Calling all small animal and equine Nurses

[Honey Bee♥]

Hello,

basically, I'm a student VN (small animal), and wondered if anyone could help me. Horses are always going to be my favourite animal, and once I had qualified as a VN (small animal), I was going to go on to do the equine course. However, my tutor at college said that you're basically just a stable hand. I've been a stable hand since I was 11, (I'm now 18), so I'm quite used to that. But is that it? Or do you actually get to do some fun stuff aswell? If I could have some good and bad points of both -(small and equine) that would be very much appreciated, as I'm very confused!!

Thanks for your time.

 

[lizness]

I am an equine nurse a large proportion of the day is spent cleaning up, holding horses for hours, scrubbing places for injections or holding plates for x-rays in dangerous positions or holding very heavy horse heads whilst sedated to get their teeth done. I think it really depends on the practice you go to for the work you will be doing, i.e the experience of the vets/facilities. There may also be scope to develop an interest i.e geriatric ponies, worming, fat ponies. I think there is probably a higher level of interest in small as I believe you get to do anaesthesia and there will be alot more ops. Also small animals are often easier to x-ray etc as they get sedated. I really think thast you need a practice that will come across interesting cases/do surgery for it to be worth working at just about minimum wage, long hours and doing weekends on call or else you are just an overworked/underpaid groom.
I believe that there will be a lot more job availability in small animal too and it would be more of a long term prospect

 

[ALO]

I'm a small animal nurse and had the same debate when I was qualifying. I came to the conclusion that I'd rather be in the warm indoors and not resent having to then go and sort my own horses after dealing with other peoples all day!also I think there's much more scope for small animal nurses to do more nursing,for instance the nurses in my practice do all the radiography and anaesthesia in our practice. You are still working long hours and being paid minimally though. I do live my job though

 

[Boulty]

Another small animal nurse here. I did have a brief think about equine but decided that I liked working in the warm and I prefer my patients to only be able to inflict minor injuries on me! I do know someone who was on my small animal course and has just starting training as an equine nurse at newmarket and is loving it though so it can be done if you have the motivation and it's definitely what you want. She did see practice in a few equine hospitals before she made her decision and to get some experience and I'd recommend doing that if you are serious about this being what you want to make sure the it would live up to your expectations.