How do I become a Vet?

Factual Questions
1

(I think this belongs in GQ, but maybe it’s more an IMHO type question.
Mods, move it where you will.)

So I was talking to the boyfriend last night, and I was telling him all
about how I wanted to go back to school to be a veterinary technician.
And he asks me, “Why not a Vet?” (Gosh, I love this guy, he always
encourages me to do things I don’t think I can do. But that’s a thread
of another day.) So I asked myself, why not a vet?

I know nothing about becoming a vet. What kind of schooling does it
require? I had heard that it was seven years of school, is this true?
How difficult is it? What kind of classes and courses do you take for
this? How much does the schooling cost? (I’m in canada, just FYI and
will be going to school here.)

Anyone who is a vet and can tell me what it’s like to be one? I mean, I
have a good idea, but maybe tell me about some things that you wouldn’t
normally think of.

I think I need some career counselling. :slight_smile:

2

Becoming a veteranarian is not unlike becoming an M.D. You need to go to grad school. And it helps to have some premed classes. And a great desire to be around sick animals.

3

You first need a four year degree in something like Animal Physiology. If you do really, really well, you can get into a Vet school. It’s very difficult to get into Vet school, nearly as hard as getting into Med school. Vet school, along with the internship that will follow will take you a number of years.

Here is the website for the American Veterianary Medical Association which I am sure is full of great information for someone who wants to enter the profession.

Haj

4

Sorry.

I meant to also link to the Canadian Veterianary Medical Association. This site was not working when I tried to look at it.

Haj

5

Ah! That was exactly the information I was looking for! It had links to a lot of the questions I needed answers.

Thanks.

6

Stephi, you would do well to find a vet in the area where you are going to spend your non-school time. I own a dairy and one of my best friends is my vet. He had two students ride with him during this past summer. One is almost sure to be hired by him this spring when he graduates from vet school. The other was just starting vet school and even if he isn’t hired by my guy he has invaluable experience in vet medicine for when he finishes. IMHO he will be hired b/c my vet just loves the guy. My vet’s partner got his break by riding with the vet school roommate of my vet. Good Luck.

7

Seeing as I studied in Australia, most of my experiences with regards cost, how to get in, what to study first, etc are probably not relevant.

Here are my thoughts on what it’s like studying vet, and what it’s like to actually be a vet.

Studying vet was rather intense. Keeping up with my school workload and trying to work part time to support myself and have a relationship all at the same time damn near killed me. You may have to make sacrifices to study.

If you get to pick which school you go to, the vet school in Guelph, Ontairo, is the most well regarded internationally out of all the ones in Canada.

Being a vet is in many ways a nasty job. Over here, at least, people refer to it as a vocation, not a career.
This is because the pay is crap (much less than any equivalently educated profession - in this country, teachers earn more than vets, as do nurses, mechanics, garbage collectors…), the hours are terrible, and clients often make your life difficult in spite of your best efforts to help them.
You have to do it because you love it, in spite of all this other stuff.

Things to remember: even if you have no desire to work with sheep, horses, cattle, cats, insert species you aren’t interested in here, you will have to study them anyway because you have to be competent with everything.
Yes, this includes snakes and other creepy-crawlies.

Being a vet isn’t all about cuddling cute little puppies and kitties, or saving noble racehorses.

A lot of it is quite mundane.

Clients can drive you crazy with their stupidity. They also frequently refuse to listen to what you suggest, and refuse to even pay.

That’s another thing. Being a vet (especially a small animal practitioner) is about being in a small business. As much as I find it distasteful, you have to consider everything in a financial framework. If you don’t have a good head for business/admin/paperwork/etc, you will need to study this area.

The thing I find most frustrating, having grown up in a country where there is universal government funded healthcare for humans, is when you can fix a relatively minor problem which would improve a pet’s quality of life no end, but the client refuses because they think (or it genuinely is) too expensive.
Or even worse, when they have to put the animal to sleep because they can’t afford a relatively simple treatment.

You will get woken in the middle of the night in the middle of winter and have to trek out to a farm to see a sick cow, if you work in large animal practice. You will get there, from time to time, and discover that the cow has been sick for a week and it probably could have waited until morning. You will treat it anyway, and the farmer may refuse to pay.

