Become a Morningside Veterinarian
You don’t have to have it all figured out yet.
Build your career at Morningside Animal Hospital in Chico, California.
We believe the beginning of your veterinary career should be a time to learn, grow, ask questions, build confidence, and discover the kind of veterinarian you want to become.
Morningside is an independently owned, community-minded small-animal hospital where excellent medicine and genuine relationships go hand in hand. We care deeply about practicing high-quality medicine, but we also believe that how we care for our patients, clients, and one another matters just as much.
We're especially interested in meeting new and recent graduates, including veterinarians within their first three years of practice.
Associate Veterinarian (DVM)
$110,000 starting salary for full-time new graduates
4×10 schedule · No overnights · No on-call
Why Morningside?
Morningside was built around a simple idea: providing top-tier personalized veterinary care with compassion and respect, while cultivating a healthy, sustainable workplace for our caregivers.
We're a locally owned, woman-owned companion-animal hospital serving Chico and the surrounding Northern Sacramento Valley. Our independent practice is centered on high-touch, individualized care, modern medicine, low-stress visits, and relationships between clients, patients, staff, and doctors.
We're not interested in creating veterinarians who all practice exactly the same way. We're interested in helping veterinarians develop the knowledge, confidence, and judgment to practice excellent medicine in their own way.
That philosophy extends directly from our vision for Morningside: to be a place where veterinary students and new graduates can learn to love this calling in their own way, helping continue the tradition of veterinary mentorship that sustains our profession.
What Does Independent Practice Mean For You?
We're an independently owned hospital, and that shapes the way we work, learn, and care for our patients. Being independent gives us the ability to make decisions based on what we believe is best for our patients, clients, and team.
It means we're personally invested. Decisions aren't made by a distant corporate office. The people you work with are the people developing the practice.
It means we can listen, adapt, experiment, and grow in meaningful ways. It means there's room for your ideas, and we're building something together.
What Mentorship Looks Like Here
You won't be expected to know everything on day one. Starting your veterinary career shouldn't mean being thrown into a full appointment schedule and expected to figure everything out alone. We believe new graduates deserve room to learn, ask questions, build confidence, and gradually develop independence.
At Morningside, mentorship is about more than teaching someone how to practice medicine. It's about helping a new veterinarian develop the clinical skills, communication skills, confidence, judgment, and sense of purpose to build a career that feels genuinely their own.
You'll have:
Dedicated mentorship
Our structured mentoring program provides additional support specifically designed for new graduates.
Weekly doctor meetings
Our doctors meet weekly for case discussion, workflow conversations, problem-solving, and professional support.
Progressive independence
As your experience and confidence grow, you'll gradually take on more complex cases and responsibilities.
A team to learn from
Mentorship doesn't stop with the doctors. Our RVTs, veterinary assistants, and support team bring years of experience and knowledge to patient care. We believe everyone has something to teach and something to learn.
Room to explore your interests
Morningside offers opportunities across wellness, internal medicine, dentistry, soft-tissue surgery, diagnostics, chronic disease management, feline medicine, behavior, and more.
Additional professional support
Optional professional coaching and support are also available through Grounding Leadership.
Our goal is to help you become a confident, thoughtful, independent veterinarian. Not to keep you dependent on a mentor.
What Your First Year Can Look Like
We know every new graduate comes to us with a different background, different interests, and different areas where they feel confident or uncertain. So we don't believe in a one-size-fits-all approach. Your first year will be about building a strong clinical foundation while gradually increasing your independence.
Early on: You'll have time to become comfortable with our hospital, team, systems, and approach to patient care while building confidence with routine wellness and illness appointments.
As you grow: You'll take on increasingly complex cases with experienced doctors and team members available to talk through questions, diagnostics, treatment plans, and client communication.
Along the way: We'll encourage you to explore the areas of medicine that interest you, whether that's surgery, dentistry, feline medicine, behavior, chronic disease management, preventative care, client education, or something you haven't discovered yet.
Ultimately: We want you to complete your first year here feeling not like you've learned “the Morningside way” but like you've developed your own way of practicing excellent medicine.
