For more than 50 years, UC Davis has pioneered the field of training veterinarians to work with both free-ranging and captive wildlife.

It was a typically warm Southern California morning on the cusp of fall. Jane Riner, DVM ’22 had finished final blood draws for her two young patients. They were ready to be outfitted with tracking collars and placed in crates where they would recover from short- term chemical immobilization before being released back to the wilds of San Diego County.

Dr. Alene Pohly’s fascination with solving a good mystery may stem from her teenage obsession with Bones, the fictional television series based on a forensic anthropologist solving crimes for the FBI.

“It was a favorite show and now I find myself in pathology on the disease investigations team doing necropsies all the time!” said Pohly, who recently completed a three-year residency training program from UC Davis in Zoo and Wildlife Anatomic Pathology.

After obtaining an undergraduate degree in biological sciences from California State University, Chico in 2004, Dr. Stacy Kraus thought she wanted to pursue a job in the rapidly growing biotechnology field. That career path changed a couple of years later when she encountered Dr. Kate Hurley while working as a technician at the California Animal Health and Food Safety laboratory on campus.

Hurley earned her DVM from UC Davis in 1999 and returned in 2001 to start the world’s first residency in shelter medicine.

For nearly 50 years, teams of UC Davis veterinarians and students-in-training have helped monitor the health and wellbeing of hundreds of animals brought to the California State Fair.