Love in the Darkroom.

I spent the summer of my second year in Veterinary School in Iowa. I was a research assistant to Dr. Howard Tyler at Iowa State University in Ames. My best friend, and former housemate, Shila was there working on her masters degree and we were able to work in the same lab. The lab was at the ISU Dairy, in one of the old barns. I was working on a few projects, but my main project was an incubator model for premature births. Each day we also worked a bit on the cows doing different projects. I had traveled to Iowa with my other best friend, Randleigh. Randleigh was a big black dog? I was never sure how much of Randleigh was dog. He did have one particularly canine trait- snarfing stuff off the floor. One morning I awoke to a dog that could not. After assessing him, I realized he was in real trouble. I called my then boyfriend, a 4th year veterinary student at ISU and told him  Randleigh was a goner. He drove  over to get him, and I started thinking. Toxin was top of my differential list and I needed to figure out what he could've gotten into. I decided to go to the Dairy and pull feed tags off bags and see what might be lurking inside. On the third tag I got a hit. Lasolocid. Lasolocid is a coccidiostat put in calf feeds to help prevent scours, or diarrhea. Lasolocid is toxic to dogs, and even more so to horses. It attacks the heart muscle, causing acute death in the horse and a slower version in dogs. This is what was happening with my pooch. I called the Vet School again, and let them know what they were dealing with. They did a marvelous job, saved my dog? and the boyfriend had a short moment of being my hero before I gave him walking papers.
At the end of the summer, I borrowed enough money to fuel my way back to North Carolina. When school began, I thought to have a cardiac check up on Randleigh to see how the damage to his heart was progressing. The first step in my check was to have him radiographed. This is the official way of saying "x-rayed". I brought him with me to school and went down to Radiology. I implored Randleigh not to eat anyone and let them do their jobs. He decided to allow them to live another day and his chest films were taken. I went into the dark center of Radiology, and he and I waited next to the warm humming processor that would spit out his films. In front of us was two separate banks of light boxes. The films were getting shoved into a clip at the top of the box, then a Rad Doc would come along, have a looksee and speak into a little recording microphone his or her findings. Then, pull the films down off the lights and move on to the next. I saw Randleigh's films come out and onto the top set of boxes they went. I waited and soon a tall fellow came over, peered briefly at the films, said "Normal" and pulled them down.
Wait! This is a learning experience and my best friend has a heart problem. "Excuse me." I said.
"My name is Cate Hamilton. I'm a third year student and these films are of my dog, here. Would you please go over them with me?" The handsome Doctor looked a bit taken aback, but stammered out a "Sssure." He put the films back up on the light box and pointed and described and let me know what he saw. "Thank you." I said, holding my hand out "and, you are?" Now, I know I startled him, but he told me his name "I'm Dr. Drost"."Well, I appreciate it, Dr. Drost. I'll see you around!"

He was awfully cute. I decided to marry him.