How many hours of experience did you have?

[Kara31191]

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I was wondering how many hours in different areas you had completed when you got into vet school?

I'm just wondering because I'm trying to look into the varied experiences I could get in the next five years before I will be applying. Thank you! 😀

-Kara

 

[Electrophile]

I can't remember exactly how many hours I put down, but I'll try...

Non-vet shadowing experience:

Small animal: thousands. I'm a behaviorist, I foster for a national rescue and the local humane society, I've done several dog sports (Schutzhund, agility, etc), yada yada yada.

Large animal: not much.

Equine: took riding lessons back in the day. I estimated 300 hours.

Exotic: own and have owned numerous exotics (snakes, rats, mice, birds, ferret, rabbits) and have fostered a few for the local humane society (mostly guinea pigs)

Vet shadowing experience:

Small animal: several hundred with several vets, including an Army vet.

Large animal: several hundred with a mixed practice vet, mostly dairy and beef cattle. Also helped the vet with a sheep and goat sale.

Equine: not a whole lot (a few farm calls was it), but with that same mixed practice vet.

Exotics/zoo: did 25 hours at the Omaha Zoo

Lab animal/research: did several thousand hours of research during undergrad and grad school, including a collaborative research project with the head vet of the Research Animal Diagnostic Lab (RADIL)

 

[WhtsThFrequency]

Animal and veterinary: Two weeks at a cat-only clinic the summer before I applied. And that is it. My "animal/vet" experience consisted almost soley of my own pets, including my breeding reptiles.

Research: somewhere around 3-4000 hours 😉 I worked summers and breaks in biological/chemical labs since I was about 16...so that helped.

It takes all kinds!

 

[CookieBear]

I'm a weird one, with pretty much one huge long single experience...

13 years full time in a small animal/exotics hospital. It was my first (and only) job.

But I'm pretty much the exception to the rule. As most on here are aware, they like diverse experience. As in the words of Cornell, they prefer "Breadth, not depth."

 

[Kara31191]

😀 Thank you everyone! I was just trying to get an idea of what I should have in the next few years.

-Kara

 

[ri23]

I'm a weird one, with pretty much one huge long single experience...

13 years full time in a small animal/exotics hospital. It was my first (and only) job.

But I'm pretty much the exception to the rule. As most on here are aware, they like diverse experience. As in the words of Cornell, they prefer "Breadth, not depth."

OSU tells people that they like both breadth and depth 😉

 

[pressmom]

Given the amount of time you have, I would go for at least two deep experiences of 400 hours or more and another 3-4 light experiences of at least 100 hours. Just my thoughts.... 🙂

 

[Angelo84]

small animal part time ~3000 hours, large animal 100 hours volunteering, behaviorist 100 hours volunteering, zoo 250 hours volunteering, 40 hours alternative vet shadowing, field experience 200 hours, research--honors thesis didn't list hours

 

[cyrille104]

about 1500 hours split between shelter, animal hospital, zoo, and research

 

[PAThbrd]

800+ hours (2 foaling seasons) at a referral equine practice in central kentucky
~400 hours as summer manager of a small animal practice
4000+ hours working at various horse farms and many, many more hours spent riding, showing, etc.
3-400 hours driving carriage horses
2500+ hours raising/training seeing eye puppies
~200 hours in research

 

[Poke]

800+ hours (2 foaling seasons) at a referral equine practice in central kentucky
~400 hours as summer manager of a small animal practice
4000+ hours working at various horse farms and many, many more hours spent riding, showing, etc.
3-400 hours driving carriage horses
2500+ hours raising/training seeing eye puppies
~200 hours in research

You make me sick.


😍

 

[shuvball1]

~650 Small Animal Hospital
~260 Research
~200 Zoo Animal Hospital Volunteer

Hopefully this is good enough! I was unable to have a job during the school year due to athletics so this is all from the summers...

 

[ri23]

5000+ Zoological
500+ Horse Research Farm
200+ Horse Riding facility
100 SA clinic

 

[Kara31191]

ri23, by Zoological, what experiences did you have there? Anything extremely interesting you'd like to share. 🙂 Who am I kidding? It's all interesting...

 

[ri23]

It was almost all interesting. My time there was spent between three things while I was there education, the Children's Zoo, and large mammals (elephants, giraffes, big cats, bears etc.). I started in a pilot volunteer program when I was 13 where they selected 15 13 years olds from the surrounding areas.

For the children's zoo I mainly worked with farm animals and domestic animals. We had dogs that we trained and we did training shows with basic obedience and agility. Our department was in the education department so a large part of the job was educating the public on the different animals, but there was also a lot of training. One of my favorite animals in the CZ to train was our arctic fox, after two years of training she was finally comfortable with me and she was really only comfortable with a handful of people.

