I hear a lot of failed vets become doctors.

Veterinary school is harder to get into and their is a lot of overlap in background materials. Med school has a lot of overlap so if somone desideds to swap carriers it’s an easy transition into a high paying job.

This may well be true. While there are hundreds of medical schools in the United States, there is only one vet school per state. And some, like Virginia and Maryland, combine - so there are in fact only about 30.

> Causality can't run from vet school being expensive to veterinary practices being profitable.

Yes, it can: expense of getting into the field limits competition.

Now, long-term steady-state eventually the market should adjust so that the people are willing to pay the up front cost because of the actual rewards, but real meaningful effects are often not long-run steady-state effects.

The linked article goes through a list of qualitative factors which could be linked (though it does not seem to attempt to quantify their correlation).

I imagine vets have to frequently put animals down and have those talks with the owners, I could see that being a huge buzzkill

The debt load of veterinarians is pretty staggering. Going to vet school is as expensive as going to medical school, but the pay is considerably less than an MD makes. It is not at all unusual for a vet to graduate with $300k+ in student debt, and to still be paying that debt down well into their fifties or even sixties.

You also have to deal with pet owners who are... let's say irrational. People seem to be even more willing to believe in homeopathy or nutritional fads or essential oils when dealing with their pet's health than with their own. The bills for veterinary care are not as high as for human medicine, except that most people don't have pet insurance and so pay much higher out of pocket bills than for their own health care, which makes the emotional stakes even higher. And owners will not hesitate to trash you on social media. The issue here is that to a much greater extent than doctors, veterinarians gain new patients by word of mouth and recommendations. So reputation is even more important than it is to doctors. A few ugly, well-placed reviews in Yelp or Facebook can do considerable harm.

All of this leads to an extremely stressful job, especially for younger vets or vets with young children.

Some of the agricultural vets have a stressful gig.

Or maybe if you become a vet it’s because you love animals, and killing them day in, day out takes a massive toll.