At the forefront of contemporary animal shelter medicine

Dr. Tanner Hernandez, medical director, Companion Animal Alliance

Tanner Hernandez never planned to become a veterinarian. Growing up on a rural Louisiana farm, he wanted to be a teacher like his mother. Now, the 2020 LSU School of Veterinary Medicine graduate is both—and more. As medical director at Companion Animal Alliance (CAA), a non-profit open-intake shelter for East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, he is a leader in contemporary shelter medicine, a profession that wasn’t fully recognized as an official veterinary specialty until March 2023 by the American Veterinary Medical Association’s American Board of Veterinary Specialties. He is one of the youngest medical directors serving one of the largest animal shelters in Louisiana.

LSU Vet Med Communications Manager Sandra Sarr spoke with Dr. Hernandez about the challenges and rewards of his work, and his vision for the future of shelter medicine.

Why shelter medicine?

I definitely didn't know that I wanted to practice shelter medicine. That's not what my plan was for my life. I had a job back home in Natchitoches, La., at a small mixed-animal practice. I met my wife during my clinical year and decided to stay in Baton Rouge. Because of COVID-19, clinics were not hiring, so I looked to see what was offered at LSU Vet Med. I knew it would give me high-quality, high-volume veterinary skills and provide exposure to many different species. I got to see all kinds of cases serving at shelters like Lafourche, West Baton Rouge, Iberville, Tangipahoa, Walker, Companion Animal Alliance (East Baton Rouge), and Dixon Correctional Institute in Jackson, La. I like being an advocate for people and animals who have no one to advocate for them. Many we serve are people who don't have good access to care. The bottom line is a lot of people can't afford basic veterinary care like vaccines, spay-neuter procedures, heartworm tests, and preventatives for their animals. 

Expanding veterinary services to serve the community 

In 2023, the East Baton Rouge Metro Council passed an ordinance that was revised by Councilman Darryl Hurst to make it possible for Companion Animal Alliance to provide members of the public care for their pets at low or no cost. Previous ordinances allowed CAA to help only those animals impounded at the shelter. Now, it's easier for us to help more pets and pet owners in underserved areas within East Baton Rouge Parish. The change makes affordable veterinary care accessible and helps keep animals in their homes.

Overcrowding in the shelter

This past year, in 2024, we took in 9,495 animals, one of our highest intake years ever. This doesn’t include TNR (trap, neuter, and release) Sundays we do for community cats, surgeries on about 80 extra cats per month. CAA was designed to take in around 7,000 animals a year when the building was erected in 2018. During our heaviest intake, we have to temporarily house animals in kennels in hallways and in overflow kennels outdoors, something we don’t want to do. At times like these, we put out emergency appeals for national transports and fosters. Transports are extremely competitive, so we often rely heavily on our foster base. We’ve been fortunate to have lots of community support, often clearing out the shelter prior to large disasters. 

Stemming the tide, a strategic approach

By running reports on parish zip codes, we can focus on serving those areas from where we receive the most animals. When our Pets for Life program started, the 70805 zip code was where most of our intake came from, and it correlated with high poverty rates. When you overlay that map with vet clinics, there are hardly any in the low-income areas. If nobody else fills the need, we need to do it.  

The best way to stem the tide of unwanted pets in shelters is to build a rapport with the community. People need to know that you're there to help their pets stay healthy. It’s important to advocate for legislation that promotes animal welfare, and that gets enforced. Louisiana has a long way to go when it comes to animal welfare laws, but we are making strides every day to improve the lives of animals on a legislative level. I serve on the legislative committee of the Louisiana Veterinary Medical Association, and we deal with some of these issues. Law enforcement agencies typically handle animal cruelty and neglect calls when there's no animal control agency, but they often have other priorities. I have seen countless cases of extreme emaciation, chronic conditions unaddressed, and animals that have never been socialized. These animals have taught me that there are so many worse things than death. 

