As you wander the grounds of NRG Park, perusing the many attractions and competitions the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo has to offer, you might spot Dr. Leslie Easterwood weaving between a row of cattle, tilting her head to check for ringworm, or fielding a student’s frantic question about a pig’s scratch. She might stop briefly to assure an anxious exhibitor that everything seems fine, then continue to the next row of stalls. “A great day,” she likes to say, “is when I don’t have to treat anything at all.”

Dr. Easterwood is one of two official onsite rodeo veterinarians making sure every animal is healthy and compliant with Texas Animal Health Commission requirements. In her words, she has “a three-pronged job”: treating sick or injured animals, enforcing health regulations to ensure arriving animals have proper paperwork and show no sign of contagious issues; and facilitating the drug residue avoidance program for the market animals, to protect both the fairness of the competition and the food chain once those animals, err, move on.

Her days never follow a set structure. Dr. Easterwood might start the morning addressing health certificates at one gate, answer a call about a horse cut on the trailer ride over, then speak with an exhibitor about a sheep separated from the rest of the herd. If an animal arrives with a contagious problem, she checks it and sometimes has to send it home. Or she might clear an animal for entry if everything else is in order. She never knows what will come next.

When Dr. Easterwood got her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree from Texas A&M in 1995, she was already familiar with the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. She’d interned as a student in the late 1980s and never fully left. Over time, the event grew too large for any vet to handle alone, so in 2003, she and Dr. Gregg Knape came on full-time. Back then, the show sprawled across various areas; for nearly a month each year, they coordinate minute by minute.

“I stay 24/7 for 24 days, and Dr. Knape, who lives in Alvin, comes up every night for the rodeo, and he’s the official rodeo veterinarian,” Dr. Easterwood says. “If something happens during the rodeo performance, that’s the time we really need two people.”

When it comes to interacting with exhibitors, Dr. Easterwood walks a tightrope. She wants to guide young exhibitors in real time while respecting each animal’s regular vet back home.

“[Exhibitors] go home with an invoice that has everything that I saw [and] did,” she says. “They can send to their veterinarian so that they can follow up with them. Sometimes I’ll call them. The veterinary community is very small, so most of them I’ve either taught or I know.”

One of her major tasks is overseeing what she describes as the largest drug-residue avoidance program “not just in the state, but anywhere.” Every youth market animal that comes through must pass certain tests to confirm it has no lingering medications or performance enhancers.

Despite the high stakes, she rarely sees show-related emergencies. Most of the injuries are the same ones that might happen at home—a horse might develop colic, or a steer gets stiff after a long trailer ride. That doesn’t mean every day glides by without surprises. In one especially memorable instance, she was called to see a sloth someone had brought in as part of a petting-zoo exhibit. It was moving in its signature cartoonishly slow motions, hanging upside down to eat. “I was like, ‘oh my gosh, I know nothing about sloths.’ That’s probably the most unusual thing that I’ve treated out here,” she says with a laugh.

In 2020, Dr. Easterwood’s skills were put to the test. On the 12th day of that year’s show, officials trying to curb the spread of COVID-19 closed everything just as the lamb and goat competition began. She helped compress what would have been a two-day youth event into a single day so those kids could still compete. By two in the morning, she had helped send nearly all the animals home. In 2021, there was no public at all—just masked exhibitors, with no shopping or major attractions.

“That was a rough year,” Dr. Easterwood says, fighting back tears. “There was a lot that changed in 2020, and some of those things that were for the better have stayed.”

Even though it felt strange, that scaled-back show introduced online paperwork and other streamlined processes that remain useful today. By 2022, spectators were back, and the grounds were buzzing. It’s a period Dr. Easterwood still finds emotional to recall, but she acknowledges that a few of those COVID-era adjustments have helped the entire operation run more smoothly.

Now, with the rodeo back to full capacity, Dr. Easterwood’s days are as unpredictable as ever. Some nights run late. Others pass quietly. On the best days, she doesn’t get any urgent calls at all, leaving time to stroll by the barns and smile at the contented shuffle of hooves settling in for the evening. For her, that’s enough of a reward. By the end of the rodeo’s 24-day run, she’ll have walked miles on the grounds, checked hundreds of animals, and fielded countless questions. But she’ll also have kept one of the world’s largest livestock shows running as smoothly as possible. And that, she says, always makes every bit of effort worth it.