Reply #23: Well, good luck with your endeavors anyway

[CAcyclist]

I had some of the same criteria when I was deciding what to do for a career - my conclusions led me to veterinary medicine. For a brief while during the dot-com boom I was questioning why I had spent so long to go to school and not make as much as these people who were just kids and hadn't even graduated yet. However, here I am, having weathered the dot-com implosion; bought my clinic in 2002 at about the worst economic time, and we're doing great 3 years later. I will always have a job, no matter what happens - if Bush throws this country into a deep depression, I can still get a job with the government inspecting meat if worst came to worst.

True, vet school is 4 years plus whatever undergrad classes you might need to take to meet the requirements, but we had people in our class in their 50's. And the cool thing about that is once you graduate, you get instant respect from the clients. Veterinary medicine is one field where the grayer you are, the more in demand you are.

The years of schooling needed for vet med is why I recommended a vet tech degree - I recommend a two year program with a public college and not the accelerated 9 month degree from a private for profit college like Western Career College where you pay through the nose for a crappy education.

Techs are in high demand in private practice and they can work as contractors with multiple vets to provide specialized services such as in-home hospice care, transportation services , behavioral counseling, reproductive services, dialysis, rehab/sports medicine. There's a business called Scout's House in this area that just opened up and they do orthopedic rehab work and with all the dogs having knee surgery nowadays, I only see this niche growing and growing. You don't even need to be aligned with a vet to do canine sports medicine. They can also work in the field for the government or private non-profits in wildlife recovery programs.

I see this field growing exponentially in the future because there is so much that paraprofessionals can do. I think the field for trainers is going to grow, but I just don't see it as a career that is going to provide the flexibility and income you want. I never called it elitist - I called it specialized - there's a difference.