Features

Shelter Animal Medicine Program Provides Benefits to Animals, Students, Community

The plight of unwanted pets is staggering – almost 7 million companion animals enter shelters nationwide annually. Veterinarians, particularly those specializing in shelter medicine, can make a difference in the lives of these animals. That is the impetus behind the growth of Penn Vet’s Shelter Animal Medicine Program (SAM), started in 2006.

Penn Vet’s urban location, unique amongst veterinary schools, offers an opportunity to touch on all the missions of the school: teaching, research and clinical care. To expand the clinical and teaching opportunities, and to develop a focused shelter medicine academic core, the school recently hired Rachael Kreisler (V’12) as a lecturer in Shelter Animal Medicine and Surgery.

The program began as a way to expand Penn Vet’s ability to teach clinical veterinary medicine to students in their senior year. At the same time, the academic field of shelter medicine focuses on the study of diseases, the population management realities of animals in shelters and outbreak recognition and mitigation.

Learn more about Penn Vet's shelter animal medicine program here »

Penn Vet's Field Service Tends to the Farms

It’s a quaint image: a rural vet in a pick-up truck driving down a country lane to treat a sick cow or horse.
Charming though this depiction may be, it belies the thoroughly modern nature of the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine’s Field Service. While the nine veterinarians who comprise the Field Service still function as the “old country vets” for the local community, aspects of their practice — including advanced diagnostic services, dairy-production medicine and even acupuncture — bring the Service squarely into the 21st century.
Operating out of Penn Vet’s New Bolton Center in Chester County, Field Service has provided preventive, routine and emergency care to large animals within a 30-mile radius of the campus since 1956. Each year, the Service sees approximately 20,000 cows, 6,000 horses and an assortment of other animals, from llamas to goats.
Back in the 1950s, Field Service vets were generalists. But following a trend in the field of veterinary medicine, most of Penn’s Field Service vets are specialized by species today and have advanced training in areas such as internal medicine, sports medicine, preventive medicine and milk quality.

Read more about Penn Vet's field service here »