Karen Overall - Manual Of Clinical Behavioral Medicine for Dogs and Cats

Dr. Karen L. Overall holds BA, MA, and VMD degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She did her residency training in veterinary behavioral medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and is a Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Behaviorists (DACVB). Dr. Overall is also certified by the Animal Behavior Society as an Applied Animal Behaviorist (CAAB). She has served for more than 20 years on the faculties of both the veterinary and medical schools at the University of Pennsylvania where she has taught undergraduates, graduate students, and professional students with great joy and to rave reviews, and she ran the Behavior Clinic at Penn Vet for more than a dozen years.

Dr. Overall has given hundreds of national and international presentations and short courses and is the author of over 100 scholarly publications, dozens of textbook chapters, and the text Clinical Behavioral Medicine for Small Animals (1997). She is the editor-in-chief for Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research (Elsevier). Dr. Overall has been named the North American Veterinary Conference (NAVC) Small Animal Speaker of the Year, has been awarded the Cat Writers Association Certificate of Excellence for The Social Cat column in Cat Fancy magazine, and in 2010 was named one of the Barks 100 Best and BrightestBark magazines list of the 100 most influential people in the dog world over the past 25 years.

Dr. Overall serves and has served on numerous governmental committees focused on canine health and behavior, including the Commonwealth of Pennsylvanias Canine Health Board, to which she was appointed by former PA Governor Rendell, and the U.S. Department of Defenses Blue Ribbon panel on caninepost-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD). She frequently consults with governments locally, nationally, and internationally about scientific, legal and welfare issues of pet dogs and behavioral assessment, welfare, and performance issues pertaining to working dogs, in which capacity she co-chaired the U.S. governments FBI Scientific Working Group on Dogs and Orthogonal Detection Methods (SWGDOG) for 7 years.

Dr. Overalls research focuses on neurobehavioral genetics of dogs, the development of normal and abnormal behaviors and how we assess behavior, especially as concerns working dogs. Her favorite collaborator is still her husband, Dr. Art Dunham, who understands how important it is to her to have a life of the mind and who shares her interests in political activism, art, classical music, and the value of travel for learning about languages, cultures, food, wine, and friendship. Having decided that the carrying capacity of their canine household was four dogs, they continue to live with four much loved, rescue Australian shepherds in a shifting array necessitated by the unfortunate disparities between human and canine demographics.