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Minot veterinarian cares for pets

By HANNAH VELASQUEZ 9 min read

Pinkerton Animal Hospital expanded its veterinary team by adding a new veterinarian earlier this month. Dr. Eden Johannes, a North Dakotan and a 2025 graduate from North Dakota State University and Kansas State University, has joined the clinic.

"I'm a full-fledged associate veterinarian here and we see patients every day," Johannes said. "I see everything from puppies and kittens that are getting their first vaccines to life-saving surgeries, end of life procedures and everything in between."

Johannes attended NDSU for pre-veterinary medicine before getting accepted into Kansas State for her Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) degree. She said the DVM program was something nothing can prepare you for.

"I enjoyed my time at NDSU. I definitely spent more time studying than going out with friends, but I still really liked it down there. I became close with a few professors,” Johannes said. "Even though I spent my life with my nose in a book, I still made friends while there, enjoyed classwork and took opportunities that I could grow and engage in. Honestly, I don't think anything can prepare you for vet school until you get to vet school, because I really didn’t have to study until I got into vet school.

"I went from taking 20 credits in undergrad and studying a couple days before exams to being in 20 credits without the option to do otherwise. I would have class from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., go home, take an hour to eat dinner and then I would study until I went to bed. It was like that pretty much everyday for four years."

Johannes said the volume of work made things overwhelming but being able to practice what she loved at the end of the day kept her going. She said the four years of vet school was spent mostly with her nose in a book and over-caffeinated. Johannes said multiple of her professors had expressions to describe the graduate school experience.

“You’ve got to be on top of your game to get into vet school. The challenge was the overwhelming volume of it,” Johannes said. “I had multiple professors and clinicians in vet school that all used the same expression - ‘It’s like trying to drink through a fire hose.’ You’re just blasted with more information than you could possibly learn all at once and you spend all your time and life on it. It becomes a game of figuring out a system to get what you need, then filing the rest away for when it’s going to be relevant. It’s getting through the day remembering that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Some days were definitely harder than others, but from all of that, the really hard stuff, you end up graduating and being able to practice what you love.”

Growing up on a ranch near Underwood, Johannes was surrounded by animals her whole life. Her father was a rancher and her mom, a nurse. Her family took care of a wide variety of animals and would let their daughter help care for them. Her earliest memory of her childhood set her on the path toward veterinary medicine.

“I grew up on a farm and was potentially a little bit indulged as a child. We always had cats in the house, dogs and I had a horse as a kid and grew up around cows,” Johannes said. “My parents would let me keep all the little injured animals that I found. One time we raised a batch of pheasant chicks after my dad accidentally hit the hen in the field with the tractor. One of my very earliest memories, I was about 3 years old. I was out with my dad in the calving barn with the cows. He was pulling a calf because we had a cow that was having issues and needed some help. I really think that’s where it started because it’s amazing the things that we can do for these animals and for an impressionable toddler, that really does mean a lot.”

Throughout schooling, Johannes was encouraged in her learning by her parents. She said she was a curious child and was continuously fascinated by science and animals. While there wasn’t a distinct moment when she knew veterinary medicine was her path, the career field was always something she came back to when she thought about her future.

“My parents very much encouraged education, curiosity and learning,” Johannes said. “Throughout school I always loved all my science classes, getting to dissect things in biology in, like, 10th grade was always a great day. I was just fascinated by it. I was that little kid that grew up always wanting to be a vet and as I grew up through high school, looking forward, I did think about other careers, but I ultimately came back to being a vet. That was what was fulfilling for me. That was kind of always the plan.”

Johannes owns three horses, a handful of cats and a dog outside of Minot. She said she loves animal surgery and has been able to practice and perform on small animals, but her favorite area of work has been with horses. She recalls her junior year of vet school, where students got to perform and assist with animal procedures. Johannes said she was terrified at first, but seeing the rehabilitation process afterwards encouraged her.

“While I was there at school, I had a dog come in that needed a surgical procedure, but their regular vet wasn’t able to do it,” Johannes said. “They came in for the specialist, and it was a fantastic dog and owner. After she went home they mailed me a thank you card and that was a very meaningful experience for me.”

Johannes continued and said her favorite part of the practice is getting to figure out the tricky cases and getting an animal to feel healthy and normal again. She explained her love for surgery, calling it an art.

“I’ve had a lot of surgeries that are very rewarding to me because something about it just makes sense. I don’t know how to describe that other than it’s the kind of person that I am,” Johannes said. “One of my favorite procedures to perform is a mastectomy. Dogs and cats get breast cancer just like humans do. We don’t have the same access to radiation and chemotherapy. We cut the tumor off, sew them up and figure it out on the back end. For large dogs, sometimes my incision is the whole way from their chest to their groin. One of my favorite things is going in and closing because I’ve taken out a lot of tissue and just seeing the art of the science and being able to put sutures in there, pulling it together and a beautiful stitched incision - hopefully curing a dog of cancer at the same time. It is very rewarding, even if I’ve been in the OR doing that surgery for two hours and exhausted.”

Before coming to work at Pinkerton Animal Hospital, Johannes said she worked at another practice; however, through that work she was losing her love for medicine. Burn out and loss of interest has been an expanding problem throughout the rural parts of the United States due to the veterinary shortage, yet some clinics and administration still overlook their veterinarians. When joining Pinkerton’s team, she said knew that balance needed to be in place.

“For me, in particular, after leaving my last practice, I was at a point where I hated being a doctor and I never thought that I would say that a year after graduating,” Johannes said. “I was working five days a week, every single week on call at least every other weekend because it was a smaller practice. I was exhausted and burnt out, so coming here I knew I needed better balance and they were very accommodating.”

Johannes detailed the schedule for the doctors being four days a week, 10 hours days and seeing as many patients within reason to provide the best care to each one. She said Pinkerton splits the on-call duties as evenly as possible to give their doctors a chance to go home, have a work-life balance and time to rest.

Working at Pinkerton for almost a month now, Johannes described the environment as supportive and productive.

“I’m very busy, but I like being busy. I knew I was going to be busy coming here and I like that I’m part of the team,” Johannes said. “I fit more in the demographics of my technician and assistant support staff and the folks that sit at the front desk. We’re all younger, so we joke around and have a great time. I really like the supportive work environment that we have here, where we get a lot done but we can also have a good time. I also really appreciate that even though the other three doctors here are all middle-aged men, being different from them, being a woman in my upper 20s, that I’m still part of the doctor team here.

“I went into an exam room last week and I came out and the other two doctors were waiting for me to be second opinions for things they were doing. That was great. I was happy the rest of the day because you’re telling me that these men that have been practicing for 20 years want me to look at their X-rays and microscope slides for a second opinion, and I’ve been out of school for a year and a half. That’s awesome,” she said.

Her experience in Minot, caring for the community’s animals, has been positive.

“I would like to thank all the people that I’ve met so far because so many of them have been warm and welcoming. They meet me in the exam room and tell me how excited they are to have me here and to have a new vet,” Johannes said. “I appreciate the warm reception and I just want to tell them that we are busier, but we are still happy to see them and want to see their pets. We always hope that we can have a good day and a smile on our face when we see them. We appreciate when they come in and are understanding and they have a good attitude, even if we’re behind schedule.”

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