Agriculture · Helping & Teaching
Veterinarian: what the job actually is
Diagnosing and treating sick and injured animals, advising their owners, and sometimes being the person who ends a life when there is no other kind option.
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The work
What this job actually is
- Being the doctor for animals who cannot tell you what is wrong, and for owners who are scared, broke, in denial, or all three. You treat the animal and manage the person.
- Practices differ a lot. A small animal clinic is cats, dogs and appointments. A large animal or mixed practice is trucks, barns, calving at night and herd health on dairy and beef farms. There is also work in public health, research, food safety, shelters and industry.
- Surgery and diagnosis are the part people imagine. A large share of an ordinary day is talking: explaining a diagnosis, giving a price, discussing what the owner can afford, and talking them through a decision.
- Euthanasia is a regular part of the job. It is done as a kindness, and it still lands on you, again and again, with the family in the room.
- You are also running a business, or working in one. Staff, inventory, pricing, records and a waiting room all sit on top of the medicine.
A Tuesday
What a normal day looks like
Not a good day or a bad one. The ordinary version, which is what you would actually be living.
- 7:30 — Arrive, read the overnight notes, check on the animals who stayed in, and look at the surgery list.
- 8:00 — First appointments. A vaccine, an ear infection, a limp that has been going on for six weeks and nobody noticed until last night.
- 10:00 — Surgery. A spay, a lump removal or a dental. Two hours where nothing else exists, then the paperwork.
- 12:00 — Lunch if you get it. Phone calls, test results, and one more case review at the counter.
- 13:00 — Afternoon appointments. The cat who will not be examined, the dog whose owner has just heard the word cancer.
- 15:00 — A hard conversation: the treatment that would work costs more than the family has, and you have to say so without making them feel judged.
- 16:30 — An emergency walks in, so everything else slides by an hour.
- 18:00 — Records. Every case needs a written note and nobody does it for you.
- 19:00 — Euthanasia appointment, scheduled for the end of the day so the family is not rushed. You go home after that.
- 5:30 — On a large animal or mixed practice, this is when the day can start instead: a truck, a barn, and a calving or a sick cow at an hour nobody planned.
Honestly
Who loves this, and who should not do it
The second list is the useful one. Nearly every careers page leaves it out, which is why nearly every careers page reads like an advert.
- You can be steady in front of a distressed person and a distressed animal at once.
- You like medicine and problem-solving, and you can live with not being able to ask the patient where it hurts.
- You do not mind blood, smell, bites, scratches and being kicked, because they come with the work.
- You are good at explaining things plainly and gently, and at asking for payment without flinching.
- You want a long training that ends in a clear, respected, in-demand role. Job Bank rates Ontario prospects for this occupation as Good.
- Death and grief would wear you down. Euthanasia is a routine part of the job and many vets find the emotional load, plus the pressure from owners, the hardest part of it.
- You do not want to talk to people. A great deal of the job is conversation, often with someone who is upset, angry about the price, or ready to blame you.
- You hate debt. Four years of vet school after an undergraduate start is a long and costly route, and you start your working life owing money.
- You do not want on-call hours. Emergencies, calvings and sick animals do not follow a schedule, particularly in large animal and mixed practice.
- You need a body that holds up. Lifting animals, standing for hours, working in barns in winter and being kicked are all part of it.
- You want to be sure of a result. Animals die despite the best care, sometimes after the owner has spent everything they had.
The route in
How you actually get there in Ontario
Undergraduate years first
The Ontario Veterinary College at the University of Guelph, Ontario's veterinary school, requires applicants to complete at least four full-time undergraduate semesters before applying. The prerequisite courses include biological sciences, cell biology, genetics, biochemistry, statistics and a humanities or social science credit, and the application asks for an average of at least 75% across both the prerequisites and the most recent four full-time semesters.Experience and references
There is no minimum number of hours, but the application asks about veterinary experience under direct veterinarian supervision, other animal experience, and work and extracurricular activities. It needs three references, and at least one must be a veterinarian who has supervised you. All applicants complete the Casper test, a situational judgment assessment. Start building that vet relationship in high school.The DVM
The Doctor of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Guelph normally takes four years. A rabies immunisation is required for admission and continuation, with annual titre testing and boosters while you are enrolled.Licensing
To practise in Ontario you register with the College of Veterinarians of Ontario. A graduate of an accredited veterinary school must pass the North American Veterinary Licensing Examination (NAVLE), and the College sets its own conditions for registration beyond that.
Where this comes from: University of Guelph OVC — DVM program application and requirements · University of Guelph — Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (D.V.M.) calendar · College of Veterinarians of Ontario — Competency examination and assessment policy
The money
What it pays in Ontario
Job Bank's own figures, quoted rather than summarised, with the period they describe — so you can tell how old they are and go and check them.
