Colorado State University Veterinary Teaching Hospital: Comprehensive Care, Education, and Innovation

The Colorado State University (CSU) Veterinary Health System stands as a leading referral center in the Rocky Mountain Region, providing advanced veterinary medicine and compassionate care for a diverse range of animals. As a teaching hospital, it plays a crucial role in educating future veterinarians while delivering comprehensive services to patients.

Comprehensive Veterinary Care

The CSU Veterinary Teaching Hospital offers expertise in over 25 veterinary specialties, catering to dogs, cats, exotic pets, horses, and farm animals. The hospital is committed to providing comprehensive veterinary care to patients while educating our veterinary students, interns, and residents. This comprehensive care takes time, but you can feel confident that everyone caring for your pet is qualified.

Expert Team

The team caring for pets at CSU combines years of collective knowledge and expertise. This includes:

Faculty Veterinarians: Doctors of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) who see clinical patients at the Veterinary Teaching Hospital.
Board-Certified Veterinary Specialists: Specialists have completed an additional three to five years of training and have passed rigorous examinations to achieve certification, similar to their human medical counterparts.
Registered Veterinary Technicians (RVTs): RVTs are highly trained and experienced professionals who are certified with the state and registered with the Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA). They attend annual education courses to build and maintain their skills.
Veterinary Assistants: Veterinary assistants support and assist our medical teams with many aspects of client and patient care such as client communication and education, performing vitals, treatments, patient restraint, prescriptions, and also clerical duties.
Interns: DVMs who are advancing their training through a one-year internship.
Fourth-Year Students: The students on your care team are finishing their final year of veterinary school. Veterinarians can practice as soon as they graduate and pass appropriate licensing examinations.

Clinical Trials

Consider referring a client to one of our ongoing clinical trials. These trials help our doctors investigate methods to improve detection and treatment of pet illnesses, as well as improve the quality of care each patient receives.

Financial Information

The Veterinary Teaching Hospital is regulated by a state "fair competition" clause, and our fees are comparable to those of regional specialty private clinics. Payment is required at the time of service. 80% of the low-end estimate is due prior to any services being provided over $250, and final payment is due at the time of discharge. Additional charges or credits may be applied up to seven (7) days after dismissal. You will then receive a revised invoice and the additional charges will be due at time of receipt. To cover the cost of thoroughly cleaning and sanitizing spaces throughout the hospital - including hazardous material disposal and biohazard surveillance and response - a $15 environmental cleaning and safety fee is charged for each visit. The Veterinary Teaching Hospital accepts cash, single-party checks, VISA, MasterCard, Discover, American Express, and CareCredit. We do not offer payment plans; speak to your veterinarian about financial hardships you may experience paying for services. Payment must be made at time of service.

Flint Animal Cancer Center

One in four dogs and one in five cats will develop cancer in their lifetimes. The Flint Animal Cancer Center at Colorado State University offers a unique combination of advanced cancer diagnostic services, innovative treatment options, and compassionate care for dogs, cats, and other pets with cancer. As a patient, your pet will benefit from a comprehensive assessment provided by an expert, multidisciplinary team, including medical, surgical, and radiation oncologists. Our goal is to make sure that you are fully informed about your pet’s diagnosis and treatment options, so you are comfortable asking questions and making decisions. You are a key member of your pet’s cancer care-giving team.

Research and Advancement

Treating cancer is not enough. We’re on a mission to conquer cancer in all species and, to make this a reality, we have to start at the cellular level. The continued support of the Ann and Lawrence G. Laiks Canine Cancer Fund has allowed the Flint Animal Cancer Center to conduct impactful research that promises to make a big difference for dogs fighting cancer.

The Flint Animal Cancer Center (FACC) received a $100,000 grant investment from national nonprofit Petco Love in support of their lifesaving work for pets in Northern Colorado. Petco Love is a national nonprofit leading change for pets by harnessing the power of love to make communities and pet families closer, stronger, and healthier.

