FORT BENNING, Ga., (July 29, 2015) -- Capt. Caleb Preston said it may be cliché, but he wanted to be a vet since he was a little boy.
"I gave up on that, pitched it to the side when I turned 18. I joined the Army and was a medic for six years," Preston said.
But it didn't take him long to again realize his dreams of working with animals. After obtaining a bachelor's degree in biology at Mercer University he was accepted into vet school at the University of Georgia.
"A lot of people don't realize that vet school is four years, just like medical school," he said.
Preston, now a veterinarian at the Fort Benning Vet Clinic, has been a veterinarian for nearly a year and loves his job at the clinic.
"I love working with the people. We have great personnel here who really care about the animals," he said.
The clinic has a twofold purpose: caring for and supporting military working dogs and privately owned animals and keeping active-duty vet personnel proficient at their jobs in case they are deployed.
One of the interesting things about being a veterinarian, Preston said, is the amount of stuff you get to do.
"We're the internal medicine specialists; we're the radiologists; we're the dental specialists. Medical doctors really don't do all of that - they have specialists they send patients to. We don't have that available, so we do all those things," he said.
The clinic also helps make sure new pets on post meet post requirements.
"When people move here, they bring their pet and any documentation they have from previous vets. There are a few vaccines that are required on Fort Benning that aren't given at all locations, so a lot of times we have to go ahead and start that vaccine series for them to register," Preston said.
Preston said if pets have all of the proper vaccines and are up to date, their registration should not take long.
"If they don't, we have to start getting them the vaccines. The one required on Fort Benning that isn't required at other locations is a two shot series, so they have to come in and get their initial shot and come in two weeks later for a booster shot. We can't register pets until that series is finished," he said.
The clinic can do anything a civilian vet clinic can do, Preston said, including vaccines services, surgery cases, spaying and neutering and dental cleanings.
Though the clinic will treat privately owned animals, those pets are secondary to working military dogs.
"People are misguided in thinking they can call us like they call a civilian vet clinic and they can always get an appointment," said Preston, whose responsibilities to the Army don't stop at the vet clinic.
"I get tasked for certain missions and sometimes we don't have a vet. I do food defense also. A lot of people don't know that," he said. "Unfortunately the number of appointments we have this summer are very limited because I'm the only veterinarian here."
Preston said the clinic will try to accommodate privately owned animals quickly, but cannot always guarantee service.
"Unlike a civilian veterinarian clinic, there are days when there's no veterinarian here, so we have to refer them to a clinic off base," he said. "A lot of times we don't have appointments available and if we do, the military working dogs take precedence over privately owned animals."
Preston said the biggest thing he wants people to know about the clinic is that they are here to give them all the services they can, whenever they're available.
"We do what we can. We try to help. We try to fit in as many people as we can whenever we have time," he said.
The clinic is open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. until 4 p.m.
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