A Veterinarian Comes Home To Newtown

By Dottie Evans

From frogs to rhinos to great white sharks, Dr Barbara J. Mangold, DVM, has enjoyed a most unusual 12-year career in veterinary medicine. During this time, she has treated all kinds and sizes of wild native and exotic animals in various locations around the world.

Now, Dr Mangold says she is ready to “come home again” to Newtown in the greater Danbury area where she grew up, and she is delighted to be working in the town where so many members of her extended family live.

She will also be “coming home again” to cats and dogs. On September 22, she took a full-time veterinary associate position at the Newtown Animal Clinic at 98 South Main Street, working alongside Dr Neal J. Warner, DVM. Dr Warner is the owner of the veterinary practice that was founded in 1936 by longtime Newtown resident Russell Strasburger (1914–1999).

Dr Mangold said she remembers driving down South Main when she was growing up and noticing Newtown Animal Clinic, especially after 1978 when her family left Ridgefield to build a home along Lake Lillinonah. Now her brothers, Bill and John Mangold, live in Newtown and Brookfield, respectively. A sister, Tricia, lives in Hamden, and another sister, Judy Mangold Crane, lives in Newtown next door to the family home.

“I have 19 nieces and nephews who are my surrogate children, and I’m so glad to be a part of their lives again,” she said.

The opportunity to work with small animals at a well-recognized local animal hospital and to keep track of her animal clients on a regular basis also appealed to her.

“I’m lucky to have these options,” she added.

When Dr Mangold saw the ad for an associate’s position at the Newtown Animal Clinic in the Journal of Veterinary Medicine, she was delighted.

“It was just by chance that I picked up the journal. As soon as I saw it, I knew this was what I wanted. I know a lot of the clientele. It’s a nice, clean hospital and they do good medicine,” she said, adding that it was a well-established practice and well managed.

Dr Warner said he is “very excited” to have Dr Mangold on board, not only because he likes to have two full-time doctors on staff, but also because of what she brings to the practice in the way of experience and skill.

“She’s coming home, and that means stability and continuity.  She is a calm and relaxed person, and the animals can sense that,” Dr Warner said.

From A Ridgefield Pet Shop

To Disney’s Wild Kingdom

“I always knew I wanted to take care of animals,” Dr Mangold said as she recalled her childhood years spent helping out in the family business between 1975 and 1983. It was known as The Pet Shop and was located in Copps Hill Plaza in Ridgefield. Firmly anchored in the middle of a family of seven children, Dr Mangold is convinced it was during those early years that she found her calling.

“We all worked there. Health questions concerning the animals would come up, and they always intrigued me. At home, we kept snakes and ducks. And we would bring home dogs and cats.

“I knew I wanted to be a veterinary technician, and I worked in that field for six years before deciding to go to vet school. I’ve delved into it, devoted my life to it. It always came easily, and I’ve always loved my jobs,” Dr Mangold said.

After graduating from Ridgefield High School with the Class of 1975, Barbara Mangold attended the University of Maryland for four years, majoring in animal science. She received her graduate degree in 1990 from the Virginia/Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, in Blacksburg, Va.

She completed a one-year internship in small animal medicine at the Angell Memorial Animal Hospital in Boston, Mass., and her first job in private practice was a two-year stint in West Hartford. That was followed by a three-year residency in zoo medicine at the Bronx Zoo in New York City.

In April 1996, Dr Mangold was hired to help bring in animals for the live exhibits at Animal Kingdom, one of the newer theme parks at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla.

“When I got there, they only had two giraffes. By the time I left, there were 400 animals, all obtained from various sources including other zoos.” She traveled to Texas, for example, to pick up a black rhino.

“Thirty crocodiles were brought in by Federal Express cargo plane from a crocodile farm in South Africa. During the flight, we had to peek at their eyes through tiny holes in their crates to see how they were doing.”

Dr Mangold and the rest of the Animal Kingdom staff had to quarantine all the animals upon arrival and then examine them for infections and injuries before they were introduced into the exhibits.

“We gave them shots of preventative medicine and performed general health exams on each one. We took care of everything from frogs weighing two grams, to rhinos weighing 1,500 pounds.”

During her time at the Bronx Zoo, to which she returned in 2000 as a staff veterinarian, Dr Mangold became involved in a shark rescue program that was conducted by the zoo in cooperation with the Society for Wildlife Conservation. Specifically, the program was geared toward the preservation of endangered great white sharks.

“We travel to the sharks’ feeding grounds off South Africa, where we tag them for the purpose of tracking their migration routes by satellite,” she said.

Dr Mangold has become a dedicated participant in the ongoing tagging project. Just two months after joining the Newtown Animal Clinic, she took 12 days off to volunteer for a team working off the east coast of South Africa.

“This was undertaken in cooperation with the Marine Coastal Management Resources agency of the South African government. Our hope is to find out where the sharks go and try to protect those waters.”

The Newtown Animal Clinic is located at 98 South Main Street. The phone number is 426-2777.