There's nothing worse than getting home at night, turning on Netflix and tuning out to the next episode of Anything But Vet Med that happens to catch your eye on any given weeknight. While it's a blessing to have ready access to entertainment, it's also a curse that robs us of the opportunity to engage in a more satisfyingly productive outlet for the extreme stress that accumulates throughout the average veterinary workday.
Without worthwhile leisure, you're liable to fall into the trap of a life spent medicating your anxiety with Hulu and the History Channel. Before you know it, the only meaningful, nonveterinary skills you possess get relegated to those you might accumulate via YouTube osmosis and Discovery Channel pseudoscience. None of us wants that.
So, in the hopes of improving the collective veterinary psyche, I offer you this list of vet-adjacent hobbies as my veterinary public service for the month.
1) Skip the gym—start exercising with animals
The gym may be convenient, but it's an easy habit to break because it requires almost no investment. When you start exercising with animals, the bond itself makes it harder to abandon the project. Consider…
