Vettings and 10 metre circles on concrete! RANT!

Been thinking this for a while, and will probably be slated for saying it, but I am actually feeling sorry for the OP. What has all of this got to do with her problem? feel this thread has been somewhat hijacked.
 
My spelling and grammer is terrible...i am aware of that :P
...but i use HHO for fun and relaxation....so when i reply i just tend to just type and not give grammer etc much thought. If you judge me on my typing and grammer alone I may come across as a complete idiot. :) English has never been my strong point and I dont have a hugh amount of intreast in the nuances of the language...shrugs.
In a proffesional setting things would be different.

Vet bashing posts do come up a lot on horse and hound though ... wether people realise it or not this place can be very anti vet at times and it is disheartening to read.
I know that its just a reflection of the world in general that the negative comes up more often than the positives but still....

As for the new vet bashing debacle....
If newly qualified vets do not see normal practice and do procedure's how are they ever ment to learn and become the more experienced partners of the future?
Yes ,some of the more difficult cases or more advanced procedure's require an older partner to give guidance or for the grad to offer assistence and observe initially..but how will they ever learn if they never get the opportunity to actually work?
We do weeks of seeing practice and clinical procedures in collage and in our own free time and are expected to have a certain level of competance before we are ever allowed to qualify.
But there is no way to cover every procedure we need to know in collage...there simply isn't time.So learning on the job is part of Veterinary life....and it never stops.With the changes and advances that are going on in animal medicine all vets should constantly be learning new things and about new procedures.What was standard practice 10,20 years ago may be completely different now.

I understand that it does come across poorly to point out we got high grades to do the course...and that it can be percieved as arrogance to illustrate that...but it is still true.If you get into vet your expected to be academic and you need to be driven,very bright or just plain lucky to come out with the grades...we could have been sensible and chosen careers based on future earnings...but instead we went for Vet.Its a lifestlye choice more than a job.If you see it as a job I dont know how you'd stick it long term.

My older brother is doing Medicine and Im doing Vet so i have some insight into the differences between the two courses as we often do compare and contrast...in general the discussions ends with him telling me I should quit and do med...better money,a better lifestyle and easier time in collage and less dangerous.. and bar the lifestyle I can't argue about any of it.

I cant imagine ever arriving out to a yard and treating an owner like they knew nothing about their horses..new graduate or not that's just rude.But id hazard a guess and say more a charactor flaw than a issue produced by beng a new graduate.

Then again this post will no doubt come across poorly..Im not great at explaining what i mean in writing sometimes,but that is the joy of an internet forum i guess.
 
yorksG said:
If the vet courses are over subscribed, then surely that means there will be more of them?
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No it means that if there are 7 unis offering the course and each uni has 50 places a year we get 350 new vets a year and 350 places for undergraduates each year. If the course is oversubscribed it simply means say 700 are applying each year and half of them are disappointed. The number of new vets stays the same.

Sadly it is the same with other courses too, dentistry for example. We have demand for more new dentists, to the extent that we are importing qualified dentists from all over but there aren't enough places at dental school.

The way universities are funded doesn't help either, courses like Vet are expensive to run, so why add more places when instead you could accept more undergraduates onto cheap to run courses like say law. This means that you get less vet graduates and more law graduates, leading to the situation we have now with shedloads more law graduates than there are jobs, inability to get vocational on the job training and plummeting salaries (in all but the magic circle firms salaries for new lawyers are rubbish - often lower than starting salaries for teachers or nurses!). It isn't just these professions either, we are getting discrepencies in supply and demand all over.
 
I have used my senior vet for over ten years and he is fabulous. I always make sure he is the one who comes out. He always asks me what the problem is and what should we do and I'm like 'well Tom, your'e the vet aren't you meant to be telling me what to do'

However on two occasions I have had to use the on call vets - both junior and recently qualified. One was for a colic and one for tendonitis and they were both fantastic and very professional.

OP I'me glad your horse didn't hurt itself badly - it could have been a lot worse.

Personally I'm not one for vetting, all of my horses are free ex racehorses and with the legs they've got my vet would have laughed my out of the county.
 
Increasing the numbers of students in medicine, veterinary science, dentistry, etc. is really difficult because of what is required to teach them. If I want to accept another 20 students in philosophy it's easy because I just add them to my lecture and run one more tutorial. In medicine, for example, I would need to find more labs, more rotation placements, more anatomy demonstrators, more cadavers, more doctors willing to teach, etc.

I remember when the government kept pushing for more doctos and we had ended up with classes of 270 students when the lecture theatre would seat only 250, anatomy demonstrations went up from 2 students per cadaver to 12 students per cadaver and we had to beg doctors to teach (not because they did not want to, but because they didn't have time!).

OP: apologies this post is totally hijacked, but I find the topic interesting and important. Hope you don't mind too much!
 