If your pet is diagnosed with cancer, the first thing you will do is find the best treatment options for your best friend. For many, the best option is a clinical trial. Clinical trials provide access to new, cutting-edge treatments that will offer your pet a fighting chance.

Humane Colorado Veterinary Hospital at CSU Spur

Humane Colorado Veterinary Hospital at CSU Spur is an active hospital providing pre-scheduled appointments of urgent care services for pets of families who otherwise wouldn’t have access to veterinary care. In January 2022, Humane Colorado opened its doors even wider by launching a new veterinary hospital at CSU Spur. The services offered at the Humane Colorado Veterinary Hospital at CSU Spur benefit from the unique perspectives of student interns and recently graduated externs from CSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. Student externs participate in two-week rotations at CSU Spur and the Leslie A. Malone Center, where they assist seasoned veterinarians with various procedures and learn about animal welfare from a sheltering standpoint.

Central to Humane Colorado’s commitment to accessibility is creating an environment at CSU Spur where people can gather to learn and be inspired. Humane Colorado aims to engage the community in the essential work of veterinarians and expose young people to STEM-related careers so they can begin to envision themselves in these roles.

Humane Education

A cornerstone of Humane Colorado’s compassionate mission is engaging with youth and people from all walks of life to foster respect for animals, people, and the world we share. The organization seeks to inspire communities to appreciate the unique nature of all animals, treat them with kindness, provide for their well-being, and work together to prevent and heal their suffering. Additionally, Humane Colorado offers community pet classes that cover the basics of animal care and introductory training.

Veterinary Professional Associate (VPA) Program

Years in the making, a new master's degree in veterinary clinical care at Colorado State University has opened for applications, with a program start this fall. Colorado is the only state to create a VPA registration. Since 2021, when the idea of a midlevel practitioner began gaining traction in the United States, veterinarians have debated - often heatedly - whether the role will ease or exacerbate the challenges it is said to be designed to address, such as veterinarian shortages and the rising cost of care. Two CSU faculty are the driving force behind the new degree. Dr. Shari Lanning, an expert in online learning and designing curriculum and instruction to meet the diverse needs of all students with an interest in access-to-veterinary-care issues, is the director of the master's program. Dr. Wayne Jensen, a professor in the clinical sciences department, first proposed the degree almost 10 years ago. The conversation came amid related developments. A bill that would create the country's second VPA role is advancing through the Florida Legislature. Lincoln Memorial University in Tennessee is reviewing applications for a new master's in veterinary clinical care, a program conceived separately from Colorado's but since revamped to ensure graduates meet Colorado's VPA criteria.

Program Details

Dr. Lanning: As it stands now, the master's program is going to run on its own budget and with its own faculty and its own resources. There are areas where we can collaborate with the DVM program. CSU is reworking their veterinary school curriculum, and they're launching in the fall. Their work in developing the details of that new curriculum hasn't extended to their third year just yet, which is where we would have a lot of overlap with our fourth semester. Lanning: Application is open for fall '26. The soft close date is April 1. Who's applying? Lanning: You name it. We also have some students who are currently working in more of a mixed animal field and would really like to see a large animal master's program launched.

Addressing Veterinary Shortages

A 2006 graduate of Colorado State University's veterinary school, Dr. Lanning: Local shelters, clinics and private hospitals. Of course, with shelter medicine, we know that it is very difficult for certain shelters to find veterinarians. I've heard from a number of shelters that say, "I have had an open position for over a year. We are offering the same salary as private practice. It used to be that we had this misunderstanding that we couldn't pay as well as private practice, and that's just not the reality of it.

