Foster City Council honors longtime community veterinarian

The Foster City Council issued a proclamation at its Oct. 18 meeting honoring Cowing for his time of veterinary service in the community and helping pets and pet owners throughout the decades. The council presented the proclamation Monday to Cowing with his family and friends in attendance.

Cowing was a veterinarian for 47 years and has worked in Foster City since 1988. He graduated from the University of California, Davis, in 1974. Before opening his practice in Foster City, he started out briefly in Sacramento and worked in San Bruno for 13 years. He opened Animal Cove Pet Hospital and Clinic in 1989 and ran it until he retired in May 2021. He initially started in Foster City in 1988 before eventually moving to his Animal Cove location on Beach Park Boulevard. Cowing was born and raised in Southern California before coming north to do his undergraduate and graduate degrees. He first became interested in being a veterinarian in high school and found medicine fascinating, although he didn’t want to work on people.

“Little did I know that it would be harder to get into veterinarian school than med school, which is true,” Cowing said.

For long stretches of his career, he was the only veterinarian in Foster City, becoming the go-to person for various emergencies, ailments and checkups. He estimates he was the only veterinarian in town for 23 years. Several councilmembers have been clients. In March, Cowing sold the business and property to a group of owners who will continue to operate Animal Cove Pet Hospital and Clinic.

“It was quaint. It was nice having your own practice. I was a one-man practice for a long time,” he said.

Cowing has seen lots of change in Foster City, with new buildings and people throughout the years. People are willing to spend more money on their pets, with more corporate businesses buying into veterinarian medicine and practices. COVID-19 also affected business, with clients seen outside instead of inside. The changes and challenges every day kept him active and going throughout his career.

“The cases are always different. There’s always something going on, and when you get tired of something that way, you buy a new piece of instrument, or there’s something that you have to learn,” Cowing said.

He does not have any big lifestyle changes in mind with retirement, saying one of his favorite things now is to sleep in instead of getting up at six in the morning. He lives in San Mateo and plans to spend more time at his cabin in Soda Springs near Lake Tahoe during the winter for snowshoeing and cross country skiing. However, he will miss the daily interactions as a veterinarian.

“That’s the hard part, not being around all the clients. A lot of my clients were friends as well. They were friends beforehand. I made a lot of client friends, so that’s the hard part. That’s the part that you don’t always hear about from retirement,” Cowing said.

Cowing thanked his wife and family for their many years of support and pushing him to success. He met his wife, Renée, on the very last day of veterinarian school.

“I’m really truly honored by this, and I was totally surprised,” Cowing said.

curtis@smdailyjournal.com

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