You may think me a midge strange for suggesting it, but veterinary medicine’s charms comprise more than cerebral challenges and emotional highs; vet medicine is also beautiful…as in, aesthetically pleasing to a high degree.

From a breathtaking birds-eye view through a microscope’s lens...

...to the snaking rivers of barium in an X-rayed abdomen,

my job is—at times—nothing short of visually stunning.

Though I work in a forty-year-old strip mall and constantly feel the need to apologize for the tatty look of the place, this job offers plenty of room for daily magnificence. Beyond the perfection of a newborn pup...

...and the luxurious look of a purebred cat are the humble, everyday splendors I most admire:

Everything from the whitest shade of a simple canine tooth...

...to the majestic black of a melanoma...

...it’s all potentially admirable—if you adopt the right point of view.

Even surgery, stool or pathology can be visually interesting and dazzlingly beautiful:

Have you ever seen electron microscopy of a retrovirus? I dare you to find something so perfectly beautiful in your entire life. I don’t think even diamons can look so pristine:

OK, so maybe it’s me. Perhaps I just have an overdeveloped aesthetic sensibility—for a vet. Maybe I should have continued my study in art history and set vet school aside to pursue my PhD. Even if I had, somehow I don’t think my life would have been too different.

Can you imagine a thesis on the representation of canids in nineteenth-century landscape painting?