I was at the pet store today and out of nowhere this young Rottweiler started lunging and barking its head off at me and going crazy just for walking past to get to the register (at a distance and I wasn't even looking at it). For some reason it sent me into a freeze response, like my body genuinely felt like it was in a war zone (had a rough childhood and sudden loud noises make me flinch). I've literally committed to a vet school and will likely be attending this fall but things like this make me worry that I'm not cut out for it. I've worked with dogs before, but the constant barking among many other things used to really get to me and I ended up leaving the clinic after 3 years to explore other avenues of vetmed. In addition I found most dog owners completely insufferable as clients. Well trained dogs are hard to come by and most people humanize their dogs as a way to project onto them. No other animal consistently had batshit crazy humans accompanying them (and we saw all kinds of species). On top of that I found it annoying that most dogs came in for self inflicted conditions (insane foreign bodies, "happy tail", being constantly fed human food and pancreatitis-maxxing which is the human's fault, but they gotta humanize their dogs...). I wanted to learn medicine, not just be spending my day helping these creatures vomit up 12 used tampons and a panty!
I know I'm obviously going to have to be around lots of dogs in vet school and that it's a very canine dominated field, and I'm willing to put up with it for 4 years. Obviously I don't let my feelings show outwardly, I treated my canine patients the same as any other animal and nobody could tell how I really felt about them, and I could never tell my future classmates because I think it's a very taboo outlook to have. But am I doomed? I'm very passionate about so many aspects of this field. I know there are many pathways for DVMs that don't involve direct canine interaction. But it's kind of weird to be a dog-averse veterinarian, don't you think? I didn't expect to get in anywhere and now that I did, I'm having second thoughts.... I'd love some advice or perspective, please be nice to me I know most people probably won't like this post :/ I'm really trying to get out of this feeling and am even working on it in therapy.