Everyone you ever met, on discovering that you are in vet school/a vet will perpetually ask you for advice about their pets, and will get upset when you tell them that you aren’t qualified to give it, or need to see their pet to give it. They will get upset when you won’t do things on the cheap for them. You will be expected to tell someone exactly what the problem their dog/cat/whatever has is, from a vague description of symptoms, and a home remedy that is much cheaper but just as effective as the drug they would buy from you.

You will walk around covered in dog or cat fur, and smelling like cow/horse/pig/chook excrement.

You will have physical injuries - no matter how careful you are, it’s only a matter of time before you get bitten by a cat or dog, or kicked by a horse or cow.

If you work in large animal practice, you will spend a lot of time in your car driving around. This puts us as a profession at increased risk of dying in a car accident.

Finally, vets as a profession are the second most likely to kill themselves (after psychiatrists, I believe). This is because it’s an incredibly stressful and demanding job, and we have easy access to a lot of lethal drugs.

Oh yeah. If you have any kind of criminal record, you may be denied a license to practice (at least over here) because of the requirement to work with prescription drugs.

That’s all I can think of for now.

The above applies to Australia, Canada could be different.
If you have any specific questions, please ask.

phraser, BVSc

8

Oh, I forgot to mention that in Australia, despite the conditions of the act which regulate working hours, many vets work a 70-80 hour week. More, at peak times of year (like calving).

9

Another thing… the curriculum may differ over there, but we had to spend almost all our school holidays rostered on prac work in the university clinics, or seeing practice with vets.

You can’t depend on having holiday time to earn money, or for seeing friends, family, etc.

10

In the US you need to have very good grades with your BS/BA degree to get into vet school. The main reason for that is there aren’t many vet schools in the US. For example here in NC there is 1 vet school and 4 med schools. I’ve heard it’s harder to get into vet school than some med schools.

There also seems to be a trend with more women than men becoming vets now. For example, I take my dogs to a vet clinic with 5 doctors and all are women. 3 of them graduated in the last few years.

11

deadeyesdad Yeah, I was planning on visiting a local vet around here and asking what it’s like. I’m not sure if I can do a “ride along” I’ll certainly ask though.
phraser, yeah, I understand it’s a dirty, thankless job, but I’d love to do it anyways. I have a lot of experience with animals, dogs, cats, horses, goats, pigs, chickens, and cows (I grew up on a hobby farm) and I even have some experience with marine animals. The pay, in Canada anyways, isn’t that bad, but I imagine it’s not the kind of job you take for the pay.

I also have experience with running a small tradeshow, and several small businesses. I know all about invoicing, receiving and paying bills, filing taxes, etc etc.

I realize it’s a very stressful job, and I think the part I’m most concerned about is dealing with people who don’t give their pets adequate care. Like, dealing with a disease where a $20 vaccination would have prevented it, things like that.

Right now, I’m more interested in dog/cat/ small animal care, but large animal care does sound interesting. I think I’d like to get some experience in both.

kpm Yeah, I’d be more worried about not being able to get into school, I have more than enough funds for it, but there are only 4 Vet schools here in Canada. I guess I’m just worried that I’m not smart enough to do this. And that I don’t have the academic skills to graduate. (If you understand my meaning.)

12

Vet school is indeed harder to get into than med school, and the curriculum tends to be even more grueling. There’s a lot more to learn; by the time the average med student is actually seeing patients, the average vet student is learning to do surgery, and doing it on multiple species, to boot.

Veterinary medicine is a wonderful way to spend your life, but it’s also really, really hard. Not just physically, or academically, but emotionally, too. You will get attached to some of your patients, and some of them (a lot, depending on the type of practice you’re in) will die despite your best efforts. Some of the ones you lose will look or act just like your pets at home, or will remind you of pets you used to have. You will have to watch animals suffer because their owners don’t know when to let go. You will have to put animals down for easily preventable stuff like parvo. You will have owners who cling to you, sobbing hysterically, after you give them a prognosis. You will have owners tell you that you’re an evil, heartless, money-grubbing bitch who doesn’t care about animals at all.

In the US at least, it’s vital to have practical experience with practicing vets. Many schools require at least one of your letters of recommendation be written by a vet. Don’t just ride along, get in there and get your hands dirty. Come home covered in blood and puke and shit a few times. Deal with a few fractious animals. Assist in a few euthanasias. Deal with a few obnoxious clients. If you still want to do that for the rest of your life, then go for it.

