"I bought this building in 1986 from Dr. Marvin Greenwald, who'd been here since 1958. The shingle changed; the work didn't."
The VeterinarianDr. Hal Rasmussen
Hal grew up in Slinger, Wisconsin, on a forty-cow dairy farm his father ran in addition to teaching high school math. He went to UW–Whitewater on a scholarship he half remembers being for FFA, did his undergrad in animal science, and was accepted at the UW–Madison School of Veterinary Medicine in the fall of 1981. He graduated DVM in 1985.
His first job out of school was at a four-doctor mixed practice in Sheboygan, where he learned to do herd checks on Holsteins, deliver foals at 2 AM, and sit through Wednesday-morning practice meetings he came to dread. "I figured out fast I wasn't going to be a good employee," he says. He started looking for a place of his own about eighteen months in.
Dr. Marvin Greenwald, who'd run the Cedar Creek clinic since 1958, was looking to retire. Hal bought the building, the equipment, and the practice goodwill in the fall of 1986 for $87,000 and a handshake. He put his own shingle on the door in January 1987 and saw fourteen patients that first week.
He married Linda in 1988. Their daughter Sara was born in 1994 and has been around the clinic her whole life — Hal says her first word was "Boomer," which was the name of a Lab they were treating for hip dysplasia at the time.
The Front DeskLinda Rasmussen
Before Hal asked her to "fill in for a week" in 1991 while the receptionist had a baby, Linda was a UW Extension home economist working out of the Ozaukee County office in Port Washington — running 4-H, doing nutrition workshops at the senior center, teaching canning in church basements every August. She had a degree from UW–Stevens Point and ten years of public-facing work behind her.
The week stretched into a month. The month stretched into a permanent job. She's been at the front desk three mornings a week ever since — thirty-three years now. She knows every client by their pet's name. She remembers which dogs hate the scale and which cats need to be sedated to come out of the carrier. She is the reason people don't dread coming in.
The TechSara Rasmussen, RVT
Sara graduated from the Madison College Veterinary Technician program in 2016 and got her RVT credential the same year. She worked at a four-doctor small-animal practice in Madison for four years after that — saw a lot of polished medicine and a lot of high-volume spay-neuter days and got very good at IV catheters.
She came back to Cedar Creek in 2020. She said she missed the calf work and didn't want to spend her career inside a building. Today she runs the back: anesthesia, surgery prep, dental work, the lab. On heavy farm-call days she rides with Hal. Her dog Murphy, a Lab-shepherd cross, sleeps under the surgery table on slow afternoons.
The Building412 Highland Road
The building was put up in 1922 as the Cedar Creek Feed & Implement store. For thirty-six years, this was the place farmers came for chicken feed, fence wire, and the occasional new disc harrow. Dr. Marvin Greenwald bought the building in 1958, converted the front room into a small-animal exam space, kept the back loading dock for his truck and his large-animal supplies, and ran the practice here until he sold it to Hal in 1986.
Hal added the kennel addition in 1994 when the boarding side of the practice outgrew the back hallway. He rebuilt the surgery suite in 2009 — gas anesthesia, modern monitoring, a real recovery room — paid for with a small-business loan and three years of Sara's college tuition deferred.
The exterior is still painted barn red, which is the color Greenwald painted it sometime in the early '60s. The gold-leaf lettering on the front window was redone in 1994 by a sign painter from Sheboygan who Hal swears is the last one left. The picture window is original 1922 glass. The front door is the original front door of the feed store. Nobody has ever seriously talked about replacing it.
What we don't doHonest scope
We don't do board-certified surgery. We refer ACL repairs, complicated fracture work, and oncology to UW–Madison's veterinary teaching hospital, or to Wisconsin Veterinary Referral Center in Waukesha. We don't have a CT scanner. We don't board cats long-term. We don't sell prescription food online — you can pick it up at the desk.
We're not trying to be everything. We're trying to be the right thing for the people and animals we see — the dairy farmer with a Holstein who won't stand up, the working family whose Lab ate a sock, the retired couple whose old beagle is finally slowing down. If that's not what you need, we'll tell you where to go.