Hello.
Now most of you probably see the title of this blog and think "Well that's an oxymoron!". Unfortunately it isn't. I am a vet and I am also poor. Unfortunately at the moment I am between jobs and finding vet jobs can be very trying at times.
But even when I was working I wasn't particularly well off.

You see, vets aren't as well paid as everyone thinks they are. In fact compared to human doctors which basically do the equivalent amount of time in study (5+ years to become a vet or a doctor) us vets are paid pretty crappily compared to them. A new graduate vet is expected to get paid somewhere between 48-65k a year. And if you want to work at the higher end of this scale then you need to be working out in the middle of nowhere as a cattle vet with only your dog for company.

Most new grads start on 50k and some have started even lower than 48k. For those of you that think it is a lot; it's not really, especially when you have to study for 5+ years and a policeman studies for 5 months and makes 59k.

To prove it; my car is a little 1993 Toyota Corrolla with a giant ding in the side! It looks like a deer ran into it! Unfortunately it was the side of a house that got me. :[

So you're probably thinking "How come it costs so much when I go to the vets?".
Well veterinary medicine is not subsidised like human medicine is and we have a lot of overheads. We have to pay rent for the building, and the facilities we have - like xray machines, autoclaves (to sterilise surgical equipment), dog and cat food, medical supplies and drugs, but most importantly the employees' time!
Drugs are very expensive. But most people don't realise this as the government subsidises our own drugs so much that we only have to pay 5 dollars each time we get a prescription.

At one of my clinics I used to be at, we would charge $29 to see the vet, get a health check, get advise and get two different vaccinations in one. This is amazingly cheap!!! When I had to go get a vaccination for myself that wasn't subsidised, it cost me $178 per shot. That did not include any health check or discussion with a doctor, and I needed THREE of those vaccinations in total.

So yeah.
The purpose of this blog is really to follow my plight in being a vet and trying to make some money, to talk about all sorts of stuff: any stuff.
I'm quite happy to reply to any questions that you may have. I also would like to post helpful information on things such as giving your animals pills, which we all know is difficult and can end up looking like a scene from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, especially after attempting to give your cat his or her medicine

So for now I've decided to try and be an Avon rep while I wait for my next vet job to come along. No idea if I'll be any good at it, but you are more than WELCOME to buy some products from me when I've got it sorted. I would greatly appreciate it!
Thankees
Love you and your menageries