Agriculture · Helping & Teaching
Veterinary technician: what the job actually is
The person who does much of the hands-on clinical work in a vet clinic: nursing, lab work, anaesthesia monitoring, X-rays and calming the animal down.
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The work
What this job actually is
- Being the nurse, lab tech, anaesthetist's assistant and animal handler in a veterinary clinic. The veterinarian diagnoses and prescribes; you do a very large share of the actual hands-on care.
- You place IV catheters, draw blood, run tests, take X-rays, monitor animals under anaesthesia, clean teeth, send people home with instructions, and hold a frightened dog still while something unpleasant happens to it.
- You work in small animal clinics, large animal and mixed practices, emergency hospitals, research settings and shelters. A technician in a dairy practice and one in a downtown emergency hospital have very different days.
- You will be bitten and scratched at some point, and you will lose patients you worked hard to save. Those two facts come with every vet clinic.
- You are also the person the owner talks to when the vet has left the room, so explaining things clearly and kindly is a skill the job uses every day.
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 — In early. Check the animals who stayed overnight, give their meds, walk the dogs, clean the cages.
- 8:15 — Prepare for the day's surgeries: draw up drugs, set out instruments, place IV catheters, check the anaesthetic machine.
- 9:00 — Anaesthesia. You watch the heart rate, breathing and the patient's colour for the whole procedure, because you are the person who notices when something changes.
- 11:30 — Recovery. Warm the patient, watch them wake up, and call the owner.
- 12:30 — Lunch, interrupted by a phone call about a dog who ate something it should not have.
- 13:30 — Lab and X-rays. Run blood work, position a nervous animal for an image, and write down what you found.
- 15:00 — Client education. Show an owner how to give a pill, change a bandage or understand a diet change.
- 16:30 — A dental or an ear flush. A repeat procedure, done carefully, on an animal who is not pleased about it.
- 17:30 — Clean and restock the treatment area. Disinfecting everything is one of the most important and least celebrated jobs in the building.
- 18:00 — Hand over to the evening staff or go home. Some days the last hour includes a euthanasia you assist with.
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 like medicine and practical, hands-on work more than you like a desk, and you like the nursing side more than the diagnosing side.
- You stay calm with a frightened animal and a stressed-out owner at once.
- You do not mind the smell, mess and bodily fluids that come with caring for sick animals.
- You pay attention to detail. A wrong dose or a missed change in a patient's breathing matters.
- You like a clinic's pace and team more than working by yourself.
- You hate being on your feet and lifting for hours. Large dogs, heavy animals and long shifts are part of the job.
- Euthanasia, abuse cases and animals that cannot be saved would flatten you. Compassion fatigue is common in animal health work.
- You want a high income for the work. Job Bank's Ontario wage range for this occupation is modest, set against the college programme and the responsibility you carry, and you should read the wage figures below before deciding.
- You get tired of owners who are upset about the cost, who have not followed the plan, or who blame the staff.
- You get easily bitten, scratched or kicked and do not want it to happen regularly.
- You need regular hours. Emergency and large animal work includes nights, weekends and holidays, and clinics run on appointments that start before you have had breakfast.
The route in
How you actually get there in Ontario
Graduate from an accredited college programme
Ontario colleges run veterinary technician programmes that take two to three years. To use the Registered Veterinary Technician designation you must graduate from a programme accredited by the Ontario Association of Veterinary Technicians (OAVT). Accredited programmes at the time of writing include Algonquin, Collège Boréal, Georgian, Northern, Seneca, Sheridan, St. Clair, St. Lawrence, University of Guelph Ridgetown, and Thompson Rivers University online. Check the OAVT list before you apply, because accreditation status can change.Become a pending member
The OAVT requires you to be a pending member, which includes a criminal record check, to write the national exam.Pass the VTNE
The Veterinary Technician National Examination is written through the American Association of Veterinary State Boards.Complete the Professionalism and Ethics Workshop
The OAVT describes this one-day workshop as required to obtain Registered status. After it, you complete your membership as a full member.A shorter first step exists
Colleges also run one-year veterinary assistant programmes. An assistant role is a way into a clinic and a way to find out whether you like the work, but it is a different job from the registered technician's and the programme is not the RVT route.
Where this comes from: OAVT — How to become an RVT · OAVT — Accredited programmes · ontariocolleges.ca — Veterinary programs
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.
- $17.95
- Low (hourly)
- $22.00
- Median (hourly)
- $33.04
- High (hourly)
Ontario, NOC 32104. 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.
Moderate3 out of 5 stars
- Employment growth will lead to a moderate number of new positions.
- Not many 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
- 10,550
- people work in this job in Ontario
- 94%
- are women (48% across all jobs)
- 5%
- are self-employed (15% across all jobs)
Source: Job Bank — Animal health technologists and veterinary technicians job prospects in Ontario (NOC 32104). 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 11 and 12 biology and chemistry. The college programme pages on ontariocolleges.ca list the specific entry requirements, so read them in Grade 10 or 11, not Grade 12.
- Volunteer or job-shadow at a vet clinic, a shelter or a rescue. The goal is to see the unglamorous parts: cleaning, restraint, lab work, a hard goodbye.
- Ask about the Specialist High Skills Major in Agriculture, which has animal science variants where schools offer them, and includes first aid and CPR certification and co-op placements.
- Join 4-H and take an animal project, or work with a farm, stable or kennel. The animal handling experience goes straight into a college application.
- Read the entry requirements of your preferred college early, including anything about working with animals, so nothing surprises you in Grade 12.
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 whether you can stay steady around a hard animal day
About 60 minutes- Phone a veterinary clinic at a quiet time and ask whether a technician would answer two questions from a student. Ask what their day looks like and what they would tell a 16-year-old.
- Read the OAVT page on how to become an RVT and write down the five steps. Circle the one that feels hardest.
- Look up one veterinary technician programme on ontariocolleges.ca. Read the course list and write down which three courses you would look forward to and which you would dread.
- Do a task that tests your stomach and patience: clean up a mess, handle a stinky chore, or look after a pet or a neighbour's animal, calmly, for thirty minutes without complaining.
What it tells you. If you were curious about the technician's answers, the course list had more to look forward to than dread, and the messy chore did not bother you, a vet clinic job-shadow is the next step. If you realised you wanted to diagnose and decide rather than assist, the veterinarian route may fit better. If the mess and the emotional load put you off, better to learn it now than after two years of college.
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 do you do on a normal day that surprised you when you started?”
- “How do you cope with the sad days?”
- “What does the RVT designation change about your work or your pay?”
- “What would you tell somebody choosing between a technician programme and a veterinarian route?”
- “Which kind of practice have you worked in, and which did you like best?”
- “What part of the job do you wish more people understood?”
- “Where do technicians go in this field after five years?”
Could you own one of these?
The part other career sites never mention
Less directly than a vet. Most technicians are employees, and Job Bank's workforce data shows a low rate of self-employment in this group. Some build businesses on the side, such as mobile services, but technicians generally do not own clinics.
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.
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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.