When Jerry Ward found the orphaned foal, he didn't know she'd end up in surgery with an arthroscope built for dogs and a therapy still in clinical trials.

He got the call about a newborn alone on the mountain, somewhere across the 5,000 acres near Virginia's highest ridges where the Grayson Highlands wild pony herd roams.

She was nursing from a water bottle when he found her — the sign that her mother had been gone too long.

Ward belongs to the nonprofit that looks after the herd — volunteers who crowdfund winter hay and care for the ponies that need it, often out of their own pockets.

He drove up in a side-by-side, guessing she'd been on her own two or three days, then took her home and named her Little Bit.

Keeping the foal alive meant providing her with colostrum, antibody-rich first milk a newborn cannot go without.

Ward found a farm store in Marion already closed for the…