Dr. Cardoso-Carroll

Vivian Cardoso-Carroll, DVM

Education

1995 Bachelors of Veterinary Science from Texas A&M University

1998 Graduated Cum Laude from Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine

Member of Phi Zeta Veterinary Honor Society

Work

Dr. Vivian Cardoso-Carroll is just a regular old (well, not old-old, but kind of old by teenager standards) general practice veterinarian. Her professional interest and unofficial specialty is internal medicine. She doesn’t do major surgeries. In fact, the last animal she spayed was in 2010. (It’s not that she can’t do the surgeries; she's actually pretty good at them. But the stress of potentially making a patient worse off as a result of an incision is a bit much for her). Her favorite surgery is probably the laceration repair (usually post-dog fight) because it’s like putting together a puzzle. Granted, it’s a flesh puzzle, but vets are weird that way.

After graduation, she went straight into private practice at a corporate owned veterinary hospital in Dallas. Corporate veterinary medicine was not quite for her, so in May of 2000 she started working at Animal Medical Center of Plano as an associate veterinarian. That is where she has been ever since. The animal medical center is a 4-doctor practice; Vivian is one of the “part timers,” working three days a week, plus some Saturdays. She read somewhere that the practice is located in one of the richest zip codes in the country, so they have the luxury of a fairly affluent clientele that takes good care of their pets. This also allows her to practice the best quality veterinary medicine she can.

Personal

This is where the juggling act comes in. Vivian has a 100-percent non-medical engineer of a husband and two elementary school-aged boys. On the one hand, she loves them more than anything else on the planet. On the other hand, she can’t help but feel, on occasion, like they’re sucking the life out of her. Despite all the gray hairs and extra pounds, the crazy family is her greatest accomplishment.

Did we mention that she's allergic to animals? Yep, all of them. She take shots, and a lot of antihistamines.

Speaking of animals, Dr. Cardoso-Carroll has three dogs: Scully, a 13-year-old bona fide mutt; Katelin, a 12-year-old “au natural” (i.e. non-tail docked or ear cropped) Miniature Pinscher; and Mia, a one-year-old black Labrador Retriever. She also has a rabbit (a black Californian mix named Junior America that her son caught as a stray by luring him into a cage with a carrot), a hermit crab, and an assortment of fish. She's trying to talk her husband into some chickens, but he’s worried about the homeowner’s association rules. She also has a client who is going to breed Micro Pigs, so she's very interested in one of those. Her husband has never really had a pet in his life, so this is a little overwhelming for him.

In her free time she tries to maintain her “cool card” by going to concerts with her girlfriend — mostly alternative rock with a little pop thrown in for good measure. Her favorite bands of the moment are Vampire Weekend, Weezer, and Metric. Recent concerts include Cage the Elephant, Lady Gaga, Silversun Pickups, the Pixies, and Green Day. She does love live music. In fact, if the show is just right you can catch them dancing around like fools; it's great fun and helps remind Vivian that she can still do things that don’t involve meeting the needs of small children. Vivian and her friend are also working up the nerve to go to one of those giant music festivals where you sleep in a tent and listen to music all day and all night for 5 days straight. It’s good to dream.

Vivian hates exercise and avoids it if at all possible. She is an avid reader. She used to ride horses and be “arty”; someday she would like to get into those again. She loves a good (by good, we mean less than $7-a-bottle) glass of wine and is considered an above average cook (it probably stems from her love of eating). Her next big life goal is to learn to play bass guitar so some day she can be the only girl in a rock band. Again, it’s good to dream.

Image: Devine Photography