Common sense counts; Tufts Cummings grads get sage advice.

• Position: LOCAL NEWS

Byline: Melissa McKeon

GRAFTON - Dr. R. John Berg, the speaker whom the Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine class of 2012 chose for their commencement, is also one of the school's professors. In that role, he's gotten to know the class, but he also knows about the world they'll be entering and what they'll need to make it there.

And he knows they, like any veterinarian, enjoy a good poop joke.

It wasn't just an icebreaker, however, when Dr. Berg told the graduating class, families and faculty gathered outside the Agnes Varis Campus Center in North Grafton yesterday of a vet school prank, placing the droppings of a Great Dane in a shih tzu's cage and watching fellow vet students frantically looking for a reason for the phenomenon.

"Common sense is a key component," Dr. Berg told graduates.

Common sense featured heavily in Dr. Berg's advice to the 92 graduates about a profession that he said is "evolving, intellectually challenging and constantly changing."

Their future, Berg told them, is bright in spite of the poor economy, owing to something that's changed the whole profession in the nearly 30 years he's been in it: the strength of the human-animal bond.

"Veterinarians were very slow to realize the power of the human-animal bond," Dr. Berg said. "But we now recognize that the public demands and is willing to pay for very, very high quality veterinary medicine. The human-animal bond was the driver behind specialization, use of very expensive imaging equipment and the explosion in clinical and basic research that's improved health care for animals at every level."

Owners spent $48 billion on their cats, dogs, birds and reptiles last year, Dr. Berg reported, and $10 billion of that was on veterinary care.

There are 191 million pets among the United States' 310 million residents, and only 61,000 veterinarians, he said.

He advised graduates to read about everything during their first years, and ask questions of all of the veterinarians they encounter.

But most of all, he advised them to enjoy their success...