Ready?
Veterinary Surgeon — your shift
The animal is the patient. The owner is the history — useful, and not always right. Look at who is in front of you, then tap the box they belong in.
Full screen — no distractions
What does a veterinary surgeon do?
You diagnose patients who cannot tell you anything, in front of an owner who can — and the owner is often wrong about what they saw.
Also called: vet, veterinarian, animal doctor.
A day looks like
- 1Consults all morning, ten minutes each, and in that ten minutes you take a history from a human and an examination from an animal.
- 2You operate in the afternoon on a list you set yourself that morning.
- 3You have a conversation about money, because the treatment that is best and the treatment the owner can afford are not always the same one.
- 4You end at least one day a week with a decision to end an animal's life, and you do it in the room with the family.
Hardest part
Euthanasia, and how often. It is the right answer more than people expect, it is a kindness, and it never becomes routine — vets carry it, and the profession's mental health record is the reason that matters.
Best part
Getting a diagnosis out of an animal that could not tell you one thing, and being right.
How you actually become a veterinary surgeon
- At schoolTop grades in sciences — veterinary medicine is among the hardest courses to get into anywhere.
- TrainingA five- or six-year veterinary degree with extensive clinical placement, then registration.
- How longFive to six years to qualify, then several more before surgery feels routine.
- Your first jobNew graduate vet in a mixed or small animal practice, with a mentor.
Frequently asked questions
- Is being a vet harder than being a doctor?
- Different rather than harder, though entry is often more competitive. A vet covers many species, cannot ask the patient anything, and has to weigh what the owner can pay — which is a decision human medicine mostly does not put on the clinician.
- Do vets really put animals down often?
- Yes, and it is a real part of the job rather than a rare event. Vets describe it as one of the kindest things they do and also the heaviest, and the profession takes its effect on mental health seriously.
- Can a vet tell what is wrong just by looking?
- Sometimes, and that is exactly the trap. Several serious illnesses look identical from the outside, which is why good vets test before treating rather than backing a first impression.
More from Agriculture & Nature
Farm Manager
You run a business whose main supplier is the weather, and you make decisions in spring that you do not find out about until autumn.
Shepherd
You look after a flock that hides illness by instinct, and for six weeks a year you deliver lambs at three in the morning.
Animal Welfare Inspector
You go to somebody's property after a complaint, decide whether an animal is suffering, and are the person who has to say so out loud.
Water Bailiff
You patrol a river, check that people fishing it are allowed to, and work out where the thing that killed the fish came from.
Fisheries Officer
You board working fishing boats at sea and check that what is in the hold matches what the law and the quota allow.
Ecologist
You survey a piece of land before it is built on, and you are the person who says whether what is living there stops the build.
Agronomist
You walk fields for a living and tell farmers what to put on them, when, and — more often than anyone expects — that they should put nothing on at all.
Soil Scientist
You dig holes and read what is underneath, which decides whether a place can grow food, hold a building, or be lived on safely.
Marine Biologist
You study things living in water you cannot breathe in, which means most of the job is designing a way to find out rather than looking.
Countryside Ranger
You look after a piece of countryside that belongs to everybody, which means managing the habitat, the livestock and the public at the same time.
Veterinary Nurse
You run the anaesthetic while the vet operates, which means for that hour the animal's breathing is your responsibility and nobody else's.
Forestry Worker
You fell trees deliberately, in a direction you chose, using cuts that decide where several tonnes of timber is going to land.
Arborist
You climb into a living structure on ropes and take it apart in an order that keeps it holding you up the whole time.
Beekeeper
You open a box containing fifty thousand animals that can all sting you, and you read the colony's health from what is drawn on the frames.
Dairy Technician
You milk a herd twice a day, every day of the year, and the routine you follow is what decides whether they stay healthy.
Horticulturist
You make new plants from old ones and keep them alive through the stage where almost anything kills them.
Farrier
You trim and shoe horses' feet, which is anatomy, blacksmithing and handling a half-tonne animal, at the same time, bent double.