Careers Involving Animals
The Three Best Careers Involving Animals
If you’re an animal lover, then you might consider one of the many great careers involving animals. Of course, not all careers involving animals are equally fulfilling for those who love animals. You probably, for example, wouldn’t want to work at a slaughterhouse or be involved in animal testing for cosmetic firms. However, many careers involving animals do so in a humane manner. Here are the best careers for those that love animals.
Veterinarian
Becoming a veterinarian is the obvious career for those who love animals. As a vet at a small animal practice, you will get to see animals on a daily basis and to help improve their quality of life with your expertise. Of course, vets don’t just give cats and dogs shots these days. The veterinary field has expanded to such an extent that you can now practice acupuncture, alternative medicine, and behavior as part of your expertise. Furthermore, it is not just small animals or farm animals. With the expansion of the pet industry to include wild and exotic animals, veterinary medicine has had to expand as well. So just as in human medicine, vets too have specialized.
The main drawback to this career is the extended schooling and the difficulty involved in entering vet schools. It takes just as long to become a vet as it does a doctor, and with the many species involved in an education in vet med, many students find the experience overwhelming.
Animal Trainer
If medicine is not for you, you might consider becoming an animal trainer. Many types of organizations need animals to do certain jobs to assist humans. The obvious example is pet owners who want to have their dogs trained to increase obedience and compliance in their homes. However, the animal training field goes far beyond this. Law enforcement, for example, employs several animal trainers to help them train the dogs in their canine units. This type of work involves not only picking good canine and human candidates for the training positions but in helping the human and canine pairs to bond and learn to communicate with one another. One major part of training law enforcement canines is teaching dogs to detect drugs or bombs for assignments like airport security. A candidate for these careers must be very good at working with both people and animals.
Organizations also use dogs in a series of other roles that help humans. Many trainers teach dogs to help people with specific handicaps like blindness. Typically, those who train these dogs must be good at keeping a regular schedule and having the patience and awareness to deal with the difficulties of this profession. A recent program started that used prison inmates to help train dogs for returning Gulf War veterans. The dogs helped those suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to avoid situations that triggered their debilitating anxiety attacks. At the same time, the training program, run out of prisons, helped give inmates a sense of worth in society before their release. Those who ran the program had the job of monitoring the progress of the animals and of coordinating with vets to make sure dogs’ training matched the specific problems that veterans faced.
Organic Farm Owner
Another career that lets you have a close relationship with animals is owning and operating an organic farm. Unlike industrial farms where corporations treat animals simply as the cogs in the industrial process, organic farms tend to take a much more humane view of their non-human partners. Chickens and cows roam free. Organic farmers don’t inject their animals with harmful antibiotics or treat them simply as a means to an end. The quality of life of these creatures is far superior to that of those who end up in your Big Mac.
These are only three of the many careers involving animals. If animals are your thing, there are definitely jobs out there that will allow you to work with them in ways that will not compromise your conscious and that will benefit not only the animals but society as well. Look to volunteer for businesses and organizations that affiliate themselves with your career of choice so that you can get a good sense of what demands you will need to meet and then take the first steps toward entering that profession. The animals will thank you in their own ways—with a wag of the tail or a gentle purr.