Dr. Jay McDonnell joined Dogs and Cats Veterinary Referral in 2004. He received his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from the University of Missouri-Columbia (UMC) in 1990 and his Master’s degree in Veterinary Neuroanatomy in 1991 from UMC. After four years of general practice in Missouri and Oregon he began a three-year Neurology-Neurosurgery residency at Tufts University in Massachusetts becoming boarded in Neurology by the American College of Veterinary Medicine in 1998. . He was Assistant Professor of Neurology-Neurosurgery and taught in the classroom and the teaching hospital at the University of Georgia-Athens from 1997-2000. He was an invited lecturer at UMC in 1996, 1997 and 1998. In 2000, he became chief of Neurology-Neurosurgery at Tufts University establishing an active and successful Neurology Internship and Neurology-Neurosurgery Residency with Dr. Dominic Faissler. At Tufts, he helped established the in-house magnetic resonance imaging suite, a brain surgery unit and minimally-invasive CT-guided biopsy program. He has published in scientific and lay journals on topics as diverse as chemotherapy in veterinary neurology, brain and spinal cord cancer, head trauma, deafness, seizures, cerebrospinal fluid techniques and feline neurology topics. He has lectured locally, nationally and internationally on veterinary neurology-neurosurgery subjects. He is currently an assistant Clinical Professor of Neurology-Neuroanatomy at Tufts University.

Dr. Snakard graduated cum laude from Villanova University in 1992 with a Bachelor of Science Degree. She headed south to attend the College of Veterinary Medicine at Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama and graduated magna cum laude in 1996. She completed a general internship at the Animal Medical Center in New York City, NY in 1997 followed by a surgical internship at the Dallas Veterinary Surgical Center in Texas. In 2001, she completed a three year residency in small animal surgery at Texas A&M University and joined a large veterinary referral hospital in Virginia in 2001. She passed the board certification examination to become a diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Surgeons. Prior to joining Dogs and Cats Veterinary Referral, she was an associate with a large veterinary referral hospital in Los Angeles, California.
In April of 2006, Auburn University’s College of Veterinary Medicine honored Dr. Snakard with the Class of 1996 Young Achievers Award. Although she enjoys all aspect of veterinary surgery, her special interests are minimally invasive thoracic and abdominal surgery and plastic and reconstructive soft tissue and orthopedic surgery.