Career advice please

Hi all,
I'm hoping for some career advice.
I was all set to work with horses, until at the age of 15, I was told that I must stop horseriding, or I will end up in a wheelchair due to a weak hip. I can walk fine, but couldn't walk around all day. As a result, 11 years later I am in an office job, wishing I was working with animals.
Are there any jobs with animals which I could still do? I have a business degree. I'm quite stuck for ideas. I have looked into working for an animal charity, a few years back, and was offered an interview but couldn't go as the commute would have been too far.
I'm happy to work with any animals, but cats would be a huge bonus!
Shall I just give up the dream and get on with a career not with animals?
Any advice gladly recieved!

There are so many things you can do to work with animals, and I've known many people who in their 30s, their 40s, or their 50s who've made career changes!

The basic problem for most people is finding the time to retrain.

There are shelters, you can train as a vet technician, I don't know if they have the equivalent of animal control in the UK, but something like that is an option.

The main thing is to just keep applying for jobs, to keep sending out those resumes - and volunteering at a shelter is one of the best ways to know when an actual job there is opening up.

Good luck!

Laurie

Would volunteering suffice the need?

If not, You could work in a local vet's office as an office manager and/or receptionist (some places combine the two). Then you can use your business degree effectively while working with animals.

Originally Posted by lunasmom

Would volunteering suffice the need?

If not, You could work in a local vet's office as an office manager and/or receptionist (some places combine the two). Then you can use your business degree effectively while working with animals.

Click to expand...

That sounds like an excellent plan. Or even work for a university that has a vet training centre in their admin section.

Good luck!

I'm in the same boat as you, except I have a bad back, not hip, lol, and I don't have an business degree.

I find it's hard to get a job with animals if you don't have any work-related experience with them. For instance, I've only worked three jobs in my lifetime, one was at a barn for five years, another at fast food for three years, and my current job in a business environment on the computer all day. Most people don't seem to notice the five years in a horse barn and just look at the business side of things.

I haven't really found any ads looking for animal-related positions. I also looked into vet tech school, but of the schools near me, they only admit something like 22 people per year and the pay isn't good enough for me to switch.

Instead I foster! I get my "kitty fix" from that

You could look into barn management. Many of those positions are word of mouth, so get into the horse community in your area and start asking around, it definitely won't hurt!

My dream job (and with your business degree you'd be way ahead of me in that area), would be to open a cat "motel". A lovely atmosphere and place for people to leave their beloved kitties when they had to travel and leave their feline babies. I'd set it up with spacious "rooms" with scratching posts and a little "house" for them to hide in if they wanted privacy. I'd get to love on cats all day long and sometimes at nighttime too!

At the shelter where I volunteer, there's a wonderful woman whose (paid) job is to manage the volunteers, organize fundraising and adoptathon events, and schmooze area businesses into matching donations, that sort of thing. I'm sure your business degree includes some training in people management, event coordination, and general marketing, right? You could probably walk right into a job like that!

And every time I go over to the shelter, this woman is sitting in the floor with puppies climbing all over her, so... just because you aren't physically caring for the animals doesn't mean you wouldn't be able to spend time with them.