Maddie's Fund - Press Room

(Alameda, CA - July 2004) Maddie's Fund^® has awarded $250,000 to support the first year of a shelter medicine program at Auburn University's College of Veterinary Medicine. Funding is scheduled to continue over six years, for a total of $1.5 million. The program is called Maddie's^® Shelter Medicine Program in honor of Maddie, the Miniature Schnauzer who made this funding possible.

The goal of the new program is to help Alabama's shelters guarantee a home for their healthy and treatable shelter pets by creating a pool of shelter medicine specialists and advancing scientific knowledge in non-lethal strategies for pet population control.

There are three major components of Maddie's^® Shelter Medicine Program: graduate and resident training, continuing education, and research.

Maddie's^® Shelter Medicine Program includes a core clinical rotation that all veterinary students must take in order to graduate. The clinical rotation includes Maddie's^® Shelter Ambulatory Service, a series of visits to participating animal shelters for on-site consultation, diagnostic support and teaching.

In addition to the clinical rotation, required core classes will include lectures on shelter medicine with such titles as "veterinarian's role in animal sheltering," "infectious disease epidemiology in shelters" and "strategies for pet population control."

Veterinary students can apply for Maddie's^® Summer Fellowships to research shelter medicine topics, or they can choose from a variety of Shelter Medicine electives:

an elective clinical rotation in shelter medicine
an elective class on animal behavior
an elective class on free roaming and feral cats

For post graduates, faculty and practicing veterinarians, Maddie's^® Shelter Medicine Program offers:

Post Graduate Resident Training, in the form of a three year clinical rotation to train Residents in the recognition, diagnosis and prevention of infectious disease and behavior problems in shelters (Residents will also help train fourth year vet students and submit a research project for publication.)
Non-Lethal Shelter Medicine Research
Continuing Education, including symposia on shelter medicine topics for faculty and private practitioners and a web based consultation service to provide information and advice to animal shelter personnel and veterinarians

Thanks to Maddie's^® Shelter Medicine Program and the fact that fifty percent of Auburn University's veterinary students practice in Alabama after graduation, many of Alabama's private practitioners will soon have a greater awareness and understanding of animal sheltering problems and the willingness and ability to help shelters solve them.

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July 2004