Washington, D.C. 1963
A young Army soldier brushes down a black horse named Blackjack. In a few days, that horse will walk in President Kennedy's funeral procession with no rider and the boots turned backward in the stirrups, while a grieving country watches.
The soldier taking care of him is a kid from West Texas who, not long before, had never even met a veterinarian.
Years later, you would ask him about that week, and he would just shrug. "I was just a grunt that took care of him."
That kid is Dr. Davis Hall. Blackjack was the first famous patient in a story that ends with three animal hospitals, a family, and four words on our door: Love People. Love Pets.
Here is how it happened.
The Farm
Davis grew up in a small West Texas town, showing sheep and calves in Future Farmers of America and working the ranch his granddad ran, six sections of it. Money was thin. When an animal got sick, nobody called a vet, because there was nothing to call one with. You handled it, or you didn't.
He didn't really know what a veterinarian was. He just liked the sound of the word. He liked it enough to point his whole life at it.
The Soldier
He went to Texas A&M when it was still all military and strict, and by his own account it straightened out a punk kid in a hurry. He graduated on a Friday. Took his state board exams that weekend. Reported to the Army that Monday.
They sent him to Washington. He looked after the Army's horses, including a black one named Blackjack who wasn't famous yet.
Then a president was killed, and the country needed a riderless horse to lead him home. Blackjack got the call. Davis was the one who made sure he was ready. A farm kid who never had money for a vet was now caring for one of the most watched animals in the country. He has never once made it sound like much. It was.
Built by Hand
When the Army was done with him, Davis stayed. He went to work for a veterinarian at Bailey's Crossroads. He treated horses at night. He spayed cats on his own ironing board at home, because that was the table he had.
In 1974, a local vet named Dr. Parvie had a heart attack. Parvie owned a small practice called Town and Country, one little building on a Fairfax corner. His wife called Davis and asked if he could help. She ended up selling it to him for $90,000. It was one building then. There are three on that block today.
A year later, in 1975, Davis did the thing most people only talk about. He built a hospital with his own hands. The site was an old Atlantic Richfield gas station. He dug the footings himself. He pulled out the lift where the gas pumps used to sit. When he was finished, it was Columbia Pike Animal Hospital.
Then he ran both at once. Seven in the morning to eight at night, back and forth between the two hospitals, then out to treat horses after dark. Seven days a week, for a year straight, until he could finally afford to hire help. Nobody gave him a thing. He earned all of it, building by building.
The Son
Davis's son Reed grew up inside all of it. The Hall house was a small zoo: pigs, goats, chickens, cows, horses, and one baby deer with a broken leg recovering in the kitchen. There was a pet pig named Lemonade. Reed's best memories are riding shotgun in his dad's truck on horse calls, a boy watching his father work.
Reed became a veterinarian too. When he finished school, the family bought the building next door, the old Town and Country Real Estate office. This time Reed made his dad promise to hire an architect instead of swinging the hammer himself.
Ask Davis the secret to lasting fifty years, and he won't say a word about marketing. He says the Golden Rule. "If you treat people the way you want to be treated, you don't have to worry about business. It'll come."
Reed learned it by watching, not by being told. He calls his dad his best friend. And the thing he is proudest of is not the buildings. It is the team that walks in every morning and treats animals and people like their own.
Watch how it all began.
That is the kind of vet most people are looking for. If you are, come meet us.
The Family Today
That family is still here. Fifty years on, the Halls care for pets across Northern Virginia through three hospitals. Town and Country in Fairfax, since 1974. Columbia Pike Animal Hospital and Emergency Center in Annandale, built by hand in 1975. And our newest, Animal Clinic of Clifton, serving its community since 1995.
The instinct that started all of it, treating animals gently and treating people kindly, is the same reason Town and Country is now Fear Free Certified. Taking the fear, anxiety, and stress out of your pet's visit isn't a trend to us. It is the exact thing Davis believed on day one. It just has a name now.
WUSA9 came out to cover the news. Watch the segment:
Want to see what a calmer vet visit feels like for your pet? That is what a Fear Free Appointment is built for.
Pets were never customers to this family. Neighbors were never strangers. That is what Love People. Love Pets. has meant since a kid from West Texas first picked up the phone for someone else's animal. It still means it today.
And the story is still being written. In 2025, we welcomed Animal Clinic of Clifton to the family, the newest chapter in something that started with one man and an ironing board.
