I never imagined I’d end up on a clinician’s path. In my wildest dreams I didn’t picture fracture repairs in racehorses and camels, arthroscopies, endurance and show events, diagnostic imaging and sports medicine. For a long time, veterinary medicine was the thing I liked least. It ended up being my career.
I wrote this in Doha in December 2020, while I waited for flights to resume.
A rough start
It didn’t start well. By my final year I didn’t have two nickels to rub together to pay my last two semesters’ fees. That was made worse by an extra summer semester, because one of our professors wanted to teach new reproduction concepts to the students he hadn’t seen much of during the regular term. I was one of them.
After that summer I started knocking on doors, and they stayed shut. I failed one job interview after another. I was at my lowest, stuck in self-doubt and wondering whether I’d picked the wrong life.
The Brooke
Then The Brooke hired me, and I was posted to Gujranwala as a junior vet for working horses, donkeys and mules.
Back then The Brooke ran excellent training in clinical and interpersonal skills. It helped me in ways I only noticed later. For the first time I could feel what an international organisation was like: the emails, the visitors from abroad, the training sessions across Pakistan. Somewhere in there, my relationship with clinical work changed from tolerance into something close to infatuation.
Qatar, and rooms full of better people
In October 2018 I moved to Qatar and joined a sports medicine and surgery section as an associate veterinarian. The first few months were hard. I was working with diplomate surgeons (ECVS and ACVS) from Europe and the US, and it was fierce. It was also the best education I’ve had.
In early 2019 I spent time at an equine hospital in Oman with my friend Dr Waqar, who had just come back from the US. He taught me the basics of advanced diagnostic imaging, and I owe him a big share of whatever I’ve achieved since.
To keep improving, I also took part-time work at the government racecourse and at small animal clinics in Doha, building the skills I’d need for the ECFVG (the route for foreign vets to practise in the US). In mid-2019 I started a small private practice of my own. That practice turned into the idea for a company, Vetmor, and a way to bring Pakistani vets and assistants to work in the Middle East.
Update, 2026: since I wrote this, I’ve run my own ambulatory camel practice in Qatar, worked in clinics across the Gulf, and moved to a hospital in Abu Dhabi. I still work with horses and camels, and now wildlife too.
What it taught me
Uncertainty is normal. Almost nothing on this path went the way I planned it. The plans still mattered, because they got me moving, but I learned to hold them loosely.
Come what may, move on. Failed interviews, empty bank account, a hard first year abroad: none of it was permanent. The only thing that would have made it permanent was stopping.
Say yes to the room where you’re the weakest. Working next to surgeons who were far better than me was uncomfortable every single day. It’s also where I grew the fastest.
People carry you further than plans do. A training programme at The Brooke, a friend in Oman, a few senior colleagues who took the time to explain. I wouldn’t be here without them.
You can find your way even when you’re lost. I didn’t have a map. I had the next step, and then the one after that.
If you’re a young vet somewhere near the start of this road and I can help, please get in touch.