How do you calculate animal experience?

[Two]

I understand the difference between animal experience and veterinary experience, but I am not sure how many hours I would have in the animal experience category. I have looked at past posts on SDN, and I see that some schools count pet ownership as animal experience. If you take care of your pets every day, how many hours would you put down on an application? Would you calculate it as 1-2 hours every day over the course of your pet's lifetime? Would it look bad if your bulk of animal experience is from owning pets? (My family loves animals and we have had horses, cats, dogs & birds)

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[GellaBella]

I understand the difference between animal experience and veterinary experience, but I am not sure how many hours I would have in the animal experience category. I have looked at past posts on SDN, and I see that some schools count pet ownership as animal experience. If you take care of your pets every day, how many hours would you put down on an application? Would you calculate it as 1-2 hours every day over the course of your pet's lifetime? Would it look bad if your bulk of animal experience is from owning pets? (My family loves animals and we have had horses, cats, dogs & birds)

Oh dear, there is an SDN debate about this every year, so you will get a variety of responses.

My feeling is that unless the school specifically says that including pet ownership hours is ok, I would leave it out. The reason being is that you're a pre-vet student, at some point you most likely took care of a family pet, and it seems (to me) like application padding.

Some schools ask that you do include it, in which case I think your idea of 1-2hrs/day seems appropriate. Other schools specifically say not to include it, unless you were involved in breeding, showing etc.

For what it's worth (prob not much) I had goats, pigs, dogs, cats, rabbits, etc etc growing up and helped to take care of them every day but didn't list ANY animal experience on my VMCAS application (yup put in a nice big 0) and got accepted to penn and tufts. I think all the schools I applied to asked me to not include pet ownership so I didn't.

If you're unsure I def suggest emailing the schools you're thinking of applying to (prob after this application cycle cause they're likely really busy right now) and see what they think 🙂

 

[EllieGirl89]

I would definitely email the individual schools if you are unsure. This year, Ohio State told me not to include caring for my pets. I did, however, include caring for and training my horses during the years I did 4-H with them. For that I just calculated an average of 15 hours per week every week for the 6 years I was in 4-H. My other hours were mostly working on horse farms, in a dog kennel, horseback riding lessons, etc. I think as a general rule, if you're doing something where you're actively learning or using your animals for some reason other than just "pets" it's okay to include it. That would include breeding, showing, 4-H, etc.

 

[sumstorm]

When I applied, I had lived on a farm for a decade as a youth. I spent a minimum of 90 minutes a day doing farm chores, at least 50 weeks a year. I realized that made the number astronomical, and I already had a lot of animal experience hours. So I noted it on the program, and put 100 hours, then put an explanation that I did daily farm chores, what they were, and for how many days/yr and how many years. I did include additional hours under other subject headings like dog obedience competition, and livestock showing, but those were certainly in addition to that 1.5 hours a day minimum. But I didn't want anyone to think I was padding hours. I had a couple of adcoms on review say they noted the discrepancy in length (10+ yrs) and the hours and looked closer at the explanation and thought that was a reasonable way to handle it. I did not include the general pet care because it could easily seem fluffed or inflated. Right now, in vet school, I have 7 dogs and 2 cats, and if I really need to, I can tend to all of them in less than half an hour a day, so when folks have a couple of pets and are chalking up major hours on care, I tend to wonder if what they are defining as care is different than actual husbandry.

I do think if you have an unusual situation that you want to address (ie care for a pet that is above and beyond normal, living in a home that does pet boarding, growing up with assisting a parent dog groomer) it is possible to put it up with a good explanation, but if you really have a ton of hours in it, it may be better to thin it out. I am sure some will disagree.