07/02/2025
It’s that time of year when we welcome our new intern veterinarians!
Interns are recent graduates who’ve earned their licenses to practice veterinary medicine but want to deepen their clinical experience. For our interns, that is with horses (and the occasional goat or camelid). Bend Equine Medical Center’s Internship Program offers veterinarians the opportunity to work in a variety of specialty areas, including sports medicine, surgery, internal medicine, podiatry, reproduction, dentistry, and urgent care.
Please join us in welcoming Drs. Sarah Smith and Emily Ward!
Dr. Smith grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, competing in dressage and eventing. She attended Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in biophysics, biochemistry, and molecular biology. She received her veterinary degree from the University of California, Davis (UC Davis).
She enjoys emergency medicine, surgery, and integrative therapeutics. During school, she worked as an after-hours large animal surgery technician, an equine hospital treatment nurse, and with the California Student Veterinary Emergency Response Team to help with local emergencies and wildfire evacuations. She also collaborated with UC Davis’ One Health initiative to investigate the relationship between wildfires and disease spread among wildlife.
Dr. Emily Ward is originally from Utah. Prior to university, she worked as a foaling attendant and a small animal veterinary assistant.
She earned a bachelor’s in animal science from UC Davis and attended veterinary school at the Atlantic Veterinary College (AVC) on Prince Edward Island, in Canada. While at AVC, she worked as both a small and large animal veterinary assistant and participated in equine neurology research.
She previously owned a horse and enjoyed trail riding. In practice, Dr. Ward is drawn to surgery, urgent care, outreach, and client education. She especially enjoys working outside and being around horses daily.
