We are the student chapter of the Association of Shelter Veterinarians (ASV), or the Shelter Medicine Club at UGA. Our club started in 2006 and has been very active within the vet school and the surrounding community. Shelter Medicine is an emerging field within veterinary medicine that applies a herd health outlook to small animal medicine. Our discipline is fast growing and opportunities are abundant. Some relevant topics within the field of shelter medicine include epidemiology, infectious disease transmission and control, facility design, high volume spay/neuter, behavior evaluation and modification, community outreach, forensic veterinary medicine, animal abuse investigation, and public policy as it relates to companion animals. For more information about shelter medicine, please visit www.sheltermedicine.org and www.sheltervet.org.
The club hosts many exciting speakers; past topics have included introduction to shelter medicine, vaccine strategies in a shelter setting, feral cat management, and veterinary forensics. The club also hosts fundraisers (yummy bagels from Zim’s in the mornings!) to support our activities and educational meetings. This past spring, we hosted our first annual film festival, which included several documentaries highlighting challenges that have significantly impacted the shelter medicine community, including dog fighting and disaster relief. The club is also very active in the community, providing volunteers for mobile adoption events, rabies clinics, and other activities to benefit area shelters. In the fall, the club sponsors a trip to Full Moon Farm, a wolf-dog sanctuary in NC, to assist with building housing structures for the canines who are sheltered there.
We feel that shelter medicine is an exciting and dynamic field of veterinary medicine that impacts all small animal practitioners, even if you do not plan to actually work in a shelter. There are many ways that all of us can serve our community when we graduate from UGA, and we hope that our club activities will help students become more aware of issues that face all animal shelters so that they may offer assistance and guidance.
President: Natalie Duncan
Vice President: Angela Gray
Secretary: Beth Antley
Treasurer: Vanna Dickerson