Gold Standard Medicine, Thoughtfully Supported
We take our medicine seriously. Morningside provides comprehensive companion-animal care for dogs and cats, including wellness and illness care, urgent care, dentistry, soft-tissue and orthopedic surgery, ultrasonography, internal medicine, chronic disease management, geriatric care, and end-of-life care.
Our hospital is equipped to support both learning and high-quality patient care, including:
Full in-house IDEXX laboratory
Digital radiography
In-house abdominal and cardiac ultrasonography with remote specialty consultation
Comprehensive in-house pharmacy
Feline-only exam room, lobby entrance, and hospital ward
Comfort room for patients and families who need a quieter, more compassionate experience
Paperless Shepherd PIMS
AI note-taking scribe to help reduce administrative burden
We believe technology should support good medicine and help our team spend more time doing what matters: caring for patients and the people who love them.
The People You'll Work With
Great veterinary medicine is a team effort. You'll work alongside doctors, RVTs, veterinary assistants, receptionists, and administrative staff who bring different backgrounds, experiences, and interests to Morningside.
Meet Dr Allison McGann
Owner, Founder, Veterinarian
… read more
Meet Dr. Kyle Crowson
Associate Veterinarian
… read more
Meet the Morningside Team
Support Staff : RVTs, Veterinary Assistants, Receptionists
Administrative Staff : Managers & Office Dogs
Why Chico?
You aren't just choosing a hospital. You're choosing where you'll live.
Chico sits in the foothills of Northern California, with easy access to Bidwell Park (one of the largest municipal parks in the USA) hiking and biking trails, the Sierra Nevada mountains, and the broader outdoor recreation of Northern California. It's a growing community with a small-town feel, while still offering plenty to do outside the hospital. And Morningside is deeply connected to the Chico community.
Come practice medicine somewhere you can build a life, too. Explore Chico →
Ready To Learn More? Here’s The Opportunity:
Associate Veterinarian at Morningside Animal Hospital
Full-time or Part-Time
Open to New or Recent Graduates from AVMA-accredited School
Schedule, Compensation & Benefits Detailed Below
A Work Life That Lets You Be Human
We want you to build a career in veterinary medicine that is sustainable, meaningful, and compatible with having a life outside the hospital.
Your schedule:
4 × 10-hour workdays
Monday-Friday practice
No overnights or weekends
No on-call shifts
Our current position is available as either full-time or part-time, depending on the candidate and practice needs. We also value flexibility and are willing to consider individual circumstances when building schedules.
Compensation & Benefits
We believe veterinarians should be fairly compensated for the knowledge, skill, time, and responsibility their work requires. As an independent practice, we also believe compensation should support excellent medicine rather than create pressure to prioritize production over patients, clients, or the people providing their care.
Compensation:
New graduate full-time starting salary: $110,000/year
Experienced full-time associate salary: up to $150,000/year
Benefits include:
Medical insurance
Dental insurance
401(k)/retirement contribution
3 weeks paid time off
Continuing education allowance
Professional development assistance
Professional liability insurance
State licensing and DEA fees
Uniform stipend
Employee pet-care discount
And some things are part of the job, not a perk:
No overnight shifts
No on-call shifts
A Monday-Friday practice
A collaborative support team
Weekly doctor meetings
Structured new-graduate mentorship
Flexibility around individual circumstances
A practice where patient care and client relationships matter more than production numbers
Who We're Looking For
We're especially interested in new and recent graduates from AVMA-accredited veterinary schools, including veterinarians in their first three years of practice.
You may be a great fit if you:
Care deeply about patient welfare and high-quality medicine
Want to continue developing your clinical skills
Value mentorship and collaboration
Communicate thoughtfully with clients and coworkers
Enjoy being part of a team
Are curious and willing to ask questions
Want to contribute to a positive practice culture
Want to develop your own professional interests and identity
You don't need to know exactly what kind of veterinarian you want to be yet. That's part of what we're here for.
Ready to Meet Us?
Maybe you're actively looking for your first veterinary job. Maybe you're months away from graduation. Maybe you aren't sure what you want yet.
That's okay. We'd love to meet you.
If Morningside sounds like the kind of practice where you could see yourself growing, we'd love to start a conversation.