When Rachel Farr was in her senior year at Macomb High School, her class was asked the question every senior gets: "What do you want to be when you grow up?”

She wrote down "soccer mom."

She is currently a captain in the United States Army, fresh off a nine-month deployment to East Africa, where she served as the veterinarian overseeing military working dogs at one of the most strategically important U.S. installations on the continent.

Close enough.

A 2015 Macomb graduate, Farr had wanted to serve her country since she was around ten years old. At fifteen, she started working for her cousin, a veterinarian, and found herself equally drawn to animal medicine. Her father, a family practice physician still practicing in Macomb, would come home and talk through his cases at the dinner table. She wasn't sure yet whether her future involved people or animals — but medicine of some kind seemed inevitable.

At Iowa State, she started in animal science, then switched to biology to keep her options open, working at the university's dairy farm and quietly keeping both veterinary and human medicine on the table. In her senior year, she decided on vet school. She also talked to Marine Corps recruiters, and her backup plan was clear: if she didn't get into vet school, she'd commission as a Marine officer.

She got in. And was a little sad about it.

"I was kind of sad because I was looking forward to serving," she said.

Then an email arrived from the Army.

"Hey, have you heard about the Veterinary Corps?"

She hadn't. "Who thinks of the military having veterinarians?"

She applied for the Health Professions Scholarship Program — the Army helps fund your education; you owe them years of service in return — got in, and suddenly the two things she'd wanted since childhood merged into one career.

Oklahoma State College of Veterinary Medicine is where she earned her DVM, graduating in 2023. During her fourth year, the Army sent her to Hawaii for a month of hands-on training and then to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, to the Lt. Col. Daniel E. Holland Military Working Dog Hospital — the premier facility of its kind. She's been back to Hawaii at least once since.

After graduating, she commissioned as a captain and received orders to Fort Benning, then transferred to Fort Campbell, where she now leads a Veterinary Services Support Team — a deployable unit whose entire purpose is to prepare to go and then go.

Last August, she went. For nine months, she and a team of three soldiers operated out of Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, overseeing military working dogs deployed across the region. She returned about a month before this conversation.

The working dog program, she explains, is technically owned by the Air Force — all branches have dogs, but the Army is the only branch with clinical veterinarians, meaning an Army vet like Farr can be assigned to any base across any service. Marine bases. Navy bases. Air Force bases. Even Space Force — "Patrick Space Force Base has dogs," she noted. There are only around 250 Army veterinarians in total, by her estimate. It is a genuinely small world.

The dogs themselves, she says, are in a category of their own — roughly 45% German Shepherd, 45% Belgian Malinois, 10% Dutch Shepherd, all of them elite working athletes trained for explosives detection, patrol, and special operations missions. Getting one to hold still for an exam is a different proposition than your average Labrador.

"If I were a mechanic," she said, "I'd want to work on Ferraris."

The work has taken her to places she didn't see coming. She served as the veterinarian at the presidential inauguration in Washington, D.C. She's run spay-neuter clinics and herd health projects across Africa. 

She's seen the dogs actually in action on deployment — not just in garrison — and been the one responsible for keeping them mission-ready.

Through it all, she traces a thread back to Macomb. The town was small enough that she could play any sport she wanted — basketball, volleyball, softball, one after the other, only one off-season from seventh grade through senior year, and that one was involuntary (a torn labrum, ignored for years, finally fixed freshman year of college). Big enough to compete in real tournaments. Teachers who knew her name. Freedom to ride bikes and tromp through the creek and figure things out.

"It teaches you how to be a team member," she said of all of it. "That skill started early."

Her parents are still in Macomb. Her dad is still seeing patients. Rachel isn't sure yet how long she'll stay in uniform — eventually, she'd like to settle down somewhere. But for now, the opportunities keep coming, and she keeps saying yes.

"I cannot complain," she said.