Dr. Laurie Thornton has always been an animal person—her mother swore that right after, “Congratulations, it’s a girl,” she heard, “Mom, I want a horse!” Laurie was involved in equine 4H as a kid and owned a quarter horse and a border collie. By the time she did a paper in grade school about dog training, she was hooked. During high school, she worked at a dog grooming shop as the bather—she can still bathe a dog in record time.

After graduating from the College of William and Mary with a major in biology and a minor in English, Laurie attended veterinary school at Colorado State. Summer jobs included wrangling at guest ranches, where she actually got paid for riding all day and keeping her guests on the top sides of their horses.

For the first 13 years after graduation, Laurie did largely emergency medicine and thrived on the adrenaline. Now she works daytime hours, gets more regular sleep, and pursues interests in internal medicine, acupuncture, and behavior. She also screens dogs for the hospital visitation programs at Children’s and Littleton Adventist Hospitals.

Laurie enjoys cooking and traveling, especially to beautiful places in the West where she can enjoy the outdoors with her husband and their corgis. 

“My goal in interacting with patients and clients is for the patient to believe they had a gentle petting session and the owner to believe they had a thorough and informative visit.”