I have known that I wanted to become a veterinarian since I was seven years old. Throughout my life, I have been fascinated by science, teaching, and animals. (Fortunately, my parents were tolerant enough to allow me to care for a menagerie of pets: dogs, cats, rabbits, gerbels, guinea pig, hamster, turtles, frogs, one chicken, birds, a raccoon, horses and a hermit crab). When I was 16 years old, I began to work for a veterinarian helping him do whatever he would allow me to do. Over the course of the following eight years, I was able to watch, listen and learn, as well as contribute some of my developing skills to that practice. The University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana accepted me into their veterinary program in 1970 and I graduated with my D.V.M. degree in 1974. Upon my graduation, I worked for one year at a busy three doctor animal hospital with two highly experienced veterinarians, one of them a surgical specialist. For the following two years, I was employed at The Anti-Cruelty Society in Chicago, seeing thirty patients per day and performing surgery on at least 2,000 patients over those two years. My dream of working in a more relaxed environment where I could actually get to know my clients and their pets, by spending more time with them in the exam room, became a reality when I began my own practice at Lavitt Animal Hospital in Morton Grove in 1977.