Imagine working in a medical clinic where your patients have no loved ones advocating for them, no way to explain how they’re feeling and often little to no documented medical history. As an added challenge, resources can be scarce and some patients can act, quite literally, feral.

That’s the reality for Dr. Avnee Mistry and Dr. Sam Zurlinden, who work in North Carolina’s third-busiest county by volume for shelter animals.

These recent alums of the NC State College of Veterinary Medicine stand at the forefront of public health and animal welfare in the same community that gave them their veterinary training. Individually and together, Mistry, of the Wake County Animal Center, and Zurlinden, of the SPCA of Wake County, treat thousands of forgotten, surrendered and indigent animals across the Triangle and North Carolina every year and shepherd them into loving homes.

Last September, when Hurricane Helene devastated Western North Carolina, the Wake SPCA took in animals from the Asheville Humane Society to open up shelter space there for lost pets. 

The Wake County Animal Center took in 6,787 animals in 2023, the most recent year with complete data. By the shelter’s count, about a quarter of those creatures were entrusted to rescue partners including the Wake SPCA after preliminary health and legal screenings. 

“Being able to advocate for these animals who may not have had anyone else fighting for them is, I feel, such life-saving work,” says Mistry, DVM Class of 2022. “We make such a difference in all of their lives every day. And as shelter veterinarians, we get to be involved in a lot more aspects of community well-being than I think most people could imagine.”

Mistry and Zurlinden’s commitment to protecting public health is manifold. Their roles position them to flag area outbreaks of infectious and zoonotic diseases, increase access to veterinary care and educate the wider community about what happens inside animal shelters and animal health and safety.

Importantly, they also support veterinary students venturing into shelter medicine while maintaining close ties to the college that gave them their training. Over the past three months, Mistry and Zurlinden have lectured at a statewide veterinary conference and hosted NC State DVM students at their shelters for selectives and clinical rotations.

The need for shelter veterinarians statewide is pressing. National database Shelter Animals Count shows North Carolina logged 100,286 animal intakes in 2024, a volume higher than some states with larger human populations, including New York and Pennsylvania.

“We’re in desperate need of shelter veterinarians in North Carolina,” says Zurlinden, Class of 2023. “There’s a huge shortage across our whole state, and so it’s really exciting that Dr. Mistry and I are in these positions and eager to help out at the beginning of our careers. We can accomplish a lot together.”

Seeking Shelter

Though they graduated a year apart, Mistry and Zurlinden started in the same class at the College of Veterinary Medicine and were both named Annable Scholars for their commitment to community service.

From Denver, Colorado, Zurlinden found her way to shelter medicine through zoos. Following a childhood dream to be a zookeeper, she majored in zoology at Colorado State University and manned the kennels at the nearby Larimer Humane Society between classes. She soon found she loved the work.

Even after she graduated in 2009 and took jobs first at the Pueblo Zoo and later the Denver Zoo, shelter medicine was never far from Zurlinden’s mind. Volunteering to help pets displaced by a wildfire in 2014 persuaded her to commit to shelter work by way of veterinary medicine.

She left her primate-keeping job in Denver to serve as the lead animal care technician at the Adams County Animal Shelter in Colorado, then worked as a veterinary assistant in the Raleigh area when her husband’s career moved their family to the Triangle.

Zurlinden finished her veterinary school prerequisite courses along the way and was admitted to NC State’s DVM program in 2018, getting involved in shelter medicine however she could. She conducted outreach through student clubs, took an animal welfare-focused selective with professor Dr. Monique Pairis-Garcia and completed externships at the ASPCA in Asheville and Guilford County Animal Services.

“I pushed myself to explore other facets of veterinary medicine because I wanted to be sure, but it always has come back to shelter med for me,” Zurlinden says. “I worked really hard to find connections there.”

Zurlinden split her third year of veterinary school over two years after having her second child in 2020. In 2023, the year she graduated, the American Veterinary Medical Association officially recognized shelter medicine as a boarded specialty. 

Zurlinden joined Guilford County Animal Services as a veterinarian that fall. She looked for Triangle-based opportunities when commuting from Raleigh to Greensboro became unmanageable and landed the veterinarian job with the Wake SPCA in May 2024.

“We’re in desperate need of shelter veterinarians in North Carolina,” says Zurlinden. “There’s a huge shortage across our whole state, and so it’s really exciting that Dr. Mistry and I are in these positions and eager to help out at the beginning of our careers.”

Mistry was born in the United Kingdom but spent most of her childhood in Naples, Florida, and went on to earn her bachelor’s degree in microbiology from the University of Florida. Her experiences working with unowned animals began there, through volunteering with a feline trap-neuter-vaccinate-release, or TNVR, program called Operation Catnip.