The large mammal part was by far the most interesting. I got to see the first ever sucessful surgical AI of an African Elephant (elephants were my favorite animal to work with) as well as helping with training of a lot of animals. One of my favorite things to do was seal feeds/training as well as necropsies and taxodermy. I got to help with the taxodermy of a 351 lb stillborn elephant calf as well as a hippo, leopard, giraffe and many other animals. Watching necropsies was also extremely interesting. We had a few lambs die of copper toxicity so seeing the jaundiced organs. Overall, I absolutely loved my zoo experience - and that is what I thought I wanted to go into but since starting vet school I changed my mind. Sorry if this is incoherent rambling - I'm multi-tasking with my studying 😉.

 

[JerseyisCutest]

It was almost all interesting. My time there was spent between three things while I was there education, the Children's Zoo, and large mammals (elephants, giraffes, big cats, bears etc.). I started in a pilot volunteer program when I was 13 where they selected 15 13 years olds from the surrounding areas.

For the children's zoo I mainly worked with farm animals and domestic animals. We had dogs that we trained and we did training shows with basic obedience and agility. Our department was in the education department so a large part of the job was educating the public on the different animals, but there was also a lot of training. One of my favorite animals in the CZ to train was our arctic fox, after two years of training she was finally comfortable with me and she was really only comfortable with a handful of people.

The large mammal part was by far the most interesting. I got to see the first ever sucessful surgical AI of an African Elephant (elephants were my favorite animal to work with) as well as helping with training of a lot of animals. One of my favorite things to do was seal feeds/training as well as necropsies and taxodermy. I got to help with the taxodermy of a 351 lb stillborn elephant calf as well as a hippo, leopard, giraffe and many other animals. Watching necropsies was also extremely interesting. We had a few lambs die of copper toxicity so seeing the jaundiced organs. Overall, I absolutely loved my zoo experience - and that is what I thought I wanted to go into but since starting vet school I changed my mind. Sorry if this is incoherent rambling - I'm multi-tasking with my studying 😉.

I am 100% jealous. I don't believe we have oppurtunties like that here👎(
By training, what did you mean? ( I obviously know with the dogs, but what about the fox, elephants, etc.)

 

[ri23]

For the fox most of the training centered around getting her comfortable with people. It was a very long and slow process to get her to accept food from hands, allow people to touch her etc. The original intention was for her to do educational programs so we wanted her to be comfortable with people, but after a few years it became apparent that she would never be comfortable with that.

For the other animals at the zoo nearly all of the training revolved around husbandry to allow easier access for the vets. For example the seals were trained to come up on the beach area and we would have them target a target pole and stay while we mimicked doing an ultrasound. Also we went through an exam of checking teeth, flippers etc. everyday so that they would be used to it. Some animals like the seals would do more "entertainment" type tricks such as putting a fin in the air and swimming mimicking a shark and retrieving rings etc. The cats, bears, monkeys, otters etc. were all taught to target in various positions near at the edge of the cage so medications could easily be administered.

The elephants went through extensive training. They are such intelligent animals that they usually have a very long repertoire of behaviors in order to enrich the animals and keep them thinking. A lot of the behaviors with them involved the safety of the keepers. They were trained to pick up and hand their dishes to the keepers after eating for example, as you never want to bend down and pick something up while turning your back on an elephant. Before one of our elephants left the facility the keeper I worked with had me give her commands to try and get her used to new trainers. One of my favorite experiences was when one of the elephants had a calf and I got to go in and interact with it; imagine puppy type clumsiness in a 300 lb calf.

 

[Espeonage]

That's exactly what I'm looking to do. I was seriously sitting here pouting reading all about it. Zoo animals, exotics, and wildlife.. nothing would make me happier than to be able to take care of all three. 😀 I definitely agree that I am 100% jealous. At what zoo did you do all that?

 

[Kara31191]

Wow, that's cool! I was thinking I could try and get some experience. There is a zoo relatively closeby. The stoneham zoo is what it's called. So when I'm 18, I will probably check there. Thank you! 🙂

 

[ri23]

I worked at the Toledo Zoo. Ohioans are really lucky as we have some fantastic zoos. Toledo, Cinncinnati, Columbus and Cleveland are usually all ranked in the top 10-20 of zoos through various organization's rankings system.

The unfortunate part of zoo medicine is that it is one specialty that typically pays less than a non-specialized DVM and it is an extremely hard field to get into. Most zoos (even the larger ones) usually have anywhere from 1-3 vets on staff, so it's nearly impossible to get a job.

