Meet the Doctors: A Q&A with Dr. Colleen Cassidy
At Rainier Veterinary Hospital, our focus is and has always been providing excellent service and care to our clients and their patients. We want our veterinarians to spend as much time as possible with every patient, and truly get to know every client. But what about the reverse—you knowing us is just as important. So to help our clients get to know us, we’re running a “Meet the Doctors Series” in our new blog. We’ll chat with each of our four veterinarians, finding out more about their passions, pets, and personalities.
Today, we’re kicking off the series with Dr. Colleen Cassidy, who joined our family at Rainier Vet in August of 2015 and has been practicing since graduating from Cornell University in 2014. As is the story for most veterinarians, Dr. Cassidy wanted to work with animals her entire life, but becoming a vet wasn’t her first dream—being a mermaid was. Let’s get to the bottom of this!
How did you get into the field of veterinary medicine?
As a kid, I dreamt of being a mermaid. Seriously. But I really didn’t know what I wanted to do. I liked biology in high school, and I majored in that in college. I just knew that I wanted to work with animals. So after undergrad, I took a year off and worked on a seabird colony off the coast of Maine. The program in Isles of Shoals was part of Cornell, and it’s been going on for more than a decade. It’s a restoration program for terns because the seagulls have taken over. Our work consisted of monitoring and guarding the colony, counting their eggs and babies, and really just letting the terns do their thing.
It was a very cool experience, so when a friend of mine who was in vet school suggested becoming a vet, I embraced the idea. I would get to work with animals, and it’s such an interesting career because it’s solving puzzles. And it’s of service, which has always been important to me. So I went to school having done all of the prerequisites but never thought that that’s what I would be doing!
Now that you’ve realized this dream you didn’t know you had, what do you love most about being a vet?
Getting to work with the people as well as the animals. I love that I am connecting with the clients, and together, we’re working to help the pet. I appreciate the human-animal bond, and I try to foster that as much as possible. One of the areas I want to focus on in my career is getting to know people over time and working with long-term clients and patients—the animals I see as puppies and kittens, who I get to follow in their lives and really make a connection.
But I think it’s also important to help people in their time of need and help them feel that they’ve made the right decision. For instance, with euthanasia, which is never easy, I want to be able to connect with the client on an emotional level, discuss his or her feelings and thoughts, and together determine what is going to be best for the pet. Even if we just talk about the animal’s quality of life, and I send the client home with medication, it’s still a peaceful, Zen moment. And I hope that the clients feel they’ve gained something valuable in talking with me as well.
Do you feel that’s what separates you from other doctors, your connection with people?
Yes. One of the things I’ve always felt comfortable with is empathy and connecting with people. I try to remember the value of listening and just letting someone talk to me. Sometimes, a person just needs to say something and feel that they’ve been heard, and I like to give them that. It’s free but valuable.
What is it, then, the separates Rainier Veterinary Hospital apart from other vet clinics and hospitals?
Our roots in the community and our history in the area—the building itself is almost 100 years old! And I work with a lot of clients who have been coming here for decades. It’s very important to have those clients who are loyal and who, despite the changing faces at the clinic itself, still find us to be providing a valuable service.
Let’s get back to that mermaid thing. Who (and what) was your first pet?
I had a bunch of goldfish, so maybe that’s it. I also had a hamster named Cinnamon, who lived for about two years. And I had a cat named Prissy, who I rescued when she was about 4 years old. Prissy lived to be about 19 years old—she passed away the month before I graduated.
What’s your all-time favorite book or movie about animals?
That’s not fair; there’s too many! For movie, it’s How to Train Your Dragon. It very much celebrates the human-animal bond and how much better the two can be together. Plus, I want a dragon! And for book, it’s Wild Magic by Tamora Pierce, which is about a girl who can talk to animals and eventually learns how to turn into animals. And truthfully, that’s what I wanted to be as a kid: her. And I think I came pretty close.