Day in the life of CAA’s medical director

In the morning when I arrive at the shelter, I begin by walking the entire shelter seeing every animal in our care with walk-by kennel exams. Our daily population typically remains around 200 dogs and 50-100 cats on-site. I mark down animals that need medications or behavior modifiers and then move on to our more involved cases identified as needing more in-depth diagnostics (x-rays, bloodwork, orthopedic exams, etc.). While we are maintaining our in-house population, I also manage any emergency cases the shelter sees. Commonly these are animals in our foster care system, recently adopted animals, or animals being picked up by animal control that are in dire need of attention. On top of these responsibilities, I have to manage a team of veterinary technicians and veterinarians, while still contributing to my upper management role in the shelter. Recently, I was able to hire a clinic manager, a veterinary intern, and have continued to receive support from LSU’s Community Outreach and Shelter Medicine Departments making these tasks more doable. My job has a lot of moving parts, and I have to be good at a lot of different things. Veterinarians are the backbone of improving things in shelters, and so I try to do my best each day that I am at work.

Making treatment decisions with limited resources

The kind of medicine I practice involves a spectrum of care approach, offering a range of choices to clients. The shelter has limited resources, so I take a problem and decide what is the best treatment option for the animal and our budget. We have to be able to treat the population as well as pay our staff. The animal’s quality of life is always the first priority when I make decisions.

Spectrum of care

Coming from a shelter med background, I'm excited about the spectrum of care approach offering treatment options at different cost levels. Just because you can't afford a $3,000 treatment doesn't mean you're a bad pet owner. It just means that you're not a pet owner that can provide that. So, there must be ways to get other treatment options that can still provide your animal with a good quality of life. There is always a gold standard of treatment, but when owners cannot afford this treatment, we follow our veterinary oath and figure out a way to get the animal care within the owner’s capacity. This tests our creativity as veterinarians. At CAA, we don’t believe that pet ownership is just for certain people. Every person, regardless of income, should be able to have companionship with an animal if they want it, but we have to be there to support them at the level of care they can provide.  

 No-kill shelters and save rates

There’s a lot of talk about save rates and no-kill shelters. Focusing on euthanasia rates is not a fair way to think about shelter medicine. Those of us in this profession want to do what's best for the animals, and sometimes that is euthanasia when it will relieve physical and/or mental suffering. We see animals that sit in the shelter for a very long time lose their mind, no matter how many behavior modifiers, enrichment, foster homes, and walks we provide. Those are the hardest euthanasias, the ones that are behavior related because nobody's choosing them no matter what we do to network them or try to get them out. A lot of behavior problems would be solved if they were in a home with a normal routine. We do what's right for that animal—even when it affects our euthanasia rates.

When euthanasia is the most compassionate option

I can’t think of anything worse than to be in constant pain while everything I’ve been given is not working and I can't get better. We resort to humane euthanasia when nothing else will work or when we don't have the capacity to provide what the animal needs. None of us get into the profession to euthanize animals, but we did get into the profession to ensure animal welfare is protected. Animals must have access to appropriate care, and when this cannot be provided, we must do what’s needed to end suffering. 

When going the extra mile is the way to go

Yes, it’s true that I’m known for going to bat for animals. LSU called me about a paralyzed cat brought in by a Good Samaritan. I told LSU I didn’t know if we'd be able to support the extensive case at CAA but I said they could send him over. When we got him, he couldn't use his back legs, yet he was still super happy. I moved forward with taking X-rays, which showed he had been shot, and a pellet was lodged in his spinal cord. I thought he’d have to be euthanized. But he had a will to live. We named him Hermie. I took him to my house and cared for him for months. He ended up going to Idaho to a cat rescue that fitted him for mobility wheels. He made friends with an old dog that lived outside their cat room. He has a very good life at the sanctuary.

Lives in our hands

The save rates in shelters have gotten better because vets are in the shelters. But most shelters in the U.S. do not have a veterinarian on staff. A contributing factor is the debt-to-income ratio for new graduates. If you become a shelter vet for a private non-profit or a state-owned shelter, you are taking a pay cut. Another factor is that smaller shelters don't have certified euthanasia technicians, so the burden of having to euthanize animals falls on the veterinarian. It is stressful to be the decision maker and the one performing the euthanasia. At CAA, vets don't have to bear that burden alone. Even if euthanasia is the best decision for the animal, it is still going to weigh on me. Finding outlets, cooking and reading, have helped.  If I've had a really bad day, I'll stop on the way home to pick up something to cook and sometimes I invite my staff over. Shelter medicine definitely takes a toll on everybody that's in it, and so we have to know when it is time to take a break.

