Reference letter from a vet?

[hoanguye]

Hi guys,
I volunteer at a veterinary hospital on the weekends and the vets are always busy so I end up shadowing an AHT. I help out in the lab sometimes, restrain animals, observe surgeries, and assist with other tech related duties. The vet school (WCVM) I'm wanting to apply to requires a reference letter from a vet, and I'm pretty sure the AHT would be able to write me one, but I'm just wondering if that would suffice since it's not going to be from a vet. Should I just ask straight out to shadow a vet?
Thank you!

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[HopefulAg]

From the AHT (what is an AHT any how? Not familiar with that acronym) probably wouldn't be sufficient. You've worked with the vets before right? For how long? You may consider just asking them any how, even if you don't spend every second of your time at the clinic with them. They're bound to have at least noticed, interacted, and have some kind of impression of you if you've been there long enough.

 

[168135]

AHT = Animal Health Technician

 

[BlacKAT33]

Depending on how much interaction you've had with the doctors you may already "qualify" to ask for an eLOR from your vet. When i volunteered at my clinic i spent 75% of the time working with the techs. The vets only helped out in complicated cases and surgeries. Other than that, they basically hand off the pet to the techs and they spend time talking with the owners or starting the new patient while we work . If you feel like you still don't know the vet that well you can ask to shadow him specifically, but if your clinic is like mine, which i described above...it's not really worth it since you'll get more hands on activities around the techs. But it is really a personal decision and it depends how close you feel you are with the vet. Maybe just asking more questions and getting into more convos with the vet would do. Sometimes it's hard to get a spare minute of their time since they are busy, i spoke with my vet the most when he would do surgeries. He was pretty talkative during the routine surgeries. However, if you try to do this be careful and "read" your vet, some vets like complete silence while they are doing surgeries.

 

[thnythe]

When I was in this situation, I approached both the AHT and the vet. I explained that while I felt the AHT had a better grasp of who I was, I required a reference letter from a vet and I asked if they would feel comfortable writing one together.

I think in the end the vet wrote me a letter and the AHT read it over and added any input, since we had spent more time together.