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what type of animals will i work with

I want to become a veterinarian. I want to know will i be working with all type of animals. #veterinarian #animal-health

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Thank you comment icon It depends what vet you are if you are a livestock vet you will work with farm animals it all depends on the work area of being a vet Breanna
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Lauryn’s Answer

It depends on your practice. Cats, dogs for sure however some practices also take reptiles, birds other small mammals like rabbits, ferrets and chinchilla.
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Michael’s Answer

Great question. I really think that the diversity of the many different types of animals you will encounter during vet school and beyond makes the career of veterinarian such an attractive choice. The veterinary oath I took upon graduating divides animals into two broad types: domestic and not. Traditionally, the classic anatomy texts are available for the major domestic species like horses and dogs. The Athletic Horse is a contemporary textbook, but at the beginning of last century, horses were still a major means of transporation. Hence, there was a lot of interest and need in describing their anatomy. Some students, maybe you, will start with a strong motivation for doing zoo medicine. Basic anatomy is part of the building block of your veterinary education and what you learn there, which will already be a study in compairisons, will also serve you to compare and extrapolate to wild animal species that may be less known because fewer animals will have been available to study. As part of my education and it will be also part of yours, we learned about the first transgenic cow which led to many ethical questions that needed to be addressed. That being said, transgenic animals challenge our notion of what type of animal we are finally dealing with or want to propagate as a domestic species. Before I end responding to you, let me add that you would also encounter all the little critters that cause disease in animals, the nematodes, fleas, mites, etc. Our goal may be to get rid of them so that our domestic and wild animals thrive, but their biology can be fascinating and the better we understand it, the better chance we have at containing them. Last but not least, though species will allow one "type" of typing, you will have the opportunity to dvelve much more deeply into a given species. Still many veterinarians go into private small animal practice and such veterinarians, though they will deal with ferrets and hamsters or birds and iguanas, see the great variety of breeds that exist within the canine breed. Many, many of the diseases have a genetic component and hence they will be breed-specific, often to, not just one, but several breeds. And yet typing according to breed does not always hold true. It can even be detrimental such as when projecting what you may know about some pitbulls' strength about an individual pitbull that is brought to you for aggression, but actually is crying out because something is stuck in his or her paw. Never lose sight of the individual animal patient you are treating. That being said, when I had to participate in taking blood from a herd of sheep during my time at vet school (taking blood in sheep requires you to sit them up and restraining them with your knees) (it was a herd of research animals kept by the vet school to study Johne's disease (paratuberculosis)), my young back barely held up (there were more than a hundred) and, no, we did not give them names. I like to watch some of the TV shows about vets. They allow me to see and hear about their experiences, especially for those types of animals I did not (yet) encounter in real life.
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Ashley’s Answer

What types of animals you work with is almost entirely up to you. If you join a veterinarian hospital, like Laura said, you will work with primarily dogs and cats and will have some rabbits and other small animals. But, if you choose to be a livestock vet, you will work with farm animals. There are also specialty vets, known as exotic vets, that work with zoo animals, reptiles, and birds and lab vets that work in the lab and hardly even interact with the animals at all and focus on research, animal food production, and infectious disease diagnosis. You could also specialize in a specific field of study, much like human doctors, and focus on dentistry, anesthesiology, or cardiology (which could lead you to see a larger variety of animals).
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Laura’s Answer

Hi there! At most veterinarian hospitals, you will be working with a lot of different animals: cats, dogs, rabbits, birds, etc. There are specialty animal hospitals as well, so it can depend on where you want to work. For the most part, I would be ready to work with a majority of animals and I hope your career aspirations work out for you!
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