Washington, D.C. 1963.
A young Army soldier brushes down a black horse named Blackjack. In a few days, that horse will walk in President Kennedy's funeral procession with no rider and the boots turned backward in the stirrups, while a grieving country watches.
The soldier taking care of him is a kid from West Texas who, not long before, had never even met a veterinarian.
Years later, you would ask him about that week, and he would just shrug. "I was just a grunt that took care of him."
That kid is Dr. Davis Hall. Blackjack was the first famous patient in a story that runs straight through the doors of Columbia Pike, a hospital Davis would one day build with his own two hands.
Here is how it happened.
Watch how it all began.
The Farm
Davis grew up in a small West Texas town, showing sheep and calves in Future Farmers of America and working the ranch his granddad ran, six sections of it. Money was thin. When an animal got sick, nobody called a vet, because there was nothing to call one with. You handled it, or you didn't.
He didn't really know what a veterinarian was. He just liked the sound of the word. He liked it enough to point his whole life at it.
The Soldier
He went to Texas A&M when it was still all military and strict, and by his own account it straightened out a punk kid in a hurry. He graduated on a Friday. Took his state board exams that weekend. Reported to the Army that Monday.
They sent him to Washington. He looked after the Army's horses, including a black one named Blackjack who wasn't famous yet.
Then a president was killed, and the country needed a riderless horse to lead him home. Blackjack got the call. Davis was the one who made sure he was ready. A farm kid who never had money for a vet was now caring for one of the most watched animals in the country. He has never once made it sound like much. It was.
Built by Hand
When the Army was done with him, Davis stayed. He went to work for a veterinarian at Bailey's Crossroads. He treated horses at night. He spayed cats on his own ironing board at home, because that was the table he had.
Then, in 1975, he built a hospital with his own hands. The site was an old Atlantic Richfield gas station in Annandale. Davis dug the footings himself. He pulled out the lift where the fuel pumps used to sit. When he was finished, it was Columbia Pike Animal Hospital.
He had taken over a small practice across town a year earlier too, Town and Country in Fairfax, after its owner had a heart attack. For a stretch he ran both, seven in the morning to eight at night, then out to treat horses after dark, seven days a week, until he could finally afford to hire help.
Nobody gave him a thing. He earned all of it, building by building.
Dr. Davis Hall, the founder.
The Son
Davis's son Reed grew up inside all of it. The Hall house was a small zoo: pigs, goats, chickens, cows, horses, and one baby deer with a broken leg recovering in the kitchen. There was a pet pig named Lemonade. Reed's best memories are riding shotgun in his dad's truck on horse calls, a boy watching his father work.
Reed became a veterinarian too, and learned his father's rule by watching, not by being told. Ask Davis the secret to lasting fifty years, and he won't say a word about marketing. He says the Golden Rule. "If you treat people the way you want to be treated, you don't have to worry about business. It'll come."
Reed calls his dad his best friend. And the thing he is proudest of is not the buildings. It is the team that walks in every morning and treats animals and people like their own.
Dr. Reed Hall, the next generation.
That is the kind of vet most people are looking for. If you are, come see us.
The Family Today
That family is still here. More than fifty years after Davis started out, the Halls care for pets across Northern Virginia through three hospitals: Town and Country in Fairfax, Animal Clinic of Clifton, and the one Davis built by hand, Columbia Pike Animal Hospital and Emergency Center in Annandale.
Columbia Pike never closes. It is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for emergencies and everyday care, and it never charges an additional emergency fee. When your pet needs help at two in the morning, the same family that started with an ironing board and an old gas station is still here to answer.
Pets were never customers to this family. Neighbors were never strangers. That is what "Love People. Love Pets." has meant since a kid from West Texas first picked up the phone for someone else's animal. It still means it today.
And the story is still being written. In 2025, the family welcomed Animal Clinic of Clifton, the newest chapter in something that started with one man and his own two hands.
