Meet the Team at Animal Hospital of Hinesburg

Dr. Leavey returned to Vermont in 2009 after veterinary school at Tufts University. Pat has enjoyed being with the team at Hinesburg since 2014 and became an owning partner in 2019. Pat loves working with dogs and cats, but he also has an interest in working with exotic species, including reptiles, small mammals, and poultry. Pat’s areas of focus are surgery, dentistry, and ultrasounds. He and his wife, Anna, live with their son and daughter. They also have three pets: Fred, their black Lab, Frankie, a chocolate lab, and Theodosia, their quirky cat. When not at the hospital, he is usually having fun with his family and friends or playing music.

We welcomed Dr. DeMoy into our practice in 2016. She graduated from the Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine in 1999. Dr. DeMoy practiced mixed animal medicine, focusing on small animals, for three years in central New York before moving back to Vermont in 2002. Karen lives in Orwell with her husband, Dave, a large animal veterinarian, and their three daughters. When not shuttling her children to their various activities, she also enjoys gardening, needlework, crochet, felting, and is an avid reader of all topics. At home, Karen’s extended family includes a border collie mix named Moxie, a Havanese named Dottie, a miniature poodle named Harre, and Melon the cat. They also have a leopard gecko, turtle, guinea pig, rat, and many chickens.

Dr. Kara Palac grew up in New England and considers Vermont to be her favorite place in the world. She was thrilled to join The Animal Hospital of Hinesburg team and come home in 2020. She graduated from the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University in 2014. After graduation, she worked at a mixed-animal practice in central New York state for two years. She then spent over three years in New Jersey, focusing on practicing high-quality small animal medicine and performing routine surgeries. Her clients appreciate her candid approach towards taking care of their pets, as well as her dry sense of humor.

For fun, Dr. Palac enjoys running half marathons (she has a goal to run one in all 50 states), baking cookies, watching Netflix, and relaxing with her husky, Ginger, and her horse, Koko.

Dr. Kristen Guldbech grew up in New Jersey. Before attending veterinary school, she got her Masters in Animal and Dairy Science at the University of Georgia. She then attended St. George’s University School of Veterinary Medicine in Grenada, West Indies. During her time in Grenada, she was part of a program that would travel around the island and help provide spaying, neutering, and veterinary care to the local pets most in need. After Grenada, she did her clinical year at Iowa State University. After a year in the Midwest, she missed the mountains and decided to move back to the East Coast.

Since beginning in private practice, she has made several trips with volunteer organizations dedicated to providing population control and rabies vaccinations to endemic countries to help in trying to reduce rabies cases worldwide.

Her special veterinary interests include internal medicine, theriogenology, and worldwide rabies prevention. In her spare time, Dr. Guldbech likes making pottery, knitting, traveling, hiking, camping, and cooking, especially baking. Kristen lives in Williston with her dog Squirrel.

Since his residency, Dr. Levin has served as Staff Surgeon at small animal referral and emergency hospitals in California and New Jersey, as well as Chief of Surgery in Massachusetts and Vermont. Dr. Levin has received board certification and is a Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Surgeons. His areas of special interest include orthopedic surgery and soft tissue surgery. Dr. Levin is trained in the Tibial Plateau Leveling Osteotomy (TPLO) surgical procedure for the treatment of cranial cruciate ligament rupture and has performed thousands of these procedures in his career.

Winnie Standeven is a recent graduate of UVM with an animal science major and biology minor. Ever since she was four, she knew she wanted to be a veterinarian and felt a beautiful connection with animals. She is from Medford, MA, and currently lives in Charlotte, VT. She is the barn manager of Stryker Stables, where she also boards her horse King, a nineteen-year-old thoroughbred. She has ridden horses since the age of five, and in her spare time, she loves to ride King, take him on the trails, or take her three dogs (Juno, Percy, and Calypso) on a hike. She hopes to become an equine veterinarian someday and live on a farm with as many animals as possible!