How to Become a Vet Assistant and Decide if it’s the Right Career for You

You love animals and working in a fast-paced environment with lots of other employees. You enjoy connecting with customers and helping educate clients. If this sounds like you, you may be a fit for an exciting career in veterinary assisting. Veterinary assistants are the backbone of a vet office, helping speak to pet owners and managing animals.

Learn how to become a vet assistant, what the job entails, and the skills you’ll need.

Why Become a Vet Assistant?

If you love caring for animals, you can choose to pursue a career that allows you to care for them all day. The work you do as a vet assistant lets you take an active role in promoting animal health and their overall well-being. You’ll perform a variety of routine animal care tasks and assist veterinarians and veterinary technicians in treating injured and ill animals.

A benefit of being a vet assistant is being part of a care team that is as passionate as you about animal health. Working side by side, you and your team members can share in the satisfaction of helping animals to be at their peak health.

What Does a Vet Assistant Do?

Vet assistants help veterinarians and veterinary technologists and technicians take care of routine tasks during the caring of animals.

Some tasks veterinary assistants may perform include:1

• Feeding, bathing, and exercising animals
• Cleaning and disinfecting cages, kennels, and examination and operating rooms
• Restraining animals during examination and laboratory procedures
• Maintaining and sterilizing surgical instruments and equipment
• Monitoring and caring for animals after surgery
• Helping provide emergency first aid to sick and injured animals
• Assisting in collecting blood, urine, and tissue samples

What’s the Difference Between Vet Tech vs Vet Assistant?

While both work in veterinary offices, there are differences between vet assistants and vet technicians. Both veterinary technicians and vet assistants may bathe and care for animals. Veterinary technicians are qualified to do more procedures than veterinary assistants who help veterinarians and veterinary technologists and technicians with their daily tasks.

Learn more about Carrington Colleges’s Veterinary Technology program.

What Skills Do You Need to be a Veterinary Assistant?

Veterinary assistants should be able to communicate with pet owners and the rest of the veterinary team. They also should be able to do routine tasks such as cleaning and grooming animals. Some of these skills can be learned, either on the job or at a Veterinary Assisting program, but other skills may need to be innate to candidates considering this career.

According to O*NET Online, some essential veterinary assistant skills and abilities include:2

• Active Listening — Giving full attention to what other people are saying, taking time to understand the points being made, asking questions as appropriate, and not interrupting at inappropriate times.
• Monitoring — Monitoring/Assessing performance of yourself, other individuals, or organizations to make improvements or take corrective action.
• Service Orientation — Actively looking for ways to help people.
• Active Learning — Understanding the implications of new information for both current and future problem-solving and decision-making.
• Complex Problem Solving — Identifying complex problems and reviewing related information to develop and evaluate options and implement solutions.
• Coordination — Adjusting actions in relation to others’ actions.
• Critical Thinking — Using logic and reasoning to identify the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions or approaches to problems.
• Reading Comprehension — Understanding written sentences and paragraphs in work-related documents.
• Social Perceptiveness — Being aware of others’ reactions and understanding why they react as they do.
• Problem Sensitivity — The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing there is a problem.
• Deductive Reasoning — The ability to apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense.
• Arm-Hand Steadiness — The ability to keep your hand and arm steady while moving your arm or while holding your arm and hand in one position.
• Inductive Reasoning — The ability to combine pieces of information to form general rules or conclusions.
• Information Ordering — The ability to arrange things or actions in a certain order or pattern according to a specific rule or set of rules.
• Manual Dexterity — The ability to quickly move your hand, your hand together with your arm, or your two hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble objects.
• Trunk Strength — The ability to use your abdominal and lower back muscles to support part of the body repeatedly or continuously over time without ‘giving out’ or fatiguing.

Where do Vet Assistants Work?

Veterinary assistants work in veterinary offices, but there are different types of offices. When choosing where to work you may question if you want to work for a major chain, small independent veterinarians or in emergency veterinary medicine. According to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), In the USA, approximately 3.2 million shelter animals are adopted each year. Also, according to a study in 2018, Americans spent about $17 billion on veterinary care in hospital, clinics, and food.3

Major corporate veterinary operations include VCA, Banfield Pet Hospital, Greencross, CVS Group, and Mars.3 Independent veterinarians will vary based on where you live and work, but there are plenty of options. The type of clinic you work at will also influence what kind of animals you work with. If you work in a more rural area with a veterinarian who treats farm animals, you’ll see different animals than if you worked in a city.

Emergency veterinary clinics differ from traditional vet offices in that they are open longer, usually 24/7, and perform less preventive care and deal with more acute injuries or illnesses.

No matter what setting you work in as a vet assistant, your primary goal is to keep the space comfortable, safe and sanitary.

Who is Right for Veterinary Assisting?

With vet assistant attributes – including skills and abilities – covered, what else makes someone a good candidate for a job as a veterinarian’s assistant? There are some core values and personality traits that may make you more successful.

Love Animals

Loving animals is a given for a vet assistant. It’s unlikely you’d be interested in joining a veterinary office if you didn’t at least have a soft spot for furry friends. But take note if you have any animals you dislike. Not all veterinarians will work with animals like reptiles or birds, but if you have an aversion to either you should make sure you don’t work in a clinic that treats them.

Empathy

While most people think of veterinary medicine for the good times, the fact of the matter is that many animals end up at vets’ offices because they are seriously ill. As a vet assistant, you may be speaking with worried pet parents. Make sure you have compassion and empathy to help relate to someone who may be at risk of losing a pet.

Emotional Resilience

Veterinary assistants help out with all aspects of a veterinary office, from restraining animals to dealing with owners to helping at the front desk. When emotions are running high, it’s important that a vet assistant not become overwhelmed.

Attention to Detail

A big part of a vet assistant’s job is keeping the area comfortable, clean and sanitary. With germy animals around, this isn’t time to cut corners. The best vet assistants know how to make sure they get everything done right the first time and take pride in the quality of their work.