwitz fondly. "He is an excellent teacher," she says. "He had a zest for learning."
Still, work had an impact, especially when it came to the sciences, and she says her grades were only average. In 1987, when she applied to the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine and several others, she was turned down.
Undaunted, Hogan went to work for Penn's New Bolton Center, once again cleaning out stalls, but this time there were 25 stalls and heavier work. She was the only woman operating a forklift that removed carcasses from the premises.
By 1988, she had been accepted into the University of Pennsylvania's veterinary medicine program. As she attended classes and worked at the New Bolton Center, tending to horses, she decided she wanted to become a surgeon.
After graduation and an internship with Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital in Kentucky, she spent three years in a large-animal surgery residency at Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine. She then returned to New Jersey, where she became an associate at the New Jersey Equine Clinic, catering to racehorses.
She now is in the process of buying the 140-acre, 44-stall hospital.
She and her husband, Eddie Lohmeyer, manage a 38-acre farm in Creamridge, N.J., where they raise, race and sell Standardbred or harness race horses.
Hogan says she especially loves to see horses run. She and her husband own and race four trotters. "Shadow of Your Smile just won at the Meadowlands," Hogan said in a recent long-distance phone conversation, with a smile that even a cell phone couldn't hide.
--Barbara Garrison