Victoria Lea Voith

Dr. Voith is a Professor of Animal Behavior at Western University College of Veterinary Medicine. She has varied experience in research, private practice, behavior consulting, teaching, and animal shelter veterinary care.

Dr. Voith is a Charter Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Behaviorists (DACVB), and is one of the pioneer researchers and clinicians in the fields of applied animal and veterinary medical behavior. Previously, she has also served as the President of the American Veterinary Ethology Society, the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior and the American Association of Human-Animal Bond Veterinarians. In the early 1980’s, she established the first residency in Animal Behavior at a veterinary school, the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Voith has published numerous journal articles and chapters on animal behavior and the human-animal bond, and most recently has led research on visual breed identification of dogs. 

Dr. Voith earned a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from the College of Veterinary Medicine at The Ohio State University. She also earned a Masters of Science in Veterinary Clinical Sciences, and a Masters of Arts in Experimental and Comparative Psychology from The Ohio State University, and a Doctorate in Neuroanatomy / Animal Behavior from the University of California, Davis.

Dr. Voith brings her experience in animal behavior, the human-animal bond, animal sheltering, and visual breed identification research to National Canine Research Council, where she has been an advisor since 2010.

See Dr. Voith’s 2010 video interview (right), where she describes her early research, which concludes that there is little correlation between DNA identifications and dog adoption agencies’ visual identifications of dogs of unknown parentage.