Best of CASE District III Award
 

Institution: University of Georgia

Title of entry: Healthy as a Horse

About this entry: The University of Georgia’s College of Veterinary Medicine has saved thousands of lives since its teaching hospital first opened in 2015. One of those patients was a tiny premature foal named Faith. Faith was about the size of a small Labrador retriever when she was born, and she quickly went septic. Without the expert care of UGA veterinarians and staff, she would have died. Instead, she’s a strong and beautiful horse going on a year old, and she’s competing in national futurities. After connecting with Faith’s owner with help of our vet hospital staff, we made multiple trips to interview, photograph, and film Faith and her owner. To fully tell the vet hospital’s story, we also profiled a herd of cattle cared for by UGA veterinarians and their students, a Chinese goose with lead poisoning who was nursed back to health in the veterinary facility, and a dog whose owner was told to put him down by multiple vets after he started having trouble breathing and eating. Instead, he’s now a huge 3-year-old Lab that we filmed playing on our campus. Not every case has a happy ending, but so many of the ones seeking specialty care at our hospital have been told by other veterinarians that there was no hope or that the best thing to do is euthanize the animal. Our veterinarians take those “impossible” cases and give pet owners hope.