Endangered Species

There’s a new species on the Endangered Species List, but this one gets around on two legs and sometimes four wheels; it’s the rural veterinarian. America’s rural infrastructure has been on a gradual decline over the last decade, if not longer, with vast numbers of people leaving rural areas for the chance of higher paying city jobs. Among those choosing city life over rural life are veterinarians. It’s much easier to treat pampered pooches and small domestic critters than it is to care for large farm animals; animals that can easily weigh in at more than sixteen hundred pounds. With the ever increasing costs of becoming a veterinarian, combined with the fifty to sixty thousand yearly wage of a rural vet, plus the very real possibility of personal injury, you would have to wonder if it was at all worth it. Despite all that, life as a rural veterinarian offers something the city can’t even begin to compete with; quality of life. In rural America you won’t get stuck in rush hour traffic, you know your neighbors, heck you know the whole town, you can breathe the air, and the patients and their caregivers truly appreciate what you do.