Include Pet Owner Hours?

cubs11 said:

in the 2 years that i've been on this forum i have seen a few mentions of this, but i'm wondering what your suggestions are as far as including/not including animal experience hours as pet owners?

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The general consensus seems to be to not count general ownership, but count hours doing above what most do. That is to say, don't count feeding, walking, training your dog, etc. - but you could count training hours if you're a competitive flyballer or do SAR or such.

I didn't count any of my dog ownership or general horse ownership - the only hours I put down were hours I was paid for (stable hand, instructing, etc.) or doing something I could have been paid for in a different situation (acting as a groom for instructors, working student positions, barn-sitting).

I agree with DVMorBust that general pet ownership doesn't count.
To add to the horse thing, I would include hours you spent taking lessons.

ETA: It does get a little fuzzy in some situations; what I would probably have done in that case is use the lower estimate (only the things I was sure should count) and then use the little explanation area to explain the things I hadn't accounted for.

For example, if you did the horse owning/working/lessons thing you could put down in the hours just those that you spent taking lessons, competing, or being paid to work in the stable or with someone else's horse, and then in the explanation say "I also rode my own horse 5 times a week for 4 years and did all my own horse care" or whatever.

I think it would be legitimate to include that. I didn't because there was no way I was going to be able to accurately figure out the hours (multiple neighbors' animals over many years, splitting jobs with my siblings... way too complicated for the amount of hours it would have probably added up to). If you have a better memory or record of it then I think you may as well include it.

On a side note, when I have kids I'm going get them to keep track of that kind of thing in case they ever have to fill out some crazy VMCAS-like application.

I wouldn't count it, it seems like a huge stretch and I feel that it's just fluff on an application. I mean, I've had a pet in the house since I was born, so technically I've been a pet owner for 24/7 for 20 years...let's see, that's a LOT of hours.

I would say paid pet sitting is fine, as that is above and beyond normal pet duties.

cubs11 said:

my thoughts exactly. i felt a little ridiculous putting hundreds of thousands of hours just for being a pet owner, but i remembered seeing someone on here say the included "life time pet owner" hours in animal experience. just making sure others didn't include it as well.

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Part of the issue, at least from conversations I've had with other people applying and in school (although nothing official) is that a. general pet ownership really doesn't say much more than 'I like animals and am comfortable with some species', which is generally (not always) assumed of vet school applicants in the first place, and b. coming from this, claiming pet ownership hours when nearly everyone has them in some way seems like padding.

Plus, didn't VMCAS say somewhere not to include them? At least on last year's? Or am I going nuts?

When I toured Auburn I asked about listing hours spent caring for my goats, and they told me to include them but "don't go overboard."

bunnity said:

I think it would be legitimate to include that. I didn't because there was no way I was going to be able to accurately figure out the hours (multiple neighbors' animals over many years, splitting jobs with my siblings... way too complicated for the amount of hours it would have probably added up to). If you have a better memory or record of it then I think you may as well include it.

On a side note, when I have kids I'm going get them to keep track of that kind of thing in case they ever have to fill out some crazy VMCAS-like application.

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My mom made me keep all the awards I got from high school on and was very happy to tell me "I told you so" when it came time to fill out VMCAS!

I listed pet ownership and pet-sitting in my app and my post-mortem sent to me from Purdue showed my animal experience hours at 0... meaning they didn't count any of those. Don't know about the other schools I applied to. Just a precautionary tip to all of you applying this year!

I included hours as a show handler, a dog trainer/handler (agility, drill, herding, SAR), a dog training instructor, and doing barnyard duties on my folks farm that they paid others to do. I also included my zoo experience, shelter experience, lab experience. I also included livestock showing...and my rabbit and poultry business.

I did NOT include general pet ownership, which would have included reptiles, cats/dogs, birds, pocket pets, ferrets, and a skunk.

I also did not include some really special projects that I worked on while completing a fellowship. I did include the fellowship, but lumped the animal experiences under it and emphasized it in my PS (tending to domesticated elephants in hill tribe villages isn't something to be left off the application...but it didn't really FIT anywhere...it was under a vet, but in a foreign country, it was a short term intensive project, etc.)

One school's supplemental asked for a description of your experience with various animals such as pigs, cows, etc....I wish VMCAS did that.

I am still confused about what to include of my horse experience.
Lessons?
Teaching lessons?
Riding other people's horses for pleasure? (I'm guessing no)
Riding other people's horses to rehab the horses from injuries (sometimes paid, sometimes not)?
Exercising horses for money?
Training school horses?

What about cleaning stalls, feeding, and grooming horses? I was in the campus equestrian club for several years and spent hundreds of hours working at the barn -- I wasn't compensated except for getting to ride the horses and take some lessons. It seems that this could be considered part of normal horse ownership if it were my own barn, but it is also horse-related employment of sorts, albeit without the traditional exchange of money.

Thanks for your help! The panic stage has begun . . .

