Dr. Schneider bought The Family Pet in 2005 and has led it for more than twenty years. She is now transitioning toward retirement, and continues to see patients and operate while the practice settles into its next chapter.
Choosing who would take it on mattered a great deal to her. She wanted the practice to stay family-owned and local rather than pass to a national group, and she has been part of every step of the handover.
Before Ballard
Dr. Schneider graduated magna cum laude from Auburn University College of Veterinary Medicine in 1991, and has practiced in Seattle for most of the three decades since.
Early in her career she served as a Veterinary Officer in the US Army Medical Corps, reaching the rank of Major. She was Chief of Veterinary Services and Preventive Medicine at the United States Military Academy at West Point, where she was also official veterinarian to the Army mascot mules. She was later stationed in Augsburg, Germany, leading a rapidly deployable medical unit that supported troops and military working dogs.
She has worked for Hill’s Pet Nutrition, PAWS, and the Bellevue Humane Society, and spent much of her career as a relief veterinarian across some thirty Seattle-area hospitals, which gave her an unusually broad view of how different practices solve the same problems.
Her professional interests are surgery and nutrition, and she is a USDA-accredited veterinarian, qualified to issue international travel health certificates.
Outside the clinic she is a single parent to her son Carter, and shares her home with a Golden Retriever named Cowan. She skis, hikes, and gardens.