Vet advocates for pets - in their home and in the House

Jennifer Muller is an award-winning veterinarian who makes house calls and legislative policy. A kind of house-pet ambassador without portfolio, waiting room, or office staff, but well equipped with flea preventive and powerful friends in Harrisburg and Washington.

Her career was not inevitable.

The daughter of a math teacher and a stockbroker, Muller grew up in a bedroom suburb of New York City. She studied hard, got into Brown, majored in American civilization, and spent a semester in Botswana studying wildlife. This segued nicely into her job as a White House intern under President Bill Clinton.

After graduating from college with honors, Muller became a domestic-policy adviser to Al Gore. She might have stayed in government, but when George W. Bush took office and the political universe went antipodal, Muller, then 28, quit D.C. and moved to Los Angeles to become a screenwriter.

One day in 2001, when she was in Laurel Canyon Park walking her mutts Izzie and Goldie (which she had rescued as scrawny strays under a stoop back in Washington), she stumbled upon her true calling.

She can't remember what prompted the conversation or whom she was talking to, but she does remember what the person said: "You should do in life what you find yourself doing in your free time."

To make a long story short, she graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinarian Medicine in 2007. After working for a small private practice for a year, she decided to set out on her own. She has a cousin in Key West who does solely house calls. The model, she thought, would work well in Philadelphia.

"I like the idea of having closer relationships with people," she says. "Instead of 15-minute appointments, always rushing, this just seemed like a better way. The animals are more relaxed."

She put signs up in the High Point Cafe and Weaver's Way Co-op in Mount Airy, and through word of mouth, her practice grew. She estimates that she now has more than 100 clients.

On a weekday afternoon at the end of February, Muller pulls into a driveway in Chestnut Hill, parks her Chevy Trailblazer, and opens the trunk. From a block of metal drawers, she removes syringes and medicines and packs them into an Igloo cooler. She leaves her portable blood-analyzing machine behind, but tucks her MacBook under her arm.

Encumbered by the equipment, she maneuvers carefully around frozen droppings in the snow and arrives, mission accomplished, at the side door, where she's greeted by two barking black Labs and their owner, Gabrielle Jones, a 31-year-old anthropologist at Penn.

"Sorry," Jones says, "I tried to clean up the yard."

"That's OK!" Muller assures her. "I get to see his stool is normal."

Muller kneels to nuzzle the dogs. Jack, 101/2, just had a hip replacement and is feeling fine. But Seamus, 9, who has had several surgeries for disk problems in his back and neck, has been complaining of pain and incontinence. He growls crankily when the doctor touches him. She watches him get back to his feet and limp over to a box of toys, fetch a squeaky doll, and lumber into one of the dog beds in the living room.

"It's hard to evaluate pain with Seamus because he's always miserable," Muller says.

Her stethoscope is draped around her neck; her white coat is a comfortable size too big. She's wearing pearl earrings, jeans, and sturdy shoes, and has pulled her dark hair back in a practical ponytail. The small scar on her right hand is still pink, a gift from a cat she'd examined the week before.

During her last visit with Seamus, she had advised Jones to take the dog off the anti-inflammatories he'd been taking so she could better identify the source of his current problems. The two women discuss treatment options. Steroids. An MRI. Perhaps another operation.

"If it's a degenerative myelopathy, it won't respond to steroids," Muller says. "He may have multiple chronic disks. Unfortunately, in older dogs, surgery is not as successful. But the MRI is going to offer a wealth of information."

Jones will have to take the dog to a veterinary hospital because Muller does not do surgery and has no access to high-tech equipment.

"So, should we give you a call in a few days?"

"Yes," Muller says, sitting down at the kitchen table with her Mac to enter notes in Seamus' chart and write up the invoice. "I'm price-matching the Rimadyl to PetMeds," she tells Jones, then gives her the total for the visit, $65.

She packs up her stuff and heads for the door, when Jones remembers something she meant to say. "Gregory told me you won some kind of award recently?"

Muller smiles, flattered. "I've been chair of the veterinary health board, and I got a couple of awards."

"Very cool," says Jones.

In January at the North American Veterinary Conference in Orlando, Muller was named Veterinary Advocate of the Year by the Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association. Last month, at a black-tie event connected to the Westminster Dog Show in New York, she was honored as Veterinarian of the Year by a veterinary drug company and a publishing house specializing in animal hobbies and industry.

The attention, she explains, comes from her work helping to craft a new law in Pennsylvania imposing stricter standards on commercial puppy-breeding. In 2006, Gov. Rendell appointed her to the advisory board that made recommendations for the new legislation, and in October 2008, he named her chairwoman of the Pennsylvania Canine Health Board, which continues to draft new regulations.

"She has been incredible," says Marsha Perelman, chairwoman of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, who has served with Muller on both boards. In drafting proposed legislation, Perelman says, Muller - in addition to her medical knowledge about proper temperatures for adult dogs and puppies and other health concerns - "knew how extraordinarily important wording was, the impact of a misplaced comma or a single word. . . . She was also very good in making all of us think about how to structure our requests, leaving room to negotiate."

Muller now takes care of Perelman's dogs.

The 36-year-old vet came to the governor's attention several years ago through her then-boyfriend, Todd Bernstein, a political and social activist, who, along with former Pa. Sen. Harris Wofford, helped create the national Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service. Muller and Bernstein had met online in 2006. They were married last year on a yacht in St. John's. Thursday is their first anniversary.

In her speeches at the awards ceremonies, Muller summed up the celestial aligning of her professional spheres.

"I said that one of the reasons I decided to become a vet was not just to treat animals, but to apply my policy experience to help animals on a larger scale. And I said: Thank you for having me."

Contact staff writer Melissa Dribben at 215-854-2590 or mdribben@phillynews.com.