Carrying his CU veterinary degree, the doctor will be home for dinner

Retrievers Acadia, left, and Bailey will head with Kurt Venator to St. Louis, the dog food capital of the world. Venator is receiving a D.V.M. degree from the College of Veterinary Medicine. He's from Williamsville, N.Y. Alexis Wenski-Roberts/Veterinary Image Lab.

By Roger Segelken

Graduating with a doctor of veterinary medicine degree, Kurt Venator could minister to pets -- one cat, dog and gerbil at a time -- by joining a private practice. Or he could improve the health of millions of animals -- by joining the pet-food industry.

"It was tempting to follow the James Herriot model," Venator said of the country vet whose best-selling All Things ... books described the human-animal bond from the doctor's end of the stethoscope. "And there are so many other opportunities for veterinarians these days," he added, mentioning wildlife medicine, research and public health.

"But this is a dynamic, growth time in the pet-food business. There's so much more we can do to meet animals' nutritional and medical needs," he said.

So Venator, at 31, is packing up the family (which now includes 8-month-old son Parker) and moving with his wife, Kristi Campbell (a professor of government), to St. Louis, where a marketing job in one of the world's largest pet-food companies awaits. He'll help steer research strategies and product development, tracking improved foods from the laboratory to the cat- and dog-food dinner bowls.

Venator already had one advanced degree when he enrolled in Cornell's College of Veterinary Medicine in 2000 -- a Ph.D. in neuroethology (the relationship between nervous system function and behavior) from University of Texas-Austin. While at Cornell, Venator thrived on the college's case-based curriculum, which, he said, "makes students better problem-solvers and clinicians." Venator even found time for research (first, explaining the physiological basis of ventricular fibrillation, then clinical studies of a novel treatment protocol for encephalitis in dogs) although looking back now, he's not sure how.

"Sleep derivation had a lot to do with it," he recalls of four hectic years. "Respirators during Christmas break" is another memory, from a husband-and-wife project, removing horsehair-filled plaster and lath from the 1880s Italianate house they restored in Brooktondale.

That house has a great yard for dogs, but their two Labrador retrievers had to board with Venator's family when he was on 18-hour clinical rotations. With all those overnight emergency shifts completed, there should be lots more "together time" for the family -- including dogs Acadia and Bailey, of course.

He'll miss Ithaca, Venator admits, but there's one consolation. Like many college towns, St. Louis named some streets after universities. The Venators are moving to Cornell Street.