Bentley Payne’s tenacious kindness, intelligence and calm during crises have prepared her to be one of the program’s next graduates.
Bentley Payne is approaching her final semester at Texas Tech University’s School of Veterinary Medicine.
From organizing the school’s Barks & Rec adoption event to rising to the challenge when flood waters rose in Hunt, Texas this past summer – Bentley has packed a plethora of life into four years.
“I never would have imagined a small-town girl like me going on all these adventures,” she said.
An Animal Lover at Heart
Bentley grew up in Caddo Mills, Texas. Her mother was the high school principal, and her father ran the local supermarket. The Payne home was a little wild, with horses, bunnies, chickens, pigs, cows, turtles and hermit crabs.
In kindergarten, Bentley would have her parents bring stuffed animals to her imaginary clinic. She had her parents fill out intake forms including the animal’s middle name and favorite color.
“If they didn’t fill out all the paperwork, I would not treat their animal,” Bentley says with a laugh.
But life wasn’t without its challenges. Bentley began having seizures when she was 14.
“I was diagnosed with a seizure disorder,” she says.
Going into high school, this was something Bentley had to manage, but she was determined to not let it slow her down.
“My parents always told me to ‘bloom where you are planted,’” she says.
Bentley served as student body president all four years of high school and graduated valedictorian. She was accepted to Auburn University and spent four years studying pre-veterinary animal science.
Rodney Joe
As the time to apply to vet school drew nearer, her parents worried about Bentley. Her seizures had decreased but were not gone. At times, they caused injuries. Once, Bentley tore her rotator cuff during a fall.
So, Bentley began looking into what it would cost to buy a seizure alert dog. The average price tag was $50,000. That’s when Bentley began to wonder if she could train a dog herself.
“I’d accomplished bigger things; I’d overcome a lot, so I just thought, ‘I can do this,’” she says.
She found a Great Dane breeder in Texas and met her companion – Rodney Joe.
She brought him home when he was eight weeks old and quickly began training him. The duo trained three times a day, 20 minutes each session. It took a full 10 months to complete his training.
Thanks to hard work and answered prayers, Rodney Joe was able to alert Bentley for the first time when he was only six months old.
“The first time he did it, I didn’t know what he was doing,” Bentley recalls. “My parents were the ones who actually first picked up on it.”
Rodney Joe will get up near Bentley’s face and begin to gently bark at her about 20 minutes before a seizure. When Bentley began taking him to classes, he was smart enough to quietly nudge her arm instead of bark.
“Rodney Joe is my hero,” she says of her best friend.
Texas Tech
With Rodney Joe by her side, Bentley began to discern which veterinary school would be the best fit. She wanted to be closer to family and in-state tuition sounded appealing.
Texas A&M was on her radar, but she knew Texas Tech had just started a new veterinary program. She decided to visit the School of Veterinary Medicine in Amarillo – her first time out to West Texas.
“When I walked in, I just fell in love with Texas Tech,” she says. “I knew it was the vet school for me.”
Bentley was impressed with the one-on-one attention she received from the school’s staff and faculty and the state-of-the-art facilities. When she arrived at orientation, she knew she’d made the right choice.
“Dean Loneragan knew everyone’s name on the first day,” she remembers.
That level of care and intentionality went a long way with Bentley, who knew no one coming into the program. However, things didn’t stay that way for long. The effervescent student went out of her way to make meaningful connections.
This was noticed by the faculty.
“Bentley is fierce in her convictions and quick to defend her friends and anyone in need,” says Dr. Trista Mills, associate professor of General Veterinary Practice. “Her genuine goodness shines through in her demeanor and in every interaction.”
Bentley found herself working harder than ever before. The former valedictorian had to let go of her identity as a straight A student in pursuit of something greater – the love of learning.
Following her parents’ advice of blooming where she was planted, she made it her mission to leave the School of Veterinary Medicine better than she found it. At the holidays, she helped organize an Angel Tree for local Amarillo families and children. It’s a tradition now that has more than 300 students and faculty participating.