Some are made for this job

I never go to a vet conference and hear people say, ‘Oh my gosh, I really want your job!’ Everybody says, ‘I can't believe you do all of that.’ I really think that some people are made for it, and some people are not. I love my work because I never have to question if I'm making a difference. Whether I show up and I see our in-house animals or if I’m out in the community giving people's pets rabies shots, I'm always making an impact. At CAA, we provide a service to the public, and it’s incredibly rewarding.  

Access to care, expanding to meet needs

We are so excited to see the expansion of CAA into a better developed Access to Care department. Care is getting more expensive, and CAA’s Pets for Life, a program within our Access to Care Department, aims to keep pets and people together in underserved areas in East Baton Rouge Parish. Staff members use connections made in the community to identify families in need of vet care and then coordinate with my CAA medical team on scheduling services in the mobile clinic or at CAA. Once the animals are on the veterinary care schedule, I either directly provide or oversee the care of all animals sent to us. It can be intimidating going into communities that are in rougher parts of town, but providing these services has taught me that people welcome people trying to help their animals. The sense of community and gratitude is overwhelming. Early in 2025, while out in the community setting up our mobile clinic, a guy drove by and said, ‘Miss Paula (CAA Director of Access to Care), you've been doing this for a long time. You got my dog neutered six years ago.’ That’s the presence you have to have to help turn the tide. Backyard breeding is a really rough thing that we have to figure out to address pet overpopulation. You're not even going to see the backyard unless you establish a relationship with the person first. You have to gain their trust to be effective.  

Communication matters

The ability to effectively communicate is important in my work. I grew up in rural North Louisiana which taught me how to have a conversation with anybody. When the CAA team goes out for wellness clinics, we meet people who don't know what they need for their animal. We don’t judge them. We see what we can do for them and communicate the best we can to them to teach them about their animals.  Every veterinarian is a teacher, and good communication is essential for effectiveness. I work really hard to try to open the lines of communication with LSU Vet Med. We talk and get on the same page, which helps us work together to help animals in our community. Also, our relationship with Baton Rouge Community College continues to grow, and we regularly receive interns and externs from their veterinary technology department. CAA is inviting others in so that we can grow to meet expanding needs. Being transparent and owning what we do is important. I'm happy to sit and talk to anyone about what we do and why. That’s what we learn to do when we're in vet school at LSU. We learn to communicate with people and figure out how to integrate shared values into what we are doing. 

Lifelines: helping the most vulnerable

We partner with Bissell Pet Foundation and its Fix the Future Program to address the lack of access to veterinary care for both shelters and pet owners. Bissell pays contracted veterinarians directly who work with approved organizations where spay-neuter is most needed. We have used their vets at CAA to help us. Now we have fewer than 40 animals in the shelter that need surgery. Most of them are waiting on stray holds to expire for us to do their surgery. I've also worked hard to create new programs. We recently got a grant to provide parvo treatment in-shelter using Elanco’s Canine Parvo Monoclonal Antibody (CPMA), which is something we had never been able to do before. Parvo was pretty much a death sentence to any puppy that came in. If they tested positive, they would immediately be euthanized, along with any member of the litter, to prevent spread. Parvo is just too dangerous of a virus to remain in the shelter. It would spread like wildfire if it remained within our walls. Through collaboration with our director team, we compromised. If an animal wasn't showing clinical signs, they had 24 hours to get placed out of the shelter. If they were showing clinical signs they had to be out by the end of the day, which gave them more time to be networked to foster care and outpatient care or for rescues to pull them and treat them. When CPMA became available, we wrote a grant to fund the drug and now, with our new treatment policy, parvovirus is not a death sentence. We are able to provide care, properly isolate, and network the animals into foster care or to rescues. Treatment decreases the course of the illness and increases the ability for rescues to treat. CAA has come so far to be able to do this instead of just having to euthanize puppies. We can give them a chance.

Decision making in treatment

We have a good number of emergency and ICU cases and do our best to manage those. Why not try? We had two puppies and found one that had passed away in the kennel. Both had terrible hookworms. One puppy was still alive but had bad anemia. We don't have a blood bank. So, I pulled one of our healthy shelter dogs, did a blood draw, and performed a blood transfusion on that puppy. I pulled out an emergency book, followed procedures, and placed a catheter in the puppy's jugular vein. He lived and our then-LSU intern, Dr. Isabel Grazian, adopted him. The blood donor, one of our long-stay dogs, got adopted, too, because he was a hero. He was one of our older pit bulls, and I picked him because I knew that if he and I saved this puppy, I could also maybe save him. I wanted to get him adopted badly. It worked.

