Bruce Coston’s Bio

 I was born in Denver to parents who have little interest in animals. Despite this handicap, I was endowed from childhood with The Gift (see the chapter of the same title in Ask The Animals) of loving animals. As a preacher’s kid growing up mostly in Florida, my family had neither the income nor the interest in indulging my animal interest to any significant degree. Only a series of orphaned blue jays, injured blue herons, hamsters, parakeets, and finally, a show ring misfit sheltie named Thumper helped to develop this passion. 

When I was nine or ten, I told my folks that I wanted to be a veterinarian. From that time on I never wavered from that goal. To that end, I tried to get as much experience working with animals and veterinarians as possible. Horses were my first love and I spent as much time as possible working with the horses at summer camps, first as a camper in Florida and then for six summers at camps in Virginia and Alberta, Canada.  I also worked stints as a kennel boy in a boarding kennel in Florida, a farm hand on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, and a vet’s assistant at a mixed animal practice in Minnesota.

After graduating from college in Tennessee, I was accepted into the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Minnesota. As a testament to her devotion, Cynthia, my college sweetheart followed me from her home in Georgia to Minnesota.  We were married after my first year in veterinary school.

Through my junior year in veterinary school, I maintained my focus on horse practice, vowing not to spend my days stuck indoors in some clinic working on vicious little poodles with painted nails. During my senior year in clinics, however, I realized that for me the joy of practice was found in the emotional connection between the pet and its people, a connection which was most easily experienced with household pets.  When this epiphany met the reality of how much more easily comprehensive medicine and surgery can be done in a primary care small animal hospital compared to horse practice, my career path veered unexpectedly in that direction.

After graduating from vet school in 1987, I was accepted into an internship program in small animal medicine and surgery in Rochester, New York where I spent a grueling and rewarding year learning the ropes of private practice in an intensely busy setting. But the Minnesota and upstate New York winters were persuasively leading Cynthia and me south. In 1988 I joined a practice in Waynesboro, Virginia where we spent three plus years. We welcomed two boys, Jace and Tucker, into our family while living in Waynesboro.

In March of 1992, we moved to Woodstock, Virginia, on a Sunday and opened the doors of Seven Bends Veterinary Hospital the next day. That practice has grown from myself, Cynthia and two employees then to a staff of more than 20, with four veterinarians practicing in a new, state-of-the-art facility (http://sevenbendsvet.net). I still enjoy the relationships that make practice life meaningful: those with the staff, the clients and most of all with the pets themselves. And yes, I do spend my days in an office where I often work with poodles with painted nails – and I love it!

The stories in Ask The Animals came to life first as monthly articles in a regional newspaper. After a few years of relating these simple and true stories from my practice life, I began to get frequent requests from readers to compile them into book form, a process which consumed my mind and my time for many months. While this was hard work, it paled in comparison to the task of finding a publisher. My first choice was St. Martins Press because they had published James Herriot’s books which I had consumed with utter fascination growing up. They had inspired my own career aspirations. But, because St. Martins Press does not accept authors without agents, they were beyond my reach.  Early in the publisher search process I declined the publication contract of a small niche publisher of animal how-to books whose only distribution network was her booth at dog shows and her website. Though I was able to garner the enthusiastic support of Art Linkletter, Joe Wheeler (an anthologist considered by many to be “America’s story teller”), and others, after three years of shopping the manuscript around without success, I was frustrated and at the absolute end of my resources. 

It was at about this time that I had a chance encounter with Dr. John Killinger, an author with Thomas Dunne Books (an imprint of St. Martins Press). When I described my manuscript to him, he asked to see it; liked it; and requested my permission to share it with his editor – an offer I could not refuse.  Before I knew it, my manuscript had been picked up by Thomas Dunne Books and I was sitting in the apex office on the seventeenth floor of the Flatiron Building in New York City listening to one of the people responsible for bringing James Herriot’s tales to the world compare my simple stories to his. No way!

Our boys, Jace and Tucker, are now both in college in Tennessee, so Cynthia and I are adjusting to an empty nest. Of course we miss them awfully, but there’s a whole lot more time now for going to movies, going out to eat, watching the sun set over the Shenandoah Valley from the deck, reading, and, oh yes, working on the next book. Neither of the boys was possessed with the passion to be a veterinarian like their father. Jace, who blanches at the sight of blood, is pursuing a degree in International Business. Tucker is taking premed coursework in college. We have much for which to be grateful as we watch them become men. We’ve talked about it for years. Now we’ve gone and done it – worked our way out of jobs as parents.

So we’re back to just Cynthia and me and our pets. We currently have three cats (Flinn, Webster, and Phelps) and one dog, Starr. You may recognize Flinn, Webster, and Starr from Ask The Animals. Phelps, named after Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, reminds us very much of Ollie, who figures prominently in the book. He’s also black and white. He too is a rescue kitty, adopted from clients who couldn’t keep him. He’s trouble personified and Ollie reincarnated. As I write this, he’s attacking shoestrings at my feet, his yellow eyes bright and inquisitive. It is Phelps you see with me in the photograph on the back flap of the book cover.

Starr is now an elderly dame that still frequently gets confused for a Golden Retriever puppy. She is a Cocker Spaniel cross that weighs in at about thirty pounds or so. She retains a lot of her puppy characteristics, including a high strung, reactive personality. We’re currently teaching the eternally fearful Starr to be a boat dog so she can come with us to the lake on weekends rather than staying at the kennel in the hospital. She’s learning, and now seems to enjoy it. She will float in the lake on an inflatable chair and actually enjoys running chest deep in the water biting at the waves. Honestly, there are few things cuter than Starr swimming.

Webster remains as neurotic as always, still convinced that everyone is plotting against him.  He pretends, quite convincingly, to despise Phelps, yowling hysterically at his attempts to engage Webster in play. Sometimes it’s good not to understand the language he uses.  I’m sure it wouldn’t be printable. Web stays to himself. We call his hiding places his Web sites. He comes to the bed at night when things are quiet and calm to purr and seek attention while we’re trying to sleep.

Flinn just recovered from surgery to remove several small bladder stones, found coincidentally on x-rays to evaluate a lameness. That was a bit exciting. Now about 13, he’s the elder statesman, with a heart condition that made the anesthesia a bit tense. With the stones gone, he’s back to normal. We thought he was just getting old and cranky. Now that he’s back to himself, it’s amazing to us how much those stones were really bothering him; another lesson not to confuse age with disease. He loves the young buck even though Phelps attacks him unmercifully too. But then, Flinn loves everyone.

Besides full time clinical practice and writing, I enjoy golf, time spent in the boat, water skiing, snow skiing, racquetball, traveling, and photography, none of which I excel at. Things I don’t enjoy include politics, hypodermic needles when they are directed at me, guacamole, or confrontation. And I greatly resent being of an age where I need to wear bifocals and diet. But the alternative to aging is worse.