"vet" as a career choice?

[kathymuggle]

My middle child (who will be 11 soon) has been saying she wants to be a vet for the last few months.

While I know she could change her mind, and is very young, it is the first time she has stated a career desire - and she is a very loyal to ideas she has.

Is it a good career choice? Would you encourage someone to go into it? What has been your biggest joy and bissest issue in being a vet?

TIA!

Kathy

[Nicole915]

I'm a veterinarian in the US, and love my job, but like every career it has its difficult moments. You most certainly have to be good with people, not just animals.

First off, I'd say its a difficult path to begin with. You have to be very good at math and science. It is harder to get into vet school than med school. The people who come in as clients and say "oh, I was going to be a vet, but I would get too sad" just make me wonder if they have any idea how rigorous the requirements and education is. My husband is a human MD and PhD, so I was able to compare his experience to mine... and they are vastly different. In order to be a vet you have to know every system of many species. Human side medicine is far more specialized. Human med school is also more expensive, but vet school isn't cheap by any means.

The economic reality of working as a vet is comparable to working as a dentist. Since the client isn't insulated from the cost of health care, the whole experience and choices made are different and require both flexibility and tact.

I would also caution you that people assume that "If you really love animals, you'll save this one for free". They don't always understand the economic reality of running a business, and the demands can be challenging when dealing with people who want something for nothing. If the general public didn't have the idea that a DVM should be altruistic or that they should dictate when and where I do my charity work it would make life as a practicing vet far more enjoyable.

All that said... its the best job I could imagine. Yeah, everyone loves the well puppy visits, but the feeling that you get from fixing an animal so that they can live a better life is huge.

[dachshund mom]

I'd see if she can follow along with a vet for a day to see what the job is like. I wanted to be a vet my entire life until I did a shadow program in middle school. As much as I love animals, it wasn't the career for me.

[Noelle C.]

Originally Posted by Nicole915

I would also caution you that people assume that "If you really love animals, you'll save this one for free". They don't always understand the economic reality of running a business, and the demands can be challenging when dealing with people who want something for nothing.

I worked for a very large animal hospital in Massachusetts years back, and we saw this a lot. People claimed if we cared, we'd provide free treatment for "just this one animal." If we provided all care free for every "one animal," bills wouldn't have been paid, receptionists and techs would have to work for free, and there would have been no money for supplies. There is really less money to be made being a vet than being an MD. It's just as Nicole said. People aren't insulated from the cost, and because of this, decisions to do pricey procedures are harder to make, and the costs of many things are less, by necessity, than they would be for a human. When it's out of pocket 100%, the rules change. The overhead does not.

I think most kids have a time when they want to be vets. How fun to work with animals all day! Until that dog that was hit by a car dies, or you have to deliver the news that that bump is cancer and the chance of the poor thing living is so slim, even with painful surgery. It's an unfortunate reality that these things happen, and they're not rare, isolated incidents.

For the right person, being a vet is a rewarding, wonderful position, good and bad stuff combined. For many others, it is indeed too sad, and so, for them, would be the wrong choice. It's very hard to get into vet school. There are so few of them to begin with that it's going to simply be harder to get into a program. The cost of school is astronomical as well, and the pay at the end isn't the wealthy life many think of.

I'd suggest what's already been suggested, to see if your daughter can shadow a vet, or even volunteer a few hours on the weekend to helping clean cages and such so get some hands-on semi-experience to observe and see what goes on.