As a veterinary practitioner from another state now practicing in Virginia, I too was once a veterinary student learning new skills. I was fortunate enough to attend a veterinary school where all my learning was overseen by full professors or, minimally, by senior residents, which in turn were answering to full professors. When I was at the hospital during my 12 month senior year, I attended rounds with a full professor twice a day on every service, as well as weekly case presentations which were discussed by full professors. While making medical decisions, or doing clinical proceedures, I was always under the observant eye of either a full professor, or a senior resident, with a consistant system in place. My concern with a student getting his/her experience from private practitioners is to what quality and type of supervision is being given? What one private practioner might feel is adequate supervision, might be totally inappropriate in another's eye's. Before opening my own practice in Virginia, I did relief work for a few years and was extremely surprized at the diversitity of quality of practices. Is there some governing body that oversees the student's education in these preceptorships? And most certainly, while the expectation of a client taking their pet to a veterinary teaching hospital is that a student might help perform a proceedure under direct guidance, a client would certainly not expect that a student be performing any type of proceedure on their pet in a trusted private veterinary practice, and should DEFINITELY be allowed this knowlege and give their consent in writing before ANY proceedure is performed that is outside of those allowed by the Virginia Board of Veterinary Medicine for a non-veterinarian.