Class of 2018: Newly minted veterinarian excited to start career in southern Alberta hamlet

After four years in a city of 1.4 million people, Clayton Brandt is ready to return to small town life.

After graduating from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in the Class of 2018, he’s starting his first job as a veterinarian at practice in Dunmore, Alta., a hamlet near his home town of Medicine Hat.

“It’ll be nice coming back,” Dr. Brandt says. “I enjoy the small community feel. You get to know the clients well and you get to know the people in your community, because everyone knows everyone. I like that for sure.”

Brandt’s experiences growing up influenced his decision to become a veterinarian. He spent a lot of time on his uncle’s farm. And at home there were always pets around. In Brandt’s case, some of the pets went on to become police dogs.

“My dad was with the Medicine Hat police canine unit so right from the time I was a kid we always had a puppy around the house,” he says. “He was involved in raising the pups, some of them became police dogs and some didn’t. I guess a bit of it wore off on me.”

His new boss, Dr. Megan Herman, DVM'14, owns Animal Medical Centre South. She’s thrilled to have Brandt join the mixed animal practice. “In this area we have a shortage of vets in general,” she says. “I looked a while ago and I think every clinic in Medicine Hat was trying to hire. It’s difficult to keep people unless people are from here.”

Dr. Herman looks forward to working with Brandt, not only because of his training and expertise but also because he truly wants to live and work in the area. “I do like smaller communities,” says Brandt. “When I first got to Calgary and you’re sitting there on Deerfoot with the traffic at a standstill for hours, I got a little impatient, I guess you could say,” he says with a laugh.

From hamsters to heifers

UCVM prepares graduates to be rural community veterinarians. That means being able to work with everything from hamsters and hounds to horses and heifers. Which is exactly what Brandt wanted to do from day one at UCVM.

“Our profs said, ‘Don’t put on the blinders. You’re going to find things you like and you might change your mind’ and a lot of my classmates did,” he says. “I kept my mind open throughout vet school but it stayed the same for me. I always wanted to go back to a smaller community and to do mixed practice. I’ve kept on that path.”

Brandt will work with a wide variety of animals in his new job. “There’s small reptiles and exotics like chinchillas and rabbits, right up to cattle and horses and companion animals. I’m hoping to do all of it.”

And ‘all of it’ will include mentoring vet med students in their fourth-year clinical rotations. His new employer is a partner in UCVM’s Distributed Veterinary Teaching Hospital.

“I won’t forget the school,” Brandt says. “There’ll be more UCVM students coming to Dunmore and I can pass along some of the knowledge I’ll eventually pick up. I’m excited for it, it should be fun.”