Dr. Karen L. Overall has 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 behavioural medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and is a Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Behaviourists (DACVB). She ran the Behaviour Clinic at Penn Vet for more than a dozen years. Dr. Overall lectures at veterinary schools world-wide and is a Professor at Atlantic Veterinary College, UPEI. 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 texts Clinical Behavioural Medicine for Small Animals (1997; Elsevier) and Manual of Clinical Behavioural Medicine for Dogs and Cats (2013; Elsevier) and of the DVD, Humane Behavioural Care for Dogs: Problem Prevention and Treatment (2013; Elsevier). She is the editor-in-chief for Journal of Veterinary Behaviour: 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 Writer’s Association Certificate of Excellence for “The Social Cat” column in Cat Fancy Magazine, and in was named one of The Bark’s 100 Best and Brightest – Bark Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the dog world over the past 25 years.
Dr. Overall shares her life with her husband, Dr. Art Dunham, and their 4 Australian shepherds. They have been taking in rescued Aussies for more than 20 years and their dogs frequent feature in lectures and writings. They all love living on PEI and living on the beach. Dr. Overall spent a lot of her childhood in Quebec and is delighted to be back in Canada. Dr. Overall’s research focuses on neurobehavioural genetics of dogs, the development of normal and abnormal behaviours especially with respect to early experience, assessment of behaviour, with an emphasis on working dogs, truly humane routine behavioural care and psychopharmacology.