Veterinary Dentist Terrie Faber: “Pursue your passions.”

by Maxine Fischbein

(AJNews) – From a young age, newly-retired Dr. Terrie Faber knew that she wanted to be a veterinarian.  Reflecting on her distinguished career, Faber—born and raised in the Calgary Jewish community—provided fascinating glimpses into the passion for animal welfare that led her to become a healer, a pioneer in veterinarian dentistry, a successful businesswoman and an educator who relished the opportunity to teach veterinary students sharing her singular calling:  Insuring that animals, who cannot verbalize pain, and indeed mask it, are given the opportunity to live their best lives.

Faber had been a veterinarian for about a dozen years when she sought a new challenge and considered, among other possibilities, veterinary dentistry.

When she first began to practice veterinary medicine, Faber joined Dr. David Sandwith in a veterinary practice in Woodlands where their partnership spanned two decades. Sandwith was not keen on animal dentistry and therefore asked Faber to take on the role. While she liked the idea, Faber knew she needed to learn a whole lot more.

Fortuitously, around the same time, Faber attended a weekend lecture and lab that Dr. Loic Legendre, a Vancouver veterinary dentist, was conducting in Edmonton. It was the days of slide projectors, which Legendre used to share images of x-rays and photos of animals with dental disease.

“No one had heard of x-raying dog and cat teeth in those days,” recalled Faber, who added that the images “…showed that these animals were walking around in pain.”

“The owners didn’t recognize it, the vets didn’t recognize it, and these animals were suffering,” Faber realized. “It hit me like a ton of bricks.”

“These were my words to myself,” Faber told AJNews. “This is awful.  Somebody needs to do something about it, and that somebody is going to be me.”

Dr. Legendre shared with Faber available avenues to get the training.

One option would have necessitated a move to the United States, but Faber was juggling a four-year-old, a newborn baby and a veterinary practice.

Fortunately, there was a second path toward her professional goal—a fellowship in the Academy of Veterinary Dentistry—but to fulfill the requirements, she would need a mentor.

She turned to Dr. Legendre.

While he at first declined, Faber knew Legendre had to be the one.  She begged him to take her on, knowing that the next nearest specialist was in Toronto.

Legendre told Faber what kind of x-ray and other equipment she would need and invited her to broach the topic with him once she had the necessary tools.  To his shock, she got back to him within a week to let him know everything was on order.

Faber began flying regularly to Vancouver for training that lasted four years. Her supportive husband, Perry Gerwing, looked after their four-year-old son. Faber took her baby daughter with her, arranging her visits around the schedule of her sister, a Vancouver university professor who looked after the baby while Faber worked.

Faber went on to establish Alberta Veterinary Dentistry in 2012, initially renting space in her previous practice and, in 2014, relocating to a building owned by her husband.

There were six busy years before COVID hit.

Initially, Faber was sceptical that people would prioritize advanced dental care for their pets during the global pandemic. She assured staff that she would find a way to stay in business and that she would keep them employed.

It turns out that the practice became “insanely busy,” as more and more people acquired pets.

Faber recently sold the practice, the pinnacle of a career during which she also shared her expertise, lecturing on veterinary dentistry and, for the past dozen or so years, teaching the small animal dentistry portion of the veterinary curriculum at the University of Calgary.

“It’s interesting how everything has transpired,” muses Faber, who graduated with her Veterinary degree from the University of Saskatchewan—then the only school for veterinarians in Western Canada—in 1986.

“It’s a great career!”

Notably, her graduating class was the first where the balance shifted, with more women graduating the faculty than men. Today, Faber says that women comprise 90 per cent or more of veterinary graduates.

“It’s a women’s profession,” Faber told AJNews.

“[Like medicine] it’s a caring and compassionate profession, added Faber who believes that more women would have populated the field all along, had they not first been barred and later discouraged.

“It’s a great career,” said Faber who was visibly moved as she recounted her career highlights.

She began with an interest in large animals. After working with farm animals for about a year she changed course.

One graduates as a general vet, explained Faber, adding, “You can take your career where you want,” perhaps studying toward a unique specialization, working in industry, or engaging in research.

Part time work is certainly a possibility for women who want to spend more time at home with their young families.

Veterinary practice, says Faber, is “very, very rewarding.”

“The people that get the most satisfaction out of it are people that really love animals and have the desire to help them…. The reason dentistry became so important to me is because it is a kind of suffering that is very hard to recognize,” Faber told AJNews, mainly because animals have no voice.

“With chronic suffering you only see the improvement after you relieve it,” adds Faber, whose clients often told her after the fact that their fur babies were like different animals following dental surgery.

Don’t ask Faber to opine on work-life balance.

