Zachary Wright

Why I Chose to Specialize in Oncology

I wanted to be a veterinarian from the moment I began walking around.

My mom tells the story about how three-year-old kids were carrying blankets while I was carrying around a toy horse. So, it's really always where I was aimed and I never thought about anything else.

I’ve been at VCA my entire career.

I was the first VCA student representative at my veterinary school in 2003 and I've been with VCA my entire career.

My internship was at the flagship VCA hospital in West Los Angeles. Then I was a VCA-sponsored resident at Texas A&M, then my first job out of residency was at a VCA specialty hospital in Albuquerque. When I applied to internships, because of my experience, I kind of prioritized some VCA clinics and they also prioritized me, I think.


When I was an intern, I worked hard enough that they were willing to extend a VCA sponsored Oncology Residency.

Its really competitive for one of the 10 or 12 oncology spots a year, but VCA will provide the funding to universities to take additional students for training. I was lucky enough to have their support and land one of the spots.

The reason I chose oncology was because I wanted to specialize.

There was a lot about general veterinary medicine I didn't think I was that great at, so specializing meant being able to eliminate some of the things that I knew weren’t my strengths in practice. Oncology is an open frontier for veterinary medicine and there’s so much to explore. I find that fascinating.

If you work in a single veterinary practice, there’s only so much room to grow. But in a big company like VCA and part of Mars Veterinary Health, we have the opportunity to develop, grow and try new things. That’s a big reason why I’ve chosen to stay here my entire career: the commitment to clinical excellence and the seemingly endless and varied career and development opportunities.


For example, I have chaired the Mars Veterinary Health Oncology Advisory Board since its inception in 2018.

The board tries to provide a strong foundation and network to support all the oncologists at Mars. Some of them need us to look at new veterinary products. So, we’ll work closely with them to figure out if something is appropriate. Others might just need help on a case. Having this community across our global care network that is united in getting pets the best possible care makes being an oncologist fulfilling because of the resources, connectivity and shared learning our advisory board provides.

Oncology is a growing specialty with increasing demand because pets are living longer.

That makes cancer more inevitable, at least for the foreseeable future. But oncology is not the doom and gloom specialty that many people think it is. We don't euthanize a lot of pets every day. Our service actually comes with a lot of happiness and hope. It is pretty rewarding to see a pet have a positive outcome from such a scary word like ‘cancer.’

When patients finish their radiation or chemotherapy protocols, we celebrate them. They get photos, bags of treats and a card signed by all of our staff.

One thing that is really appealing to me about being an oncology specialist is it allows you to build meaningful, long-term relationships and connections with clients and their pets, because you're seeing them consistently throughout the rest of the pet’s life. For one of our most common disease, lymphoma, I’m seeing a pet every week for five straight months.

So, I get to know people and their pets a lot better.