Trumann Animal Clinic is a small animal clinic in Trumann, Arkansas. Dr. Norette Underwood has been dedicated to providing pets with compassionate, high-quality veterinary care in a loving environment for over 40 years!
Voted Gold Best Veterinarian of NEA for 2021 & 2022 #wearethebest
Our goal is to provide the best veterinary care experience available to help pets live a happy, healthy, pain-free life!
We also provide an online pharmacy for our patients through Vets First Choice. It is our sincere promise to only provide products that are 100% guaranteed by the manufacturer. With us, your pet will receive safe, quality products.
WE PUT YOUR PET’S HEALTH CARE IN YOUR HANDS. Download the VetScene app (in links below) to manage your pet’s health today.
ABOUT OUR DOCTORS:
Dr. Norette Underwood is a Harrisburg native and graduated from Harrisburg High School in 1974. She graduated from LSU in 1982 and opened Trumann Animal Clinic in April 1984. Dr. Underwood loves participating in all shotgun sports, reading, gardening, photography and learning more about veterinary medicine. She is married to Donald Nolen from Marked Tree. They have no children, but numerous cats and dogs. She feels very fortunate to be home and able to provide honest, current, compassionate medicine for the pets of Northeast Arkansas.
Dr. LeAnn Pack is our board certified radiologist. She is the owner and CEO of Southland Vets, a mobile ultrasound and teleradiology company based in NE Arkansas. She also provides imaging locum support for the veterinary teaching hospitals in Missouri, at Cornell and Oregon which allows her to stay on the cutting edge of imaging. In her spare time, Dr. Pack enjoys photography and traveling. She has 2 dogs; both are patchwork Catahoulas with blue eyes. She actively trains her dogs in obedience.
In a veterinarian’s world, animals are the focus of their whole career. Veterinarians center their attention to animal health and work to improve the health of the public. They diagnose, treat, and research medical conditions and diseases of pets, livestock, and other animals. Dr. Underwood focuses on small animals and she owns and operates Trumann Animal Clinic in Trumann, Arkansas.
Norette Underwood is a native of the area and from Harrisburg, Arkansas. She attended Stephens College in Columbia, MO. When asked why she chose an all-girls college, she said, “My mother went there, and I wanted to go to school out of state.” From there she stayed in Missouri and worked with the Missouri Cancer Programs through the American Cancer Society. She worked as a receptionist until the program gained some grant money where they could have her working on research. “We worked with Sinclair melanoma swine, and we took out their thymus and made them immunologically incompetent. From there, we injected melanoma into these pigs and conducted melanoma research based off these pigs’ reactions,” she explained. They also worked with nude mice. She cannot recall exactly what they did with them because it has been about 40 years since she worked in the research field. After this she ventured on into veterinary school in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Dr. Underwood graduated from LSU in 1982. She did not, however, get in the first nor the second time she applied but was placed on the waiting list. She can recall working for the Missouri Cancer Programs and waiting to get into vet school. “I would call every day to Dr. Titkemeyer’s office because he was in charge of admissions. I would ask if they had anyone drop out yet. They would tell me no, and I would leave work and go home disappointed.” She would always call from work because they had a WATS line, so she didn’t have to pay for the long-distance call. Her mother had been visiting her once while she was working in Missouri. She told me when she got home from work her mother was standing on her apartment doorstep jumping up and down, screaming, “You Got In, You Got In!” Dr. Underwood said she got out of the car and asked her, “Got in what?” Her mom screamed, “Vet school.” They were both very excited.
After vet school, she practiced two years in New Orleans then opened Trumann Animal Clinic April 1, 1984. Describing her business, she says, “it’s a small animal clinic with only one operating doctor,” speaking of herself. She says, “even though there is only one doctor, we still provide everything except orthopedics, that any other hospital provides.” She often has stand-in doctors that come in and work while she is away.
Underwood states, “I was fortunate because I knew what I wanted to do in high school. I knew I wanted to be a veterinarian because I loved science and animals.” Basic requirements include, many science courses. Chemistry, Biology, Microbiology, Veterinarian Anatomy and Physiology are just a few. Accounting and finance classes are useful. “You may not do your books, but you need to understand them,” Dr. Underwood says, “I also think a Psychology class would have been beneficial.” Oral Communication is a big part in any field that you have to deal with talking to people or to a group of people. “You have to love animals as well as people in this career because there is a person attached to that animal,” she says, “my goal is that every client understands.” She did have an alternative plan if vet school didn’t work out. “I took a lot of extra history classes because I loved history. I always thought I would go to law school and be the first woman president,” she said. The only other class type that she wishes she would have had more of was Business. She wished she would have taken Marketing and other Business classes. Dr. Underwood took Acupuncture Training in 2011 and Tui Na Massage Training in 2012 at Chi Institute. In 2019 she received her Certified Veterinary Medical Manipulation Practitioner Certification at the Chi Institute.
When asked to describe the most interesting or unusual situation or experience you have encountered during your career, Dr. Underwood sure did surprise us. “I was even out of school when this happened, but someone brought us a wallaby. We had to try and find its butthole,” she tells. A wallaby is a small or mid-size macropod; they are part of the same family as kangaroos. She says that there are too many memories to recall. She goes on, “Some guy called Dr. Ryan on an emergency, and Dr. Ryan told him to put some duct tape on it and go see Dr. Underwood in the morning. He called us and said the dog had a little bitty cut. The dog gets in here and is cut from his chest to the middle of his belly. I spent two hours putting the dog back together, and it was a beautiful job. The guy comes back to see the dog after surgery, and he says well I figured y’all would just put some duct tape on it.” She also told us, “I went and hung out with a Veterinary Dentist, because I thought about becoming a board-certified Veterinary Dentist. We went to the zoo and performed a root canal on a tiger, and I thought that was pretty cool.”
There are many veterinarians in this area. We asked Dr. Underwood, “What makes you different?” She kind of laughed at this point and said, “I don’t think I am God. I also think that what I know is to be shared. My staff is very well educated and some doctors do not like that.” She goes on to say, “You can learn a lot from a good technician when you get out of school, but you have to be open minded. Some doctors think well I am the doctor, and you aren’t.” She also does Holistic Medicine offering cold laser therapy, electro-acupuncture, medical manipulation, tui na massage, and acupuncture. There is a commercial about a dog named Blackie who they thought would never walk again, but with the help of Dr. Underwood and acupuncture, Blackie can get around just fine on all four legs.
Dr. Underwood is currently on Arkansas Veterinary Medical Foundation Board and on the Arkansas Veterinary Medical Examining Board. She is active in her local Chamber of Commerce and community. Prior to this, she was the District Representative for Arkansas AVMA for 20 years, President of Arkansas AVMA in 2008, Active in Trumann Rotary and President Past. She has served as National delegate to the National Sporting Clays Association for Arkansas and placed All-American in Small Gauge Sporting Clays in 410, 28 gauge and 20 gauge for the last 10 years. Her hobbies include photography, sporting clays, duck dog training, shotgun sports, cooking, bird watching, reading, needle work, beading, puzzle working, and loves to learn daily.