Podcast #023 – Houston We Have A Problem

The equine veterinary profession is at a breaking point. There is little incentive for developing new horse vets. The American Association of Equine Practitioners (AAEP) knows it and is putting together a task force to address this. They are asking all but the people they should be asking – the horse owners themselves. Their efforts to discover the reasons are long overdue and in fact, are probably too late.

I have been writing for a while about the inevitability that horse owners, especially those in rural areas, would soon be out of options for finding expert veterinary care for their horses. There are 3 reasons:

1) the high cost of receiving a veterinary education and the low return in salary (money competition).

2) the generational changes for the desire to have a “quality of life” in a profession with high personal time demands (time competition).

3) the demand of horse owners driven by agenda driven companies for reactive veterinary care diminishing the observance of proactive, preventive horse care (bias competition).