I enjoy your posts. I took the prophylactic rabies vax in veterinary college, not the rabies series due to possible exposure. Sorry for the confusion.

I too do not care much for small animal practice b/c it does seem to me to be so much about the money and, as you said, at the whim of the owner. I liken it to cosmetic surgery in people (or general medicine, sometimes)... whatever the client wants.

I had planned to be a large animal vet as well, but before getting my license I began having a family, after years and years of trying and no luck. So I took time off to have our first child, then before I could return to school I was pg with our 2nd! Then we decided to complete our family of four children. Since the youngest has just started kindergarten, I haven't yet pursued completing the requirements to practice.

Where did you attend veterinary college?

 Quote: Paula Colvett

I enjoy your posts.

Me too.

Colorado State in Fort Collins.
I could not get pregnant, same years of trying, ended up adopting 2 boys. I was a way better vet than I was a mother. I longed to be a mother, new life etc. The ultimate creative act. Good for you with your 4 kids, it's great, I'm jealous!
Alas, the money in SA. The last year of my practice life I did SA because it had hours which dairy medicine did not,better for family. People would have a sick old dog, cancer, whatever, would POUR money into it, I wanted to say, "Mr. Jones, perhaps it would be better for you to invest financially and emotionally in a new pup instead of this sweet old thing who best case scenario has 3 mos left." Or the people who refused to treat. "$300. to pin that leg, are you CRAZY?" You know how mad people got on this forum when the grandmother put her snappy Aussie to sleep?
They were mad, I think, because they thought to themselves, "I could have fixed that dog." You knew you could fix it and the client wouldn't. Sometimes the people just couldn't afford it and sometimes they decided the dog wasn't worth it. The charges we gave people weren't inflated either, you needed to make a profit to pay the techs,buy the new anaesthesia machine. No one was getting rich, but it still made me insane. I felt I was profiting off other peoples misfortune. I finally just quit and we bought a farm.
Where did you go to school? When?

 Quote: Betty Landercasp

You knew you could fix it and the client wouldn't. Sometimes the people just couldn't afford it and sometimes they decided the dog wasn't worth it. .... The charges we gave people weren't inflated either, you needed to make a profit to pay the techs, buy the new anaesthesia machine. No one was getting rich, but it still made me insane. I felt I was profiting off other peoples misfortune. I finally just quit and we bought a farm.

This is a POV that we don't get to hear often. I'm not saying it's uncommon; we just don't hear it articulated very often (or I don't).

It's sad and it's hard to answer, isn't it?

I think I could not do it. I think that unless I specialized in something like nutrition-as-treatment (and no regular stuff!), I'd be useless. I also think I don't stop often enough to appreciate the folks who DO do it, who manage to deal with the owners who won't or can't treat and won't or can't PTS, with the heartbreak and pain, with being feared (or bitten) ... and with people declaring that they are money-grubbers. I don't think that anyone in his/her right mind goes for vet med to get rich.

RE: Distemper, Rabies, Parvovirus

Distemper is common here, and while the Island of Newfoundland is rabies free (after an expensive multi-year program that involved heavy fox trapping and throwing rabies vaccine encased within a bait outside helicopters into the forests--we once took a titre on a bear that had apparently eaten several hundred of these!)rabies occurs outside in the adjacent mainland.
I have lived in the mainland portion of the Province (Labrador) where rabies cycles through every 4-6 years. Personally I have been treated for post-exposure (after breaking a glove while extracting a tooth from a fox that turned out to be rabid). There are many feral or semi feral dogs living in remote communities that die of all of the above diseases each year, and it is heart-wrenching to observe them. I agree with Betty-rabies and distemper in particular are cruel diseases. We also see distemper-like illnesses in wildlife such as marten and mink (though little is known about these). Puppies with parvo mercifully die quickly, though a handful managed to survive the outbreaks I observed at a shelter I volunteered at. Parvo and distemper are so prevelant that there is always a high liklihood that any animal brought into a shelter is ill with it. These experiences have been a motivator for me to vaccinate my pets, though I consider each vaccine carefully in terms of the risk of disease versus potential vaccinosis. For example, I would not vaccinate against Lyme disease or kennel cough, and use a 3 -year interval for rabies, and one booster outside of the puppy vaccinations for the others. If I lived in a place where these diseases were much less prevalent (and I had good, quantitative information on occurrence) it is entirely plausible that I'd choose not to vaccinate for any of the diseases we are discussing. I consider it a kind of risk management in terms of the health and longevity of my dog.
I can't help but wonder how relieved the caribou I study would be if we could help them ward off bot fly and warble fly infestations...though in the wild, animals compromised by any sort of illness or injury don't live long.

Isabelle

I went to UT Knoxville, would have been 2000 graduate but left fall 1999.... so close! I don't regret it, as the option is always there to return if I so choose.