Wellsboro area pet parents know Dr. Kristine Shaw as a busy veterinarian with a downtown office and boarding kennels on Water Street, and as the owner of the Grand Canyon Veterinary Surgery Center on Route 6, just east of Wellsboro. For years the property was home to the SPCA, then Animal Care Sanctuary, before the Shaws bought it in 2022. The fifty-six acres include the surgery center, a beautiful guest house, and a free dog park where canines can romp, run, and make new friends.

What many people don’t know is the route Kristine took to get to where she is now. It started in Horseheads and meandered to Mansfield to Wellsboro to Boston, back to Wellsboro, then to State College to Mexico to Wellsboro to Australia—like a focused boomerang—again back to Wellsboro, where her endeavors improve the quality of life for four- and two-footed critters alike.

All in the Family and in the Community

Kristine, fifty-one, also has an active household—husband Simon, daughter Savannah, thirteen, and son Devin, eleven. They also have two girls, ages thirteen and eleven, who are long-term guests at their busy farm home near Wellsboro. That farm is a lively place with reindeer, donkeys, chickens, ducks, a Eurasier dog (a spitz type, originating in Germany), two miniature Australian shepherds, and two cats.

Like most parents of preteens and teens, Kristine and Simon are busy with their kids’ many activities, including marching band, cheerleading, and other school events. Kristine says Simon, an IT professional, now handles projects with the veterinary practice and their other properties, and many matters of the household. Since 2018, the practice has been the sole sponsor of the Laurel Festival’s Pet Parade, and also sometimes hosts a Halloween event outside the downtown office.

This past December, the Route 6 property was the site of a holiday event known as Mistletoe Farm, Kristine’s brainchild and creation envisioned and planned in her “spare time.” In a way, the idea began several years ago while she was battling breast cancer. Kristine recalls the December day when she had shaved her head because of the cancer treatments. She donned a blonde wig and then she and her daughter went downtown to see a live reindeer display in Wellsboro.

“That day, I knew I’d someday like to have reindeer,” she says. That dream came true over the past couple of years. She then created the story, now a published book, Santa & the Perilous Christmas Eve, with her son.

Kristine, who loves Christmas and the fact that Wellsboro is such a Christmas town, says that ultimately led to the idea of the Mistletoe Farm event. She even created a dozen characters, part of a program she narrated on wagon rides around the property. The visitors also got to see live reindeer, visit and have photos taken with Santa, and enjoy cocoa and cookies.

“I hope to make it an annual event, and I hope to expand it,” she says.

“We had so much fun!” says Sue Ellen Walton, from Athens, who attended with her family. “I’ll never forget my grandson giggling when he saw the reindeer. Santa did a great job, and the story and the layout of the event was beautiful. They had a great staff, too. Well done!”

The Shaws owned other properties locally, but now are focusing on the veterinary practice and kennel property downtown, the surgery center property, and their recently purchased farm near Wellsboro.

Start of a Dream

The path Kristine and Simon followed to get to where they are today had some twists and turns. For Simon, who is a Wellsboro native, it was coming back home. Kristine was born, raised, and graduated from high school in Horseheads, the youngest of three children of Aileen and the late Kerwin Playfoot. Her mom still lives in Horseheads. Kristine has a sister, Kathryn Wagner of Rochester, an engineer. Their older brother, the late Kerwin Playfoot Jr., had Down’s Syndrome and passed away when he was forty-four, while Kristine was in veterinary school in Australia.

“I wanted to be a vet from the earliest memories I have,” Kristine says. “I didn’t do well in elementary school. We didn’t talk about ADHD and those things back then, but I feel like that was me.”

When she was about five years old, Kristine went along to a vet appointment for Frisky, one of the family’s cats. The vet showed her ear mites through a microscope.

“I remember thinking that’s what I want to do,” Kristine says. “But it took me a long time to get there—a long time before I felt worthy of pursuing it.”

After graduating from high school, Kristine didn’t go to college right away. In her early twenties, she worked at the Martha Lloyd Community Residential Facility in Troy, caring for ladies with developmental disabilities. That was excellent experience in learning how to work with people. She started at Mansfield University “on a very limited part-time basis.” She took one class, college algebra, and got an A. That gave her the confidence to take more classes. Over six years, Kristine earned a bachelor’s degree in biology with a minor in chemistry from the university. That was in 2000, eight years after graduating from high school.

