Dave Wright Writes

  Unbridled Compassion by Dave Wright Margo I gazed with pride at my diploma hanging on the wall of the Denver Pet Hospital: Margarite Philips, Doctor of Veterinary Medicine. I leaned back in my office chair and thought of how I had finally secured my dream job: How as a young girl, I loved every critter I met—Phoebe, my pet gerbil that drove my sister bonkers running on its squeaky wheel from dusk to dawn; how I insisted on nursing baby bunnies to health despite the warnings that they wouldn’t survive; how I endured four years of undergrad and another four years at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. I was one of 140 students, 85% of whom were women. The handful of boys in the class were snuff-chewing cowboys who wore belt buckles the size of dinner plates and displayed them at rodeos every free weekend. Rodeos! Now there’s a travesty to animal welfare. While many of the women in my class fawned over the boys, I spent every fre...