Getting To Know Veterinary Industry Leader Dr. Eleanor M. Green

Dr. Eleanor M. Green rode her passion for horses into the veterinary world, first as a practice owner and later as a leading figure in academia and across the profession. Until recently, she was directing the creation of the Lyon College School of Veterinary Medicine in Arkansas. Dr. Green served as dean of the Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine from 2009 to 2020 and before then was an educator or administrator at Mississippi State University and the universities of Missouri, Tennessee, and Florida. Today, the double-boarded veterinarian operates Iron Horse Farm and Iron Horse Consulting, is a senior adviser and consultant at Animal Policy Group, and volunteers as a board member with the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame and Museum. The Auburn University DVM graduate was also instrumental in starting the Veterinary Innovation Council and the Veterinary Virtual Care Association.

1. You left Texas A&M in 2020 and became Lyon College’s founding dean three years later. Why did you leave, and what brought you back to education?

I loved Texas A&M and never would’ve stepped down, but my husband and I live in the middle of horse country outside of Fort Worth and have a small horse operation, Iron Horse Farm. So, I stepped down so we could do this horse operation and consult. I later talked to the Lyon president about being the founding dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine and doing it remotely, and she said yes.

2. What is the school’s status, and what is your current role?

We have an AVMA Council on Education comprehensive site visit scheduled for August — a big hump. In the process of recruiting a dynamite team, one person I was recruiting as an associate dean was Dr. Carolyn Henry, a former dean at the University of Missouri. She said, “I’d really like to be a dean again.” The more I thought about it and the more we talked, I believed my job as founding dean was to ensure success. So, I thought, “Why should I build my team and my program, and then hand them over to her? Why don’t I help her build her program?” As of March 2026, she is the dean, and I will help from the sidelines.

3. What are some of the philosophies you share with Dr. Henry?

Both of us are very anxious to change a lot of things about education. If you survey young people — and this isn’t just veterinary medicine — nearly half of learners from the age of 18 to 36 say learning isn’t fun. So, what can we do to make learning not just fun, but fun and more effective? I think we can do that through technology enhancements, virtual realities, artificial intelligence, simulations, clinical skills, and all those things. I think we can make education a lot better.

4. What would it take to evolve the veterinary education learning process?

I recently saw a figure that medical information doubles every 72 days. There is no way we can teach like we used to. We cannot ask students to just memorize anymore. Obviously, they’re going to have to learn and memorize, but what they really need to learn is how to access, assess, and apply data rather than just learn a lot of facts. There’s a great quote I came across, and I’ll see if I get this right: “In a world of change, the learners shall inherit the earth while the learned shall find themselves perfectly suited for a world that no longer exists.” I’m talking about not only developing career veterinarians but also developing future-ready veterinarians.

5. Did you imagine doing what you do today when you were a little girl?

The answer is a resounding “No!” I’m from a family of physicians, and everybody thought I might go into human health care. My dad was a surgeon, and he’s my rock and role model. And yet, I’ve had a passion for horses since I was born, and I couldn’t think of a better way to combine those two than veterinary medicine. From a very early age, all I ever wanted was to be a really good equine veterinarian.

6. How did you get into academia?

I ended up marrying a classmate who was from Guntown, a small town in northeast Mississippi. He always wanted to go home. We talked and I said, “Well, why don’t we go? Because one or two things will happen: Either you’ll get it out of your system, or we’ll both just love it and find that’s where our life is going to be.” So, we went, and we loved it. But along the way, they were building a veterinary school at Mississippi State. The dean visited us and offered us both jobs. That’s how I ended up in academia, and I’ve been in academia ever since.

7. How long were you in Guntown?

Four years, and it was very successful. I learned so many things in that setting: building our own practice, designing our own facilities, and starting our own practice from the ground up. We also did some really fun things and had wonderful experiences that I’ve carried through with me. I could write the James Herriot book again.

8. Your dad was one of your biggest role models. Any other people come to mind?

Certainly. My mother was extremely smart and went to Carnegie Tech [now Carnegie Mellon University]. She did enormously well there, as she painted and played the cello and piano. Everything she touched was very artistic. I kind of got a little bit of that, too. Another mentor is a gentleman named Dr. Paul Neal. He was an equine surgeon from England and head of the large animal department of Liverpool veterinary school at Neston Station. He did a visiting professorship when we were at Mississippi State. He was delightful, very smart, and had an international reputation. He’s the first person who ever told me I was doing good. To have a person of that caliber say that about my clinical skills and professional abilities, I think that’s the part that really got me.

9. How do Dr. Neal’s words impact you today?

I try to find the good and praise it. I try to help people understand their talents. I had an intern at the University of Missouri who was one of the brightest I’ve ever seen. He was naturally good as a clinician. The clients loved him, his colleagues loved him, and the students loved him. He was just a star. He published more papers as an intern than the senior faculty. So, I tried to encourage him to go into academia, and he did. He’s now at North Carolina State and has been there for many years. But you know what he told me? He said, “You’re the first person who ever told me I was good.” Now, how can a person with that level of talent not know it and not be told it?

10. Why do people hold back from saying it?

If you see someone who’s really good, the first assumption is they must know how good they are. The other thing is we might check ourselves so that we don’t interfere or insert ourselves where we may or may not be wanted. If we are going to be mentors, we need to encourage and not just give career advice. We also need to give personal and professional advice.

