My first job after my Masters program. A fabulous experience in my early career! Most people know the name New York as the mega-city. But is it is also a huge dairy state and has a large and diverse countryside. Beautiful seasonal color changes, lovely old dairy barns, wonderful old stone houses, and hundreds of years of history. My job was as Field Veterinarian supervising of one of five regional service laboratories for mastitis control in dairy cattle. I often refereed to this program a "socialized medicine for dairy cows". The program was subsidized by the state department of agriculture and was administered by Cornell University (as an employee of the university I was a card carrying Cornell Faculty member!) I was introduced to the art of milking system function and safety assessment and learned the New York approach to mastitis microbiology. Also everything you ever wanted to know about Streptococcus agalactiae. Learned all the mistakes to avoid (learn by doing) in executing an eradication program. Got my first experience with a herd with serious teat end hyperkeratosis, warts, and >50% Staphylococcus aureus. I promised myself from that experience that I would attempt to collect teat condition data on every herd I worked in.