Meet the new Doc—not the same as the old Doc. In response to the success of Dr. Kate Hurley’s veterinary column, Animal Sheltering is increasing its coverage of shelter medicine issues. This department will run in every issue, with authorship rotating between Dr. Hurley and our new columnist, Dr. Lila Miller of the ASPCA. Your shelter veterinary news source is now bicoastal! We’re delighted to have Dr. Miller sharing the space with Dr. Hurley, and we look forward to learning from their columns.

I was very flattered when the editor of Animal Sheltering, one of the most respected venues for information about shelter medicine, asked me to share the writing of the regular shelter medicine column with Kate Hurley. One of the biggest challenges of such an assignment is selecting one topic from the hundreds I could write about. But for my first column, I decided to follow the precedent set by Dr. Hurley by providing some information about my background in the field.

I confess that I never envisioned a career working with shelter animals. My only experience with a shelter was when my family adopted a puppy from the ASPCA when I was about five years old. At six, I decided to become a veterinarian, but when I eventually graduated from Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, I had no long-term career goals. I knew I wanted to return to New York City to work, but I didn’t want to plunge into private practice. Nor did I want to intern at another venue where I would learn more of the same “high tech” medicine that I knew the clients I most wanted to serve—those in inner-city neighborhoods—would not be able to afford.

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