DR. TOM DeVINCENTIS has lived on the Upper East Side since 1971, but he has never taken the subway or bus to work. “I’ve always lived close to my office and walked or taken my bike,” said Dr. DeVincentis, a veterinarian with a practice on East 75th Street. “I’ve almost always taken my dogs to work, too. I put them in the basket of my bike.”
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An Animal Lover's Haven
He rarely takes elevators, either. “Both my office and apartment are on the ground floor,” he said. “I live a very horizontal life in a very vertical city.”
It was a different story when he came to New York after graduating from the College of Veterinary Medicine at Ohio State, making the move with a neurotic vizsla named Margot. He learned how difficult it could be to live with a dog in Manhattan when he rented a fourth-floor walk-up on East 72nd Street. “I had to climb 77 steps to my apartment,” he said. “I had to walk the dog three times a day.”
In 1980, he found a ground-floor one-bedroom with a garden in a brownstone on 80th between Madison and Park Avenues, making it easy to have a bicycle and a dog. “It was $750 a month and rent-stabilized,” Dr. DeVincentis said. “It seemed like a great deal.”
He was interviewed by his landlords before signing the lease. He expressed concern that the garden had no security gates and asked if they could be installed. “They told me it was very safe and nothing would happen,” he recalled.
But he was a bit shaken once he moved in and started to meet his neighbors while dog-walking. They kept saying the same thing: “Oh, you’re the fellow who lives where the guy was murdered.” Dr. DeVincentis did not panic, however, because the neighbors also told him that the victim knew his killer and that it wasn’t a random crime.
The apartment’s bathroom and kitchen have flashy 1970s lipstick-red sinks, and the bathroom has mirrored walls. “My lease says I cannot redo the kitchen or bathroom,” he said glumly.
Nonetheless, Dr. DeVincentis’s personality permeates the place. At first glance, it seems a traditional uptown apartment, until you realize that all of the art and most of the fabrics have an animal motif. In the Indiana Jones-inspired bedroom, there are zebra-striped lampshades flanking a bed made with leopard-spotted pillows and a faux-fur bedspread. “I’ve been on three safaris,” he said. There are many paintings and photographs of jungle animals, and an aquarium is next to the television set.
In the living room, which has more faux-fur and animal-print pillows, there’s an eclectic assortment of horse paintings and drawings hanging over the sofa. “They’re relatively new,” he said. “They reflect my new passion.”
Four years ago, Dr. DeVincentis’s childhood love for horses resurfaced when he read “Seabiscuit” by Laura Hillenbrand and “Horse Heaven” by Jane Smiley.
Coincidentally, he was seeing a $175-an-hour therapist who became ill, so he decided to spend that amount each week on horseback-riding lessons instead. “Now I work only four days a week, because I go fox hunting on Long Island every Tuesday and on weekends,” said Dr. DeVincentis, who has a house in Water Mill.
Fox hunting has given him an insight into animal behavior that he never learned in veterinary school. “Now I understand what horses are meant to do,” he said. “I understand how they see and get around things. They are not trying to keep me safe. They are trying to keep themselves safe.”
Dr. DeVincentis does not minister to his own horse (which he leases) or to those of his fellow riders. “I never wanted to be an equine doctor,” he said. But he does take care of his hunt club’s 16 foxhounds.
The deep, loving bond between pets and humans is the theme of Mr. DeVincentis’s new book, “Tails of the City: Confessions of a Manhattan Pet Vet” (Glitterati, 2008). He makes painfully clear that an essential part of his job is helping his clients say goodbye to their animals. “To love a pet means we bear witness to the full circle of life,” he writes. “We nurture and discipline, cherish and protect, but finally the most important part of loving, the part that completes the cycle, is to let go.”
He doesn’t find it easy himself. “I sometimes don’t follow my own advice,” said Dr. DeVincentis, who reluctantly put down Billie, his 18-year-old bichon frisé, a few weeks ago. “I shouldn’t have waited so long. She wasn’t enjoying her life. She couldn’t see or hear.”
Meanwhile, he has Kiki, his late mother’s 6-year-old Shih Tzu, to take care of. “I kidnapped her from my stepfather in Florida,” he said sheepishly. “I got permission from my stepbrother. My stepfather had moved into assisted living and was not giving her the attention she needed. I knew my mother would be spinning in her grave.”
Dr. DeVincentis worries about his own exit strategy. “I think I have about six more years until my rent hits $2,000, and they can destabilize my lease,” he said. “Maybe it will be time for me to move on by then. I’ve always worried that I’d be one of those people you read about who are carried out of their rent-stabilized apartments feet first.”