As an equestrian from a fairly young age, working in a barn has gone hand-in-hand with my time around horses. Initially, it was informal helping with chores and sweeping aisleways – it morphed into assisting with lessons and pony camps. During my undergrad degree, I worked in the university’s equine center as a stable hand, was a teaching assistant to several of the freshmen level courses held out at the barn, and I spent over 2 years living in the apartment attached to the front of the facility where I served as emergency staff, and completed night check. In addition to the university barn, I worked for a private barn in the area for a lady who had a facility in her backyard and just kept a couple of horses on the property. Now, in vet school, I work at the barn where my horse is boarded.
In addition to the thousands of hours honing horse husbandry skills, working in a barn has given me a plethora of life skills and experience that I have found to be directly applicable to life in vet school.
- Equine emergencies
- This one is an obvious skill set to gain while working in a barn. If you work in a barn for a long enough period of time (or one that has a lot of horses), chances are at some point you will run into an emergency. Lacerations, punctures, choke, colic, loose horses, cast horses, sprung shoes, nose bleeds, horses caught in the fence/stall/door – all situations I have walked into upon getting to work, just to name a few.I’ve learned the most important thing is to take a second to assess what is actually going on. Do I have time to call the barn manager first, or should I be acting first and catch the barn manager up to speed afterward? Is it safe for me to try to handle the situation on my own, or do I need more people? Is the horse in immediate danger? If it isn’t immediately dire, and I find a horse not acting right, I am assessing the appearance of their stall, feed and water, their behavior, and I might grab a TPR before texting the barn manager with what I’m finding.
By taking the time to assess an emergency, I am more effective in aiding that horse. Finding a panicking horse, and then panicking myself is not helpful, and ends up taking longer than taking a step back, gathering as much information as possible and then jumping in. And sometimes that process is incredibly short.I can apply this skill both literally (when I am spending time in the hospital at the vet school), and to other areas of my studies, like test-taking. When I am taking an exam, it does me no good to panic. If I take a step back, and assess the situation….what is the question asking? What do I know about the topic? Can I rule out any answers I know to be incorrect? It leads me to a more effective and rational test-taking strategy.
- This one is an obvious skill set to gain while working in a barn. If you work in a barn for a long enough period of time (or one that has a lot of horses), chances are at some point you will run into an emergency. Lacerations, punctures, choke, colic, loose horses, cast horses, sprung shoes, nose bleeds, horses caught in the fence/stall/door – all situations I have walked into upon getting to work, just to name a few.I’ve learned the most important thing is to take a second to assess what is actually going on. Do I have time to call the barn manager first, or should I be acting first and catch the barn manager up to speed afterward? Is it safe for me to try to handle the situation on my own, or do I need more people? Is the horse in immediate danger? If it isn’t immediately dire, and I find a horse not acting right, I am assessing the appearance of their stall, feed and water, their behavior, and I might grab a TPR before texting the barn manager with what I’m finding.
- Triaging
- This one relates pretty closely to dealing with emergencies, but I view it as a separate skill. I walk into the barn to find a loose horse. What do I do first? Do I grab the horse, or do I go shut the gate that is hanging open?
It depends: are there other horses in the field, or was the horse out alone? Is the loose horse acting dangerously, or is it standing and grazing quietly somewhere? If the loose horse is the first out and there are other horses that could get loose, I go try to get the gate shut; stop the hemorrhage.If I walk into an emergent situation and I don’t have all the tools or information I need, what can I do to best handle the situation without making things worse?Obviously, this is a skill I will use in the veterinary field going forward. But in vet school, I apply my triaging techniques to my classes and studying. With up to 9 hours of lecture in a day (yes, you read that correctly), and 18-22 credit hours each semester, there are not physically enough hours in the day for me to be studying every single subject, every single day. So I triage my studying. What do I need to be doing today that is absolutely necessary? If I have time, what do I need to do that is important, but could wait if need be? And what do I not have to worry about until later?
- This one relates pretty closely to dealing with emergencies, but I view it as a separate skill. I walk into the barn to find a loose horse. What do I do first? Do I grab the horse, or do I go shut the gate that is hanging open?
