Committee Member Profile—John Jagar

As a 12-year-old growing up in Charleston, South Carolina, one of the last things John Jagar wanted to do was to learn to ride horses.

"When my mother said I needed to take lessons for six months because riding horses was something I should know how to do, I fought her all the way," says Jagar, 46, a veterinarian in Millbrook, New York, and a member of the Zweig Committee for three years. "But then those six months turned into six years. I swallowed the hook and was caught."

Through his teens, Jagar showed hunters. "I was fortunate, however, to ride a very crummy horse," he laughs.

Huh?

"I consider it fortunate because during a show in high school, Ellen Gleason, formerly of Rochester, New York, saw me and said I rode too well to ride something so terrible. So why didn't I come to her farm and ride her horses?"

It was on Gleason's trainer's horse farm in Atlanta that Jagar was first drawn to veterinary medicine. Intrigued by the work of her equine veterinarian, he decided that was the field he wanted to pursue.

After his sophomore year at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, Jagar worked as a groom on Claiborne Farm, which was owned by the family of a classmate. There he met veterinarians Colonel Floyd Sager and Jim Klyza, both alumni of the New York State College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell.

"After meeting those two men, I decided Cornell was the only veterinary school in the world to go to."

Getting in was no easy task, however, because Cornell was-and still is-a statutory college and primarily accepts New Yorkers. Jagar found a friend, however, in Dr. Sandy Delahunta, then the chair of admissions, who stuck his neck out and got Jagar admitted.

"I've redeemed myself since," Jagar says with a grin. "Although I was the token southerner then, I have since come back to live and practice in New York."

Before doing so, however, Jagar did an internship and residency at Auburn University and received a master's degree in large animal surgery. He returned to New York in 1980 to work as a resident veterinarian on a breeding farm in Ghent. In 1984, he opened a practice with two partners. They located the business-Millbrook Equine Veterinary Clinic, P.C.-in the Hudson Valley, which is the hub of the New York horse breeding industry.

In his free time, Jagar helps his 16-year old daughter, Ashley, prepare for and compete in three-day horse events. His 14-year-old son, Ross, on the other hand, is a "golf nut." With his wife, Suzanne, Jagar owns a thoroughbred broodmare, now with a weanling and a yearling still on the farm, a stallion share, and three dogs: a Labrador to hunt with and two "rug rats"-a terrier and a cocker spaniel, "which is a veterinarian's dream because they have every problem known to dog."

This past summer, Jagar volunteered as one of 60 veterinarians working at the Olympics. "I was assigned to fences 4, 19, and 20, and truthfully, there were very few veterinary problems. But we had a great time there for two weeks."

Jagar says he is elated to be a member of the Zweig Committee.

"This committee has been the best I have ever served on. It's a great bunch of people doing a very worthwhile thing. It allows me to read research proposals that are on the cutting edge of veterinary medicine. It gives me a chance to know what's going on and to provide some input to ensure there will be some practical end result from the research that will benefit horsemen."