 

[mbv]

Kara, just so you know, the Stone Zoo is not a very nice zoo, but they do have a volunteer program. They don't have a very wide variety of animals, and the habitats are not great. That said, it could still be a great opportunity as long as you aren't expecting to work with lions and elephants and giraffes (they do have a mascot dressed as a giraffe though..). They do often have REALLY cute snow leopard cubs though!!!!! Maybe I just wasn't impressed with the huge "southwestern US animals display" because I'm from New Mexico?? Information on volunteering is here: http://www.stonezoo.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.viewPage&pageId=830&parentID=844&nodeID=3

Many positions don't offer animal contact, but there are a few that do. The Franklin Park Zoo in Boston/Jamaica Plain has a wider variety of animals, but even so is pretty bad compared to many other zoos I've been to around the country (The best in New England that I've been to is Providence's, but that's obviously a long haul from the North Shore!)

 

[ri23]

Also, another little disclaimer, most volunteers want to at zoos want to work with the animals. I was extremely lucky as I was in a pilot volunteer program and so there wasn't a lot of us and I got to make connections with the keepers and the vets rather fast. Still, for the first 2 years I really didn't do a lot of animal work beyond enrichment and educational programs with smaller animals. If you are really interested in the zoo field I would try to get a volunteer position ASAP and be dedicated to whatever task they give you. If the zoo you want to go into has volunteer positions with keepers/vets they will usually be awarded to hard working/dedicated volunteers. The prospect of getting a job working with animals is even lower. In order to get a temp keeper job you really have to know people.

 

[rexosaurus]

you can count me in on the bitter/jealous list! nevada definately does NOT= zoo! In fact, it equals poor excuse for a zoo! Hey, at least we have research!

 

[david594]

Many positions don't offer animal contact, but there are a few that do. The Franklin Park Zoo in Boston/Jamaica Plain has a wider variety of animals, but even so is pretty bad compared to many other zoos I've been to around the country

But the franklin zoo has a Prehensile tail porcupine named Snuffles as a program animal. He alone made me consider getting involved there, but the drive was just a little too long.

 

[ShelterGirl]

Sometimes smaller zoos are good too because you get a variety of animals to work (or volunteer) with. The larger zoos here around here are awesome, but you stick to one routine or string as an zookeeper intern - and you have to work full-time unpaid for several months; no part-time volunteer positions with animal care. Not something I can swing financially, as great an opportunity as it would be.
I've been volunteering at a much smaller zoo for a few months and am already on my second routine rotation. Less exciting animals? Yes. Have I seen and done cool things, including observing the veterinarians (like seeing an anesthetized jaguar get rads, a cysto, and endoscopy, or like bathing a goat with a cystotomy stoma)? Yes.

To the OP - for this application cycle (I didn't get in last year; only ~200 hours small animal clinic experience at that time) I've got the following experience:
~1500 small animal veterinary clinic
~1300 hours small animal behavior
~100 hours zoo
~50 hours large animal
Thousands of hours of small animal experience (managing feral cat colonies, volunteering at shelters, etc.)

We'll see if that gets me in 🙂

 

[Kara31191]

Wow.

I honestly haven't been to a zoo in so long! Like literally 8 years. There used to be one here in MA that my family used to take me to. But it was shut down for neglect or something like that. I guess they weren't feeding the animals. I'm not really sure but they closed like 10 years ago, more or less.

I have:
- 600 hours of working at the animal clinic.
- 33 hours handfeeding parrots at a bird store.
- My gecko breeding, which I really can't record in hours...

Well, I guess I should really focus on other types of animals once I get to college. Lets say I take the Animal Science major and handle large animals. Would that be something I'd record as a "class" or would it be something that O would record in hours?

Thanks!
-Kara

 

[pressmom]

I recorded my hours in a large animal lab handling class. (The class was only labs and we did things like processing baby pigs, neutering calves, trimming hooves, things like that...) Anyway, I recorded those hours on my VMCAS under animal experience.

 

[Kara31191]

Thank you! 🙂

 

[LeahUnderTheSea]

Do you guys really post things like "horse back riding lessons" or "owned a dog for 10 years", etc. for animal experience?


I'd be really excited if those things are ok to list, because my vet-experience is minimal (but growing!) but I have a lot of life experience with animals...🙄

 

[VAgirl]

Do you guys really post things like "horse back riding lessons" or "owned a dog for 10 years", etc. for animal experience?


I'd be really excited if those things are ok to list, because my vet-experience is minimal (but growing!) but I have a lot of life experience with animals...🙄

Yes, because on VMCAS at least, they have a separate section for animal experience. I didn't list pet ownership on any except the VA-MD supplemental, though, because they're the only one that specifically asked for it. With the others, I just assumed that it was fairly run-of-the-mill and not worth mentioning (I don't own exotic pets or anything). But for horseback riding (and helping out around the barn) I definitely listed it.