Anamaki Chronicles
The Forest Gump of Dominica
Dr. Rick, Dr. Rick! Come Quick!
Rick Stobaeus is the quintessential country doctor to the people of Dominica . . . for their animals.
Wayne D. King
Rick and I have known one another since high school. (He’d be very upset with me if I didn’t mention that we were students at Northfield Mount Hermon in Gill Massachusetts. Rick never misses a chance to promote his high school alma mater).
Back in the 70s, when he was taking care of Mr. Leavitt’s lab animals and helping to revitalize the farm program at NMH it didn’t take a rocket scientist to see that animals were his life’s calling. He has carried that love for animals into his professional life.
Just before the Pandemic locked down the Island nation, and much of the world, I had the pleasure of traveling to Dominica to visit old friends who had landed on the island for different reasons and from different points of reference.
Wini Dean, was a business leader and a fixture in the state capital in New Hampshire, operating the most chic boutique in the city. Wini had moved to the island with her new love reggae musician Free Joseph. Free Joseph was a native of Dominica. As fate would have it, Wini chose an apt time to make her transition - it was almost as if she knew that her boutique “Isis” would not have the same cache it once did after the events of 9-11. Rick Stobeaus moved down a few years later after some unpleasantness that stemmed from a dispute over the burial of a horse, for which he was vindicated, leaving him with a bad taste and hastening what was a transition he had already been planning.
I stayed with Wini and Free in their home in in the Lubiere section of Roseau, the capitol city of Dominica (aka Dominique) and visited Rick at his home in the “Belles” area of the “Nature Island”. Between them I got what can only be described as the “cooks tour” of the Island nation, experiencing both the incredible beauty of the island and its unique culture as well.
The Belles is in the highland rainforests of Dominica a land of pure mountain springs and rivers, hot springs, boiling lakes, and crystal cascades.
On my very first day there Rick took me to a hot spring where I witnessed him working the crowd like a seasoned politician - in a green veterinary smock of course. In fact, in the entire time I was there he never once was seen without his green doctor's smock - unless he wore no shirt at all. It wasn’t just his uniform, it was his flag.
The only competing interest for Rick - besides his four-legged and winged patients of course - is his new home. Rick knows a little something about rebuilding his life, he’s had to do it before. So when he and his wife Carol began building their little island paradise on Dominica he made sure to plan it so he could offer old friends a refuge and even have the space and place for rounding up a few new ones.
In just about ten years, since he closed his animal hospital in the states and moved to this Caribbean nation of fewer than 100,000 people, Richard Stobaeus has become a fixture on the island and the “go-to” guy for whatever ails the pets and the livestock on the island of Dominica. Part guru, part gadfly, part politician, Stobaeus crisscrosses the island daily on his rounds, treating goats, spaying and neutering cats and dogs, educating and cajoling farmers on the best way to keep their animals happy, healthy and productive and acting as the cheerleader-in-chief for the island of Dominica.
I joined Rick for a day of rounds that took us all over the island from beautiful long stretches of sandy beach to a chocolate shop where they grow their own cocoa right on site, to the markets of Roseau, the capital city, where just driving through the city with windows down brought shouts of “Dr. Rick! Dr. Rick! Dr. Rick!” Rick seems to revel in the attention.
In the car as we went from farm to farm, he alternated between telling me stories from his youth and waxing poetic about the future of his adopted homeland. When he wasn’t reminiscing, he was describing his hopes for the island. His big dream is to start a Veterinary college on the island. With already-existing infrastructure, in the form of a recently abandoned Medical school, and the support of the political establishment on the island, it appears that he is well on the way to realizing that dream.
Life may have thrown Dr. Rick a curveball but it hasn’t struck him out. I’m betting he’ll be back in the batter’s box soon enough, flying his green flag and rocking his ponytail.
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