“I honestly have to give a lot of credit to Betty Lou Blumberg,” reflected Lauren. “I was a quiet kid, and she pulled me out. She was one of the first people that really believed in me. She was like, ‘Well, why can't you do this? Why shouldn't you do that?’ She was a really strong woman and one of my first role models.”

Betty Lou’s belief in Lauren also helped when she applied to grad school.

“I was an English major at Wellesley College,” recalled Lauren. “When I decided to apply to veterinary school, a lot of my advisors told me I should be prepared not to get in, but I was like, ‘I'm not going to subscribe to that,’ and I applied to the University of Pennsylvania and got in the first time. I just believed in myself, and Betty Lou was really the first person to recognize my potential.” 

Lauren was also inspired by travels with another Hamden Hall teacher.

“Dr. Barbara Beitch organized a trip during my senior year to the Galápagos Islands,” said Lauren. “I was 18 years old, and my dad traveled with us. It was a small ship with maybe 15 or 16 of us. It was a wonderful experience! It was 25 years ago, so it was still very unspoiled. We were the only people on the islands, and there were no structures. There were lots of seals and iguanas, and we saw ‘Lonesome George,’ the giant tortoise who lived to be over 100 years old.”

Even as a child, Lauren said she always loved animals and had a desire to care for them.

“My grandparents owned a huge horse farm in Madison, so I grew up riding horses,” said Lauren. “Even as a little kid, I was always around horses, dogs, and cats. My grandparents always had dogs and cats at the farm, and I grew up with at least three dogs in the house at all times.”

With her sights set on a career in veterinary medicine, Lauren began building her professional resume.

“I originally wanted to be a large animal surgeon, and I took a lot of large animal surgery courses at UPenn,” recalled Lauren. “They have a wonderful veterinary program, and I spent a lot of time on the large animal campus. Ultimately, I decided that while I loved the surgery aspect of the large animal program, it wasn't morally or ethically fulfilling for me to watch clients build up and break down their race horses again and again.”

With Lauren’s mind made up to care for small animals, she graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and did an internship at a small animal emergency center.

“The Veterinary Referral and Emergency Center was located in Norwalk and Shelton,” recalled Lauren. “They split their interns between the two offices, and I considered doing an emergency and critical care residency after my internship. However, when my two mentors were moving, I decided to come home and start working at a practice in Clinton.”

Lauren started working at the Clinton Veterinary Hospital in 2011, and she bought the business with her husband in 2014.

“My husband, Drew Ciok, is my other partner in the business,” said Lauren. “We actually met on our first night of vet school at UPenn. We're a good team. His first career was in corporate cost accounting, so he has a financial background, and I do more of the human resources and marketing.”

Business is good, and Lauren said she’s seen their practice steadily grow over the past 15 years.

“There aren't many privately owned practices, so we're one of the few left on the shoreline,” explained Lauren. “Everything else has been bought by big corporations. Our business has grown through existing client referrals, word of mouth, and advertising. We’re now seeing pets from parents, their children, and grandparents. There are five of us in our practice, and we specialize in small animals: dogs, cats, bunnies, guinea pigs, hamsters, and the occasional snake. We even had a lynx come in not too long ago.” 

The Clinton Veterinary Hospital is a lively practice with a family environment - staff members are allowed to bring their furry friends to work! With eight dogs and five cats of her own, Lauren said the dogs all go with her each day.

“We work really long days, so we don’t feel it’s fair to ask our full-time employees to leave their animals at home for that long. Plus, we think it keeps everybody happier,” she said.

Lauren has a few recommendations to keep pets and their owners happy and healthy, and insurance is definitely one of them in that it allows people to take better care of their pets. She also advised that pet owners shouldn’t skip on preventative care. An annual exam with blood work and vaccines helps avoid big problems down the road, she said.

“The other thing is to get to know your veterinarian,” she said. “Are they owned by a big corporation or somebody local? It makes a big difference in your pet’s care. While there are some wonderful people who work at bigger corporations, I think corporate medicine can be too focused on the bottom line and not as fluid or flexible as a private practice. That’s why we schedule 30-minute appointments to really get to know each client.”

When Lauren and her husband aren’t at work, they are traveling with their families.

“I love to travel, and my family always traveled growing up,” reflects Lauren. “My father was a surgeon, so I recognize what a tremendous gift it was for him to take the time off with us. And now, we travel together as adults. We went on a trip to Africa to trek with the gorillas and do some rhino conservation work. Later this year, I'm going to Monument Valley with my dad to do some Milky Way photography, and my mom and I are going to India next year to track snow leopards.”

Lauren’s big passion is combining her love of nature and photography.

“I’m planning to travel to Alaska to photograph wolves and bears on a remote island,” said Lauren. “I went to Kenya this past January, and we just got back from Bolivia and Chile two weeks ago, where we took some amazing photos of the Milky Way. There is no ambient light with clear skies and no pollution in the Bolivian and Chilean deserts. We could literally see the whole arch of the Milky Way! I also have some great shots of the Northern Lights from our recent trip to Block Island, where we travel each year with our eight dogs.”