Scaling Care Beyond Clinic Walls

📢 Gentle Reminder: The Woof is now The Underbite.

A few readers missed the announcement, so we wanted to make sure it’s clear — The Woof has officially rebranded as The Underbite.

All future emails will come from The Underbite.

Nothing else has changed. Same team. Same mission. Just better, with a new name.

Kate Elden didn’t set out to work in telemedicine — she set out to expand access to care. After years in equine and small animal practice, a career-altering injury and the mounting realities of veterinary medicine’s access and affordability crisis forced a hard reckoning: traditional brick-and-mortar care alone cannot meet national demand. Too many pet owners are skipping visits. Too many veterinarians are stretched thin. The gap between the care pets need and the care they receive continues to widen.

Now, as Chief Medical Officer at Dutch, Elden is operating at a different scale. She oversees clinical protocols, technology infrastructure, and regulatory navigation for a platform delivering hundreds of thousands of virtual interactions nationwide. Her mission is clear: increase access, support clinicians, and prove — with data — that telemedicine can be a credible, scalable extension of veterinary medicine rather than a compromise of it.

It starts with my brother. He was born with a disability, and growing up, I watched him struggle with things most kids never have to think twice about. Our family dog, Jamie, changed everything for him. Jamie didn’t care about my brother’s disability; she just loved him unconditionally. Seeing what that bond did for my brother, it clicked for me early on in life that animals have the power to heal people in ways medicine alone can’t. That’s what pulled me toward veterinary medicine. I wanted to be part of that.

My career path was anything but linear. I started as a horse vet in Colorado, then moved to Malibu, where I was taking care of horses for the rich and famous. But then I was kicked by a horse, which changed the whole trajectory of my career. After my injury, I transitioned into small animal care, starting with rehab, and worked my way through private and corporate practices. When COVID hit, the brand-new hospital where I was practicing closed. That’s when I started doing telemedicine, and I was immediately hooked on how it allowed me to treat more animals than ever before and provide care to animals who might not otherwise receive it.