It's Not Just Puppies and Kittens: Behind the Scenes as a Small Animal Vet (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780997025781)

Dr Wixsom is the owner veterinarian of Guardian Animal Medical Center. She believes in state of the art progressive medicine/surgery and believes in educating clients. In the area, she is seen as a veterinarian who cares and where you take your pets when they are really sick. Before she was a veterinarian, she was LTJG MJ Wixsom, US Coast Guard. She was in the first class of women to graduate from the US Coast Guard Academy. As a deck watch officer and finally Commanding Officer, she did extensive law enforcement and narcotics interdiction and search and rescue. But when a 200 pound hatch broke loose and tore up her knee, a career at sea was not likely. She decided to go back to her childhood dream to be a veterinarian. The academy and the military experience left Dr Wixsom with a strong attention to duty and a duty to serve. She writes a weekly pet education column in the local Green Beacon and the neighboring Sunday Ironton Tribune. This book is from these articles. Dr Wixsom has done wildlife rehabilitation since 1989 and has had her falconry permit although she no longer finds time to have a hawk. She now spends her field time helping survey bats in abandoned mines and caves with the National Forest Service. Late summer nights can sometimes find her wading in a pond mist netting bats with the NFS. GAMC takes in puppies and kittens from dogs that the owners have spayed. They are tested, vaccinated, spayed or neutered and adopted out. GAMC has adopted as many as 70 kittens in a season. GAMC also has worked with rescue organizations. Dr Wixsom is responsible for year 2000 Millennium Meadow where 12,000 daffodils were planed in Ashland's Central Park for her Master Garden's project. Dr Wixsom is a retired sled dog vet. She served as the head vet for the Race to the Sky Sled Dog Race in Montana as her 14th year of volunteering as a sled dog vet. She has been on the Iditarod trail three times and has worked at multiple races in the US and Canada. Indeed this is the main reason that she has nine state licenses and a Certificate of Qualification for Canada. In her spare time, she homeschooled her teenage year old daughter M'Kinzy (now 15 and in college) and works on her 35 year marriage to Matthew Wixsom, attorney (also a former Coast Guard officer). She is writing a book on her time in the first class of women at CGA.