Although many of us enjoy and appreciate animals, making them your career calls for a "special something." It includes two vital elements: aptitude and attitude.
APTITUDE FOR ANIMAL CARE CAREERS
Among the elements of aptitude you will need are robust good health-animal care is physically and mentally demanding, far from the glamorous work too often portrayed in the media! Ministering to an ailing horse may be an around-the-clock job. Placing radio transmitters on hibernating black bears to track their later movements will call for wilderness survival skills as well as physical strength and a high degree of courage.
Whether you are rescuing ducks from an oil spill, changing cat cages in a veterinary clinic, or training dogs for the show ring, your aptitude must include an almost inborn affinity for animals, an ability to handle them where others could not, a knowledge of their habits coupled with a lack of fear of the animals in your care, a calm competence that they can sense about you. With these attributes comes an almost instinctive appreciation of an animal's weaknesses coupled with a healthy respect for its strengths and unpredictability.
You may already know how well you get along with animals; but if your aspirations outweigh your experience in this important respect, you should make every effort to see if your love of animals translates into an ability to manage them. This self-testing must go beyond owning and caring for a pet or two. Volunteering in some area of animal care should tell you whether it is the field for you.
ATTITUDE-EQUALLY ESSENTIAL
With few exceptions, high income does not exist in animal care anymore than glamour does. These are among the most giving of careers, in which the desire to be of help to your fellow-creatures (we are all animals!) outweighs considerations of comfort, physical or material.
This altruism-of doing good as you see it in an animal context-is a key element in the attitude you need for fulfillment of your career. But it is not the only element. Your emotional attachment to animals must be tempered with professionalism if you are to maintain a healthy balance in your work. The anger you may face at seeing an injury or injustice done to an animal must be tempered with the knowledge of what to do, and with the degree of professional objectivity needed to do it. Without this coolness under fire, you cannot function in a helpful way.
Your attitude must be the result of having come to grips with moral and ethical judgments as well as emotions. Although animals have rights, as the Humane Society of the United States has made clear, they are nevertheless viewed as "products" in a society that depends on many of them for food. They are also viewed as necessary elements of biological and human medical research. New drugs and medical devices cannot be approved for human use until their effectiveness has been proven on animal subjects. Animal shelter employees must constantly deal with the hard facts of euthanasia-"good death" is the Greek meaning for the humane disposition of ill or unwanted animals. Veterinarians and their helpers must cope daily with animal illness and death. These are facts of life; they cannot be changed. Your moral convictions cannot be at war with your work if you are to be happy in it. If you can see the necessity of animals as food products, you may find great personal satisfaction in research designed to improve the health of livestock, or in seeing that such animals are raised and handled under humane conditions. This applies equally well to supervising laboratory animals-if you feel that their uses in the testing of medical innovations is a necessary part of improving the quality of life for society.
Your attitude, therefore, must agree with the one prevailing in your workplace. Let's say you are the conservation-minded Assistant Curator of Mammals at a zoo. If the zoo is one where animal health is enhanced and endangered species are nurtured, you will be happy in the contribution you make to these goals. If on the other hand the zoo for which you work exists primarily for the amusement of visitors rather than for a higher purpose, you would soon become disenchanted with its policies.
INTERLOCKING OF APTITUDE AND ATTITUDE
It's almost self-evident, then, that aptitude and attitude will interrelate in the well-adjusted animal care careerist. Together, they constitute your basic approach to your career.
Much of your aptitude-the ability to relate to animals, your physical stamina, ability to learn, and acceptance of less than great financial rewards-will be reinforced by your attitude: positive, cheerful, calm in the face of frustration, professional in your acceptance of reality. With such an approach, your rewards will be self-esteem and continued pleasure in a lifetime spent with animals.
