Dr. Bennett grew up in rural Lake County, California, where she spent her early career as a private practice veterinarian and as the first Medical Director at the Lake County Animal Care and Control Agency, but her relationship to UC Davis stretches back to her youth: She visited campus as a 4-H participant and in high school adopted foals from the School of Veterinary Medicine. Most recently, she served as the Chief Veterinary Officer at the Humane Society for Tacoma & Pierce County.

Why shelter medicine?

It really checked so many boxes for me. I can immediately apply care or services to the animals that I’m serving and be able to get animals quickly into permanent homes or returned to a home that they already had—and really immediately get that low-hanging fruit to reduce euthanasia rates and increase adoption rates. And I’m just a protocol nerd! I love looking at processes and writing protocols and organizing systems. The shelter environment naturally lends itself to this type of work for the benefit of the animal population. 

I’ve stayed in shelter medicine because I feel incredibly useful and practical on a daily basis and because it has so many direct impacts on animals and the people who care for them.

Tell us about one of your best days working in a shelter.

When I was the Medical Director at the City of Seattle, I was involved in the largest animal cruelty case they had ever experienced, involving a confiscate of over 200 rabbits and guinea pigs. I was able to work with my then colleague and now good friend, Dr. Sarah Mantovani, to quickly strategize how to handle the incoming animals and their need for care using the resources on hand. It felt very practical and very rewarding to go, okay, here’s the mission: We have several hours to prepare. Here are our knowns. Here are our unknowns. Let’s make a plan.  

We all became rabbit medicine experts very quickly, because we needed to. We were able to turn that experience into a way to benefit others, by teaching rabbit spays and neuters to many other local shelter veterinarians, so they could help us with that work and provide access to care for rabbits in their communities. 

I love being able to be a resource for others, and I also really love connecting people. Nothing warms my heart more than someone going, “Hey, I have a question about this.” Or, “Have you ever seen that situation?” And I can say, “Yes, let me get this for you.” Or “Let me put you in touch with this person.” In this field, we have a common goal of finding optimum outcomes for animals, and being part of the solutions is where I thrive. 

The rabbit case was in the middle of Covid, when people felt very separated and isolated from each other. It was a really unifying experience to come together for this greater good—to make a plan and then process, evaluate, and treat the animals and care for them on a very large scale for about five months, until they were surrendered and able to be adopted out. Dr. Mantovani and I represented the City throughout the legal proceedings, which eventually resulted in felony animal convictions.

What does access to care mean to you?

When you grow up in a rural county, you see the need for access to care in many different aspects, and not just for dogs and cats, but also our other companion species, horses and other farm animals. The need is great and the resources can be scarce. Access to care means that in an ideal world every animal and every person who has a relationship with an animal has the ability to find and to engage in the type of care that’s needed for their specific situation. That’s going to be different for each encounter and involves listening to what the community needs to provide for its animal population. 

Traditionally, we think a lot about financial barriers as one of those things that affects our ability to seek care, but the reality is that there are many other barriers that we would like to overcome. That includes fully staffing shelters with trained veterinarians practicing contextualized care, working around transportation challenges, and increasing translation services and access to informational materials in a way that is culturally relevant. Access to care in any setting really has to take into account that we have removed as many barriers as possible. 

I also see the shifting nature of the work that animal shelters do as really becoming more of a social support service. It is very rare to find that an animal needs one service like vaccines and no other services are needed in that household. So access to care also is a broader term for me in that we are opening up a window for services that support the human-animal bond, which may be a multitude of things, including shelter medicine as part of the bigger picture of supporting the community. We can do great things in one small area, and if at the end of the day there isn’t food for the pets or people in the home, or a safe place to sleep, we haven’t met the need fully, right?  

As a veterinarian, I want to contribute to the larger picture of access to care through the shelter medicine component, recognizing that it is one piece of the community support pie.

What would you say to a student or practicing vet who’s curious about shelter medicine?

It doesn’t have to be exclusive! There are many possibilities for collaboration between community or private practice veterinarians and shelter veterinarians, and many wear multiple hats. A lot of veterinarians who are already out in the field are “shelter-curious” and would like to come into the shelter medicine field as a career change or as a way to give back to their community.  

I would really love for students to consider shelter medicine as a field as they develop their knowledge and interests. They can develop skillsets that are really unique to a shelter context, like High-Quality, High-Volume Spay/Neuter or contextualized care or spectrum of care skills, which are also relevant to providing accessible veterinary care in private practice. Cultural competency skills are also key—being able to work really interactively with community members of different backgrounds who look to the shelter for services. 

 I don’t think of animals as “shelter animals” or “community animals” or “privately owned” animals. In some sense we label them that, depending on where they are currently. But it’s a fluid population. Today’s shelter animal can be your new companion tomorrow and vice versa. We need to remember that community veterinarians are our partners with the entire animal population.

What excites you about your role in the next chapter of shelter medicine at UC Davis?

As a shelter medicine practitioner, KSMP has become a go-to resource for me over the years. It feels like a return to where shelter medicine began and a return to the heart of supporting shelter medicine through the shelter veterinarian. I want veterinarians out in their animal shelters and in the community to feel that they’re not alone, they’re supported, and that they have the skillset and the resources to do their job well, so that they can provide access to care in their own organizations. I’m also looking forward to inspiring new generations of veterinarians to develop a passion for this rewarding field.