I always try if I can: an intuitive sense 

We do not always have resources to treat involved cases, but when we do, why not try? In complex medical cases, there's a sense I can get when I feel animals don't have a will to live, when they've given up and their demeanor seems to say they feel they are at the end. It’s a feeling I get when I walk into a room and I think, “This animal is ready and doesn't want to be here anymore.” It’s sad to see your patient fade away, cases turn south no matter what you are doing. Sometimes, simply, nothing can be done. I do think I have an intuitive sense about what I need to do for animals, whether they're going to get better or not, and when it’s time to not prolong suffering. But I always try if I can, and if I have to make the call, I know that I have done my best for my patients that otherwise would have had no one there to advocate or care for them.

Becoming a leader

When I first started, I was really nervous. I was only 24 when I graduated from vet school. I wasn’t worried about being the doctor. I was worried about the management aspect because I had never managed people on this scale. I worked at a gas station and was a shift lead, but it's different managing a team of clinicians and support staff. I'm the youngest one here. I still struggle with it occasionally even though I’m confident in my ability to handle the job. Working with the other full-time veterinarian, Dr. Payne, makes the job much easier. He has been practicing for a very long time and is a wealth of knowledge. We bounce ideas off each other and work incredibly well despite the age difference. Dr. Payne is great at some surgeries and I'm really good at others. I like to fix cherry eyes, which is when the third eyelid gland pops out and you put it back into place. It’s kind of like mowing grass—you can see your progress immediately. Once you get the procedure going, suddenly, the gland just pops back where it's supposed to go. I also really like to do amputations because the relief the animal feels is immediate. 

When I started here, over 200 animals in the shelter needed surgeries. The shelter was structured to have three veterinarians on staff, but I was the only vet here for about two months. I was still doing all the student rotation teaching, sick animals, surgeries, foster and adoption concerns, and managing staff. I worked hard to get that number down with a relief vet and providing good structure. I streamlined a lot of our processes to make things faster and smoother for the team and be able to get animals out of the shelter quicker. I can see how far not only CAA has come, but how far I have come too.

I like being an advocate for animals and people who have no one to advocate for them.

His prescription for stress is food, books, and travel. He and his wife are beach people and return to where they honeymooned, Hawaii, every other year.

Last year, he taught anatomy at Baton Rouge Community College in the vet tech program and also teaches at LSU Vet Med. He works with Dog People of Livingston, a non-profit organization hosting high-volume spay and neuter events, throughout each month.

LSU Shelter Medicine Program led by Dr. Wendy Wolfson

LSU Vet Med’s Shelter Medicine Program was developed by Dr. Wendy Wolfson in 2007 using a generous grant from HSUS. Dr. Wolfson remains at the helm and the program is currently sustained by grants. The program provides a comprehensive educational experience for veterinary students in the setting of local animal shelters.

Students gain valuable veterinary medical experience by working under direct supervision of veterinary school faculty to serve the needs of un-owned pets in animal shelters. Animal shelters in south Louisiana have become the primary educational settings. The program addresses spay and neuter, management, infectious disease outbreaks, and preventative medicine for pets housed in shelter settings.

Dr. Hernandez on Wendy’s traveling medicine bag: getting maximum benefit with less

“Much of what I do now is because of Dr. Wendy Wolfson. I would not be as strong if I didn’t have her mentorship. I still ask her questions all the time. She's one of the original shelter medicine people, and she's done so much for this profession. It makes me really happy that I'm a part of her and I can carry on her work in shelter med.   

I remember going to shelters with her and she would have a big bag of medicine. We’d see cases, and she'd ask, what are you going to do? I’d say, ‘Well, let me look in your bag. I'd dig through her bag and pick out the medicines that I felt would work. Wendy’s bag reminded me of a Santa Claus bag. I'm telling you, she had all kinds of stuff in there. At Dixon Correctional Institute, they didn't have a lot of medicines because it’s a prison. So, I’d dig through the bag, offer what we had, give instructions, and check back the next week. Wendy and I still help rescue organizations who don't have regular vets. All of us shelter vets share some responsibility for these shelters and help where we can.”

Factoid: Pets for Life Through the Pets for Life program, about 1,700 spay and neuter surgeries, 14,000 veterinary services, including medications, and 3,200 animal care supplies have been provided to 2,756 people for their 5,339 pets.