EQUINE VETERINARIAN

Learn what it takes to be a horse doctor from two young vets.

- SARAH E. COLEMAN

Not everyone who goes to vet school has the same background. Erin Homerosky, DVM, who works at Orrville Veterinary Clinic, a large animal practice in Orrville, Ohio, grew up on a hay and cattle farm in southern Ohio. The youngest of three girls, Erin was the only one bitten by the horse bug.

She didn't decide she wanted to go to vet school until the summer after her sophomore year in college.

"I'd signed up to be a biology major [at the Ohio State University], but quickly swapped to animal science," Erin says. "I liked anatomy and genetics and reproduction, and I liked being physical. So that was when I decided I was going to try to be a vet."

Kristen Stowell, DVM, works at Elkhorn Veterinary Clinic in Elkhorn, Wisc. Her story was quite the opposite: She knew she wanted to be a vet since she was a little kid.

"I still have a picture I drew when I was 5 years old of me becoming a vet," she says.

TRYING IT OUT

It's not uncommon to hear all the things you should do to determine if veterinary medicine is really your thing, like ride-alongs, job shadowing or volunteering. But do you really have to do them all? Both Erin and Kristen say: YES!

Erin spent a lot of time working in a research lab on a dairy farm when she was an undergraduate, and that was what made her realize that vet med really was what she wanted to do.

"It was an epiphany," Erin says of learning she wanted to be a vet. She had never truly considered the career.

Later that year she worked in a small animal clinic; she was a janitor there every other night and then would spend a half-day shadowing vets on the weekends. This is when Erin learned she most wanted to focus on large animals once she graduated.