Somewhere tonight, a veterinarian will finish a farm call and begin the long drive home. There may be another call waiting before supper, or a sick animal that will not wait until morning.
Another will turn off the lights in a small clinic after a day spent being the doctor, the business owner, the personnel manager, and the person responsible for figuring out how to make it all work again tomorrow.
Others will finish shifts in emergency hospitals, shelters, laboratories, classrooms, and public service. Their work will look different. Their challenges will differ. But some will carry the same question:
Does anyone making decisions about the future of this profession understand what my day looks like?
That question deserves our attention.
I believe there is a gap between national veterinary leadership and many of the veterinarians working every day to serve animals and their communities. For colleagues who feel unheard or unseen, that distance can be especially difficult.
A rural veterinarian may struggle to leave a community that already depends on too few doctors. A solo practitioner may have no one to cover the clinic while attending a meeting. A colleague in a less visible field may wonder whether the concerns shaping their working life ever reach the national conversation.
Their absence from a meeting should never be mistaken for a lack of interest. Often, they are simply busy doing the work our profession exists to do.
As a practicing veterinarian and private practice owner, I understand how easily the immediate needs of the day consume everything we have. When a patient needs care, a team member needs support, and the bills still need paying, organized veterinary medicine can feel very far away.
Yet those daily experiences are exactly what should inform our leadership.
That is why reconnecting the AVMA with practicing veterinarians is one of the central pillars of my campaign for AVMA President-Elect.
For me, that begins with presence.
We need to be present where practice happens: in rural communities, small clinics, busy hospitals, and the many workplaces that make up our immense veterinary community. We need conversations with colleagues who attend national meetings and with those who may never have the time or resources to get there.
We also need to make participation possible within the realities of a working veterinarian’s life. A colleague should have meaningful ways to share a concern without closing the clinic, buying a plane ticket, or knowing the right person.
But inviting someone to speak is only the beginning. What happens afterward determines whether they will believe the invitation mattered.
When colleagues raise a concern, we owe them a response. We should explain what can be done, what obstacles exist, and where their experience can help shape a decision. When progress is slow, we should say so. When we disagree, we should listen carefully enough to understand why.
Trust grows when people can see that someone heard them and cared enough to follow through.
Our profession encompasses an extraordinary range of work. No single practice setting, business model, or career path can speak for all of it. A veterinarian working alone in a rural county belongs in this conversation just as surely as a colleague in a large hospital or university.
The responsibility of leadership is to keep making room for those perspectives, especially the ones we are least likely to hear.
I am grateful for the people who serve through organized veterinary medicine. I also believe we have a responsibility to keep asking whom we are missing. Whose experience have we overlooked? Who has stopped speaking because they no longer expect a response?
During this campaign, I want to hear from those colleagues. I want to understand what makes their work difficult, what keeps them going, and what they need from their national association.
The AVMA should feel close enough that a veterinarian can look at its work and recognize something of their own life in it.
We build that connection by showing up, listening carefully, and carrying what we learn into the decisions we make.
Every veterinarian deserves to know that their work matters, their experience counts, and their voice has a place.
Leading together begins with making sure everyone belongs in the conversation.
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About Isaac Bott
Dr. Isaac Bott is a practicing veterinarian, practice owner, researcher, and veterinary leader whose career spans clinical medicine, theriogenology, business ownership, organized veterinary medicine, and national service. As a candidate for AVMA President-Elect, he brings a practical, service-minded perspective shaped by years of hands-on practice, scientific research, and leadership within the profession.