Although you showed admirable restraint by not claiming to be a talking dog, I'm going to rate your ploy resourceful but unethical. (Hence "ploy.") As I am sure you realize, you intentionally, albeit tacitly, duped the veterinarians, inducing them to believe that you were currently working on a study for X U or doing other dispassionate scientific research. Why else would you bring up your college days and fail to bring up the words "pharmaceutical company" or "marketing"? Having discovered that veterinarians would not participate in this study if they knew who was actually conducting it, you devised a tactic to obscure that fact. It is possible to lie without doing so explicitly. Imagine my saying this last in a thick Texas drawl, as I try to cadge a free beer at my local bar's Texans Drink Free Night -- oh, and picture me in a Stetson and cowboy boots, a disturbing sight, I grant you, pardner.