Page 32 - The Hunt - Spring 2022

LIVING
LARGE
Penn Vet New Bolton Center’s Barbara Dallap-Schaer was kid without a horse. Now she’s saving them.
BY ROGER MORRIS PHOTOS BY JIM GRAHAM
Dr. Barbara Dallap-Schaer has hosted a true menagerie of patients over her career, often at odd hours in the evening. The list includes a wallaby, a zebra, a camel and, sadly, an ailing tiger that died on the operating table. “I had
a bunch of circus people in the waiting room crying uncontrollably,” she says. “You don’t get to choose which animal shows up in the emergency room.”
Dallap-Schaer suspects that if her parents had bought her the horse she wanted as a kid, she wouldn’t have become a veterinarian. Had they done so, it might’ve satisfied her equine enthusiasm—and who knows what alternate career she would’ve pursued? Alas, her parents ignored her plea. So she sought out others who had horses to care for.
Now 53, Dallap-Schaer’s eyes light up when she thinks back to those days. Right now, she’s seated in her office at New Bolton Center, where she’s the medical director of the
University of Pennsylvania’s internationally renowned large-animal hospital. Its over 100 stalls are occupied more often than not. Its field service makes about 19,000 patient calls annually to minister to sick animals. New Bolton also serves as a campus for Penn veterinary students, employing more than 200 staff and clinicians.
Dallap-Schaer was appointed to head
the facility in 2015. She’s worked at New Bolton most of her career as a surgeon and an emergency room physician. She holds rare board certifications from both the American College of Veterinary Surgeons and the American College of Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care. As New Bolton is also a teaching hospital, Dallap-Schaer serves as professor of emergency medicine and critical care at Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine.
Those who know Dallap-Schaer well mention her intelligence and her ability
to get important things done. “She’s an extraordinary clinician, which also extends
(This page and next) Just another day on the job for Penn Vet New Bolton Center’s Dr. Barbara Dallap-Schaer.
30 THE HUNT MAGAZINE spring 2022