In addition to her human kids, Kodiak resident Malisa Levenson said she’s mom to three cats, three dogs, three horses and about forty chickens. The dogs, cats and chickens are pretty low maintenance, mostly.
“Except one of them happened to steal a little jar of Nutella,” she said. “I’m like, ‘how did you get the top off of it, it's a screw-on lid?’”
But the horses are a different story. Levenson said one of her horses has had two run-ins this year with colic, an abdominal condition that can be fatal.
The first time, they were competing at the Alaska State Fair in Palmer, and a veterinarian was nearby. But the second time, they were back home. And there is no full-time horse vet in Kodiak.
Levenson and a friend saved the horse by walking her around and forcing her to eat an electrolyte paste. But if they hadn’t been prepared with the right medicine, or if the horse’s condition had been worse, things could have gone very differently.
Like other animal owners in Alaska, Levenson has had to learn to be resourceful. Of the hundreds of cities, towns, and villages in Alaska, just a handful have more than one vet clinic, and many don’t have a permanent clinic at all.
For those on the road system, the nearest vet clinic could be hours away. And for those off of it, owners might have to take their animal on a boat or a plane. While there’s hope that things may be getting better, veterinarians and pet owners across the state say they’re still struggling to get the resources they need.
Vet retention is a chronic issue
Alaskans have cared for and relied on dogs since time immemorial. And animals loom large in the state’s public image today, from the iconic Iditarod sled dog race to a cat named Stubbs serving as Talkeetna’s honorary mayor.
“Whether you are on the road system or off the road system, for a lot of people, their animal is one of their closest tethers to reality,” said Josh Link, a veterinarian who operates a mobile clinic around Salcha in Interior Alaska.
But Alaska’s size means vet clinics are often very far apart. And Link said it’s also tough to keep veterinarians in Alaska.
“People get here, they think it's beautiful,” he said. “They might stay a year or two, but getting people to actually stick and practice here has always been a chronic issue for the state.”
Link said Alaska poses unique challenges to vets coming from elsewhere. In the Lower 48, vets might be able to refer patients to nearby specialists or offer treatment for just one type of animal. In Alaska, Link said specialists are rare, and vets have to treat all types of animals.
And they can’t just specialize in one type of medicine: they have to know how to do it all. Take Melissa Smith. Smith has been a veterinarian at the Kodiak Veterinary Clinic for more than fifteen years.
“We're the only clinic, so they have no place else to go,” she said. “We don't want to turn people away because we're the only place they can go.”
Smith doesn’t usually treat horses or other large animals, but she’ll treat just about anything else. Right now, she’s one of only two vets at the clinic, which serves 12,000 residents spread across an area about the size of Connecticut.
Smith said she typically works 9-12 hours a day, and she has to be on call 24/7 for emergencies, up to three weeks at a time.
Smith said she thrives on “organized chaos,” but Kodiak is more than most vets can handle.
“I remember one in particular that she would take the emergency phone, and when it rang, she had a visceral reaction,” she said. “Like if she was out walking, she would have to stop in the bushes and throw up. Because it's just that stomach-in-your-throat feeling of, you know that something bad is happening, and you're the one responsible to try to fix it.”
The other veterinarian at Kodiak’s clinic is leaving this month, which means Smith will soon have that emergency phone all of the time.
And large animals like Levenson’s horses still won’t have any permanent care. An application the state sent to the USDA for help recruiting a large animal vet in Kodiak this year did not get approved.
Training new vets who want to stay in Alaska
Alaska’s lack of veterinary care has serious consequences not just for animals, but for people, too. Arleigh Reynolds, a champion sprint musher and professor emeritus at University of Alaska Fairbanks' Department of Veterinary Medicine, said human and animal health are especially interconnected in places where people rely on harvested foods for subsistence.
Reynolds said that this year alone, more than 20 people in Western Alaska were exposed to rabies, in most cases by dogs who got infected by wild animals. And Reynolds said canine diseases, like distemper, can spread back to wildlife.
“If the seals get infected by canine distemper, it's almost 100% fatal,” he said. “That puts a big risk on not just the seal population, but also food security for those communities.”
There are reasons to hope for better access to veterinary care in the future. In 2014, Reynolds founded a program at UAF aimed at training veterinarians and keeping them in Alaska.
“Before we started that program, if you had a student that wanted to become a veterinarian, the best advice we could give them would be to leave the state,” he said. “By the time they got their veterinary degree, they'd been out of the state for eight or more years, and most of them didn't come back.”
At UAF, students in the program spend their first two years in Fairbanks before finishing their instruction at Colorado State University. And the program is producing vets who opt to practice in Alaska, including Link and Kodiak’s departing veterinarian, Victoria Nelson. Nelson plans to stay on the island and fill in for Smith when she takes time off.
There are other signs of progress, too. Mat-Su College opened a program for veterinary technicians in 2024. And this summer, the Alaska Native Rural Veterinary Incorporated announced a partnership with the Alaska Federation of Natives to provide free veterinary services to 80 Tribal communities across the state.
Reynolds said that got started this July. “These programs are working, and I think that there's a pretty bright future,” he said.
But for overworked vets, like Smith in Kodiak, change might not be coming fast enough.
