Nellie Goetz, DVM, MPH 
HSVMA ARIZONA STATE REPRESENTATIVE

Dr. Nellie Goetz is the Executive Director for Altered Tails Barnhart Clinic in Phoenix and Mesa, AZ and formerly taught Shelter Medicine at Midwestern University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. She received her DVM from The Ohio State in 2005 and her Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2017. Dr. Goetz completed a residency in Large Animal Surgery at Oregon State University in 2010. From 2012 to 2014, she was the Medical Director of the National Spay/Neuter Response Team at the Humane Alliance in Asheville, NC.

At Altered Tails, Dr. Goetz is head of an organization that is the largest non-profit spay/neuter clinic in Arizona, where more than 20,000 pets are spayed and neutered annually. Altered Tails is part of Maricopa County’s Companion Animal Alliance that, along with other members such as Maricopa County Animal Care and Control and Arizona Humane Society, have helped reduce companion animal euthanasia in Maricopa county by 87% from 2012–2017. Dr. Goetz is a member of the Development Committee for the Association of Shelter Veterinarians, the Veterinary Special Interest Group of the American Public Health Association and an Advisory Council member for the Native America Humane Society.

Dr. Goetz and her husband (also a shelter veterinarian) share their lives with an assortment of cats, dogs, and two guinea pigs named Grace Potter and Jean Luc Picard. She enjoys traveling with her husband, cooking, gardening, and identifying the various Arizona desert wildlife that live in the backyard.

To contact an HSVMA State Representative, please email [email protected].