Community Veterinary Services
Shelter Medicine
Mississippi State University College of Veterinary Medicine places special emphasis in preventing unwanted litters, and increasing the chance of pet adoptions. Spaying and neutering puppies and kittens have been found to greatly increase adoption rates. The College has a mobile veterinary unit which is used to provide spay and
neuter services to animal shelters in Mississippi. Dr. Bushby takes
students to 16 different shelters and the students perform, on average,
30 surgeries each trip. With 4 trips per week, the program has performed
over 27,000 surgeries since January 2007. A second Mobile Veterinary Unit
has been funded by PetSmart Charities, and will be available to serve
additional shelters in the Fall of 2012. The Mobile Veterinary Unit can
also be employed to provide animal recovery and care in a time of
disaster. The university has started a Shelter Medicine residency to
further educate the next generation of veterinarians to care for shelter
animals and to solve the problem of overpopulation of unwanted pets.
Our Shelter Medicine service has many goals. It seeks to increase student awareness and understanding of issues related to over population of unwanted dogs and cats and the issues faces by animal shelters. It helps show the role future veterinarians can play in addressing the overpopulation of unwanted dogs and cats. The services provided to the local shelters increase the number of animals adopted while providing students experience in routine elective surgery.
Pet adoption video below was made by two of our former students, Katie Pruett and Kaysey Burns.
