Years wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.

A veterinary classmate graduated from Colorado State University and went directly to West Virginia, the home state of his wife and himself. He had attended veterinary school under a military rehabilitation program after being blown apart in Viet Nam. He spent months into years at Fitzsimmons Army Medical Center in Denver, Colorado, just to get his basic life functions back into alignment.

He and I met during our "mandated" pre-professional chemistry and physics classes. College kids with short hair back in 1969 sort of "stood out" in the middle of the Hippie and free-love era.

As luck would have it, we were selected to enter the professional curriculum at the same time. I say "luck", as there was only a one-in-eight chance of being selected in those days).

Yet, it was not luck at all, it was tenacity! In previous years CSU had taken the youngest and best, with the highest grade points, and still had a ten percent attrition rate during the professional years. A new selection board was assigned to "try something new". The new board wanted people who knew how to survive in the face of adversity, a class of people who wanted to be in the veterinary profession so bad they would never quit. When our class of 1982, two of whom were female, was selected for veterinary school, our first year class average age was four-years older than the average age of the seniors on the day they graduate. We discovered half our veterinary class was Viet Nam veterans, and many others were "multiple-year applicants", causing some advanced degrees in the group. We even had classmates who had been audited by the IRS. Yes, we could face adversity and survive. That new selection board had made a decision that would change the faculty's life, especially when their ability to intimidate the young student was lost. As students, we could not be intimidated. We had been selected!

The fact that the "new selection board" was mostly World War II public health veterinarians had been known by some of us, who had been trying to "negotiate" our way into veterinary school. As first-year professional students, when the state cut the building budget, eight of us cut a day of classes, and it was still our first month of school, went to the Colorado State House, and grabbed every representative coming out of chambers. Our message was as simple as we could make it:

"You made the wrong decision for the wrong reason about our long needed anatomy building, so please talk to our Dean about the brine vats."

We did our button-holing all day, then went back to class, telling no one in the administration of what we had done. About two weeks later, the door of our histology class opened, which was directly across from the Dean's office, in stepped Bill Tietz, our veterinary school Dean, and he said, "Those of you that went to the State House a couple weeks ago, get out in the hall, now!"

Seems the Senate Budget Committee wanted to see him about the anatomy building and its brine vats. You see, in the early days, anatomy specimens were kept in brine vats, while we dissected them over a three-month period of labs. He wanted to know what we had said, and we repeated to him the above statement. We told him that we did not know enough to say anything else, so we had to have a "sound bite" that would stay with them for awhile. Sure seems like it had.

Long story short, Bill went to the Senate Budget Committee and came back with the new anatomy building funding the same day. In our second year, we did the same thing and got him the new pathology building funding. In our third year we got the initial funding for the new teaching hospital. Talk about a Teflon coating. When a professor went to the Dean about our "disrespect", that is the failure to show any fear to their empty threats, Bill would look at the professor and simply say, "They got us your new building. Think you can respect them as adults for that effort?".

Bill and I had become anatomy partners only because that decision was made by the spelling of the last name. Mine was cat, and his was carp. Not rocket science, but what do you expect for 1970? When Bill graduated, he and his family left Colorado to return to West Virginia (By God!). He immediately took a job teaching at the technician school, and stayed in that job for many years. He also sat on the State Board of Veterinary Medicine in West Virginia. After a twenty-plus year academic career, Bill left teaching to open his own tiny companion animal practice, serving the hill and valley people of middle West Virginia. His daughter is his practice manager now, and doing great. Recently, Bill wrote me this note:

Hey Cat, I just had a very humbling experience.

An ex-client just came in with a "knock me down and stomp on my heart" surprise. I had helped them for years with their dog with chronic renal failure; the dog died last year. They wanted to tell me that they are putting me in their will.

How do you measure success?

How do you politely say, "I am doing what I love, and what I did for your pet, I do for love of this profession, and the happiness of your family"?