There have been times in my laboratory animal career where I’ve been convinced that I’m trapped in an episode of Candid Camera. Candid Camera was a popular TV show when I was a kid. Video cameras were hidden to catch people reacting to unusual or surprising situations that the show set up. Though the situations were set-ups, the people’s reactions were real and oftentimes hilarious. One of my most memorable Candid Camera moments came when I was working in a University laboratory animal research facility. Most of our animal rooms and offices were in the basement of the building. Outside of the basement, a few labs containing animals were sprinkled here and there, strategically placed to ensure that different types of research didn’t cross paths. Late one afternoon my office phone rang. It was a male voice with a foreign accent. The man informed me that he was lost in our building. He was trying to make a delivery to the cafeteria and he had my name and number as a contact. Though I love to eat, I assured the man that he must have the wrong information as I was…
As is typical of when first meeting someone, the question of ‘what do you do’ often comes up. While I would love to enthusiastically answer that question with pride for my profession and simply state, “I’m a veterinarian” inevidbly the follow-on question is “where do you practice.” That then leads into ‘the explanation’ of how I’m in the Army serving on Active Duty as a veterinarian. Most responses to that are along the lines of how people don’t know we have vets in the Army (I didn’t either until I was looking to match up my career with my husband’s.) While there’s then an opportunity to explain about the military’s medical research programs and the support that I, as a lab animal vet, give to those programs, I usually choose to mention the need for vets based on military working dogs. Military working dogs generously serve our country with a passion most of us humans will never know. But that’s not why I deflect the conversation to the dogs. I deflect the conversation to the…