- $29.81
- Low (hourly)
- $60.00
- Median (hourly)
- $86.54
- High (hourly)
Ontario, NOC 31103. Reference period 2023-2024, last updated by Job Bank on 19 November 2025. Wages vary a lot by region inside Ontario and by how long you have been doing it — the low figure is roughly where you start, not what the job is worth.
Where it is heading
The outlook for the next three years
Job Bank publishes a three-year outlook for every job in every province. It is the closest thing to an honest forecast, and it moves, so read it as a weather report rather than a verdict.
Good4 out of 5 stars
- Employment is expected to remain relatively stable.
- A moderate number of positions will become available due to retirements.
- There are a small number of unemployed workers with recent experience in this occupation.
What that rating means: how many openings Job Bank expects in Ontario for this kind of work against how many people are likely to be looking — not whether it is a good job. A “limited” rating means more competition for each opening; it does not close the door, and it can change before you are ready to walk through it.
What is changing in this work
- Favourable levels of consumer spending on veterinary and related services, and a growing pet population
- Opportunities to support biosecurity and livestock disease prevention
- The use of telemedicine technologies under certain circumstances is expected to expand business prospects
Who hires for it
- The majority of these professionals work in veterinary services
- Self-employment is relatively high in this profession
- 4,600
- people work in this job in Ontario
- 65%
- are women (48% across all jobs)
- 42%
- are self-employed (15% across all jobs)
Source: Job Bank — Veterinarians job prospects in Ontario (NOC 31103). Outlook updated by Job Bank on 10 December 2025; read by us on 5 October 2026.
Before you leave school
Things you can do now
- Take Grade 12 biology, chemistry and maths at the university level. They are the foundation for the Guelph prerequisites and for the undergraduate years that come before the DVM.
- Start getting hours under a vet now: ask a local clinic whether a high school volunteer or job-shadow day is possible. One of your three references later must be a vet who has supervised you.
- Get animal experience that is not at a clinic. A summer on a farm, a stable, a kennel or a shelter counts as animal-related experience on the application, and tells you whether you like animals when they are not cute.
- Join 4-H and take a livestock project. Raising an animal and learning what normal looks like is the best way to know what abnormal means.
- Ask about the Specialist High Skills Major in Agriculture if your school offers one, particularly the animal science variants. It includes sector certifications and co-op placements.
Test it
Do this before you decide anything
Reading about a job tells you almost nothing. This is designed to be done alone, this week, for free.
Find out how you feel about the hard parts, not the cute parts
About 60 minutes- Phone a local veterinary clinic during a quiet hour and ask the person who answers: is there a vet who would answer two questions from a student about their job? Be polite, brief and ready to be told no.
- If you get a yes, ask: what is the hardest part of a normal week, and what do you wish you had known at my age? Write down the answers exactly.
- Search an Ontario Veterinary College admissions page and read the list of required courses and the non-academic requirements. Write down how many years of study sit between you and the DVM.
- Read, with the sound off if you need to, a plain written account by a vet describing euthanasia or a case that went wrong. Notice if you can stay with it or if you want to close the tab.
What it tells you. If you could hear the hard parts, still wanted to ask another question, and did not recoil at the length of the route, this might be worth following with real hours in a clinic. If the hard parts put you off, or the years of study felt like too much for the job as it actually is, then you have found out early, cheaply and without a debt. Other roles in animal health, such as technician or farm work, are a real alternative.
Better than any article
Questions for somebody who does this job
Most people say yes to a teenager who asks good questions. These are the ones that get real answers rather than encouragement.
- “What does your week look like and how many hours is it?”
- “How often do you do euthanasia, and how do you cope with it?”
- “What do you wish you had known before vet school?”
- “How much debt did you graduate with, and how long did it take to feel comfortable?”
- “How much of your work is medicine and how much is talking to owners?”
- “Do you work with farm animals, and what is that like at 3 a.m.?”
- “If you were choosing again, would you choose this?”
Could you own one of these?
The part other career sites never mention
Yes, and Job Bank notes that self-employment is relatively high in this profession. Many vets start as an associate in someone else's practice and later buy in or open their own. A veterinary practice is a medical business with staff, equipment and payroll, so most vets run a business as well as practising medicine.
Not sure this is the right list to be reading
Start from yourself, not from the job.
Future Finder is free, takes about ten minutes, needs no account and stores nothing. It will tell you which kinds of work you lean toward, and which of these pages are worth your time.
Parent of a teenager weighing this up? Career coaching for teens gets them talking to people who do the work, anywhere in Ontario.
If this appeals, look at these too
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Wages and training requirements change. Every figure on this page is linked to the body that publishes it, and the review date above says when we last checked. If you find something out of date, tell us and we will fix it.