The long way around.
Veterinarian, teacher, writer. The order depends on the day.
Somewhere along the way, I picked up some cardinal and gold.
Short version: I grew up on a beef cattle farm in West Virginia, spent about fifteen years as a mixed-animal vet, and then moved into teaching. The longer version is below. It has more mud in it, and a lot more good people.
CHAPTER ONE
Where I come from
I grew up on a beef cattle farm in West Virginia, which teaches you a few things early. The work doesn't care how you feel about it. Animals have strong opinions and no interest in yours. And there's a very specific distance between "the plan" and "what actually happened," and that distance is almost always mud.
I'm from Huntington, West Virginia, a river town tucked into the hills of Appalachia right where West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio meet. Folks there call it the Tri-State, and you can cross two state lines before your coffee gets cold. The Ohio River runs along the edge of town, Marshall University sits in the middle of it, and the hills roll off in every direction like they're in no particular hurry to get anywhere.
The best thing about the place is the people. They'll feed you before they learn your last name, show up with a chainsaw after a storm without being asked, and tell you exactly what they think of your plan, usually right before they help you pull it off. They work hard, laugh easily, and take care of their own, and they decide you're one of their own a lot faster than you'd expect. Most of what I know about treating people right, I learned from folks back home.
"There's a very specific distance between the plan and what actually happened, and that distance is almost always mud."
Not every exam happens on the table
CHAPTER TWO
How I got here
After graduating from Purdue in 2001, I headed back to Huntington and went to work at a small-animal clinic. Before long I’d started a mobile practice on the side, driving a fifty-mile circle to treat cattle, horses, pigs, and goats. It meant a lot of driving, a lot of long days, and a pretty good education in how little respect animals have for your schedule.
In 2007 I opened Brown Veterinary Services in Wayne, West Virginia, a mixed-animal practice that grew to include its own boarding, grooming, and training facility. I loved the medicine, but running a business brought a whole different set of problems, and some of them were harder to solve than the medical ones.
Apparently, one job wasn’t enough to keep me occupied. I also taught equine courses at Ohio University Southern and spent twelve years running an online retail business through eBay and Amazon. Teaching kept taking up more of my life, and in 2015 I joined Mountwest Community and Technical College as medical director of its new veterinary technology program, which I led from its first class through AVMA accreditation. I sold the practice in 2016 and moved into education full time.
That led me back to Purdue in 2020, this time to direct its veterinary nursing programs, and then to Iowa State in 2024, where I help run the Lloyd Veterinary Medical Center, the university’s veterinary teaching hospital.
My career hasn’t gone in a straight line. For a long time, I thought that was the problem. It wasn’t. Most of what I actually know came from things that didn’t look much like training at the time.
CHAPTER THREE
Everything is fair game
I write about life, work, and veterinary medicine, which covers just about everything if you squint. A conversation at the feed store, a bad meeting, a good boss, a dog with opinions, a student who figured out something the rest of us missed. If it made me laugh, made me think, or made me shake my head, it's probably headed for an essay.
Most of what I write starts with a story, because that's how people back home have always taught each other anything worth knowing. Nobody on a front porch ever said, "Here are three key takeaways." They told you about the time somebody's cousin tried to load a bull by himself, and you worked out the lesson on your own. Some of my stories happened exactly the way I tell them. Some borrow a little from here and a little from there, and a few are made up from scratch because the truth wasn't cooperating. The lesson underneath is always the real part.
Most people are sitting on more than they realize: skills they quit counting because they got used to having them, and things they lived through and filed under "not a big deal" that were, in fact, kind of a big deal. A good story has a way of digging those back up. Some of what I write is serious. Most of it isn't. A few pieces started out serious and wandered off somewhere along the way.
Boiler up!
CHAPTER FOUR
Off the clock
I ride a Harley, which surprises people who meet me and see a guy who looks like he should be driving a Subaru to a soccer game. When I’m not on the bike, I’m usually on a golf course, a pickleball court, or a racquetball court. I love sports. All sports. I’ll also sit down and watch two guys I’ve never heard of compete in a sport I didn’t know existed, broadcast from a country I couldn’t find on a map without some assistance. Norwegian log rolling? Competitive cheese chasing? The International Shovel Racing Championships? I’m in. Give me a scoreboard and somebody trying to win something, and I’ll probably watch.
I have two amazing daughters, one in nursing and one in finance. Between the two of them, I’ve got somebody who can take care of me when I get sick and somebody who can explain why I can’t afford to retire. My wife is my partner in life and in all my adventures. We love traveling, exploring new places, and playing golf together, although we’ve learned that marriage and golf both require patience, a sense of humor, and occasionally knowing when to keep your mouth shut.
I’ve lived in West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Iowa. That’s five states and zero coastlines, which means I’ve spent my entire life a very long drive from the nearest beach and a very short drive from somebody who wants to argue about college basketball. If you ever need directions to a county fair, a Cracker Barrel, or a field of corn, I’m your guy. And after all those years in the middle of the country, it turns out Iowa cornfields are weirdly good for the soul. Wasn’t expecting that one.
I’ve always been fascinated by personal finance. Kiplinger’s, financial blogs, investment newsletters, you name it, I’ll read just about anything about investing, retirement, or what somebody thinks I should be doing with my money. Of course, reading about money and being good with it are two entirely different things. Just when I think I’ve figured everything out, I’ll read another article explaining why everything I’ve been doing for the past twenty years is wrong. I’ll talk investing with anybody who stands still long enough, plus a few people who were trying to leave.
I have a deep and possibly unhealthy admiration for Basset Hounds. They’ve figured out a way of life that the rest of us spend thousands of dollars on self-help books trying to achieve. They sleep whenever they’re tired, eat whenever the opportunity presents itself, and feel absolutely no obligation to be productive. They don’t care about deadlines, retirement accounts, or what anybody thinks of them. They’ll take up an entire couch despite being only fourteen inches tall, and somehow convince you that you’re the one who needs to move. Their idea of exercise is walking to the food bowl, and even that seems negotiable. I’ve never seen a Basset Hound lose a minute of sleep over anything, and I’ve never seen one with a job. There may be a connection.
Well, there you have it.
That's probably more than you needed to know about me, but you did click on the About page, so I figure we're both responsible. If you like a good story, appreciate a little humor, or occasionally wonder how the human race has managed to make it this far, I think we'll get along just fine.
Start with the essays, or see what I speak about.
Sunday mornings, more of this.
Every Sunday morning, I send out Mostly Housebroken, a short newsletter about people, everyday life, and the strange things that happen along the way. It's the closest thing to sitting on the porch with me, minus the mosquitoes.
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