This is just my opinion...

eventualeventer said:

Lessons? Yes
Teaching lessons? Yes
Riding other people's horses for pleasure? No
Riding other people's horses to rehab the horses from injuries (sometimes paid, sometimes not)? Yes
Exercising horses for money? Yes
Training school horses? Yes

What about cleaning stalls, feeding, and grooming horses? I was in the campus equestrian club for several years [...] Maybe include all the hours but list it as an extracurricular rather than animal experience?

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Anyone who applied with more horse experience (mine was pretty much just taking lessons), how did you do it?

If I recall correctly, the application states NOT to include pet-ownership for experience. However, I would call the admissions office of the schools you are interested in to see what they would consider "Animal Experience." Good Luck!!

eventualeventer said:

Lessons?
No (but I think it depends - if lessons are your big contact, then yes. I didn't count mine because it would have been way overkill.)
Teaching lessons?
Yes
Riding other people's horses for pleasure?
No
Riding other people's horses to rehab the horses from injuries (sometimes paid, sometimes not)?
Yes
Exercising horses for money?
Yes
Training school horses?
Yes

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My thoughts listed above after the category. Then more below.

What about cleaning stalls, feeding, and grooming horses?

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Depends on what - just idle saturday hanging out at the barn, pick a stall here or there? I wouldn't. If it's experience that really gets into the husbandry aspects of it - all the sweat and long days that go along with stable upkeep - then I would keep it.

I was in the campus equestrian club for several years and spent hundreds of hours working at the barn -- I wasn't compensated except for getting to ride the horses and take some lessons.

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Definitely put this in.

It seems that this could be considered part of normal horse ownership if it were my own barn, but it is also horse-related employment of sorts, albeit without the traditional exchange of money.

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That's the issue (or great thing, depending on how you look at it) with the horse world. I'd say anything that you were compensated for in any way (pay, riding, lessons, etc.) would be a good way to break it down. I also think that people who grow up on farms should use that as animal experience.

Here's the way I broke my experience down, and a brief explanation of why I chose to include/not include:

Included:
Working as a stable hand (in the discussion section, I mentioned all the routine stuff such as stall cleaning, feeding, turnin/out as well as something along the lines of 'responsible for administering first aid and treatment for ongoing medical issues', to group all the unusual stuff in the same heading.)(job)
Working Student position (compensated in lessons for work)
Teaching riding lessons/horse care (job)
Pony Club (documentable levels/participation)
Training other horses (again, compensation in some way)

Did Not Include:
Taking lessons (that's more the 'sport' aspect than the horsemanship aspect)
Riding for pleasure (again, more the sport aspect of it)
Any medical treatment for my own horse or horses I was leasing, even ongoing, traumatic ones that took many hours and give lots of experience (this is part of ownership)
Competing (again with the 'sport' aspect)
All the other random things that go along with being a horse person

I think it really does depend for everyone, though. Especially in terms of lessons - if person A is competing at a high level, teaching, etc. in my mind, pointing out the lessons they took is kind of overkill. If person B has been taking lessons, but not much beyond that, they should definitely include them because that puts them above the average person in terms of horse experience...

Not sure exactly how to break it down. Compensation/no compensation? Compared to layperson/compared to other riders, depending on your level of experience? Hmm...

I know I read on some application that pet ownership does *not* count as experience, but I don't remember if it was the VCMAS or a supplemental. Besides, there is also a difference in "pet ownership" when you are a kid and your parents pretty much do everything and when you are an adult and have to do everything yourself. In the limited spaces of the apps, that would be hard to differentiate and therefore not "apples to apples" comparisons between candidates.

A similar question along this vein....I'm volunteering this year as a theraputic riding assistant. Should I list this as "animal experience" (I've never handled a horse in my life, so I'm learning a lot about horse handling, grooming and barn care) or just list this under "extracurriculars/community service/awards/ect"?

sheltermedicine said:

If I recall correctly, the application states NOT to include pet-ownership for experience. However, I would call the admissions office of the schools you are interested in to see what they would consider "Animal Experience." Good Luck!!

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I agree with sheltermedicine. When I applied to the UofM this past application cycle, the admissions officer guy during a meeting said you should include pet ownership. He didn't necessarily say to include it in your hours section but to at least include it in your PS. I never included my personal dog ownership but I did include taking care of my parent's horses and dog training. So I think that different schools maybe will accept or want different information to be included on your app.

katryn said:

A similar question along this vein....I'm volunteering this year as a theraputic riding assistant. Should I list this as "animal experience" (I've never handled a horse in my life, so I'm learning a lot about horse handling, grooming and barn care) or just list this under "extracurriculars/community service/awards/ect"?

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I would definitely include this in animal experience, especially if you have limited horse experience.

Last year at this time (well, actually, a few months later, to be honest), I was wavering about the pet ownership issue. I hadn't even considered it until some of my friends were talking about having put it on their VMCAS, and then of course I got paranoid about it. I asked my pre-vet club advisor, and he said that some people do it, but that it is generally ignored anyway, and is considered "fluff." I decided that putting my pet ownership hours would make it look like I thought I needed the hours, if that makes sense.

