Research, Education, or Pharma Vet

You don't have to be hands-on with horses to fulfill your veterinary dreams.

- BY SARAH E. COLEMAN

If you dream of a career where you help keep horses healthy but aren't sure if you want to be in the barn every day in the bitter cold of winter and stifling heat of summer, don't despair! There are a variety of other jobs that will allow you to exercise your equine science skills while remaining indoors.

RESEARCH AND OUTREACH

Emma Adam, DVM, Ph.D., MRCVS, DACVIM, DACVS, is an equine veterinarian responsible for research and outreach at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Ky.—but her equine career path has been vast and varied.

“When I was in vet school, I thought I would become a racehorse trainer,” she says. “But after six years of training, I realized that I wasn’t cut out to be a trainer; I preferred the puzzle of fixing what was wrong with the horse.”

After she completed vet school at the Royal Veterinary College, Dr. Adam went on to obtain board certifications (the highest level of training) in both large animal internal medicine from Texas A&M University and large animal surgery from New Bolton Center, University of Pennsylvania.

She worked in private practice as a surgeon and internist—someone who is focused on the internal diseases of horses—and was deeply involved with hands-on horse care after obtaining these certifications. Although she enjoyed the work, she was again curious to see how else she might apply her veterinary medicine degree and help even more horses along the way.