Meet the Student

Some people choose veterinary medicine. However, I believe for some people, veterinary medicine chose them. I think I am one of those people. Something in me recognized by passion early and spent my life arranging everything else around it.

I have always believed that I was put on this earth to serve animals. Not in a passive, incidental way, not as a hobby or a side interest, but as a vocation, in the oldest sense of that word. A calling. The kind of thing you don't decide so much as discover, and then spend the rest of your life trying to be worthy of.

At Duke, I built a degree that could hold that calling seriously. My self-designed B.S. in Anthrozoology of Companion Animals drew from evolutionary biology, cultural anthropology, animal cognition, and veterinary medicine, and asked a question I genuinely didn't know the answer to: what does the human-companion animal relationship actually consist of, and what does understanding it require of us? I wanted to bring the same rigor to the human-dog bond that scientists bring to any complex biological and social system: to treat it as something worth studying carefully, not just celebrating sentimentally.

That work took many forms. I spent years as Lab Coordinator at the Duke Canine Cognition Center, contributing to NIH-funded research on canine cognition under Dr. Brian Hare. I spent over 1000+ combined clinical, research and animal experience hours. I’ve learned that caring for animals is a practice in humility: in meeting animals where they are, on their terms, in conditions that don't always cooperate. I accumulated certifications in Fear Free handling, Pet CPR and First Aid, Veterinary Assisting and because I believe that caring for animals well is a discipline, not just a disposition.

And I served as president of Duke Puppy Kindergarten, a program I helped bring back to life after it had fallen dormant as its 5 year NIH funding ended, and it changed me more than I expected. The work was early socialization: getting future service dogs through a critical developmental window with positive experiences, minimal stress, and a foundation of trust. As president during its revival as a Student-led and Student-funded organization at Duke, I lead the rebuilding of the program from the ground up: recruiting and training student volunteers in low-stress handling techniques, developing curriculum, and ensuring that every interaction these puppies had with people was intentional, gentle, and welfare-forward.We trained student volunteers in low-stress handling.

The thing I kept noticing in Puppy Kindergarten, and then in my research, and then in every clinical and field setting I entered, is this: the bond between a human and their animal is not a fixed thing. It is made, and remade, in thousands of small interactions. It can be deepened or damaged by how we handle an animal at six weeks old, by how we walk them at six years old, by whether the veterinarian they see is someone who understands that treating the patient also means tending to the relationship.

That is what I want to do. I want to practice veterinary medicine that takes the human-animal bond seriously not just as backdrop but as clinical context; one that understands the owner in the room as part of the equation, that sees behavior and communication and relational history as medically relevant information. My thesis found that attachment and attunement are measurably distinct: that loving a dog and moving in sync with a dog are different things, and that the difference matters. I want to build a career on the implications of that finding.

I graduated with Highest Distinction. I am in my gap year now, continuing to build clinical hours and preparing vet school applications. I am also expanding my distinction thesis, working towards publication with a larger sample size and more predictive power. I am ready, in the way that only years of preparation make you ready, for what comes next.

This site is the record of how I got here. I hope it tells the whole story.