Texas A&M VERO Student Prepares To Serve Panhandle Communities

Story by Megan Bennett, VMBS Marketing & Communications

March 13, 2025

While working toward his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree, Jack Detten ‘23 has enjoyed unique learning opportunities through the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets, a summer job in a national park, and more.

From the Texas Panhandle to Aggieland to Yellowstone National Park — no matter where Jack Detten ‘23 goes, he strives to leave a positive mark on those around him.

“Leadership has always been important to me,” the Texas A&M University second-year veterinary student said. “I believe that developing as a leader is something that never really stops.”

This has led Detten to prioritize activities that increase his experience with animals and develop the interpersonal skills that take a veterinarian from good to great.

He’s looking forward to applying his passions for selfless service and leadership in the Texas Panhandle as he begins his second year of the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences’ (VMBS) 2+2 program, which allows students to complete the first two years of their veterinary education at the Veterinary Education, Research, & Outreach (VERO) campus in Canyon.

Finding The Aggie Spirit

Detten grew up in Hereford, Texas, also known as “The Beef Capital of the World,” and spent a lot of his youth working with cattle and sheep on his uncle’s ranch.

When it came time to choose a career path, he decided to follow in his family’s footsteps and pursue a veterinary degree at Texas A&M.

“My grandfather was a class of ‘65 veterinarian from A&M, and my uncle was class of ‘95,” he said. “It certainly was a family deal, but I didn’t know I was going to be following that path until my senior year of high school, when I realized that I couldn’t see myself leading a life without animals involved somehow and I couldn’t see myself going anywhere other than A&M.”

Detten also followed in his grandfather’s footsteps by joining the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets and majoring in animal science, although he also added a minor in genetics.

“Freshman year was tough, and I considered dropping out of either the Corps or A&M entirely,” Detten said. “But I pushed through, and I think I became a much better person because of it.”

Determined to continue improving himself, in his sophomore year, Detten also joined Parson’s Mounted Cavalry, the Corps’ horse combat unit and the only collegiate mounted cavalry unit in the United States.

“I mainly decided to join the cavalry because I didn’t grow up with horses and I was a little afraid of them, to be honest,” he said. “The cavalry trains you from the ground up and gives you a very solid equine background in a short time. It gave me a lot of confidence about working with horses.”

By the time he was a senior, Detten had become the cavalry’s pistol training officer, played a key role in bringing back the cavalry’s saber team, and was the commanding officer for his unit, Company A-1.

“I really don’t think I would’ve developed in the same way if I hadn’t gone to A&M or done the Corps,” he said. “Taking on leadership positions really helped me grow, both as a leader and as a person. Being a commander of the oldest unit in the Corps was such a high honor.”

When applying for veterinary school, Detten was drawn to the DVM program at VERO because of its small class sizes, one-on-one learning opportunities, and location, only half an hour from his hometown.

“VERO has been very formative in my time as a veterinary student,” he said. “You’re one of 18 students, so all the faculty know your name within a week and within two weeks, they know your tics.

“If you’re missing from a class, 17 people, plus a professor, will notice,” Detten said. “I got into a bad car wreck on the way to class my third day of school, and all 17 of my classmates texted me asking where I was. It was humbling to realize that on only the third day, everybody already cared about me.”

Getting Back To Nature

Detten’s commitment to personal growth, and his newfound skill working with horses, paid off when Yellowstone National Park offered him a job for the summers before his first and second years of veterinary school.

“One of my good friends in the cavalry and a fellow veterinary student, Dylan Desosa, told me about the job, so we both went up to work both summers,” Detten recalled.

During Detten’s first summer at Yellowstone, he worked as a wrangler, leading horse trail rides for guests.

“On some of my busier days, I’d be in the saddle for six hours, riding 18 to 20 miles a day,” Detten said. “It’s certainly interesting because there are very few places in the world where you can ride horses and be within 20 feet of a bison.

“We tried not to interfere with the wildlife because it’s their park more than it is ours,” he said. “Since they go wherever they want, we dealt with a lot of bull bison. It could be unpredictable at times, but it was also an awful lot of fun.”

Detten spent his second summer at Yellowstone as a stagecoach driver, driving a replica of the original coaches that brought people into the park 100 years ago.

“Learning how to drive a stagecoach is probably harder than learning how to ride a horse, but it’s a really fun experience,” Detten said. “I would take up to 20 guests on a simple out and back trip that took about an hour. It’s probably one of the cheaper attractions in the park, but, in my opinion, it’s one of the more fun ones, too.”

One of the best parts about working at Yellowstone, in Detten’s opinion, was getting to enjoy a true cowboy cookout every evening.

“It served about 220 people, give or take,” he said. “There was always someone singing, someone was pouring coffee, and you got a steak dinner almost every night. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten that good in my life, and I don’t think I’ll ever eat that good in my life again.”

Although his position doesn’t normally involve providing veterinary care to the horses he rides and leads, Detten had the chance to apply his knowledge from veterinary school after an accident occurred in the park.

“We had a horse that got into a pretty bad accident and had a bad laceration on its face,” Detten recalled. “It was fortunate that Dylan and I both had our knowledge from our first-year large animal anatomy class because we were able to keep pressure on the wound in the correct place until we got the horse to a veterinarian about an hour and a half away. It was cool to realize that I walked away from first year already having learned something.”

A Call To Serve

Detten enjoys taking every opportunity he can to prepare to serve the people and animals of the community he will one day call home.

As he looks to the future, he finds himself called to two career paths — joining the United Stated Army Veterinary Corps and serving as a food animal veterinarian.

“I’ve talked to several Army veterinarians about their experience getting to see the world and getting deployed every year, and it’s extremely appealing to me,” he said. “At the same time, after doing an externship at Muleshoe Animal Clinic and seeing what high-volume food animal medicine is like, being a food animal vet sounds fun, too.”

No matter which path he pursues — or, more likely, which he pursues first — Detten hopes to one day return to the Texas Panhandle.

“The Plainsman in me is hard to get rid of, so the Texas Panhandle keeps calling me back home,” he said. “There are plenty of areas that are very underserved, and I think that service is the highest calling that someone can have.”

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Note: This story originally appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of VMBS Today.

For more information about the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, please visit our website at vetmed.tamu.edu or join us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Contact Information: Jennifer Gauntt, Director of VMBS Communications, Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, jgauntt@cvm.tamu.edu, 979-862-4216

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