What type of experience is/was the hardest for you to find?

[Backwoods Boy]

---

Members do not see this ad.

I have found some equine experience and I know I can get SA pretty easy. I am figuring emergency and research experience might be somewhat harder to get. I know that the schools want applicants to be well rounded so what is/was the hardest for you?

 

[HopefulAg]

The first experience! Even getting a kennel job and asking to work my way up was hard because they were full up on that too!

 

[ckd816]

Farm animal experience... I live in a pretty urban area so getting experience (especially vet experience) in the agriculture end seems impossible to find. I'm not really sure what to do about it actually because it makes me nervous to apply without any farm experience. 🙁

 

[sunnex3]

Farm animal experience... I live in a pretty urban area so getting experience (especially vet experience) in the agriculture end seems impossible to find. I'm not really sure what to do about it actually because it makes me nervous to apply without any farm experience. 🙁

TOTALLY AGREE.
I live right outside DC - pretty much impossible to find ANY farms that are not 2 hours from me, although luckily equine experience isn't too hard (still quite adrive, at least 1 hour)

it doesn't help that I live in Philly for school - also pretty much impossible to find farm experience 🙁

 

[Backwoods Boy]

Thankfully I can find farm experience without any trouble. Many of my neighbors are farmers (I live in about 70 miles outside of St. Louis) so I could probably help with cows and pigs anytime.

 

[DickVetPlease]

I live in Baltimore, and go to university in Cleveland (basically live there now), both pretty urban. I've found SA pretty easily, and have been doing research for a couple years now. I think i'm just going to apply to vet school this summer without any farm/equine, and hope for the best.

 

[david594]

The first experience! Even getting a kennel job and asking to work my way up was hard because they were full up on that too!

Ditto! Once I got my foot in the door somewhere everything just kind of fell into place.

Volunteering at a SA clinic turned into a job. Having experience them, a few months later when I applied to the E-clinic I was hired on the spot. Met a relief vet there that lead to volunteering at a shelter. Shelter lead to volunteering with a feral cat spay/neuter group. First shelter closed and I moved to volunteering at the other shelter in town because I already knew everyone there.

All my volunteering since the very first gig has been with surgical teching, cleaned very few cages.

The veterinary community tends to be pretty small in most places, so once you make a few connections its pretty easy to find a connection to almost everything vet related in the area.

 

[sumstorm]

For me, lab animal, public health (patho), and mixed animal all are pretty difficult. I have mixed animal from childhood, but would like to see it again as an adult.

 

[Backwoods Boy]

Forgot to mention how being in a rural area will limit my exotics experience excluding rabbits (if those count as exotics) that my family raised... The nearest vet that deals with exotics on a regular basis is almost an hour away so it wouldn't be very economical to drive 50 miles unless I did it during the summer and only a couple days a week.

 

[sumstorm]

If you can find someone near the exotics to stay over with, you could squeeze 2 days in per trip.

 

[Backwoods Boy]

I may have to check and see if I know anybody from that area. I can't think of anyone off of the top of my head but I have time to think about it. It'll be next summer at the earliest before I consider doing that. Right now I am working more on my equine experience, probably get some more small animal experience in this summer as well.

 

[Pandacinny]

TOTALLY AGREE.
I live right outside DC - pretty much impossible to find ANY farms that are not 2 hours from me, although luckily equine experience isn't too hard (still quite adrive, at least 1 hour)

it doesn't help that I live in Philly for school - also pretty much impossible to find farm experience 🙁

Have you checked southern maryland? My family owns a small farm in PG county, so I know there are some out there!

 

[sunnex3]

Have you checked southern maryland? My family owns a small farm in PG county, so I know there are some out there!

i was able to get a 3 week equine vet internship at monocacy equine associates (i think they're in southern maryland?) for winter break, but i haven't been able to find any large animal (other than equine) vets around me.

even southern maryland is quite a drive from me (at least for some of the equine vets i've looked at - i live in arlington)
i'm trying to get as much other experience as possible so that my lack of large animal other than equine experience won't seem too bad.

i'm looking into a wildlife rehab center in gaithersburg (second chance) for volunteering or an internship, and looking into working at the washington humane society (they're hiring for assistants/techs 🙂 )

 

[katryn]

Unfortunately, finding LA experience in a town with a vet school has been a shot in the dark for me. Most everyone around here takes their LA cases to the VTH and the few LA vets in the area that practice on their own are so wound tight about liability that if they don't desperately need someone you have no chance of being hired or volunteering. Kinda sucks. But because of the University lab/research jobs are a dime a dozen. ><

 

[sumstorm]

Try observing rather than volunteering. Promise to stay out of the way, don't try to get involved other than observing, and sign a liability waiver.

 

[eventualeventer]

I'm in the D.C. area, too, and I've put a lot of miles on my car getting equine experience. My current job is a 50 mile drive. However, actually getting my foot in the door was not too difficult, since I had a lot of previous horse experience, and, as david said, once you get started, one opportunity leads to another.

Research experience was also easy to get, although I may have been unusually lucky. I just asked one of my professors if I could volunteer in his lab, and I hadn't been there a month when he started planning a project for me to take on as my own.

If anything, getting small animal experience has been hard for me because I am limited by the amount of time left over after commuting to my equine job, school, and my research lab -- I can't make a significant time commitment to a SA vet at this point. I've done some shadowing with a horse friend who's a SA vet, which is probably how I'll get all of my SA hours, but I drive 20 miles to get to that, too! My car is my second home.

I haven't even thought about getting food animal experience because I'm swamped with the rest of it, but I'm sure that would be quite a hike, too.

 

[Backwoods Boy]

What exactly is food animal experience and how is it much different than LA with cattle and pigs? I have looked around and haven't seen much difference. The way I see it, couldn't one knock both aspects down at once?

 

[jglovicz]

If someone is interested in getting lab experience (volunteer of course) it shouldn't be hard. Just walk into a lab (maybe you really liked one of your animal science or other hard science profs?) and ask if you can help out. I know that in our lab, we always have several undergrads that are looking for experience. I can't imagine that any labs would turn away free help! I got started by simply asking one of my favorite professors---when I started I was even given my own mini-project! Good luck!

 

[Ninnerfish]

DickVet, I'm from the Cleveland area too. I don't know what part exactly you're from, but if you live near the Kent/Ravenna/Streetsboro area, there is a farm sanctuary called Happy Trails (www.happytrailsfarm.org) that is always looking for volunteers. I went there a couple times and worked with the pigs, chickens, goats, horses, and roosters. The lady who runs it is very nice (though she can get a bit distracted, understandably) and if you tell her you're interested in vet med, she'll let you help with the treatments for the sick animals.

 

[katryn]

Try observing rather than volunteering. Promise to stay out of the way, don't try to get involved other than observing, and sign a liability waiver.

mmm....I might try that now that I have a good experience base in SA practice. When I was first starting out, once they got to the question of how much experience in general I had (at that point almost none), I was told a flat out no to any sort of observation/volunteering/working.