A Year of Revolutionary Lifesaving with Maddie’s Shelter Medicine Program

Take a look at our annual report!
Check out our Annual Report — we hope you’ll smile just like our coverdog when you see what we’ve been up to!

Twenty years ago, there was no such thing as shelter medicine. Today, the Maddie’s Shelter Medicine Program at the University of Florida has a record course enrollment of 427 students, with 111 having completed the Maddie’s Certificate programs. We’re truly preparing an army of shelter veterinarians to help care for homeless pets across the country and around the world!

That’s just part of the good news, however. We’ve launched a Master’s Degree with a Concentration in Shelter Medicine, and opened it to veterinary professionals as well as shelter directors and managers.

During the previous year, we’ve seen our alumni head out into shelters and academic programs, making a difference for pets everywhere they’ve gone. Those alums include Dr. Staci Cannon, who’ll be serving as Medical Director at Metro Nashville Animal Care and Control; and Dr. Amie Burling, who accepted a faculty position with the new shelter medicine program at the University of Missouri.

We’ve been making waves in the world of research, too. We conducted seven projects including into real-time disease diagnosis and distemper, and published four scientific papers on topics including community cats and heartworm in shelter animals.

In fact, we’ve been so busy finding new and better ways to help shelters care for pets, we can’t list them all here. We hope you’ll take a look at our annual report and see for yourself that Maddie’s Shelter Medicine Program is making a difference for animals every day!