When I was Five, What did I want to be When I Grew Up?

When I was five years old I wanted to either be an equine veterinarian or a therapist, possibly a psychiatrist. For awhile I was very into helping the vet when he came to the stable to take care of the horses every week, and he even taught me how to give shots and draw blood when I was 12 years old. I was so into wanting to be a veterinarian that when I was a teenager, I even did ride along to get an idea of what it was actually like to be a vet. I thought for sure that I would become a veterinarian…..

Fast forward and I started college. My friend Sunni and I actually got into the same university and we began our journey as pre-vet students. We were lucky to get most of our classes together so we were lab partners in classes. School was great and we were learning a lot of things, and even enjoying class until……this one semester was a bit brutal. I have a tough skin, but when I started to actually realize that I would spend a fair amount of time going out to calls for sick horses at 2:00 am, I started to rethink things. I also had the chance to talk to veterinarians who told me I could forget about actually having time to ride or own a horse once I became a vet because I would never know exactly what my day would be, and I had to consider that……even knowing all of this, I still wanted to be an equine veterinarian.

It wasn’t until Sunni and I were partners in a class where we had to put to sleep animals one right after the other. Of course all of these animals were deathly ill in some way, and we were not putting healthy animals to sleep, but it was still heart wrenching. I had even assisted my own vet in euthanizing various horses that were beyond help and it was ‘“ok” sort of……but this class was the final straw that did me in and I changed my major to psychology.

After that I worked on becoming a therapist, and after 8 years of school, I did become a therapist. Although every time my vet comes out to vaccinate my horses or check in on them for something, I wistfully have a second of wondering if I should have been a vet, but it quickly passes when my vet tells me about her day. And I really do enjoy being a therapist and talking to people and helping them. I gratefully wave goodbye to my vet, give my horses hugs and feel grateful that I have a career that I enjoy, and that I get to spend a lot of time doing what I love, which is riding.