She also was the catalyst behind the school’s Barks and Rec event.
Each year, long-term stay animals known as the RaiderPups live on site and help students learn hands on skills. These dogs come from local shelters and are waiting for homes. When Bentley’s first semester ended, she inquired what was going to happen to the dogs. In most cases, they were headed back to the shelter.
Together with faculty and other students, she organized the first Barks & Rec event, helping the RaiderPups find their forever homes. Last year, every dog at the clinic was adopted. The event has now placed more than 70 animals with loving families.
Waters Rising
Bentley’s resilience would meet its ultimate challenge during clinical rotations, though.
She was placed at Town and Country Animal Hospital in Kerrville during the summer of 2025. She rented an Airbnb in the nearby town of Hunt.
To celebrate the July 4th weekend, Bentley’s parents came out to spend time with their daughter and some family friends. Bentley and Rodney Joe spent the night away from their Airbnb because of this, about 5 miles away on higher ground.
“We had gotten some weather warnings on our phones that night,” she recalls. “But we weren’t expecting anything more than the average thunderstorm.”
Dawn broke with an eerie silence.
The usual hum of the air conditioner was absent. No one’s cell phones chirped with incoming texts. Ceiling fans were at a standstill.
They walked out of the house and looked down the hill. There was water higher than they’d ever seen. Bentley and her friend drove a Jeep down to her Airbnb where it was clear that the river water has risen above the windows and washed out what was inside.
“If I’d slept there that night, I would not have been there come morning,” Bentley says, somberly.
The rain kept coming.
Everyone sprang into action, preparing for the worst if the waters made it up the hill. Luckily, they didn’t but they were stuck. No one was allowed in or out of Hunt, as priority transport was given to emergency responders.
As cell service was restored, Bentley’s family scrolled through the harrowing stories emerging around them. Girls from Camp Mystic were missing. Homes had been washed away.
The Guadelupe River had risen more than 26-feet in 45 minutes during the night.
When Bentley finally made it back into town, it was unrecognizable.
Fortunately, the vet clinic was intact, so they began canceling regularly scheduled appointments and turned the clinic into a triage.
“There were a few animals we got to reunite with their families,” Bentley says. “But sadly, a lot of our work was recovering deceased pets and contacting their families to give them closure. It was heart-wrenching.
“A lot of people think being a vet is lots of cuddling puppies. They don’t see the mental toll that it takes.”
Bentley explains that most vets are extremely empathetic, and they feel a lot of emotions too, but they have to prioritize being strong for the animals and the clients.
“You have to have a reason for being a vet,” she insists. “For me, I lean on my faith. I take care of animals because God gave them to us as a gift.”
During those first harrowing days as bodies, pets and property were pulled from the water, Bentley treated many of the search-and-rescue animals.
“It was a trying time, to say the least,” she says. “I had never been through a natural disaster, and it was awful to have a front row seat to something like that. At the same time, I was glad I was there and able to help.”
Bentley praised the School of Veterinary Medicine for preparing her the best it could. She and her classmates had taken part in a “Disaster Day” simulation the year before.
“It was good I just had done the training,” she says. “Now that I have been through a real natural disaster, God forbid I ever go through something like that again, I’ll be better prepared to serve others.”
Good Soil
The next step in Bentley’s journey is sitting for the licensing exam this month.
“Bentley is intelligent and has an intuitive knack for clinical reasoning,” Mills says. “Though she may look every bit the southern belle, Bentley never hesitates to dive into the messiest of tasks – emerging from some of the dirtier clinical skills days looking like she just wrestled a pig and smiling about it.”
In that way, Bentley hasn’t changed a bit since she was a child. In other ways, her compassion has grown into even more of a gift to those around her.
Bentley hopes to eventually settle back in East Texas and serve the rural communities that first gave her a passion for animals.
And of course, Rodney Joe will be by her side.
“I think about my parents telling me to bloom where I’m planted, and I think Texas Tech is good soil that helped me grow,” she says. “The people there are smart and kind and driven and they’ve helped me make my dreams possible.”