Dogged Devotion to Veterinary Ambition

Greatest challenge is competing with the corporate world and meeting the demand of the clientele.  Paperwork, documentation, and communication are very time consuming. 

Greatest joy – Working with my husband every day and us owning such a wonderful business. 

They are high energy all the time! These canine officers are athletes, and this is their job to be energetic.  They use their nose to track, rescue, and find.  They use their teeth to apprehend, and they use all their joints and muscles to run and jump to keep our community safe. Our staff loves all of them, and we enjoy working with their handlers.  The police agencies invest a lot of resources into these dogs’ care and training.  My staff and I keep them in tip-top physical condition.  We care for canine officers for the Frederick County Sheriff Office, Frederick City Police, and the Brunswick Police Department.  We have even tended to Secret Service Canine officers at Heritage.

I grew up in Libertytown, MD and graduated from Linganore High School. Hood College had a 100% acceptance rate into veterinary school. They had a program for early admission my Junior year of high school. I applied and I was accepted to Hood College.  I was a commuter student and very active in the SGA. I was the Commuter Council Chair on the SGA executive board for 2 years. I loved the beautiful, quaint campus. The Biology Department was top notch, and I loved all of my professors and all of the individual attention they gave to their students. 

I love my Hood Ring, and I believe I have worn it everyday proudly since the day I opened the box at the Ring Dinner. Spring Parties, Fall Festival, Hood Olympics, and Shrove Tuesday were events that I looked forward to each year. The Commuter Council was a very strong organization at Hood, and I loved all of the time I spent with friends in Rayford Lodge. 

Also, I believe we went undefeated for 4 years in Hood Olympics.

Ms. Betsy Estilow was the BEST advisor I could ever ask for!   During our first meeting before I signed up for classes, I told her I wanted to go to vet school.  Enough said as she mapped out the next 4 years of my Hood Career and planned every single class to meet every vet school requirement and then some.  She was instrumental in my acceptance into vet school as I would have never been able to do it without her.

Dr. Ann Boyd was my Honors Paper advisor.  She and Mrs. Estilow provided me with the opportunity to research and write and present this Honors Paper that also helped to catapult me into veterinary school.

Dr. Allen Flora was the faculty advisor to the Commuter Council and the best Physics Professor!  He was so fun to work with in the Commuter Council, and he made what I considered an unbearable subject matter bearable.

I will be honest….. I was really sad to see that the Hood Ring tradition is not as popular anymore. 

During Cailyn’s tenure at Hood, she had many of my same professors including Dr. Flora, Dr. Boyd, Dr.Lauffer, and Dr. Falkenstein.  Cailyn had the same individualized attention to her education just like me, but the technology she was exposed to was overwhelming.  I did not even have internet when I was a student.  I had to write out the pledge by hand on every assignment. 

I really have no idea.  I can think of the good, the bad, and the ugly of every breed, so it is a very hard question to answer.  I love Miniature Schnauzers as they are smart, loyal, and fun, so I think that sounds like a pretty good combination--but they are yappy. . . .