Actually, that advice goes for tech school, too. Get in there and see how it really is before you spend all that time and money getting certified. Get a job with a vet. You’ll probably start in the kennels and work your way up to assisting and tech work. Heck, you might not need to go to tech school at all. I never have, and neither have most of the techs I’ve worked with over the years.

13

Here is a site with a specific FAQ dealing specifically with your question (at the bottom of the page) and some additional links.

WHO WANTS TO BE A VETERINAR(ian)? (with apologies to Regis Philbin and ABC for this terrible pun)

While everything the other posters explained is certainly true, there is more to the career opportunities of “veterinarian” than the usual, standard situations listed above. For example, some veterinarians just do research for schools or companies. The major pet food companies, for example, have veterinarians on their staff. I’m sure most major cities hire veterinarians to be in their shelter programs. After vet school you could get a residency and become a specialist, only doing surgery, or ultrasound, or dermatology, either in a specific practice or for many different vet hospitals.

I’m not trying to minimize the above contributions, as the problems dealing with some clients explained in the above posts are probably applicable to the great majority of vets. If you want to avoid those particular sets of problems you could still be a vet and not have to deal with it… although you’d probably have other situations to deal with that your average practicing vet doesn’t have to.

But I’m sure that is true no matter what your profession or career.

Good luck!

14

My wife is a small animal (dogs and cats) veterinarian. She graduated about 2 years ago. Veterinary Medicine is a four year program, usually on top of four years of undergrad, including various prerequisite courses - usually a bunch of bio ones.
Getting into a veterinary medicine program in the US is very tough - harder than medical school. You need good grades (certainly above 3.0 - closer to 4.o is better), plenty of related experience and you still have to pass the entrance interview.
My wife had a 3.6 in biology from a very good university, tons of experience and good extra curricular stuff and she STILL didn’t get in the first time (this was to the University of Pennsylvania - a really good vet school). She went back and worked for a pharmaceutical company for a year while taking graduate classes at night in parasitology and a few other things.

It’s tougher than medical school to get into due to the very small number of vet schools in the US.

She loves her career - she doesn’t have it as hard as the Australian vet mentioned earlier, but she doesn’t deal with large animals/livestock (although she did plenty in school). She works hard, including two nights a week and every other saturday and there are really tough days but it’s never dull.

She’ll make about $60 000 this year, and should make more as her profit sharing goes up as it is tied directly to how much she bills - new vets take longer per case. She has about $100 000 in loans.

An interesting point is that while veterinary medicine used to be a male dominated field as recently as the late 70s it has since flipped from 75% male to approx 75% female. Kudos to the ladies.

Good luck!

15

I should have probably said that as nasty as I made it sound, my job is my life, and I love it.

Not for the faint hearted, though.

16

The University of Guelph takes about 100-105 students a YEAR into their vets program (last numbers I saw). Having worked as a Frosh leader for the BSc programs at Guelph, I can tell you that the vast majority of students entering Guelph say they want to get into Vets - that number drops substantially within the first two weeks, as they realise how competitive it is to get into! I was one of those frosh - I’m now graduating as a biochemist.

Guelph requires a minimum of two years of fully-loaded (5 courses per term) undergraduate education in a related field such as any of the life sciences (biochem, biology, animal physiology etc). Already having a BSc. is often more likely to lead to being accepted into the program. Volunteer experience with animals is also a very good thing. Volunteer experience with a vet counts for even more.

Since I decided not to go through the process of becoming a vet, I don’t know that I can tell you much more, but I’d take a look at the Guelph website, www.uoguelph.ca, partuicularly the academic calendar which contains the schedule of dates, the entrance requirements, course requirements and descriptions.

You should know that if you are not an Ontarian, your odds decrease of being accepted at Guelph - in Canada, the vet schools tend to be “regional” since there are only 4 of them. I am from Québec, and I was told that there were only 2-3 places given to out-of-province students. If you are from the Prairies or BC, look into the vet school in Saskatchewan. In the Maritimes, look into PEI, and if you are from Québec, UdeM at St-Hyacinthe. I am anglophone, but I was told that (if I had applied and been accepted) I would have had no trouble at St-Hyacinthe since all the textbooks are in English anyways. My plan, though, was to complete my undergrad requirements at Guelph, then apply for Vets, which ups your chances a little bit.

I fell in love wth a different program, though, and decided to spend my university life on the east side of Gordon Street. If you really want this, then I wish you good luck and hope you enjoy the West side (though the parking is crappier over there!)