In November, the Missouri-based Animal Health Foundation (AHF) will celebrate 20 years of fundraising efforts to help support laminitis research. Established in 1984 by Donald Walsh, DVM, and his wife, Diana, AHF raises funds that go directly to research programs. AHF has no employees, no office, and very few administrative costs, but it does have hundreds of dedicated volunteers who build jumps at benefit horse shows, lick envelopes, and follow laminitis research the way some people follow baseball standings. Many volunteers are owners of laminitic horses, or have owned horses which did not survive laminitis.

AHF volunteers have raised almost a half-million dollars for research around the world over the past 20 years. Recipients of AHF funding have included Chris Pollitt, BVSc, PhD, of the University of Queensland; Phil Johnson, BVSC, MRCVS, MS, Dipl. ACVIM, of the University of Missouri; Steve Adair, DVM, MS, Dipl. ACVS, of the University of Tennessee; Tom Goetz, DVM, Dipl. ACVIM, of the University of Illinois; Harold Garner, DVM, PhD, of the University of Missouri; John Bertram, PhD, while he was at Cornell University; and Eleanor Green, DVM, Dipl. ACVIM, Dipl. ABVP, while she was at the University of Missouri