For as long as I can remember I wanted to work with animals, it was a passion I shared along with my love of music… But even now I still ask my self whether the career line I chose was the best… and still my answer is YES…

I am proud to call myself a Veterinary Nurse and to have my badge on my not so green uniform!

But had I known what lay in front of me, I may well have taken a different career as I tell such a familiar story that so many have been through, and unfortunately still have yet to come.

I started out doing work experience at a vet’s as most people do, working there in my spare time. I loved helping out, and longed for the day when I could work in an animal hospital.

That time eventually came, and I hated almost every moment of it after the first month.

Being new to the world of work I did not realize how intimidating it felt. I was keen and wanted to learn and be taught, but I was very much dropped in at the deep end. As for learning, well I could clean and muck out stables, and post mortem rooms like a pro! But when it came to nursing none of the vets had time to show me anything, and the other nurses were so harassed, I may well have been just a skivvy. What little amount of confidence I had was gone – taken a severe battering by being told I was “useless”, and had “no common sense” by one of the vets. She could strike fear into the nurses and some of the assistant vets. I once saw one of my friends pulled out of her lunch hour by the arm, forcefully, so that the vet could prove her wrong about something.

Needless to say I lasted only seven months there. I was eventually sacked as they said I wasn’t up to their standards, though I didn’t even know what their standards were, and training was non-existent! I had no way of knowing if what I was doing was right or wrong. I left a few weeks early by mutual agreement; even then they tried to con me over a month’s wages and holiday pay. Judging by the amount of adverts that are placed from there now things are more or less the same.