Summary

Once again, we are very pleased with the progress we have made in reaching our goals. Education is such a powerful tool. We continue to see a change in attitudes towards the adoption guarantee philosophy and an increase in respect for the opinions of others among the students. This is so important if we are going to move forward. The students at Iowa State University are engaged with shelter medicine! This engagement is best shown by the career choices and activities of our students once they leave veterinary school. This level of involvement by the students would not have happened without Maddie’s® support. The continued support has our students looking toward the future at opportunities that they hope will be available to enrich their education in shelter medicine, such as shelter medicine directed internships and residencies.

All of the components of this program have been beneficial. The Maddie’s® Shelter Medicine Course is the key component of this impact on students and we look forward to the Spring semester. Our student Externs have learned an enormous amount from their externship experiences and have been great ambassadors for Iowa State University. Our Summer Scholars program is very popular and we look forward to projects that will occur during the summer of 2008. Our community shelters are looking forward to the new knowledge that these projects bring.  We are very proud of our Maddie’s® Shelter Medicine Excellence Award recipients and graduates who are helping their communities and animal shelters. Our Student Shelter Medicine Organization is one of the more active student run organizations in our college.

Engagement with the sheltering community continues to strengthen our Maddie’s® Program as well. We see more doors opening for our students and more learning going on for all involved.  We look forward to expanding our Community Practice Service- Shelter Medicine component. We are also looking toward internship and residency training at Iowa State University in the future. The dialogue with our community shelters continues about the pros and cons of the adoption guarantee philosophy. As we all know, there are some who choose not to participate in that dialogue and this is most unfortunate. There is also much more interest in learning how to keep our shelter animals well, medically and behaviorally. Our goal is to keep the engagement and discussions alive and keep the focus on a home for every healthy and treatable companion animal.