“I worked at the U.S. Geological Survey Northern Appalachian Research Laboratory in Asaph, and it changed my life,” says Kristine. She refers to the now-closed facility, as do most local residents as the fish lab or the fish hatchery. “It was the first job I had that was a career job that paid a little more than minimum wage.”

Then she worked for a pharmaceutical company in Boston doing research and “didn’t like it.” The city was not where she wanted to be. Kristine describes driving all night, returning to Wellsboro with her freshwater aquarium fish—a gourami, guppies, two angel fish, and molly fish—in a milk jug in the middle seat of her car. (She’d brought Shiloh, her miniature Australian shepherd, back to her parents’ home a couple of weeks earlier.) “I felt like I hadn’t seen the stars in a year,” she says.

Once back in Wellsboro, she returned to work at the fish lab and moved into a house on Woodland Avenue. Little did she know that Simon Shaw, the man she would eventually marry, lived across the street. In the meantime, she went to Penn State to start on a master’s degree in population genetics research. She worked with endangered species and went to Mexico to study whale sharks. Kristine was in her early thirties when she received her master’s degree, with a thesis on mussels, which are important filters in the Delaware River Basin. She recalls great experiences, such as going behind the scenes at the Museum of Natural History to extract DNA samples for research.

After completing her master’s, Kristine returned to Wellsboro and the fish lab. She and Simon were married in 2005. He was director of information technology services at the courthouse in Wellsboro, but wanted to go back to school. So, they moved to State College so he could earn a degree in IT security from Penn State.

Adventures Down Under

Simon graduated in December 2008, and by February 2009 the couple had moved to Australia so Kristine could begin her studies at Murdoch University in Perth. She finally had the opportunity to pursue her dream of becoming a veterinarian.

Why Murdoch University and another continent? Kristine explains that they took a 2004 trip to Australia where Simon has family. Simon’s mother’s family was from England but had moved to Australia. At the time, Kristine wondered if she could go to veterinary school there.

“For many years, I was like a leaf blown in the wind,” she says. “I finally got a voice. Then it became a fire. I would have camped in the university parking lot.”

Veterinarian students don’t do internships but instead have a series of rotations. “Anybody becoming a vet in the United States does a full complement of species,” she explains. That’s also true in Australia, but there were other experiences too.

“I’m so thankful that I got to have such unique experiences,” she says. “There were kangaroos everywhere as well as some deadly snakes and huge spiders.” She recalls being in an area where there were nurses bottle-feeding kangaroos, as well as studying at a zoo, working with a herd of Australian cattle, doing farm visits, and more.

“It was amazing. You spend weeks on individual farms and you’re their helper,” Kristine says. One was a sheep farm. Another was a rotary dairy with 550 milking cows—she had to get up at 3:30 a.m. to round up cows.

The rotary dairy was “like a giant merry-go-round for cows,” she explains. About twenty animals are on it at a time. They each get a spot, milking cups are put on, they are milked, and then walk off the rotary. Each cow has an ear tag, which is scanned and sets the proper amount of feed each should receive.

“It was so neat. The cows wanted to ride around again in hopes of getting more grain.”

She also had a rotation at a chicken operation that produces eggs for the western half of Australia.

It took Kristine five years to earn her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine. Savannah was born in 2011, when Kristine was halfway through veterinary school. Devin was born in May 2014, after the family returned to Wellsboro, and just five months after she graduated.

“I worked right up until he was born,” she says.

A Practice of Her Own

Kristine, finally a vet at the age of forty, initially got experience with another local veterinarian and then opened her own practice in 2018.

The Shaws bought the building, a former dental office, on Water Street and renovated it. Simon’s parents, William (Skip) and Judith Shaw, helped, with Skip doing a lot of work with Simon. Others pitched in along the way, including retired dentist Dr. John Eaton and his wife, Diane, who held the mortgage for them for the first three years, making the purchase possible. The Eatons always have golden retrievers and cats, and “were very instrumental in trying to help me get started because they are such animal lovers,” says Kristine. Charlene Williams, their real estate agent, waited six months for her fee so they could get the business going. Chris and Dr. Lisa Bull, owner of Wellsboro Equipment and a chiropractor, respectively, helped night after night with the renovations and with the children.

“We met through our children,” Kristine says. “They helped us in our early business days a lot, and encouraged me.”

In the Water Street veterinary practice and boarding facility there are names on the various rooms or areas, celebrating those who helped get it all going—such as the Playfoot X-ray Room, honoring Kristine’s parents; the Shaw Surgery Suite for Simon’s family; the Eaton ICU; the Williams Feline Room; and the Bull Kennels. The dog park is also named in honor of the Eatons.

