Surgery: Get yelled at if you hold your hands below your waist, even for half a second, while you are sterile
Ambulatory: Perform surgeries on manure-encrusted surfaces
Surgery: Why would people who are in the operating room just to observe want chairs?
Ambulatory: Spend 1/3 of your day sitting in a comfy truck seat
Surgery: Discover that it rained when you see wet ground upon leaving for the day
Ambulatory: Discover that it is raining when you have to change into your coveralls standing under the open sky
Surgery: Your patients have names like “Sweetie-Boo”
Ambulatory: Most of your patients are addressed as “Boss” or “Girl,” except for one who acquires the name “The Cow We Had to Take to the Vet Clinic”
Surgery: Special room to scrub in, covered in signs with complicated procedures for doing so
Ambulatory: Scrub in using soapy water in a bucket
Surgery: Dress is business casual
Ambulatory: I consider most of my t-shirts too nice to wear (you have to be prepared to get poop on everything)
Surgery: You think your patient has developed feline idiopathic cystitis? Don’t worry about it. We don’t do internal medicine, just surgery
Ambulatory: We do internal medicine, surgery, theriogenology (reproductive medicine), dermatology, cardiology, neurology, ophthalmology, population medicine, public health