(chuckles) Well, that’s an interesting situation because everybody that looks out of a veterinarian that ultimately works in a zoo said, “How did you get there?” And I can say really serendipitously. But I also would point out that I was prepared. When I went to the university to be… Read More
Well, throughout the rest of my career, I was associated with the University of California, which was what, 40 years, something like that. Read More
But you were doing more things on than just teaching horse medicine?… Read More
Initially no, I taught a lot of different courses. For instance, I taught the introduction to large animals surgery course, the laboratory phase of it. I taught what we call a therapeutics or pharmacology course for clinical teaching, or clinical use of various drugs. I taught poisons plants, and I… Read More
When then in your university teaching, did you start to develop this program and zoological medicine at the university?… Read More
So you’re primarily there for horse medicine?… Read More
Horse medicine, essentially large animal medicine, because we also did cattle and sheep. Read More
And how long did you stay at the university doing this teaching?… Read More
And no I’m gonna have to go back now to Netflix and get these movies (indistinct) When you were working with the horses, did they help you in any way to understand the treatment of other animals and that may have helped form a direction your career was going in?… Read More
Well, each experience working with an animal added to the microchip that is part and parcel of you. And certainly I’m a very strong proponent of the concept that there is one medicine, literally, both human and animal medicine. And so what I knew about horses put me in good… Read More
And then while we were watching, I saw its lips start to move and it spit out the pill. And at that point in time, I gained an appreciation for the strength of the 40-pound chimpanzee, because eventually I had somebody, this was a fairly tame chimp, do a full… Read More
When I started the university, I admired the people that were my professors, and people that I worked with. And I had had some experience in my church of doing some teaching. And so I enjoyed teaching and I decided I want to become a teacher. And so an opportunity… Read More
And so the other thing that I got to appreciate in the movie industry was the editing process, because I was part and parcel of a lot of different scenes, if you will, and it looked like, how can that be put together?… Read More
On one particular film, I was asked to take four cattle steers up to Mojave Desert and anesthetize them in certain places on the desert to appear well eventually to be dead animals all over the place from the drought, or from a disease that was going through the area. Read More
But on the ranch, these animals were fed properly because they were valuable animals. And they’re a lot of them, they’re trained, you can train any animal to be attainment, have to work on a movie set. And I admire the people that spend the time, and you don’t have… Read More
So how did you come into contact with Cecil B. DeMille?… Read More
Well, when you get out of veterinary schools, you have to take state board examinations. And at that time it was a couple of months after you took the examination before you found out what the results were. And so during the time that I was waiting for that, I… Read More
I didn’t know him very well, but I was acquainted with him as a man, I wasn’t really privy to what his situation is with the directorship and all these sorts of things, but as a person, he was a good person. As is a little aside, did you happen… Read More
And how did you even meet the guy?… Read More
And what’s your attitude about animals being used in movies?… Read More