The only "pet owner" hours I put on there were from fostering. I fostered for some exotic rescue groups, and I had limited exotics experience otherwise, so I included it on there to at least show that I knew how to handle those animals and had a basic familiarity with their care. Obviously those animals lived at my house, and I figured including 24/7 hours wouldn't be good, so I calculated how many hours per week I spent actively caring for them, and then added up the hours for how long I had each animal. I'm not sure how each school counted that, but no one said anything negative about it in my interviews.

I included pet ownership hours on my application- since I have owned everything from horses to pet mice and everything in between. IMO, it may or may not help your application, but it definitely won't hurt it!

I disagree; I think it could hurt you if the adcom thought you were scrounging for hours or trying to inflate your hours (not saying that about you, turnandburn, but just that an adcom could think that way).

The other thing is that I think there is a difference between the value (in terms of becoming proficient at handling animals) between hours spent working with your pets and working with new and different animals on a regular basis. When you're taking care of your own animal, assuming you're not doing specialized training for agility or something, it's pretty much the same thing every day, so the learning curve flattens out after a while. Say you walk your dog an hour every day: 1000 hours isn't going to make you much more experienced with animals in general than 500 hours. Conversely, if you're working in a clinic or even walking dogs at a shelter, you are seeing different animals every day and constantly learning to deal with new issues. Working with the same individual animals over and over for years is much less valuable than working with a new animal every day for years.

There are certainly exceptions, like working on a family farm where there are many animals coming and going, or pursuing show jumping or SAR with your own animals where you're both constantly learning. I think looking at your learning curve is probably more important than who actually owned the animal when figuring out experience hours.

katryn said:

A similar question along this vein....I'm volunteering this year as a theraputic riding assistant. Should I list this as "animal experience" (I've never handled a horse in my life, so I'm learning a lot about horse handling, grooming and barn care) or just list this under "extracurriculars/community service/awards/ect"?

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If I'm remembering correctly, you should prioritize listing as follows:

Vet experience
Animal experience
Work experience
Community Service/Other

So, if you were paid to work with a vet, it would go under vet experience even though it was also work experience. Likewise, if you're listing an extracurricular/volunteer gig that had to do with animals (which your therapeutic riding work definitely is), you would list it as Animal experience even though it could also be community service.

I also think that what Bunnity said about the learning curve makes a LOT of sense. There would be no point to putting down 5000 hours of animal ownership, because maybe 100-200 of those were spent learning something, and the rest just repeating tasks. But in that sense, I suppose it could be argued that you should be able to put 1-200 hours of animal ownership down as experience, which I still don't agree with...hmm...

I guess the issue for me with ownership is that yeah, you learn the basics of care - but you really get to know *your animal* more than the species. If that makes any sense.

A learning curve occurs with every job though, not just pet ownership. Most jobs available to pre-vets get to be pretty repetitive after awhile. I think that's assumed- it's not like there is a specific instruction to only report hours spent doing *new* things at your job- they just want to know the total hours you put in. The learning curve is assumed. I think that's reading too much into it.

I really don't think it's going to hurt you- if anything they will just disregard those hours. This was the first year I included it on my application, and while I know that wasn't the reason I was accepted, it certainly didn't seem to have hurt me!

DVMorBust said:

Plus, didn't VMCAS say somewhere not to include them? At least on last year's? Or am I going nuts?

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You're not going nuts, I've heard it before from admin counselors. Ownership does not count.

Maybe if your pet had some special needs that inspired you, you could talk about it somewhere? I wouldn't add my 21 yrs of 3 dogs and 4 years of horse ownership to the mix as it would be seen as fluff and I'm sure others have had many more pets than I have!

I included hours in my application for caring for my own personal exotics. I know some schools prefer you not to do that, but since I've never owned a dog or a cat (just got a cat a year ago) but had owned so many exotics, I thought it was an important part of my application considering that I have a genuine interest in working with exotics.

My opinion - I doubt that schools will knock you out of the game because you listed some ownership hours. Keep in mind, I kept my estimate of hours very modest and used the description (responsibilities/duties) to justify its inclusion.

I think it depends on the spin you put on it. I included the animals I have owned, what I learned from it, and how it will make me a better (more competent/compassionate) veterinarian. Just my $0.02!

You can always throw in something in your personal statement about your pet ownership - that way they know it's there but it doesn't look like you're inflating hours.

Thanks for all the input! I finally got around to making my checklist of things I need to put together for applications, and my goal for the week is to put in all of my past vet and animal experience hours and make descriptions for the ones that are ongoing.

OT: Is there anyone else who doesn't really have much to put in the non-animal categories? Except for a bakery job when I was 14, all of my jobs have been either research or veterinary. My volunteering was dog-related, and my main structured extracurricular was the equestrian club.

I had nothing in one of the sections (I think it was called extracurriculars or community service or something). All my volunteer stuff was animal related and all the rest of my time was taken up with work.

I don't think it's too big of a deal; there is lots of overlap between the categories so as long as you do some interesting stuff I don't think it matters.