As a UConn undergrad, Lyla Andrick ’24 (CAHNR) was on a certain path to becoming a large-animal vet. Horse crazy since she was a kid, Andrick helped cover the cost of competing in the show ring by starting an illustration business at age 13, for which she’d draw custom cartoons of horses so that their owners could reproduce them on novelty merchandise.

Andrick was always crafty that way. She learned to sew when she was five, and as a teen she turned her favorite doodle, a dinosaur, into stickers she could sell to raise money for charities. In the summer of 2020, she was home in Rhinebeck, New York, stuck in the COVID lockdown, waiting to start her first year at UConn. For kicks, she hand-sewed a dinosaur plush and posted a picture of it online. The response was immediate: Where can I get one?

At UConn, Andrick kept two sidelines going to help pay for school. She worked with horses as a vet assistant and hand-sewed dinosaurs that she sold either direct to customers or at toy stores in Connecticut and the Hudson Valley. She created an individualized major in entrepreneurship and animal science technology, but on her many rounds with vets, she saw firsthand how incredibly difficult veterinary work could be — physically, of course, but most of all, emotionally. “I have the greatest respect for all of my veterinary friends,” says Andrick, “but I started to realize it wasn’t the right fit for me. I don’t think I have the emotional constitution for it.”

Read on for more.