Working with Animals
by People who work with animals come from a variety of backgrounds, but they usually have one thing in common – a great love of animals and a concern for their well being. Some careers need extensive medical education and lots of qualifications whilst others just require enthusiasm and lots of hard work.
One of the most important decisions you make in your life is your choice of career. You want a career that will make you happy and that you will enjoy. There are several different paths that you can choose from if you want to work with animals. You could work directly with animals or you could be office based in management, administrative or personnel positions.
Firstly there are the usual careers that everybody knows about. You could work with horses as a groom, jockey, riding instructor, equine vet, racing jockey or stable hand. Or with cats in a cattery. Or with dogs as a dog groomer, dog trainer, dog handler in the police or army, kennel manager. Or a normal veterinary career as a vet, veterinary nurse, veterinary assistant, veterinary receptionist but if you think a little further, there are plenty of other fun careers you could find.
Animal Careers
Animal assisted therapy is a fun way of brining health benefits to people who are ill or disabled. Animals with excellent temperaments are taken into nursing homes, hospitals, hospices, special needs schools and prisons to help the people there. This work involves working directly with animals, usually dogs, cats and rabbits and training them. This work can be extremely rewarding, especially if you enjoy interacting with people and have excellent communication and strong social skills.
Zoo Careers
Image via Wikipedia
If you think about working in a zoo you probably think about being a zoo keeper and caring directly for the animals but this could also involve being a wildlife ranger, curator, conservation biologist or researcher.
A slightly different role to a zoo keeper is a wildlife ranger or warden. This involves working at a safari park such as Longleat. As well as looking after the animals you would have to patrol the park to make sure the animals and public are safe and that the people aren’t distressing the animals by driving too close or feeding them.
There are now conservation and scientific programmes in zoos and aquariums which are highly technical and specialised. To get into these roles you will probably need a degree. This could be in animal science, zoology, marine biology, wildlife management or animal behaviour. Then you will probably need years of hands-on training learning to handle exotic animals.
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