Careers & Training
Learn it properly, from people who own the place.
New England Equine Practice is owned and run by its veterinarians. That is not a slogan here. It is who signs off on how a case gets handled, how long a horse can stay, and how much time somebody gets to teach you.
We train interns and externs every year, and we hire from that pool.
What working at an independent hospital actually changes.
Equine practice has consolidated fast. A great deal of it now answers to owners who have never met a horse. Ours answers to the veterinarians treating the horses.
Decisions get made here
No regional director, no protocol handed down from a group that has never seen the case. If a horse needs another two days, the doctor treating it decides that.
You see the whole case
Ambulatory through hospitalization through discharge, in one practice. You are not handed a piece of a horse and told to work on it.
People stay
Dr. Bradley has been here since the seventies. Dr. Cook since 1998. Longevity like that means the person teaching you has done this for decades.
A rigorous internship for veterinarians.
A year in a referral hospital and an ambulatory practice at once. You'll be in the surgical suite, at the farm, and on call, working beside board-certified clinicians rather than at a distance from them. Two interns share the year, rotating every two weeks between the hospital and the road. You will not spend it holding a light.
In the hospital
You are there when every emergency comes in, supervised by the attending veterinarian at first. Then you manage hospitalized patients yourself, mentored by the hospital director.
- Around 25 cases a week that you manage yourself
- Scrub in on all elective and emergent surgeries, including colic, arthroscopic, and orthopedic procedures
- One-on-one teaching from every veterinarian in the practice
- Medicine, surgery, sports medicine including scintigraphy and MRI, regenerative medicine, oncology, neonatology, and neurology
On the road
You serve as the 24-hour on-call veterinarian for farm emergencies. Supervised at first, then working independently with back-up always available.
- The full range of scheduled appointments, not just the easy ones
- Time with each veterinarian in the practice, across a wide range of horses and clientele
- You serve as anesthetist for all surgical cases during this rotation
- Real responsibility, with someone reachable at every hour
Come and watch the work.
We welcome high school, college, and graduate externs to visit the practice. You will see ambulatory work on farms and in-hospital work at Patterson, alongside a range of veterinarians across different specialties.
This is the honest version of equine practice, including the parts that happen at three in the morning. If you are deciding whether this is the career you want, a week here will tell you more than a semester will.