- The importance of a schedule
- Horses are habitual creatures, almost to a fault. Most of the horses (that are not my own) are conditioned enough that if I walk in the barn anytime mid-afternoon on, they think I am there to feed them because that’s what usually happens when I walk into the barn. Keeping a regular schedule prevents stress in horses; the more often their routine changes, the more stressed they can be, so we aim to feed and turnout at approximately the same times each day and gradually introduce changes as needed.The value of a schedule directly to my life as a vet student, especially with an overfull courseload. Making sure I know what my schedule is, and then keeping it consistent is paramount. This doesn’t just extend to knowing what my class schedule looks like; this means trying to keep similar sleep schedules, regular meals, knowing when I have time for self-care or taking a break from studying, etc.
Turns out I am not so different from the horses; when I know what my schedule looks like and can anticipate what I need to be doing when, I am also less stressed.
- Horses are habitual creatures, almost to a fault. Most of the horses (that are not my own) are conditioned enough that if I walk in the barn anytime mid-afternoon on, they think I am there to feed them because that’s what usually happens when I walk into the barn. Keeping a regular schedule prevents stress in horses; the more often their routine changes, the more stressed they can be, so we aim to feed and turnout at approximately the same times each day and gradually introduce changes as needed.The value of a schedule directly to my life as a vet student, especially with an overfull courseload. Making sure I know what my schedule is, and then keeping it consistent is paramount. This doesn’t just extend to knowing what my class schedule looks like; this means trying to keep similar sleep schedules, regular meals, knowing when I have time for self-care or taking a break from studying, etc.
- Work ethic
- Working in a barn is not difficult, but it is physical, and it requires a certain level of dedication. Horses love their schedule (see above), and just because you might have a lot going on, or the weather is bad…the horses still need to be fed and their stalls still need to be cleaned. So the biggest part about working in a barn is that you have to show up, and you have to keep showing up. Even when you might not feel like it, or it takes you twice as long to get there because the roads are covered in snow, or you are moving like molasses because it is 90 degrees with 100% humidity. You show up and take care of the horses because they need you to. Vet school is difficult, but the level of dedication is similar and it starts by simply showing up. Even when you are tired, even when you start getting behind, or feel like you could be more efficient at home, even when you just want to stay home and sleep in…you show up. And that’s half the battle – just getting to class and paying attention, but things generally start to fall into place if you can consistently show up and pay attention.
- Patience
- Horses are not robots. They have bad days, just like the rest of us. A cool day could mean that every last one of their furry behinds are romping around the pasture and they have no interest in listening to what I have to say. Or wide swings in temperature could mean a morning full of blanket changing, preventing me from starting stall cleaning on time. In my barn, we are still actively working on a flooding issue – which has been much improved over the summer – but at one point we had several inches of water, twice in 2 weeks. The stalls all flooded, the mats in the aisleway had drifted around, the feed room had half a foot of water and spilled into the blanket room. I spend about 30 hours over 3 days bailing out water and cleaning up mud and muck from every surface of that barn. And I laughed about it, because either you laugh in that situation, or you cry.Barn work is all about patience. Any time you bank on getting done early, something inevitably will do awry. And no matter whatever is going wrong, it is rarely the horse’s fault.
A steely sense of patience carries over to vet school well. The days I need extra time to study, or want to go to bed extra early…are the nights that everything goes wrong. Keeping my patience in check means I’m not taking out my frustrations on my pets, roommates, family, or anyone else who doesn’t deserve a poor attitude from me because of things beyond my control.
- Horses are not robots. They have bad days, just like the rest of us. A cool day could mean that every last one of their furry behinds are romping around the pasture and they have no interest in listening to what I have to say. Or wide swings in temperature could mean a morning full of blanket changing, preventing me from starting stall cleaning on time. In my barn, we are still actively working on a flooding issue – which has been much improved over the summer – but at one point we had several inches of water, twice in 2 weeks. The stalls all flooded, the mats in the aisleway had drifted around, the feed room had half a foot of water and spilled into the blanket room. I spend about 30 hours over 3 days bailing out water and cleaning up mud and muck from every surface of that barn. And I laughed about it, because either you laugh in that situation, or you cry.Barn work is all about patience. Any time you bank on getting done early, something inevitably will do awry. And no matter whatever is going wrong, it is rarely the horse’s fault.
They might not seem to have a lot in common, but barn work has given me many life skills (even beyond the few listed here!) that help me every day as a veterinary student.
