Speaker Bios

Dr. Karen L. Overall has BA, MA and VMD degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She did her residency training in veterinary behavioural medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and is a Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Behaviourists (DACVB). Dr. Overall ran the Behavior Clinic at Penn Vet for more than a dozen years.  She has also served on the faculty of Penn Med.  Dr. Overall is a Professor of Behavioural Medicine at Atlantic Veterinary College, UPEI and lectures at veterinary schools world-wide. 

Dr. Overall the author of hundreds of scholarly publications, textbook chapters, commentaries, et cetera and the texts Clinical Behavioural Medicine for Small Animals (1997; Elsevier) and Manual of Clinical Behavioural Medicine for Dogs and Cats (2013; Elsevier) and of the DVD, Humane Behavioural Care for Dogs: Problem Prevention and Treatment (2013; Elsevier). She is the editor-in-chief for Journal of Veterinary Behaviour: Clinical Applications and Research (Elsevier). 

In addition to having given hundreds of lectures to various associations world-wide, Dr. Overall frequently consults for welfare groups, governments, the entire range of working dog organizations and pharmaceutical companies.

Dr. Overall has been named the North American Veterinary Conference (NAVC) Small Animal Speaker of the Year and was named one of the The Bark’s 100 Best and Brightest - Bark Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the dog world over the past 25 years.

Dr. Overall’s research focuses on neurobehavioural genetics of dogs, the development of normal and abnormal behaviours especially with respect to early experience, assessment of behaviour, with an emphasis on working dogs, truly humane routine behavioural care and psychopharmacology.