One of my friends described me as over-educated and under-socialized. She may have been right :-) Generally, I prefer the company of animals to people but do my best to get along. I have a Ph.D. in Pharmacology from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and work in the pharma/biotech industry in the Washington, DC area.
I grew up in the great midwest of the U.S. Sioux Falls, SD to be exact. Animals have always played a very big role in my life. As a kid I was dog and horse crazy. Eventually, I got into a horses in a big way and spent the first part of my adult life as a professional horse trainer. I worked with performance horses and Thoroughbred race horses from South Dakota to Wisconsin to Missouri to Maryland. That career was ended by a pretty serious car accident.
So, I went to college, earning a B.A. in Biology and English, and then to graduate school. Now I play with dogs rather than horses. It is hard to believe that I have now spent about half of my life without horses, depending on how you classify it. Technically, I did ride a bit for money in grad school. But I haven't been on a horse in a professional capacity since I moved to California in 1999. Dogs have taken over that place in my life. There are definite differences between training horses and dogs but there are enough similarities that it fills that void for me. Plus, I happen to have at least 1 of the greatest dogs of all time :-)
