got it to work!

i used pete's first. i had to change all of the commas to semicolons and
then it all worked.

my looks like this:
=IF(B5=B31;C32;IF(B5=E31;F32;IF(B5=H31;I32;"Not specified")))

i am referencing other cells to give me the dog, cat, mouse terms in my
example. somehow, the semicolons seem strange, but this was the magic fix.

thanks again to you both!
doon

p.s. just about to try the second suggestion and will try applying the same
"fix" there as well...