Life can be very strange indeed. The Bureau of Labor Statistics proclaims veterinary medicine to be one of the fastest-growing fields in America. The veterinary colleges are spewing out 2,600 graduates every year while 1,000 are retiring, for a net gain of 1,600 new practitioners.

But, here's a surprise: Forty percent of those debt-laden 1,600 — some 650 graduates — are putting off entering the marketplace, opting instead for post-graduate programs.

We may set records in having the best educated unemployed professionals in the world.

On a daily basis, I search for locations for veterinarians to start new practices. The goal is to find places that can generate professional success based on population growth, pet spending and discretionary income. This is a difficult task, successful because of very powerful computers that have the demographic information and the ability to put it all together. The days of finding a nice town that looks great and making a decision based on guesswork are long gone.

Charlotte, N.C., is a wonderful-looking town, with lots of new growth but devastatingly short on discretionary income. There, the main employers are banks and insurance companies. Even New York City is scheduled to lose 165,000 jobs, and at least 27 states are or will be in recession by the time you read this column.

Some 55 million people are leaving the colder climates and heading south and west, and will continue to do so through the year 2015, according to American Demographics magazine.

A good portion of equine veterinarians in Texas just moved there from Montana and North Dakota. It's always been a long trip to get treatment for your horse in Montana. Why aren't the new graduates all headed for Montana?

Economic concerns

If you are a companion-animal practitioner in a mature practice (five years or older) in most of the United States, your transactions are down each year of this decade. If you own a multi-doctor practice, it is likely you will lay off one of your associates in the next year if you have not already done so. The standard of 12 to 15 client transactions per veterinarian per day is now closer to 10 to 12, and the mortgage isn't getting easier to pay.

The fear is palpable.

Dentistry and other relatively expensive procedures are down sharply even at the best practices, as 50 percent of our population worries about the economy, 30 percent about paying their heating bills this winter, 23 percent worry about losing their jobs and 31 percent fear defaulting on their mortgages. How long can periodontitis stand up to that?

Clients view the $700 billion bank bailout as being about as effective as last spring's economic stimulus package, which helped "not at all," according to 58 percent of those surveyed.

We cannot hope that any government policy will bail us out. We have to do it ourselves, and the good news is, we can.

For more than 20 years I have made a living going into someone else's practice and convincing him or her to do the right thing — manage the practice effectively.

Righting the ship

It is truly amazing the turnaround seen when veterinarians can be talked out of their bad management habits in favor making a better living for themselves and their staffs.

Even so, monthly oversight often is needed to get many of them back on course. Some are upset that they can no longer give all their friends all the discounts they want. They hate it when they have to take the time to document — in writing — what the pet needs so that the client really understands what the pet needs, even giving them the information they need to look up unfamiliar terms (and that's pretty much all the terms we use).