I’ve been lucky enough to write and publish three works of non-fiction. In my first book, Tell Me Where It Hurts, I compressed twenty-five years of veterinary experiences into twenty-four crazy hours at my place of work, Angell Animal Medical Center in Boston. In my second book, Love is the Best Medicine, I focused on two specific cases that had a huge emotional impact on the way I practice medicine. In my third book, Ever By My Side, I wrote a memoir, turning the lens inward to relive a few of the defining moments of my life in which animals took their cue, stepped up, and helped me appreciate a different perspective.

Finally, I’ve taken a leap into the world of fiction, writing my first novel, The Patron Saint of Lost Dogs. It always felt like the next logical step, a perfect opportunity to use my hilarious and heartwarming experiences with remarkable animals and their variously zany, desperate and demanding owners while bending the facts and details to fit a story I wanted to tell. Here was my chance to heighten the comedy, crank-up the drama, toss in a little romance and solve some tricky medical mysteries. For a writer like me, what could be more fun?