Hi Ruby,

There are not any vets on this forum at the moment, but I forwarded your question to a friend. Her reply is below;

'It is different for every vet. There is no one career pathway and every veterinary officer will have different opportunities that present themselves, and to be honest it is down to luck and where you are in your seniority (how long you have been in the army/rank/current role).
If you are looking for personal experience, I have had quite a clinical route so far. Having done an internship before I joined (extremely beneficial to have clinical practice before if you are interested in that route) I went straight into a Veterinary Officer role with the dogs. Looking after the operational dogs is not too taxing as they clearly have to be healthy! At 1MWD there are opportunities to do things with the troop, some sport etc.. There isn't loads of opportunities to do AT, it depends on who is in your chain of command and how they value it. Personally I have been lucky, I had done some skiing with OTC (SF1 and SF2) so could push to do SF3 and SL1 once I was in. Because it was worthwhile for the RAVC to have instructors! After the VO role I went into troop command.
Then otherwise I posted to the DATR and now I am in London working with the horses. It is what you make it, there are opportunities if you push for it but we are a small corps so they can't let everyone go away all the time! Hope that helps.'

23 May, 2021 14:39