21/08/2026
💙🩵 This is an amazing post that embodies almost perfectly the way we have approach taking care of our patients. Ask the questions. Try new things. Never stop caring. Never stop learning. Thank you to our wonderful clients for always supporting us! (Dr Ash)
I have a veterinary degree. That’s it. No residency, no board certification, no master’s, no PhD. I don’t even have a bachelor’s degree, which occasionally makes my CV look like somebody misplaced a page.
When I graduated from Purdue in 2001 and went back to rural West Virginia, I became about as much of a generalist as a veterinarian can be. I treated cows and horses, diagnosed Labradors, spayed cats, worked up complicated medical cases, performed surgery, and handled whatever emergency decided that 4:55 p.m. was the perfect time to become dramatic. I loved it, but I was also young and inexperienced.
In a teaching hospital, complicated cases came with specialists down the hall. Rural practice was different. Referral might mean several hours of driving and considerably more money than many of my clients had. I always offered it when I believed it was appropriate, but plenty of people simply couldn’t do it. More than once, someone would put what money they had on the counter and essentially say, “Here’s what I’ve got. Do the best you can.”
That forced me to learn one of the most important distinctions of my career: there is a big difference between not knowing how to do something and simply never having done it before.
So I started stretching. I took orthopedic and soft-tissue surgery wet labs. I learned ultrasound. I called surgeons, internists, radiologists, and anyone else who knew more than I did. I read actual textbooks before procedures, usually the sort heavy enough to qualify as exercise equipment. I referred when I needed to, admitted when I didn’t know something, and tried very hard not to confuse confidence with competence.
Over time, some of the cases that once intimidated me became ordinary parts of practice. Not because I had somehow become a specialist, but because I had become a better generalist. Repetition matters. Preparation matters. So does having enough humility to know when you are stretching appropriately and when you are simply in over your head.
I haven’t worked up a case or scrubbed into surgery in more than six years now. These days I walk the halls of a veterinary teaching hospital surrounded by specialists, residents, interns, and students. Watching them has made me wonder whether we have become so good at teaching young veterinarians to recognize risk that we may occasionally teach them to fear it.
I don’t want a new graduate attempting something clearly beyond their competence. That isn’t courage. But I also don’t want them believing every unfamiliar procedure, difficult case, or uncomfortable decision automatically belongs to somebody else. Veterinary school prepares people for more than they sometimes realize.
Use the specialists. Ask questions. Take the course. Read everything you can. Know your limitations and refer when referral is truly the right answer. But don’t automatically confuse “I’ve never done this before” with “I can’t do this.”
There is a tremendous amount of professional growth in the space between recklessness and staying permanently inside your comfort zone. A lot of my own career was built in that space, usually with a technician beside me, a textbook somewhere nearby, and a client trusting me to do the best I could.
Somewhere along the way, that is how I became the veterinarian I had to become.
*Regarding the “AI content” label: I’ve added a personal explanation in the comments below.