Intrigued by zoonotic diseases since high school, Mistry had veterinary school in her sights. She graduated with her bachelor’s in 2018 and continued her focus on public health when she entered NC State’s DVM program that fall. 

But she found herself unsure of her next steps during her final year of vet school. It was Dr. Jody Gookin, a professor of small animal internal medicine, who encouraged Mistry to combine her experiences in population health and TNVR programs to pursue shelter medicine.

“And so I ended up last-minute scheduling an externship here at the Wake County shelter in March 2022, before I graduated that May,” Mistry says. ”I really, really loved it.”

A little over a year later, after she’d completed a shelter medicine internship at the University of Florida, Mistry returned to Raleigh in July 2023 to work in Wake County with Animal Services Director Dr. Jennifer Federico, an alum of NC State’s DVM Class of 2008.

Though Mistry and Zurlinden were friendly in veterinary school, the two really grew close when they began working with partner organizations.

“When Dr. Mistry told me she was coming back to Raleigh, I just got so excited because I knew that we were going to be a great support system for each other,” Zurlinden says.

The two collaborate frequently. Animals are often transferred from the Wake County Animal Center, a municipal facility whose intake consists of everything from strays to surrendered pets to animals involved in legal cases, to the Wake SPCA, a limited admission shelter that receives animals transferred from county shelters and rescues across North Carolina and also accepts owner surrenders.

When they’re not discussing the best ways to treat “happy tail” — canine tail injuries that occur via intense kennel wagging — or any other of the countless conditions that come through their doors, Mistry and Zurlinden join forces to educate veterinary students.

Creating Advocates

For someone who was admittedly terrified of doing surgery during veterinary school, Zurlinden looks like a natural as she neuters two puppies and five kittens and spays seven additional kittens at the Wake SPCA on a Wednesday in December. She switches between surgical instruments while maintaining a running conversation with the NC State students watching her.

“In vet school, I think my first spay took three and a half hours,” she says, tying a suture shut. This one took her maybe 15 minutes.

The second-year DVM students, new to surgery, watch the procedures intently and ask Zurlinden about her technique. She was in their shoes just a few years earlier.

Taking this same course with Pairis-Garcia, a specialist in global production animal welfare, early in her DVM program was formative for Zurlinden. In fall 2023, she and Mistry returned the favor by inviting Pairis-Garcia’s students to the Guilford shelter for a behind-the-scenes tour.

“The feedback we got from the students was that they learned so much, and they didn’t know that this field existed beforehand,” Zurlinden says. “They had misconceptions about it. We had students tell us that that day might have changed their trajectory.”

For the group of students in December, Mistry and Zurlinden guide them around their two facilities over two days. On the second day, they deliver a presentation titled “How to Best Prepare to Become a Shelter Veterinarian from a New Grad Perspective.”

Every shelter is different, they explain, and the volume and needs of incoming animals are unpredictable. Successful shelter veterinarians have solid medical and surgical training and are adaptable and ready to think outside the box — for instance, by putting pool noodles over “happy tails” so they can heal.

“There is so much more to shelter medicine than meets the eye,” Mistry says. “It’s such a unique world, because you are helping the animals that need it the most. We work to serve our community, and it’s always so inspiring when the community helps us out as well.”

The medical work comes easy, thanks to their DVM training. Their biggest hurdles involve confronting systemic issues, such as socioeconomic barriers to veterinary care and spay/neuter programs, breed restrictions in rental housing and the shelters’ limited capacity for care amid so much need.

“We’re very linked to challenges in the community, because animals also suffer when their families are struggling,” Mistry says.

Mistry has heard private practitioners criticize shelter facilities for their limited clinical resources and broader patient populations in comparison to private clinics. She asserts that shelter veterinarians aim to act in animals’ best interests at all times, as any veterinarian should. Humane euthanasia, a reality of any veterinary practice, is a small part of shelter work.

In these student educational sessions, Mistry and Zurlinden aim to create new advocates for shelter medicine who appreciate its importance as a barometer of population health. They say the support of veterinarians in the community is indispensable.

“There is so much more to shelter medicine than meets the eye,” Mistry says. “It’s such a unique world, because you are helping the animals that need it the most. We work to serve our community, and it’s always so inspiring when the community helps us out as well.”

Their message appears to have struck a chord. One student, who has spent much of the tours asking questions and swaddling kittens recovering from anesthesia, says the selective has persuaded her to get involved with local shelters.

The John Sims and Holly Deyo Sims Scholarship supports DVM students at the College of Veterinary Medicine who are interested in serving shelter animal populations and the community. If you would like to advance this life-saving mission, you can contribute to that scholarship fund here.