Expert Knowledge
Dr. Joseph Threadcraft, P.E., Director of Environmental Services; Wake County
JVR Shelter Strategies has provided outstanding shelter medicine consulting services to Wake County since 2012. Significant accomplishments include a comprehensive shelter assessment that enabled the organization to transition towards recognition as a Center of Excellence. Their current scope of work includes a facilities assessment that will be used as a long term planning guide to outline recommendations for growth, expansion and improvements over the next 10 to 20 years. I am extremely pleased with JVR’s expert knowledge and subsequent contract deliverables. I highly recommend their shelter medicine consulting services.
Amazing Talent, Drive and Intelligence
Dr. Kate Hurley, Director of the Koret Shelter Medicine Program; UC-Davis School of Veterinary Medicine
We strive to tailor the shelter medicine residency to each residents’ interests, which in Dr. Robertson’s case turned out to be pretty much everything! Out of a versatile group she’s perhaps the most versatile resident we’ve ever had. Over the course of her residency, among other things, she: investigated and testified on a number of significant cruelty cases, oversaw the RFP for redesign of our website, participated in a consortium on animal hoarding, reworked our publicity materials, provided direct care to shelter animals, wrote a business plan for the shelter medicine program, participated in development of a county disaster response plan, evaluated molecular data for a diagnostic laboratory, counseled shelters and veterinarians through countless outbreaks, wrote articles on the economic impact of social interventions in animal welfare, and forged an amazing array of relationships with everyone from lawyers to economists to marketing professionals, all to the great benefit of her learning and our program. She routinely went way above and beyond the call of duty, for instance not just analyzing thousands of data points in our feline URI study, but learning a whole new program to do so. And she did all this while caring for one small child and producing another one in the course of her residency. She brought to the shelter medicine program the smarts of a border collie, the tenacity of a pit bull and the energy of…well…a Chihuahua. Maybe not the easiest mixed breed to adopt from a shelter but a tremendous asset to the shelter medicine program. Perhaps the best thing I can say is that it was sometimes hard to remember that she was a resident, not a fellow faculty member already. Probably that’s why I’ve been in such denial about her graduating! But seriously, shelter medicine is privileged that she’s chosen to devote her amazing talent, drive and intelligence to this field. I look forward to having her as a colleague and a friend.
Attention to Detail
Dr. Jennifer Lynn Federico, Director of Animal Services; Wake County Animal Center
Dr. Robertson began consulting with Wake County in 2012. A full shelter consultation was finalized in 2013. Since then, Dr. Robertson has been working consistently with Wake County on many projects including a facility design assessment, on going statistics and an Animal Hoarding Forum. Her professionalism, timeliness, attention to detail and communication skills are some of her greatest attributes as a consultant. She also focuses on the client’s needs and really understands our business. She has been a pleasure to work with and I look forward to continuing our work with Dr. Robertson.
A Tremendous Partner
Adam Parascandola, Director of Animal Protection and Crisis Response at Humane Society International
Jyothi has been a tremendous partner both in my work running a large urban shelter, where she helped provide medical care as well as advice on housing, cleaning and other protocols to keep the animal population healthy and happy, and in my current job working to provide training for agencies across the country on confronting the challenging issue of animal hoarding. Jyothi provides key important concepts and data for helping agencies to deal with animal hoarders and their animals and the maintenance of general populations of animals whether from animal hoarding situations or the day to day running of a busy shelter.
Greatly Improved the Quality of Care
Megan Webb, Director of Oakland Animal Services; Oakland, CA
I am the Director of Oakland Animal Services, a large urban animal control agency in Oakland, California. I have worked closely with Jyothi Robertson, DVM for more than five years. She is the first person I turn to for guidance when I encounter a veterinary related challenge. Dr. Robertson not only has an extensive knowledge of shelter medicine but she is also an excellent problem solver and collaborator. I enjoy working with Dr. Robertson because she understands the many challenges I face as an animal control director and helps me develop realistic, functional options for improving the health of the animals at the Shelter.
Dr. Robertson has connections to resources and experts across the country that she regularly utilizes to help. For example, we had several cats in the Shelter who became sick and tested positive for panleukopenia. I was stricken with fear and immediately imagined that we would have to euthanize large numbers of cats. I called Dr. Robertson and she helped us develop a strategy to prevent the disease from spreading throughout our cat population. She rated each cat’s “risk” by their intake and vaccination date. We then took blood from every “at-risk” cat. She connected us with a University who “titer” tested these cats at no charge as part of a research study. We were then able to identify which cats had titers for the disease so that we could focus on revaccinating the cats without titers. This system prevented us from euthanizing a large number of cats and is a practice we now implement anytime we have panleukopenia or parvo in the Shelter. Dr. Robertson then helped us update our vaccination protocol to reduce our overall disease risk among our population.
Dr. Robertson has also assisted with the remodeling of our Shelter to better meet the needs of our Shelter animals and therefore improve their health. For example, Dr. Robertson and I worked to put holes in our Shoreline cat cages to double the space for each of our cats. Also, about two years ago, we began to see a large increase in the number of small dogs coming into the Shelter. Our small dog population has since increase from about 5% of our population to over 35%. I was faced with the enormous challenge of how to accomodate these little dogs in a shelter that was built for large dogs. Dr. Robertson came up with a plan to take over one of our large dog wards and convert it to appropriate space for small dogs. Dr. Robertson created statistics that convinced me that I had to implement this change and gave me the confidence to address concerns from our volunteers who felt it would increase our euthanasia of large dogs. Since we remodeled this space, we have greatly improved the quality of care of small dogs, have not seen an increase in euthanasia and have actually converted our former small dog room into a spacious room for cats.
I also worked closely with Dr. Robertson to revise our cleaning and feeding protocols for our shelter animals. She connected us with the newest cleaning products in the field that we tested and evaluated. From those, we selected Accel which we now use for all of our cleaning, including cleaning after any animals with parvo or panleukopenia. This product has sigificantly improved our cleaning procedures. Dr. Robertson also worked with me to revise our feeding protocols to reduce the amount of food we were wasting and better meet the nutritional needs of the animals.
Dr. Robertson has also provided Oakland Animal Services with help on multiple criminal animal abuse and neglect cases. She examined the animals in these cases and wrote up examinations and summaries that were critical evidence to get these cases charged and prosecuted. For example, we had a case of a woman who tortured more than 11 cats. Dr. Robertson wrote up a summary of all of the veterinary findings in the case that helped convince the judge that the cats were purposefully injured which lead to her felony conviction. We had another case where a man beat a dog with an ax. When the dog was brought to the Shelter after the incident, I was surprised to not see any immediate injuries on the dog and the first veterinary report stated that the dog was basically uninjured. However, I had seen the video of the dog’s beating and could not imagine that the dog was not hurt. I called Dr. Robertson and we came up with a plan to shave the dog. When we shaved him, we discovered multiple large contusions. This discovery was absolutley essential to change this case from a misdemeanor to a felony animal conviction.
I would highly recommend Dr. Robertson to any animal shelter administrator or veterinarian who wants expert support to turn their shelter into a model for animal care and population health and to increase the number of animal abuse and neglect cases they successfully charge.