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Acknowledgements

We want to express appreciation to the members of the Foundation for Veterinary Dentistry, for their ongoing dedication to improving and maintaining animal oral health.

From Peter Emily

I have had a lifelong passion devoted to helping animals. As a child, living with my grandparents Dominec and Josephine Primavera, I gained a culture of helping orphaned animals. We rescued injured birds and goats, as well as stray dogs and cats in Denver, Colorado; splinted broken legs and wings, and nursed them back to health. I applied to veterinary school, medical school and dental school and had my choice of careers. My first choice was veterinary medicine, but I was influenced by my peers to go to dental school first, and then to veterinary school. As fate would have it, marriage during dental school stalled my planned educational succession, but not my personal passion and studies of comparative dental anatomy and pathology.

Dr. Father Trane, a Jesuit priest at Regis University was influential throughout my formative years, encouraging my humane curiosity regarding oral health in all species. I practiced human dentistry after graduating from Creighton School of Dentistry, Omaha, Nebraska in 1959. Shortly after, I met Alan Krause, DVM. Both of us were certified dog show judges for the American Kennel Club and had special interest in the dental standards for the many recognized dog breeds. Dr. Krause made it possible and assisted me in continuing my passionate pursuit for improving animal oral health.

In the 1970s, Dr. Richard Cambry, veterinarian at the Denver Zoological Gardens, invited me to consult and treat dental disease in many of their exotic species, which I continue to do. It has given me inspiration to continually develop improved dental techniques for the many species of captive animals.

In 1983, Dr. Eisner and I attended the Western States Veterinary Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada where we met and joined forces with some of the veterinary dental pioneers including the speakers, Drs. Gary Beard, Ben Colmery, Tom Mulligan and Chuck Williams, in what was to become a lifelong professional friendship and the organized beginning of the evolution of contemporary animal dentistry. It has continued to fuel my insatiable desire to improve dental techniques practiced by veterinarians.

I also, wish to thank, among others, Drs. Colin Harvey and Robert Bruce Wiggs, for their friendship and joint collaboration in the pursuit of the advancement of veterinary dental techniques and service.

From Edward Eisner

A number of people, in addition to Dr. Peter Emily, have been “father” figures in my life, influencing the pathway I have traveled throughout my developing professional career. At the age of 13, I knew I wanted to be a veterinarian. Though, raised in New York State where my father and his father before him were New York City Wall Street attorneys, I spent five teenage years in northwest Montana, under the influence and tutelage of a rancher and wilderness guide, Sam Wicker. It was through Sam that I gained a true appreciation for hard work, individual responsibility, completing tasks without complaining, and the ways of, and management of, large and sometimes unruly animals, including horses, mountain lions, wolves and bears in the mountains 100 miles beyond the convenience of the paved road. My formative high school years were spent at The Millbrook School for Boys, a boarding school in the rolling hills of Dutchess County, in upstate New York. There, my science teacher, and founder of The Millbrook School Zoo, Dr. Frank Trevor took me under his wing, teaching me scientific process, as well as the responsible care of the wild zoo inhabitants that we managed. In the process of my maturation, I held summer jobs traveling throughout the west as a livestock inspector for Oppenheimer Industries (OI), the largest livestock management company in the United States, headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri, and managing cattle in 14 states. CEO of OI, Larry Oppenheimer, gave me freedom and independent responsibility as well as access to the genetic information of his prized Hereford show herd via the first computerized herd program which was headquartered in Kansas City. This experience furthered my interest in the scientific process of understanding the power of genetics. I also worked as a farmhand for Ed Behrens, President of the Dairy Herd Improvement Association of New York State, at his Highland Hills Dairy Farm, where Ed continued my tutelage in uncompromised and thorough work ethic, working the land daily from before dawn to after dark.

My infatuation with the management of animals continued in my late teens and early 20 years, as I worked as a wilderness guide in the Bob Marshall Wilderness in northwest Montana and again in the Pipestone Wilderness in Alberta, Canada where I rode 2500 miles in the summer of 1956. At Cornell University in the New York Veterinary School, Professor Dr. Steven Roberts mentored me. Among other helpful attributes, he was on the Cornell veterinary school admissions committee, coach and veterinary caretaker of the Cornell polo team horses, and author and professor of equine obstetrics. I played polo for him, managed the team after an injury and received guidance from him before taking my job as the livestock inspector. Dr. Francis Fox, professor of livestock medicine and surgery at Cornell imprinted on me the importance of maintaining my skills in physical diagnosis, even in the presence of rapidly advancing automated technology. Throughout all of this, my father impressed upon me, by example, the importance of being ethical in my many pursuits. I am appreciative to all of these people, and others, who helped to shape my personal life as well as my professional profile that has spanned more than 55 years in a very rewarding professional career in the veterinary medical profession, culminating in 40 years of immersion in the evolution of advanced dental care for animals, and most lately, in joining Peter Emily in his crusade to help captive animals in the many sanctuaries, zoos and animal parks of the world.