Love your vet. (Peech)

So. It’s a new semester and I’ve learnt some hard truths about my future profession. It’s not all swanning around in long white coats and patting pretty kitty cats, oh no. Here’s some 4 facts to life as a veterinarian which any aspiring animal-lover should know…

1). Firstly. We don’t actually earn much money.

Which is a surprise, seeing how much moolah it takes to get my girls annually checked. My vets say, ‘Your cats look great! $300, please,’ while I struggle to scrape together enough change to stop them setting their wolverine-dobermann hybrids on me. Word in the lecture theatre though, is that vets at the RSPCA get paid $20 an hour for their services – that’s less than I get being a checkout chick at Coles! Sure, everyone says, ‘I want to be a vet because I love animals…!’ but I’m sure I’m not the only one who appends , ‘…and rolling around in $100 notes while my trained gorilla butler serves me a strawberry daiquiri out of a crystal goblet’ to the end. After all, we also…

2). Have one of the worst injury rates of any profession in the world.

We’re in the same position that  the mining industry was, 20 years ago. After cheerily informing us of this fact, our lecturer proceeded to regale us with funny stories about the time a dog bit him in the junk, the 65kg rottweiler that put his best friend in ICU for two days… and all those poor vets in Queensland who contracted Hendra from their patients and died horribly within 24 hours. According to “Disease and Injury Rates among veterinarians”,  71% of vets have been seriously injured in the last 10 years. Wanting a job that pays $20 an hour risking life and limb to express the anal glands of an alsatian attempting to bite your fingers off seems terribly masochistic to me. Which leads me to…

3). Being a vet is a thankless, soul-crushing task.

You wake up at 4am to shove your arm up a cow’s rear end in the freezing cold. Then clean the pus from a cat’s ear while it attempts to disembowel you with its claws. After that, you’ll remove a life-threatening wire from a dog’s paw, only to have it thank you by latching onto your wrist. Your human clients aren’t much better. Owners will introduce their 70kg slavering pet rottweilers to you with, ‘He’s a little bit nervous, so please be gentle’, when it’s very clear to you that their snarling, teeth-baring, barely-coiled mountain of muscle is certainly out for your blood. Vets are right up there with circus performers, zoo keepers and speed skaters as ‘top professionals which everyone is secretly hoping will get horribly injured to the strains of our incredulous laughter.’ On the one hand, I can understand the sentiment – after all, we’re professionals and we’re getting paid (not very much!) to know our stuff. But on the other hand, I can’t help but think that ghastly unsympathetic pet owners are part of the reason for why…

4). Vets, as a group, have one of the highest rates of suicides in the professional world.

We’re right up there with dentists and doctors (I feel for you guys) – the high-stress, high-workload, low-pay, highly competitive environment takes its toll on our frazzled minds. It could also be the fact that the profession attracts people who are ambitious, opinionated and a little bit insane to begin with.

Overwhelming, isn’t it? Think of it the next time you’re at your local vet and then give them a big, sympathetic hug. Make sure they aren’t holding any needles, because vets are twitchy people who may react unpredictably to unexpected displays of affection.

So then, I guess the question is – why haven’t I transferred into medicine or taken up plumbing yet? Well, the fact that animals are fascinating (if murderous) little critters helps. Did I mention we’re having an all-expenses paid excursion to NE Victoria in the middle of the semester? I just repeat my mantra… ‘think of the puppies, Peech. Think of the kitties. Fuzzy wuzzy kitty cats! Happy chappy puppy dogs!’ And somehow, I’m still holding on.