Is that a doctor for dead dogs?
Yes, that´s part of what they do, they also work with live animals indirectly. Basically their job is looking at tissue slides under the microscope:
1. Necropsies (what in human medicine is known as ¨autopsies¨) to determine causes of death, legal cases involving animals, insurance cases.
2. They read surgical biopsies to tell you what disease you pet has.
3. They study diseases to better understand mechanisms of disease and help clinicians to better diagnose and treat diseases in the future.
4. Every single human drug out on the market goes through animal testing and the pathologists look at tissues looking for damage to organs, secondary side effects, etc.
5. Most of the research being done in human cancer or disease is done on animal models. Pathologists look at tissue on this animals under the microscope looking for pathologic changes. A lot is being done in this field because the US Goverment funding is very extensive. For example, cancer that affects kids is a big field and there´s a few animal models for this type of research.