A Day in the Life of a Vet Tech

A lot of people think that working with animals is all snuggles and kisses. Well, they are ALL wrong. While veterinary hospitals and clinics do see baby animals like puppies and kittens they also see a lot more than that. This job is mentally, physically and emotionally draining. If you are considering entering this field please think twice.

Mental

Your mind goes a mile a minute all day long. You have to remember so many things throughout the day. By the end of the day your mental list of things to remember is so long that you’ve either forgotten, or mixed up 50% of it. The reason for this mental list is because you‘re so preoccupied with 20 other tasks that you must push whatever you are doing at the moment to the end of the day. For example after you shoot x-rays (which in and of itself if a giant ordeal) you have to send them to a radiologist via the internet. This requires at least a few minutes of your time but then the odds are that there is another appointment there waiting or someone else needs your help holding a dog for a nail trim, therefore you are forced to hold off on sending those X-rays until you get a free moment. This happens constantly throughout the day.

When you take an appointment you have to figure out why the patient is here. Usually it‘s something like "My dog has been limping on and off for a few days" which is fine because there is a pretty standard protocol for this kind of stuff, the Doctor does an exam to pin point what’s causing the limp, we shoot x-rays, send home NSAIDs and recheck in two weeks. But there is more to this scenario, this patient hasn’t been seen at this hospital in almost 3 years, now what? Well now you have to look through the patients file and find out what vaccines, blood work or annual test they are due for. Then you have to put everything that the doctor wants to do for the patient on an estimate and present this $800 'work-up' to the owner and say "Here ya go, now pay up!" a lot of the time the owners can‘t even afford basic treatment (which I do not blame them for because the prices of some of the stuff we offer are ridiculous!) so we end up doing the bare minimum for this poor pet that’s in pain.

Physical

I once carried a 190lb Great Dane, that was heavily sedated, across the hospital with the help of another co-worker. Now some might say "what’s wrong with that I can bench 190lbs by myself no problem," but this is a very young female dominated career. We are also expected to restrain huge dogs for blood draws and other procedures some of which can be painful, i.e. ripping off a broken toe nail with mild pain meds on board.

I once walked 6,500 steps in one day just around our hospital. You are constantly on your feet and when you're not on your feet, you're on the floor wrestling with the fat aggressive Mastiff that needs his anal glands expressed. If you're interested in that fun sounding procedure I'll explain it to you. You put on a glove, lube up your pointer finger and stick it straight up the animal's butt hole (cats and dogs have anal glands). From here you hook your finger around a grape sized gland and squeeze out the most foul smelling this liquid that often times will squirt across the room or right onto your scrubs. One time I was in the middle of performing this anal gland expression on a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and all of the sudden she had projectile diarrhea half on me half on the floor at a three foot distance all while my finger was still inside of her. Which leads me to my next topic.

You have to clean up every bodily liquid and solid that you could possibly imagine. Here's another true story: I had a man bring in a 180lb Cane Corso and he wanted us to do a sperm analysis as he was planning on studding the dog. He proceeded to tell me that he didn't need a teaser (a female dog in heat that is presented to get the dog horny so that we can get a sample) because he can do it himself. I said, "OK, I'll let you do your thing and you can let the receptionist know when you're finished." I'm not going to lie I was curious as to how the man could get the sample on his own so I watched through the peep hole, as he chased the dog around the exam room with a plastic baggie. When we came back in the room there was sperm every where, on the walls, on the bench, on the door and all over the floor. That was so fun to clean up.

At the end of the day you have to do the closing list. Usually while you're doing the closing list everyone else is doing who knows what, honestly. This involves sweeping and moping the whole hospital, doing laundry, wrapping surgery instrument packs, stocking supplies, and putting everything back where it came from before the hurricane arrived.

Emotional

Depending on where you work the aspect of emotion can vary. In my case my boss has very high standards as far as staff goes. This causes an almost constant critique that comes from the manager and the main doctor/practice owner. It makes you constantly second guess yourself and it's actually really depressing. Thinking that you are trying your hardest and then you either go unnoticed or told that everything you did was wrong.

Another emotional aspect of this job is the obvious euthanizing. My first time assisting with a euthanasia was pretty tough. A family came in with their Golden Retriever that was 15 years old. Her name was Sunny, short for Sunshine. The whole family huddled around this dog as she laid on a blanket on the ground. The room was so crowded with myself and the doctor there as well. While we were injecting the euthanasia solution, the whole family was so emotional I had to step away because my emotions got the best of me and I started crying. I never even knew this dog but I could tell based on how many people were there to say goodbye to her and how emotional they all were that she was an amazing animal. I remember after we put her to rest we told the family to take as much time as they needed to say goodbye before we took her in the back to send her body to the crematorium, and they stayed for at least two hours.

With all that being said I will never regret getting into this field. It's hard and dirty and sometimes I feel like I want to quit and cry in a corner but it has given me so many memories that I will always appreciate. Memories that I can laugh at later on or that I can tell my kids about when they grow up, but most importantly, it's taught me to be a stronger person. It's taught me to never give up, it's taught me to be kind to everyone because you never know what they are going through and lastly it's taught me that pets are amazing creatures that are here to keep us, as humans, sane.