The general contractor, Steve Amarosa Carpentry and his crew, did the gutting and remodeling of the Water Street facility and also are working on the surgery center property. Steve Cruttenden and his wife and daughter worked on the guest house. He also built a walking bridge over the stream between the surgery center and the guest house as a gift.

A Breast Cancer Diagnosis

The veterinary practice, which started with seven employees, was open for about a year when the next challenge came. Kristine was diagnosed with breast cancer. The diagnosis was a complete surprise. Kristine had noticed a lump in her breast but put off going for a mammogram. When she finally went for the test, she was told, “This is what cancer looks like.” A biopsy was done immediately.

“I convinced myself that it would just be a couple weeks out of my life,” Kristine says. But one of the medical staff patted her on the shoulder and said, “Oh sweetie, it’s gonna be longer than that.”

In reality, the process took about a year.

“I worked all through it—mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiation, and breast reconstruction surgery,” she said. Looking back on it now, she urges others who are going through cancer treatment to do what they need to do—what is best for themselves. “If you can rest, do that, and take care of yourself.”

She noted how fortunate they were to have Simon’s family to help care for the children, especially since her treatment involved many trips to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. To add to the challenge, the covid pandemic shutdown happened while she was having chemotherapy. While she was getting radiation treatments, she would work most of the day and then drive an hour for treatments. That was twenty-five doses, one every weekday.

“It was a journey that I never planned on going on,” she says.

“When you have a small business, you have employees who are relying on you, plus your patients. I had a lot of support from our family and my staff, clients, and the community.” Dr. Gregory Cook, another veterinarian, helped immensely during that time.

“I’m healthy now,” she said, “But I’m on the now plan. I don’t take a day for granted.”

A Successful Practice

The veterinary practice now has about twenty employees, including some who are in veterinary school but work at the office when on breaks. Another full-time vet, Dr. Natalie Mee, originally from Wellsboro, recently joined the practice after graduating from Cornell University. Also working part-time with the practice is Dr. Keitha Olthof.

“I work with some of the best people,” Kristine says. “We serve the community. We’re happy to be here as a provider to help the animals.”

They mostly see small animals—cats, dogs, bunnies, guinea pigs, pocket pets—as well as the occasional chickens, ducks, and smaller farm animals.

“I would love to have a large animal vet join me some day,” she says.

As for the job itself, Kristine says, “You really work with the people. I see my position as a vet. Sometimes I can provide a voice for the animals. Many people go into this field and don’t realize they have to like people too. You really have to like people a lot.”

Talking about different kinds of pet parents, she says, “There are people whose life revolves around their pet. They see their dog in a way that maybe some others don’t. You can see how they see their pets. You also see people whose pet is an add-on in their busy lives. There’s a lot of things to sense when you’re talking to people.”

She notes how the situation can vary drastically from room to room as they see different patients, and people, in the course of a day.

“You might go into one room with a new kitten or puppy with excited children,” she says. “And, then head into a really sad room when a pet isn’t doing well. There’s a lot of ups and downs in a day.” That’s why it’s so important to have a good team working together.

“The people I work with—we try to have each other’s backs,” she adds.

Kittens, Compassion, and the Next Thing

“We also have a kitten adoption program,” Kristine says. “Somehow or another we end up taking in a cat who is about to deliver or some other situation. We always seem to have kittens. We vaccinate the kittens and get them out there so people see them. We always find a home for them. It’s something we all love. We all take joy in watching the kittens grow and go to nice homes.”

Dr. Shaw had only known our family for a short time when we got to experience both her compassion with our dying dog and the kitten adoption work they do.

Months after moving to Wellsboro, our fifteen-year-old golden retriever was seriously ill and had come to the end of life. In a panic, my husband and I took Amber Rose to the veterinary office and the staff began evaluating her. Dr. Shaw got down on the floor beside Amber Rose as she examined her and talked gently to both the dog and us. It was caring and calming as she helped us make the dreaded decision.

In the waiting room earlier that day we had seen kittens, a gray tiger and a black one, romping in a play area. Besides Amber’s passing that day, our cat had died just before we moved to Wellsboro. That left our younger golden as an only pet. Before day’s end, we returned to Grand Canyon Veterinary and adopted two crazy kittens.

So, what’s next for Dr. Shaw?

“I have a New Year’s resolution for 2025,” she says. “Relax. Do less. Watch the kids. Enjoy what we have. Don’t make plans. Just relax.”