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reporting experience hours for your own pets
- Thread starter vetmeddream
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For the first question.......no. Because technically speaking, any other owner would have also had to take care of their dog after surgery. To me, it would look like you're reaching.
As a rule of thumb, I would only include experience with your own pets if you are heavily involved in showing, breeding, tracking, agility, etc - some type of very structured activity. I don't think taking care of your own recovering or ill animals can count as honest-to-goodness animal hours.
Of course, it could go in your personal statement (eg, you have an animal with a chronic illness and it made you more interested in the disease processes and treatments etc as you managed them). But actual hours. I doubt it.
Not sure about the second one...13 is a little young to count it, but I suppose it couldn't hurt.
As a rule of thumb, I would only include experience with your own pets if you are heavily involved in showing, breeding, tracking, agility, etc - some type of very structured activity. I don't think taking care of your own recovering or ill animals can count as honest-to-goodness animal hours.
Of course, it could go in your personal statement (eg, you have an animal with a chronic illness and it made you more interested in the disease processes and treatments etc as you managed them). But actual hours. I doubt it.
Not sure about the second one...13 is a little young to count it, but I suppose it couldn't hurt.
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I would just list the hours under community activities.
You ask some good questions. As for the dog, I would agree with the others and say no. I don't believe that your average pet experiences count as animal experience for the purpose of the application.
However, I am going to count my sheep experience on mine- because livestock management is different. If I had one pet sheep, no, I wouldn't. But I have thousands and thousands of hours in breeding, lambing (!), shearing, hoof care, feeding, condition scoring, vaccinating, deworming, castrating, lancing abscesses, bandaging wounds, blah blah blah. It could probably go on forever.
As for the 4-H, I 'd count it if it applies. Hey, many people's veterinary experience goes back to when they were 13. Just because you were a kid then doesn't mean that it doesn't count. What did you do for 4-H? Raise and show a steer or hog? Have a tiny breeding flock? Participate in the Little International? It's animal experience and it's difference from basic animal ownership. I was/am extremely involved in 4-H and it's just as legitimate as anything else you could put. In most areas, you can be in 4-H until you are 19.
You could put it in community involvement if you wanted too as well. It just depends on how you view things. Some people say to put any time you touched an animal on your application- that is to me a bit overkill. Can you/should you put your animal science labs down as animal experience? I don't see why not.
However, I am going to count my sheep experience on mine- because livestock management is different. If I had one pet sheep, no, I wouldn't. But I have thousands and thousands of hours in breeding, lambing (!), shearing, hoof care, feeding, condition scoring, vaccinating, deworming, castrating, lancing abscesses, bandaging wounds, blah blah blah. It could probably go on forever.
As for the 4-H, I 'd count it if it applies. Hey, many people's veterinary experience goes back to when they were 13. Just because you were a kid then doesn't mean that it doesn't count. What did you do for 4-H? Raise and show a steer or hog? Have a tiny breeding flock? Participate in the Little International? It's animal experience and it's difference from basic animal ownership. I was/am extremely involved in 4-H and it's just as legitimate as anything else you could put. In most areas, you can be in 4-H until you are 19.
You could put it in community involvement if you wanted too as well. It just depends on how you view things. Some people say to put any time you touched an animal on your application- that is to me a bit overkill. Can you/should you put your animal science labs down as animal experience? I don't see why not.
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I omitted owning a dog on my application as it was hard to quantify the number of hours involved and it didn't really differentiate me from other applicants on paper. Feel free to mention an anecdote involving your dog in an interview though.
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VMRCVM said yes to listing pet experience as animal experience, but it needed to seem reasonable, and you had to have been actually taking care of the animal/having responsibility - i.e. they didnt want to hear about the hamster you had when you were 5 haha
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I'm only allowed to count experience in the last 5 years 😛 So I second including the 4H experiences. It will help you look more varied, especially if the majority of your other animal/vet experience is small animal.
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I would include the experience in 4H as long as it continued for several years.
I worked at the barn in exchange for riding lessons from when I was 12-16. I learned a TON and worked hard. It never occurred to me to omit that experience simply because I was young when I started. My entire personal statement was actually based around rehabbing a horse at that job.
I worked at the barn in exchange for riding lessons from when I was 12-16. I learned a TON and worked hard. It never occurred to me to omit that experience simply because I was young when I started. My entire personal statement was actually based around rehabbing a horse at that job.
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VMRCVM does accept personal pet ownership as animal experience. When I asked Joyce how to specifically quantify this, this was her response:
"For the animal experience, list only the hours that you actually worked with them. Most people are going to max out on animal experience if theyve worked with both large and small animals. Most people list about an hour a day x 365 days a year x number of years."
"For the animal experience, list only the hours that you actually worked with them. Most people are going to max out on animal experience if theyve worked with both large and small animals. Most people list about an hour a day x 365 days a year x number of years."
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Thanks for the responses everyone! I think I will include the experience. I grew up with horses, and was in 4H showing them for five years. Unfortunately, I had to stop doing that when I was young. If I left it out, it would look like I've never been around a horse and that's just not true!
