How many hours of vet/animal experience do you have?

[FutureVet96]

I recently decided I want to start pre-veterinary medicine in January. I looked at qualifications to be accepted into vet school and hours/experience was one of them. I recently got a job at a pet hotel/daycare/spa center. What makes me nervous is, it's not a vet setting. This is my first job working with animals and I'm extremely excited, but I feel like vet schools won't care if I put this on my hours because it doesn't involve veterinary medicine. My plan is to get 500-1000 hours here. Then I plan on working as a vet assistant for 1000+ hours. I don't know if this is good enough. I'm nervous about volunteering, because I will have two jobs and be in school, so I feel like I might not have wiggle room for it. I feel like it's tougher for me because I'm 20 and I'm just now working with animals. Should I work in other places other than this? If so, where? What are your hours and where did you gain them from? Any advice/tips would be appreciated. Thank you!

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[LyraGardenia]

Animal experience is valuable as well, but you're correct you will need a good chunk of vet experience. Having some animal experience should make it easier for you to get a job at a vet clinic. Around 1000 vet hours should be plenty, assuming your grades/GRE scores/LORs/etc. are good. Plenty of people start getting experience later, so don't worry about that! Some people don't decide to go pre-vet until they're in their 30s or even later and have already had a different career. I knew I wanted to be a vet since I was little, but I didn't start getting vet experience until the summer before my junior year of undergrad. I did have to apply three times partially because I didn't have much experience the first time I applied, but there's no shame in taking a gap year in order to get more experience. It can be hard to balance getting experience while being in school, but plenty of people manage it. Getting a variety of experience (e.g. some small animal, some large animal, some research, some exotics/wildlife) is also good, but not required. Here's the successful applicant stats thread from last year, which shows the experiences some people that got accepted had: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/successful-applicant-stats-class-of-2020.1171065/