By: Tom Lindfors
Veterinarian Dr. Danielle Johnson once treated a dog with a paper shredder attached to its tongue.
“Animals get into a lot of rough spots,” she said. “But it speaks to the things that are most gratifying about practicing veterinary medicine.”
Johnson explained that in those tense situations, you need a combination of three things: “You have to have the knowledge and skills to fix a situation, your intervention has to make a difference, hopefully a good outcome, and the owner is just really, really grateful,” she said. “When that perfect combination happens, you’re like, ‘Yes, being a vet is pretty cool.’” Dr. Johnson’s practice, Homestead Veterinary Clinic, was awarded St. Croix Economic Development Corporation’s 2025 Small Business of the Year Award.
Johnson enrolled at Northwestern University expecting to pursue science or math and graduated with a B.A. in Comparative Literature and Theory just in time for the 1990-1991 recession.
She tried her hand at park ranger, architectural researcher, customer service, health insurance, and survey crew work, which led her to reflect on what she really wanted to do with her life. “Knowing that my childhood interest in animals and science could also lead me to independent business ownership, I decided to become a veterinarian,” she said. “It was a long road.”
After earning her DVM at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Johnson spent seven years working as a mixed-animal vet in Shelbyville, IL. Her attempt to buy into the Shelbyville practice fell through before she moved to Wisconsin and accepted a position as an associate veterinarian at the New Richmond Veterinary Clinic in 2009.
Johnson purchased her first practice in 2011 after a partnership in Glenwood City dissolved, leaving behind a satellite clinic in Baldwin.
Homestead was launched out of that location with a lean team of three.
In 2016, Johnson capitalized on an opportunity to purchase a larger clinic on the north end of town. After a year of renovating, Homestead opened at the new location in 2017.
After her bare bones start, Johnson had to figure out how to build a practice from scratch. She used the “Free Vaccines for Life” (FVFL) program to begin building a new client base.
FVFL reversed the traditional norm of vets giving away free exams in favor of charging for vaccines and medications, and other services like boarding and grooming. It prioritized care over money through face-to-face visits that built stronger relationships with clients.
Johnson noted that cats in particular benefited from the program because many people only vaccinate their cats every three years. “Seeing a cat every three years is not great for their health,” she said. The program enabled pet owners to enjoy long-term benefits by more regularly taking advantage of advances in dentistry, vaccines, medicine, nutrition, and early disease detection.
Johnson is dedicated to making care affordable for both the pet owner and the clinic. Homestead partners with Helping Hands for Pets (HH4P), a pay-assistance non-profit, to help owners who need assistance pay for their pet’s medical bills. HH4P relies on memberships, public donations, fundraisers, and occasional grants to fund its assistance efforts.
Homestead contributes financially to the organization. That care comes full circle. “It works out well for us to partner with them because we refer clients to them, but pet owners also find them on their own, and then HH4P sends them to us,” Johnson said.
Practical compassion is an essential part of the care equation for Johnson. She believes veterinarians have historically undervalued their work and tend to undercharge. She knows she needs to guard against letting compassion drive those decisions.
“No matter how much business sense you have, you still want to undervalue all of that experience, all of that education that went into those medical decisions,” she said. “When it comes down to the nitty-gritty, sometimes you just want to give it away because you have enough empathy for the client and their situation. When those kinds of financial situations come up, we just try to do the right thing. We’re for-profit, but we don’t make a profit on everything.”
The role pets, and therefore vets, play in the well-being of countless community members cannot be overstated. The care committed to the relationship between a pet owner and their pet, and the comfort and companionship it generates, enables people to function better as citizens and human beings.
“Sometimes I think the best thing I can do is just take care of people’s pets because they are important to people and can be so important for managing their stress,” said Johnson. “When it comes to the job of veterinary medicine, I see doing it well as a way to serve the community as a whole.”
Johnson’s approach is working. Homestead had experienced double-digit growth since 2012. After plateauing in 2024, business is once again up more than 12% so far in 2026.
Despite practicing her medicine with heart, Johnson is focused on staying competitive in a changing market of increased corporate consolidation. “We are surrounded by veterinary clinics owned by private equity interests,” she said. Private equity companies can afford to buy clinics at inflated rates, often for more than a private person could borrow to buy them. They can offer potential employees bigger sign-on bonuses and larger salaries. Once they own multiple clinics, they can leverage lucrative deals on vaccines and other drugs and supplies.
Johnson characterizes the relationship these clinics have with the communities they operate in as transactional rather than relational. “When I take in profit, I spend it in my community. When a business owned by private equity makes a profit, that profit is exported out of the community,” Johnson said. “When they decide a business is no longer profitable, they can just close that business without any consideration for that community.”
“Accessing a decent level of affordable care is becoming more concerning,” Johnson said. As a general practitioner, Johnson strives to practice medicine at a high level in-house and reduce the amount of services she has to refer to outside practitioners. Referring clients to outside providers is more impersonal and can be considerably more expensive. Doing as much as possible in-house makes economic sense for both the practice and its clients and helps strengthen the face-to-face relationship. Those relationships are fundamental to the success of a small business.
Life-long learning is essential to Homestead’s success. By growing their collective knowledge, Johnson and her staff share in the decision-making process and strengthen their ability to work more effectively as a team. Maintaining surgical and diagnostic skills in areas such as foreign-body surgery and endocrinology, while creating strategic partnerships for advanced diagnostics and complex surgeries in-house, enables Johnson to keep care more affordable for her clients.
Johnson regularly evaluates how far she can push herself and her staff while maintaining quality. “We always have to ask ourselves, is our standard of care acceptable? Are we doing the right thing? Are we taking too many risks medically under our roof?” she said.
Johnson currently serves on the board of GrassRoots Organizing Western Wisconsin (GROWW). She previously served on the board of Western Wisconsin Health and has run for the state assembly twice.
“Community is very important to me. Political polarization is not good for a community, especially a small community like Baldwin. Homestead would not be here without this community. It’s extremely important that we find ways to work together. Any way that we can make life better for everyone around us, that is what we should do.”
Just the Facts
Homestead Veterinary Clinic (S Corp
Dr. Danielle Johnson: Veterinarian /Owner
Formed: 2011 (May)
Address: 390 8th Ave.
Baldwin, WI 54002
(715) 684-4900
Website: https://homesteadvetbaldwin.com/
Employees:16
Sq. ft.: 2400
