With this first edition of *Infectious Disease Management in Animal Shelters* the animal sheltering community has received a great gift---practical infectious disease management information focused on the unique environment of the animal shelter. The editors are well known in the sheltering community and contributing authors are well respected experts giving depth to the work. The intent was to provide practical, detailed information on animal shelter disease prevention, control, management and mitigation including risk assessment, treatment, adoption considerations and client education. They have succeeded in bringing together this much needed information in one volume that will undoubtedly be of great use to those working in animal shelters.

The book contains thorough introductory chapters on wellness, (a term which expands on the general notion of health to include physical, behavioral and environmental aspects of health and well-being) outbreak management, and sanitation. A chapter on necropsy techniques provides very practical instruction on the animal necropsy with additional techniques for common shelter diseases. Instruction on head removal for rabies evaluation would have been a welcome addition. Well written chapters on the diseases of concern to shelters include: feline upper respiratory disease, canine kennel cough complex, canine distemper virus, canine influenza, feline panleukopenia, canine parvovirus and coronavirus, bacterial and protozoal gastrointestinal diseases, ectoparasites, rabies, feline leukemia virus, feline immunodeficiency virus, feline infectious peritonitis, heartworm, vector-borne diseases and zoonoses. The chapter on vaccination and immunity answers the myriad of common questions animal shelters tend to have on this complicated topic. Both the vaccination and immunity chapter, as well as the wellness chapter have tables describing the core shelter vaccines. These 2 chapters present conflicting recommendations with regard to age at first vaccination and the necessity of revaccination for *Bordetella.* The chapter on dermatophytosis is well written and focuses on diagnosis and management in a shelter setting. Color photographs (instead of black and white) would have been a nice addition to the book, especially in this chapter. The chapter on internal parasites is an excellent reference. It might have made more sense to organize the chapter from most common to least common shelter parasites for simplicity and ease of understanding. The chapter on pharmacology is interesting reading but much of the information is either too academic or too general to be of great practical use to shelter veterinarians. Although education and training were mentioned in several chapters, an additional chapter on shelter education with guidelines for training shelter workers and volunteers would be a great benefit for the readers and users of this book.

This book comes very highly recommended and is well worth the price. If it had been around when I was a practicing shelter veterinarian it would have been dog eared, stained and well worn from constant use.