Completely agree Booboos, it is the same for science and engineering subjects too. Something the government needs to look at. The other problem can be bottle necks too, in medicine I believe they don't have a problem with the numbers of uni places but it is the number of registrar jobs that cause a bottle neck meaning that there are never enough consultants (or it could be not enough SHO positions to fullfill all the registrar positions I forget). A friend of mine's husband ended up moving to south africa to continue his training.
 
I must be one of the few that doesn't care whether it is the senior or junior vet that comes out.... at the end of the day, I need my animal treated although I do tend to like the vet to keep it simple and talk to me in terminology so I understand 100%. I also dislike haveing the first question.... is this animal insured. however, I have been known to refuse to use a vet if I feel that my trust or my animals have been abused, and will not hesitate to give feedback to the surgery. How do people learn if they are never told
 
I'm surprised by this, I've never been asked to lunge on concrete and gone through several 5 stage vettings... I've lunged in tight circles but only been asked to do so in the field or on a surface. On concrete, they only want me to do the flexion test bit.
 
Wishful said:
I know that the vet profession is losing vets rapidly - quite a few are becoming doctors, going into the city, having kids and coming back part time or not at all. In 20 years time, there could well be a hole in the number of "senior" vets as so many are not sticking it out now. There already seems to be a bit of a gap in the age demographic of vets around there. There are quite a lot of junior vets in their 20s and early 30s, and there are a good number in their late 40s up. Theres' very few aged between 35 and 45 - signs of an issue.

I know that there are other vocations less well paid than vets, but the issue is that people who have the academic ability to get into vet school are generally the most desireable graduates for any profession (straight As, focussed, quick thinking and logical). Exactly what the big banks, law firms and accountancy firms want. A cynical student (and their pushy parents) would consider those options, compare hours and rates of pay and take a decision based on money, and the fact that for most of those, you are earning (or at least funded) in half the time. The comparison with the medical profession is even more direct - similar skill set (diagnostics, bedside manner, science). A newly qualified GP gets paid about treble what a newly qualified vet gets, and doesn't have to do out of hours. The NHS also pays some tuition fees. With top up fees, the average vet student doing vet as a first degree will end up with £30k of student loan - a mature student doing vet as a second degree will probably double that. Thus the vet profession ends up recruiting the idealistic students, some of whom will end up so disillusioned that they leave after 5 years of being accused of being too young, or "not my vet"! How disheartening do you think that is for someone who has worked hard for something they've wanted for a large proportion of their life?

Some vets have made the error of adding up their working hours, and dividing their gross salary by the number of hours (ignoring out of hours work) - generally you can make more at McDonalds, or any other minimum wage work. Think the worst mentioned has been £2.70/hour, before tax! And people wonder why vets have one of the highest suicide rates of any profession...

Of course everyone assumes that vets are loaded, because they generally have big, relatively new cars. The only vets who seem to think they have enough space for stuff (to be prepared for most eventualities) have big double cab pick ups. Older cars won't hold up to the work - 30k miles per year on back roads, heavily laden tends to kill cars very efficiently. OH's 06 Honda needs retiring pretty soon - on 120k miles - still looks relatively new on the outside, but mechanically it is suffering!
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I am in full agreement with this being in this situation myself. Having spent 6 years at uni studying hard to do something I love, I am now on a career break and am very likely to look for another career.

Having been in equine practice for 6 years, I have loved most aspects of the job, especially when working 'up north'. Sadly in my last 2 years I ended up in a job in the SW and to be honest the clients were really hard going. They only wanted to see a certain vet that they had had for years and were generally ungrateful. I even got asked to leave a yard, when I dropped by to check a horses bandage (fractured leg) one evening on my way home without charge. Hate to think what the yard was hiding. Sadly long hours, poor pay, lack of social life was doable, but sadly to have ungrateful clients really did it for me and am sad to be looking for an alternative job.

So to all those who won't have a vet new in to the practice (regardless of how qualified they are), please bare in mind that most vets are trying to do the best they can and welcoming them on to the yard will make there day much better, rather than greeting them with 'you aren't my usual vet, I don't want you'!! :(

Anyway this some how seems to have strayed from OP's original post, which I am not going to get into! :)
 
No one has said that they will not have a new vet! I have no idea where this came from. We have said we will not have arrogant new vets, who are rude and patronising, or who obviously do not know their job. I will not have anybody on my yard who fits that description, no matter why they are there. If I am paying for them to be there, then they had better remember their manners. All are treated with respect when they come through the gate, and I expect the same in return.
 
Surely the original post was asking horse to canter on concret, as I wouldn't canter on the road never mind concret. the vet was asking for trouble and I'm surprised she hasn't sued.
 
JR - I think the OP's horse fell in trot on a 10m circle on concrete, which is commonly (not always!) done in a 5 stage vetting.

The majority of the post seems to give the impression its a mixed bag with regards to this test as to whether or not its done either due to the vets, the owner, or the facilities available..........

and I agree I am not a fan of cantering on roads.... trotting i am ok with though!
 
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