“That’s just a fallacy,” reflects Faber.  “You just have what you have.”

She is honest with her veterinary students, the overwhelming majority of whom are women.

“It’s not so easy if you have a practice and you have kids.  When I was at work I sometimes felt guilty that I should be at home; and when I was at home I would feel guilty that I should be doing more for my career. I balanced things the best I could. I wanted to make sure that I was at every school thing that the kids had. But it was hard.”

Faber says that men of her generation did not feel that same guilt, though she believes today, as roles are shifting, that there is more sharing of domestic duties such as child care, possibly changing the equation somewhat for younger women entering the profession.

“This next generation is different, both men and women,” reflected Faber. “I think they watched their parents be workaholics and they don’t want to do that.”

Faber spoke of the difference between local Jewish women of her mother’s era—nearly all of whom she says were stay-at-home moms—and her cohort of Jewish women.

“We were the pioneers. I, and most of my friends, went to university, learned professions and went into that world….We were told we could have it all, but  there’s no such thing as having it all,” says Faber.  “You have to compromise.”

“I was extremely passionate about my career, but I didn’t give it 100 percent until my kids left home.”

Still, Faber put enormous energy into her calling, while many of her friends chose to go part time or to give up careers altogether because they prioritized having a parent home with the kids.

That was a good decision for them, said Faber.

“My career was my calling.  It was just so important to me that I wouldn’t have been happy being a stay-at-home mom…. There were just so many things I wanted to do,” Faber said.

When her kids flew from the family nest, Faber “ramped up it up into high gear.” She had a big vision for her business, eventually bringing a partner who did a residency in veterinary dentistry and an anaesthetist into the practice so that they could bring it to “the next level.” Further expansion soon followed.

“We were told we could have it all, but  there’s no such thing as having it all. You have to compromise.”

Having brought her dream to fruition, and knowing her legacy is in great hands, Faber is embracing retirement and the opportunity for new adventures, including travel.

She always envisioned doing volunteer work once she retired.

“That may still come,” said Faber, but I think I just need to rest for a while.”

Faber is grateful for the support she received over the years from family and community.

Her husband Perry—who comes from a farming family—and their children, Jared and Mikaela, share Faber’s passion for animals. Jared, an accountant, is the corporate controller at a private health care business and a doting cat owner; Mikaela is currently working toward a Ph. D in primatology.

As a child, Terrie Faber had some powerful mentors in her family of origin, including her grandmother, Mary Faber, who was a working woman all her life and integral to the family business, a store on 8^th Avenue.

“She was the matriarch of the family, in every sense of the word, a very strong woman. I idolized her and looked to her as a role model as a working woman,” Faber said.

“She was empowered by that,” recalled Faber, adding that her grandmother demonstrated that a woman could work and have a family.

Terrie Faber’s father, Lou Faber, was also a mentor. A respected lawyer who later in his career became involved in mediation, arbitration and family counselling, he modelled the kind of caring and compassion for people that his daughter later brought to the care of animals.

“He took calls at home, he did legal aid. He was kind…very rabbinical in a way, and highly sought after for family counseling. He was very ethical.”

Though she was a stay-at-home mom, Terrie Faber’s mother, Shirley, was supportive of her daughters’ educational and career aspirations as well as her sons’.

“She said, I don’t want you to have to rely on a man.  I want you to be independent.  I want you to have a career,” Terrie Faber said.

It also takes a village to raise a child. Faber says the “atmosphere and environment” of the Calgary Hebrew School—where she studied full time through elementary and junior high school, later attending afterschool classes through grade 12—was nurturing.“It was very accepted that everyone needed a good education,” said Faber, who felt supported when she announced in Grade Four or Five that she wanted to be a veterinarian.

The “atmosphere and environment” of the Calgary Hebrew School and at home was nurturing. “It was very accepted that everyone needed a good education.”

In university, Faber encountered classmates who had been discouraged or made to feel that “they were bucking the trend.” She feels enormous gratitude that her family and the Hebrew School “…always applauded my ambition.”

Faber encourages women to pursue their passions and not to be daunted by the effort and time that realizing them might take.

“It’s a great profession that offers tons of opportunities for women. There are so many ways to grow…so many great opportunities for learning,” Faber adds.

While she gladly pitches careers in veterinary medicine, she acknowledges that it can be a taxing field. And she has some great advice that is applicable to any career: Look after your health, including mental health, and set boundaries.

“Know yourself,” says Faber.  “You have to know what you can cope with.”

Once referred to by a colleague as a pioneer in advanced veterinary dentistry, Faber looks back on all that she has accomplished with deep satisfaction:

“I feel like I’ve done my good in the world. I had this vision of helping animals, and I think I’ve done it.”

Maxine Fischbein is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter.