Dr. Patronek is currently working as an independent consultant. In the past, he has worked in private practice and shelter medicine, among others. Dr. Patronek is the former Vice President of Animal Welfare at the Animal Rescue League of Boston, where he helped develop the Center for Shelter Dogs. He was a founding board member of the Association of Shelter Veterinarians and the Massachusetts Animal Coalition. Dr. Patronek is a former scientific advisor to the National Council for Pet Population Study and Policy. He was also the first Agnes Varis University Chair in Science and Society at Tufts University and the second Director of the Tufts Center for Animals and Public Policy. Dr. Patronek established the interdisciplinary Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium (HARC) at Tufts, the work of which was instrumental in the listing of animal hoarding under the criteria for the new hoarding disorder in DSM-5 (Diagnostics and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders).
Dr. Patronek has published many journal articles on the topics of epidemiology, animal sheltering, animal hoarding, animal welfare, and pet populations, among others. He has also edited books and book chapters, including the Guidelines for Standards of Care in Animal Shelters. In 2015, Dr. Patronek and two colleagues completed Animal Maltreatment: Forensic Mental Health Issues and Evaluations, the first book to provide an overview of animal maltreatment as a legal, clinical, and forensic issue.
Dr. Patronek earned his Veterinary Medical Doctor from the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine. He obtained his PhD in Epidemiology at Purdue University where he was one of the first scientists to study pet relinquishment to shelters
Dr. Patronek brings his experience in epidemiology, animal sheltering and animal welfare to National Canine Research Council, where he has been a Policy and Research Consultant since 2014.
To best understand this article in the context of the behavior evaluation literature, please see National Canine Research Council’s complete analysis here. Article citation: Patronek, G.J.,
Summary and Analysis: This paper is included because it comprehensively evaluates every study to date that has made validity, and/or reliability, and/or predictive ability claims about animal shelter canine behavior evaluations.
This study examined the accuracy of reports on nonclinical issues (e.g., dog behavior) in published papers on dog bite injuries authored by human health care professionals.
Using a detailed hypothetical with statistics drawn from the canine literature, the authors explain why behavior evaluations are “no better than flipping a coin.”
This paper covers a 10-year period (2000-2009) of all DBRFs across the entire U.S., and employs the most comprehensive methodology and scope in the literature.