How soon is too soon to look for veterinary experience?

[Echeveria]

I am currently a high school senior, so it might not be important to worry about this at the moment, but the number of hours of veterinary experience required for vet school seems so daunting that I can't help but wonder how soon I should begin looking for experience once I'm in college. Right now, my only vet experience is 50 hours shadowing a local vet (I am continuing to shadow later in the year as well, under the same vet) and some experience with exotic animals through a 3-week study abroad vet experience (I'm not sure how many hours that translates to.) I also have 200+ hours volunteering at an animal shelter near me.

I guess I'm just wondering if this experience makes me qualified for something like a vet assistant job in college. Should I apply for jobs as a kennel assistant/vet assistant as a freshman in college, or should I try to get experience in other ways, like continuing to shadow, until later?

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[SkiOtter]

If you feel like you can handle working a vet assistant job while also taking classes full time, go for it. But I would recommend that you wait at least a semester before trying to add that to your plate so you can try and get your feet under you first. If not, you have plenty of time during the summers to get vet experience, either shadowing or working as an assistant over the summer.
You also don’t *have* to have paid experience where you’re an assistant, just shadowing a ton is completely okay. I actually preferred shadowing to working as an assistant. Sure I didn’t get to do hands on stuff, but I got to follow the doctor around more and seeing how they work with clients and work through the cases and got to watch surgery vs seeing appointments with the other doctor and restraining (and then having to leave the room for most of the other stuff because I had other things I had to do) or sitting at the front and answering phones (small practice so everyone was also a receptionist).

 

[Oregon72]

It is never too early to start logging experience hours! You already have a great start. You could absolutely apply for kennel or assistant position. Until then, definitely continue shadowing and volunteering. Keep track of everything you do and by the time you are ready to apply for vet school, you will have many hours under your belt. Good luck!

 

[ajs513]

You should start your freshman year if you can. It’ll make it a little easier to get lots of varied experience. And you don’t need any qualifications to start as an assistant. Most people I know started with no more animal experience than owning their own pets. That’s to be expected.

Start off slow. Maybe going once a week. Then add on more if you can. I did two days a week for most of college. This equaled 20 hours a week. That’s 1,000 hours a year. I then took a gap year and worked three days a week. I finished with over 4,000 hours of experience. I didn’t have varied veterinary experience. It was all small animal GP. However, I got extremely good at clinical skills, handling patients, reading blood work, etc. Basically everything a tech does plus some of what the doctor did since they knew that was my goal. It’s serving me very well in vet school.

Your best bet is to try to get varied experience. Small animal GP is most abundant of course, so that’ll probably end up being most of your hours. But try to work in a specialty hospital too if you can, and at a large animal vet, maybe a wildlife center, etc. You have so much time. Do as much as you can but also do extracurriculars that aren’t focused around animals.

Also keep in mind: anyone on here that gives their opinion is just saying what worked for them. There are a thousand ways to get into vet school. Take everyone’s experience into account and figure out what you’re able to do with your workload and what you’re interested in. You’ll be just fine.

 

[CoffeeQuestionMark]

This is kinda going to depend on what you want.

1) What kind of role you want
Anything under a veterinarian counts as veterinary experience.
I worked at a veterinary clinic for less than a year b/c I near hated being an assistant at the clinic where I worked. The pay was low and the job was way under what I was capable of. I much preferred working in the DCM at school, and later on at a veterinary pathology lab.

The point being, as you know, you can get the hours in many different ways. It doesn't matter which way. If you WANT a job at a vet clinic, get a job at a vet clinic.

2) What you want your college experience to be like
I was the student that worked 15-25 hours each week during most of school. For my senior year, roughly 10 hours each week.
Some other students don't work much during the school year, and instead get all their hours over the summer. That's perfectly fine too.

 

[DVMDream]

There's no straight answer to this. Everyone is different and the type of experience everyone gets is different.

I started getting vet experience before my senior year of high school. The opportunity opened up and I went for it.

Just remember there is more to vet med than just clinic experience and more than just small animal. Hours do matter but at some point quality matters more than quantity. If you feel like you're not gaining anything from an experience might be time to find another one. You can learn a lot about vet med by kennel experience or reception work the assistant position while nice isn't the be all end all for experience.

 

[mmmdreamerz]

I got all my experience in 2 years mostly just summers and every break from school. It’s possible!