Carson veterinarian takes part in creating healthier animal shelter

By Sandi Hoover

shoover@nevadaappeal.com

Many youngsters go through a stage in life where they aspire to be a veterinarian, and Katie Roberts was no different.

"I wanted to be a veterinarian since I was 3 years old. On school career days, I had a stuffed animal in each arm and a stethoscope, and I never wavered from that," Roberts said. "Now my 5-year-old daughter wants to follow in my footsteps."

Roberts said her father told her that she had all sorts of pets when she was a child, "much to the dismay of my mother," mostly Guinea pigs, hamsters and silky mice.

"I wanted a cat, but found out early that I was highly allergic to them," Roberts said. "I thought my life was over, but it turned out it wasn't. I'm just careful to always wash my hands after handling a cat, and I make sure I don't touch my eyes or any other parts of my skin."

Roberts, who now works at Carson City's Lone Mountain Veterinary Hospital on College Parkway, was contracted by the city earlier this year to work part time at the animal shelter in a new program to improve the overall health of shelter animals.

She is usually there two days a week for three to six hours administering vaccines, de-worming or handling any other procedures in-house which don't require surgery.

"They picked up a dog, with foxtails and road rash, which was badly matted, so I was able to help by wrapping his feet and giving him pain meds," she said.

"Gail (Radtke, Animal Services manager) and I hope to sit down to plan financials for the year so we can do even more for animals," she said.

"I love making people happy, and animals give people so much joy," Roberts said.

Her background helped her both professionally and emotionally.

"When I was in Santa Barbara, I worked at the Humane Society where I had a great mentor. I learned a lot about how animals can make people happy. But on the other side, when you have to put an animal down, you know you're able to ease their suffering when they are no longer having a good-quality life," she said.

Roberts grew up in Sacramento and attended the University of California, Santa Barbara, for her under-graduate work. She attended Virginia Tech for veterinary school.

She later moved to Northern Nevada where she worked six years at the Carson Valley Veterinary Hospital on Highway 88 in Minden.

"I was on call nights and had a rotating schedule where I worked Sundays and holidays and rotating weekends," she said. "Having two children and being on your feet all day made it really hard with a family."

Roberts lives in Minden with her husband, Jason, superintendent at Thunder Canyon Country Club, and her two daughters, Maddie, 5, and Lottie, 3.

The family shares their home with three dogs, Taz, a 14-year-old pit bull mix, Roland, a 100-pound, 3-year-old bullmastiff, and Tulip Love, a 1-year-old pit mix.

"That's a full house," she said, laughing.

Her new job at the Lone Mountain Veterinary Hospital in Carson City affords a more stable schedule which better suits her busy family life, she said.

Roberts has also worked on a number of interesting cases.

One such case involved removing rocks from a dog's intestines, and in veterinary school, a cat that had eaten its owner's bra straps had to have surgery.

"About three or four months ago, someone brought a chocolate lab in late in the afternoon who had eaten Gorilla Glue," Roberts said. "The dog was looking punky, and you could feel that her belly was hard, so I called Animal Poison Control. They said it goes into the stomach and expands to three times its size, and that it solidifies and hardens."

With the help of technicians Aubrie Ricketts and Julie Garcia, Roberts performed the surgery to remove the glue mass, and the dog made a full recovery.

Roberts said one case is particularly meaningful because it's personal.

Right after she started at Lone Mountain two years ago, a 1-year-old golden retriever stray was brought into the hospital with a prolapsed condition, so she performed surgery to repair the damage.

Honey, as she was later named, ended up with a special family - Roberts' parents in Placerville, Calif.

"My parents had lost their Australian shepherd, Cody, to cancer months before that, and just hadn't found another dog that was the perfect fit, but Honey had the same demeanor as Cody. She's just a real sweetheart," Roberts said.

"It felt really good to partner with Animal Services for Honey, and it turned out she was the perfect fit for my parents," she said.

"It's just so great to be able to fix animals so they're not in pain. The challenging cases are fun, but you do have days where it's totally unrewarding if animals don't respond the way you want them to, but for the most part, it's very rewarding - it's why we do this," she said.