The equine veterinary profession is at a breaking point. There is little incentive to develop new horse vets. The American Association of Equine Practitioners (AAEP) knows this and is putting together a task force to address this. Unfortunately, they are asking all but the people they should be asking—the horse owners. Their efforts to discover the reasons are long overdue and are probably too late.

I have been writing about the certainty that horse owners, especially those in rural areas, would soon be out of options for finding expert veterinary care for their horses. There are three reasons:

1) The high cost of veterinary education and the low return on salary (money competition).

2) The generational changes in the desire to have a “quality of life” in a profession with high personal time demands (time competition).

3) Horse owners’ demand for reactive veterinary care, driven by agenda-driven companies, diminishes the observance of proactive, preventive horse care (bias competition).

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