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Addressing Misconceptions

Lanning: I have only met with a representative of AVMA once, and that was because I reached out to them because they were going to be on campus. I thought it was a good idea to meet and actually have a discussion. You've talked about "misinformation" fueling some of the opposition. Lanning: Some of the misguidance has been from a misunderstanding of how the different levels of courses work. In undergraduate, we have 100-, 200-, 300-, 400-level courses. That's more of the technician level. Then, we have the DVM level, which is usually at the 700 level and above. The higher you go up in those levels, the higher the difficulty and the higher the competencies and objectives associated with those courses are. We've seen some misinformation about the inadequate training that could potentially be taking place within the program. When we look at a DVM program, what we see is that those students are learning all species, not just dogs and cats. Whereas with the VPA, we are focused solely on dogs and cats. With the DVM program, they need to know the gamut of all the different diseases and all the different problems that happen with all of those species. Lanning: There was a pretty heavy opposition from AVMA last year that did actually target some of the veterinary students. With that misinformation, students were pretty riled up. Wayne and I held a number of meetings with students, and one of the things that I heard time and time again was that these VPAs would basically take veterinary jobs. One student said, "Here I'm trying to learn how to do basic surgical care, and they're going to be doing a splenectomy." I said, "Whoa, wait a minute, at no point is this individual trained to do a splenectomy. We are talking about uncomplicated, routine care of animals. I think that a lot of students forget that this relationship that we are proposing with the VPA and the DVM is no different than what we see with CVTs [certified veterinary technicians] and DVMs. CVTs work under the license of a veterinarian. A VPA works under the license of a veterinarian. Lanning: It's been kind of a mixed bag, as well. I will tell you the last meeting that I had with first-year veterinary students - and keep in mind, a lot of DVM students are technicians or former technicians - was very open. I would say specifically with technicians, it's the same sort of conversation. We have talked with veterinary technicians and the local CVT group. It was a lot of clarification of why we couldn't eliminate the bachelor's requirement. That was one misconception - that we chose to require a bachelor's before going into this. A professor in the clinical sciences department at Colorado State University veterinary school, Dr. Requiring a bachelor's degree seems to be an argument for the strength of the program. Dr. Wayne Jensen: Part of the reason is, we believe this program could be a career path for technicians, so we wanted to make it open to as many technicians as possible. Originally, we thought that if we could find a way around that, if they had an associate's degree and a certain number of years of experience and could take and pass the prerequisites for the course, that would be sufficient. The current curriculum focuses on cats and dogs, and you are beginning to develop one for large animals. Lanning: One of the issues that we can see when it comes to rural communities is, if an individual's career option is DVM, that individual will leave their community for four years. The beauty of this program, and why we were so intentional about that pre-clinical portion being online, is that those individuals can stay within their community. They only need to leave technically for that fourth semester. If they have a clinical practice or shelter within their rural community that meets our expectations for what that clinical training will be, they can go back to their community and eventually work there. So, they're only gone one semester.

Salary Expectations

Lanning: Yes. Lanning: When we were creating this proposal, that's obviously a question that CSU asks … salary expectation is definitely something that they look at because they want this to be a profitable career for those individuals. Now, are there current salary numbers that we can look at? Absolutely not. So that's where we kind of ran into a little bit of issues. Jensen: Dr. Jim Lloyd, former dean at Florida and an economist, did a study where he modeled what would be the financial impact of hiring a VPA into a [3.5-veterinarian] small animal practice. He set aside, "OK, this is what they would do. They would do rechecks. They would do wellness visits." What he didn't have in there was that they would do any surgery at all. He set the salary at $100,000. You mentioned in the past that CSU may want to hire some of the graduates to work in its teaching hospital. Lanning: I could see them being hired back into the program and helping to teach future graduates. Whether they will be employed at the veterinary health system at CSU just depends on the financial needs of the hospital. The VPA students will not train within the specialty hospital. That is mostly because, based on their competencies, having training under specialists is not a necessity. These individuals will be working with DVMs and addressing spectrum-of-care issues and shortages within general practice. Jensen: I would just say that it's too early to tell. Jensen: There was a report from Gallup that was just released. It was funded by PetSmart Charities. We have this huge access-to-care issue. Part of that issue is physical. There are not enough people to deliver veterinary services. But part of it is also financial. Our prices are such that people can no longer afford our veterinary services. It's upon us as the veterinary profession to find more economical ways in the delivery of veterinary services. Is the VPA the total answer to that? No. But could it be a partial answer? Absolutely.

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