11. Did you have animals when you were growing up?

Yes. I tell people we lived in a zoo because we had everything. We lived on an island in Tampa, Florida, and it was a very urban area. We had dogs, cats, guinea pigs, hamsters, gerbils, homing pigeons in the backyard, and litter-trained rabbits. At one point, we even raised baby goats and calves in the backyard. Daddy built for Mother a grape arbor, which very quickly got converted into a coop for quail and both ring-necked and silver king pheasants, which we would turn loose and help populate Florida’s central area. The prominent animal in my life, though, was horses.

12. Where did your passion for horses come from?

I don’t know. I was the only one in a family of four that got that bug. I begged and begged to take riding lessons and begged to own a horse. I started riding lessons by 7 years old and got our first horse when I was 9, and I’ve never been without a horse since. When I turned 16, I got a horse trailer to go with my car and started hauling around the Southeast by myself. You learn a lot about life when you’re out on the highway by yourself at 16 years of age. I used to say it was a detrimental gene, but I was corrected and told it was a superior gene. So, I’m sticking with that. I think the attraction to horses is a superior gene, and I’ve got it.

13. Did you have any early jobs?

I used to ride horses for other people at two bucks an hour. In the summers, I’d ride 10 horses a day, an hour apiece, and never got tired of it. I trained horses for other people, and that’s the only real job I ever had then. It’s the only real job I ever wanted, and I couldn’t see myself doing anything else.

14. Do you recall a difficult life experience?

The first one is when I was in college. My dad was a big, strapping outdoors guy and surgeon. He became a paraplegic suddenly. One minute he is fine, and the next minute he can’t walk. He never took another step. Apparently at that time, they had no idea what it was. In retrospect, it had to be a stroke to the spinal cord. To see a person of his abilities just take it in stride and continue to practice medicine was inspiring. He spent the rest of his life trying to design a chair that would lift him up so that he could safely lean over, as he was mainly an abdominal surgeon. He never got that done. Today, they got it, but back then, they didn’t. So, he did a lot of office work.

15. Do you have any special animals?

Oh, yes. One is my dog Fiddle, sitting right here on my lap. He’s the center of our universe. His official name is Fiddle in the Band, because if you’re going to play in Texas, you’ve got to have a fiddle in the band. He can be wild, has loads of energy, and is a comic. He makes us laugh every day. We also have horses. My husband, Dr. Jim Heird, is an academician and a horseman as well. He’s been on the ag side of things and was dean of ag at Colorado State as head of the equine program. He’s also an American Quarter Horse Association member and judge, and very accomplished in his area. We have our small horse operation and raise a few. One that we raised is a horse named Shanachie. He’s a three-time world champion now. At the same time, we raised another, Guthrie City Limits. He was a stallion at the Sixes. We also have a border collie named Millie Nelson and two barn kitties. We just lost our Australian. We put him down very recently, and it was very, very sad. He was with us for 12 years.

16. You’ve been a leader of innovation in veterinary medicine and helped start the Veterinary Innovation Summit. What are the biggest advances you’ve seen?

When I was at VMX this year, somebody asked me, “How was VMX different this year than it’s been in the past?” And I said, “One thing I noticed is the title of the talks — a lot of AI, digital health.” When you go to the trade show, a lot of booths have high-tech offerings, whether it’s AI, or digital health, wearables, monitoring, and radiology diagnosis. I think the Innovation Summit sparked some of that and maybe helped some of those companies move forward by increasing awareness and helping early adopters see that “We need to do this.” Another thing that came indirectly is the Veterinary Innovation Council, and I was a founding member. We wanted to take on some grand challenges. We brought leaders in the profession together, and the board members were leaders in major companies. We identified telemedicine as our first initiative and tried to help people know the benefits. Out of that came the Veterinary Virtual Care Association. It’s amazing how one little spark can end up with all these downstream happenings that you may not even trace back to the spark. It’s amazing what you can get done if you don’t care who gets the credit.

17. Do you use AI in your work or personal life?

I downloaded ChatGPT immediately. I wanted to get comfortable with it, so I use it probably every day. For example, I had to upgrade my curriculum vitae, so I put my whole CV into ChatGPT and said, “Please make a modern professional curriculum vitae out of this.” And it did a great job. I use it a lot of times just to edit things that I’ve written. I don’t use it to write things. I signed up for an AI master’s course because I want to learn more about it.

18. Talk about your creative side. What brings you joy?

I love making PowerPoint presentations. It’s kind of my artistic outlet. My husband says I put far too much time into them. That may be true, but it’s a joy. I also love photography. I use a lot of my images in my teaching. We didn’t have a library of images when I was at the University of Missouri, so I created one.

19. Any other personal activities that you enjoy?

I love to cook. I’m the fast-food queen, because I’m a veterinarian and had three kids. And I love gardening, but it’s a little hard to do in Texas, which gets so hot and dry. Of course, the center of my universe is still riding. After handing over my Lyon School reins, I’m going to ride every day. And my husband and I are going to start showing again. Then of course — this is the most important thing — we have 11 grandchildren. One granddaughter is 17, pre-vet equine in high school, and wants to be a veterinarian. Trying to keep up with 11 grandkids in five different states is hard.

20. What would you advise a young Eleanor?

Somebody once asked Willie Nelson, “What would you have done different in your life?” And he said, “Not one thing. Because if I changed anything, I wouldn’t be where I am. And I love where I am.” So I would say that. I wouldn’t change a thing.