Carlson College of Veterinary Medicine

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First-year veterinary student Kelly Lindemann and newborn colt Dealer. 

July 29,2024
Words and photos by Jens Odegaard 

It’s ten o’clock on an early-April night and Kelly Lindemann is cradling Dealer’s head in a stall at the Lois Bates Acheson Veterinary Teaching Hospital. Dealer is a little Morgan colt born just a few days ago.

Right now, it’s unclear if he’s going to make it. 

Lindemann is a first-year veterinary student at the Oregon State University Carlson College of Veterinary Medicine where the hospital is housed. Her role is to help provide basic care for Dealer while gleaning medical knowledge from the veterinarians, technicians and fourth-year veterinary students providing the life-saving care Dealer needs. 

Lindemann is with Dealer because she volunteered on Foal Team. 

Every year, first- and second-year veterinary students join Foal Team to help care for newborn horses at the beginning of their educational journeys toward becoming doctors of veterinary medicine. Most of their education for the first three years of the four-year program is spent in book learning, with the vast majority of clinical experience coming in their fourth and final year, which is spent on rotations in the veterinary teaching hospital. 

By joining Foal Team, students can get early exposure to life in the clinic. “I joined Foal Team to get hands-on experience in the large animal hospital and to see the similarities and differences between small and large animal practice,” said Lindemann, who had worked in a small animal practice prior to entering vet school. “Although there's quite a bit of overlap between small and large animal medicine, they don't directly translate. Getting comfortable with the basics of large animal medicine in my first year will help me as I enter clinical rotations later on.” 

As Lindemann holds Dealer, Dr. Andee Frei, large animal internal medicine resident, performs an ultrasound of his abdomen. Dealer’s fighting a host of issues related to premature birth.

“When he was born early, he could not stand on his own, could not nurse, and had very dull mentation.  It was obvious he was what we call a ‘dummy foal’ and would need a lot of help. As a veterinarian it was tempting to try to nurse him myself, but I do not have access to many of the treatments he needed to survive such as plasma transfusions,” said Dr. Kristin Zedwick, DVM ’09, and Dealer’s owner. “Being an alumnus, I knew the Oregon State University Lois Bates Acheson Veterinary Teaching Hospital would be the best place for him. His prognosis with proper supportive care could be very good, however without it he would have died.”

When he was first examined at the teaching hospital, Dealer’s body condition score was only a three out of nine according to the doctor’s notes. Because he couldn’t stand or nurse, he hadn’t received the nutrients and antibodies that are transferred from a mare to a foal in the crucial early hours of a foal’s life. He was given a plasma transfusion to build up his immune system. He also had a feeding tube, IV and catheter inserted to help him get the nutrients and antibiotics needed to help him survive and to help him pass waste. 

All told, Dealer spent 10 days in the hospital getting round-the-clock care, including the night Lindemann helped care for him. He was discharged in good health with his mother Tara on April 13. 

“He is recovering well,” said Zedwick in late April. “Aside from his shaved spots on his body you would never know he had to be hospitalized.  He is spunky and learning to lead and pick up feet like a normal two-week old colt.”  

“As a bit of background, Dealer is the fourth foal out of Tara we bred to a world champion stallion,” Zedwick continued. “Dealer’s oldest brother ‘Dario’ (Ideal Caisse Scenario) just won both Grand National and World Champion Hunter Pleasure Junior Horse at the Morgan Horse Grand Nationals last fall, and each sibling looks and moves and acts just like champion brother. You can imagine we have very high hopes for little Dealer's potential!” 

Dozens Beyond Dealer
During the busy spring foaling season, Lindemann and her fellow 31 students on this year’s Foal Team helped care for dozens of foals and mares. 

Foal Team co-presidents Elizabeth Cheyne, second-year student, and Brittany Mogannam, first-year student, organized the crew into teams of four or five. They took turns being on call from 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. during weekdays and 24/7 on weekends.   

“The technicians and the doctors and also the fourth-year students really appreciate having someone there to watch the foals and sometimes the mares and help hold the mares, too,” said Cheyne. “Especially in the middle of the night, which is when most of our shifts are, they're tired, they've been up who knows how many hours and they have other patients they need to go work on.” 

Mogannam adds: “Especially with foals, they can get sick very fast and their state can change pretty quickly. So even if you think you're there doing nothing, watching a foal, you're doing a lot even for the technicians, because it's always great to have eyes on the foal – especially a sick one. So, the techs and doctors are very appreciative of us coming to have eyes on the foal.”

For students interested in pursuing equine medicine in the future, Foal Team offers invaluable insight into specialty care. “The learning opportunities are just seeing, how when you're at a hospital like this that has everything you could possibly do, how much you can work up a foal and treat them,” Cheyne said. “At the clinic that I worked at before school it's not nearly as equipped, so it's pretty bare bones when you're treating a foal.” 

But Foal Team is also valuable for any student. “I think it's pretty helpful for people who don't have much experience around horses. I think it's a great opportunity, because we're going have to go eventually for fourth years,” Mogannam said. In their final year of veterinary school, all students at Oregon State do surgical and medical rotations in the large animal clinic, so familiarity with horses before then helps calm the nerves of working with thousand-pound animals. 
It also gives students a chance to make an early contribution to helping animals and their owners. 

“I am forever grateful for the intensive treatment given by the veterinarians and students. Students need the experiences in the teaching hospital to learn and become proficient and confident with their skills, and the foal team is incredibly valuable for that,” said Zedwick. “I hope in 15-20 years they still remember things they learned from caring for Dealer. I know I remember many of my student cases and borrow little pearls of knowledge from those experiences to apply to cases I see in practice today.”