Texas practitioner named as new AAEP vice president

Rob Franklin, DVM, DACVIM, a partner at Fredericksburg Equine Veterinary Services in Fredericksburg, Texas, has been named the new vice president of the American Association of Equine Practitioners (AAEP) for 2021. He will officially take over the role in December at the 66th Annual Convention in Las Vegas.

Dr. Franklin is a 1999 Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences graduate and received his board certification in large animal internal medicine in 2003. He has been an AAEP member since 1998. He served on the AAEP board of directors from 2015 to 2017 and currently chairs the AAEP Wellness Committee.

Dr. Franklin established intensive care units at equine referral hospitals in Florida, Texas, and Australia before opening a veterinary consulting and practice ownership firm in 2012 and starting his current practice in 2018. He also is a founding director of the Equitarian Initiative, which helps care for working equids and educates their caretakers in Central America, and led more 15 trips to the region since 2012. He also helped found the Texas Equine Veterinary Association, for which he has served as president.

“There is no greater good that we can do for one another than to support, encourage and praise those in our family, community and profession,” Dr. Franklin said in a recent press release. “The AAEP provides the platform for equine veterinarians to serve each other in this way. For the past two decades of my career, many things have changed but the AAEP continues to stand as a pillar for all that is good in the horse, the profession and the horse industry.”

Dr. Franklin will assume the role of AAEP president in 2023.