by Marty Fisher

If we’re judged by the company we keep, Helen L. Goldberg, MD, HS’88-’91 is in excellent standing. She lives with 20-45 champion hounds on her 20-acre ranch in the Texas Hill Country. She also has five sheep and a number of Paint horses.

“Almost every dog at my house is a champion,” says Goldberg, a consultative hematologist in San Antonio, Texas, whose hobby is breeding, raising, and training top hound dogs. Her Petite Bassett Griffon Vendéen, CH Afterglow’s Woody Woodpecker, was the number one hound in the U.S. in 2005. In 2003 her dogs took first and second place in the hound group at the Westminster Dog Show.

Goldberg, who is chief of staff at Southwest Texas Methodist Hospital and director of hematology at the Texas Transplant Institute, is almost as serious about her animals as she is about her unusual career as a clinical inpatient hematologist. She is in solo practice and can usually be found in the OR or cath lab, addressing coagulation issues.

She works long hours in San Antonio and savors her time in Comfort, Texas, with her brood. A full-time kennel manager resides on the property to tend to the dogs—each of whom lives in a giant indoor-outdoor, air-conditioned kennel. The exception is “Spanky,” a.k.a. CH Coralwood Spankin’ the Ball, a retired champion Pointer who claims his rightful place on her bed.

“My animals are my family; I spend as much time with them as I can.”

Goldberg got her first show dog—a Great Dane named Fendi—while working as a medical resident at Duke. She later branched off to other breeds—first English Pointers and then Petite Basset Griffon Vendéens, also known as PBGVs, because of Great Danes’ susceptibility to genetic health problems. Her goal as a breeder is to produce dogs who are well equipped for their jobs—mainly quail and dove hunting.

Goldberg’s greatest successes in the show ring have come with PBGVs like Woody—scruffy, fun-loving French scent hounds who are bred to hunt small game. Woody Woodpecker—whose name recalls the shaggy but perky look of the cartoon character—is the top winning male PBGV of all time for the breed. She also owns CH Dehra Pepperhill “Charmaine,” a female PBGV who has won multiple placings at Westminster. These two dogs are the backbone of her PBGV breeding program.

As thrilling as it was to win, Goldberg says these days she is more interested in breeding and raising quality dogs. That’s because champions don’t get to spend much time with their owners. They are paired with a professional handler and put on a grueling schedule of national and international dog shows.

“They’re on the road all the time, living in crates, traveling on airplanes,” says Goldberg. Now she rarely sells the two litters of puppies she raises each year—instead she places them with close friends where she knows they’ll have a good life and she can see them occasionally.

“My animals are my family; I spend as much time with them as I can,” says Goldberg.

The ranch is a respite from the high stress of her job. She attributes her practice ethics to the time-honored tradition she learned at Duke and from her mentor, chair of medicine emeritus Joseph Greenfield, MD. She recalls his saying, “never let the sun go down on a pulmonary embolus.”

“I developed a practice that gives me the freedom to follow the Duke tradition of caring for your own patients, having camaraderie, and enjoying medicine,” she says.