The legacy of a laminitis fighter: Dr. Agne's brave run in a Saratoga stakes race

News flash: Dr. Agne, an up-and-coming two-year-old racehorse named for the late equine podiatry veterinarian Bob Agne of Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital, made his second career start on Thursday, August 28 in the Grade 3 With Anticipation Stakes at 1 1/16 miles at Saratoga.

You didn’t have to be a racing fan to want this horse to win at Saratoga today. You just had to hear his story.

 

On July 11, 2025, many of us watched a young two-year-old Thoroughbred win his first start at Saratoga racecourse in upstate New York. It wasn't just your average horse race; this colt has a story

His story is about his dam. His story is about his name. But mostly, his story is about laminitis and the people who fight it.

The horse world erupted with a combination of tears and cheers that day as the gutsy two-year-old colt burst on the scene with a decisive win. Dr. Agne is the namesake of the popular equine podiatry veterinarian Dr. Bob Agne of Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital, who inspired Lady Eli's team back in July 2015.

 

This video is a feature created by the New York Racing Association's Saratoga Live team to tell Dr. Agne's story.

 

Lady Eli was still in rehabilitation at the end of that summer, when Dr. Agne headed out on his bike for a long Labor Day ride in Vermont. He never returned. He was struck and killed by a car on a mountain road.

Dr. Bob Agne was a veterinarian at the Rood & Riddle
Equine Hospital's podiatry clinic in Kentucky
for several years but had relocated to Saratoga to work
in the practice's new hospital there when Lady Eli was
diagnosed with laminitis at Belmont Park. Here he is
demonstrating continuous digital hypothermia (a form
of prolonged distal limb ice immersion therapy)
employed during laminitis treatment.

Dr. Agne, who worked on the filly with colleague Bryan Fraley, DVM of Hagyard Equine Medical Institute in Kentucky, would never know that Lady Eli fully recovered and that she would write herself a new kind of black type in the record books–the record books of laminitis, that is. 

 

Lady Eli not only survived laminitis, she returned to racing just 13 months later and went right back to winning. She scored three post-laminitis Grade I victories (the Gamely, the Jenny Wiley, and the Diana), was a very close second in the Breeders Cup Filly and Mare Turf that year, and won the Eclipse Award as champion turf female, all after recovering from laminitis.

 

• • • • • 

Lady Eli was hard to forget. But the thing about racemares is that their colts and fillies eventually show up at the races, and keep their stories alive. That's exactly what happened on July 11.

Drs. Agne and Fraley weren’t mentioned very much in the years after Lady Eli retired. She went to the breeding shed, and her first two foals raced in Europe, so the laminitis story was all but forgotten, at least until this summer.

An Eclipse award and 2014 Breeders Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf winner,  Lady Eli ran 14 times in her career, finishing first in 10 races and second in three. (Wikimedia image)

 

Another key player in the Lady Eli story was Cherie DeVaux, assistant trainer to Chad Brown, Lady Eli’s trainer. Chad Brown has won five Eclipse Awards for Outstanding Trainer in the United States, and he was devoted to Lady Eli, but the day to day rehab care of the filly fell on the shoulders of Cherie DeVaux.

Over the following years, DeVaux advanced to her own training career, with considerable success.  But she never forgot her ordeal with laminitis and Lady Eli. When the chance came to train Lady Eli’s first foal to run in the United States, she added him to her barn at Saratoga.

And she named Lady Eli's son, too: "Dr. Agne" was the name she chose.

 

Today's With Anticipation Stakes will be broadcast live on the FoxSports 2 cable network but you can watch it live on the New York Racing Association's YouTube channel. NYRA's stream is the entire day's card, so look for Race 7. Approximate post time is 4:20 pm.

Dr. Agne is not just out of one of America’s leading champion racemares; he is sired by Into Mischief, who is the six-time – and reigning – champion sire in the United States. Into Mischief is the sire of the top three-year-old this year, the mighty Sovereignty, who has been on a roll and consecutively won the Kentucky Derby, Belmont Stakes, and Travers Stakes.

The colt made his first start at Saratoga on July 11. Like his dam, he has been trained for a career as a turf runner, but the weather had other ideas that day. The turf course was closed, and the race defaulted to the dirt track; it was run at seven furlongs. That turned out to not be a problem for Dr. Agne, even though he may have had to run the race with flat turf shoes on. 

 

He won easily, charging through traffic with his white blaze making him easy to spot. He hit the finish line with steely determination reminiscent of Lady Eli herself.

As if those storybook elements weren’t enough, when Dr. Agne strode into the winner’s circle, he was greeted by the human Dr. Agne's wife,  Carrie, who was Cherie DeVaux's guest that day. 

Lady Eli now lives at Coolmore America's bucolic Ashford Stud in Versailles, Kentucky. The perfect post script to this story is that the equine podiatry team from Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital, where Dr. Bob Agne worked, still care for her hooves.

Today he tried to do it all again, but on grass. And with more serious competition. And at a longer distance. And around two turns.  

As if this story couldn't get any warmer or any fuzzier, consider this: Lady Eli is alive and well in Versailles, Kentucky in the deep green pastures of Coolmore America's Ashford Stud. She's busy raising more foals but, ten years after her laminitis, her hooves are cared for there by Dr. Bob Agne's colleagues from the Rood & Riddle Equine Podiatry Center. 

You can bet on this horse's story to make you smile and maybe cry at the same time. And those are the best kind of bets you could ever make on any horse.

Post Script: Dr. Agne did not win the With Anticipation Stakes at Saratoga, but he did come charging late again. It just wasn't enough this time. He finished fourth. But hopefully he'll be back.

Special thanks to the New York Racing Association, publicist Christian Abdo, and Coglianese Photo for their support and assistance at the track.

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US Equestrian Veterinary Summit on Sport Horses report available for download

As a followup to the 2025 US Equestrian Veterinary Summit held in March, the US Equestrian Federation has published a "white paper" report summarizing recommendations from the meeting on best practices in sport horse medicine. The report emphasizes care and welfare of competition horses in the United States.

Today the Hoof Blog offers a preview of some key points in this report.

Remembering Clint Carlson: How a mild-mannered man in a Hawaiian shirt became the "patron saint of American horseshoes"

I lost a friend on Friday. Chances are, so did you. This article is a roundabout way of introducing my readers to Clint Carlson, in case they are young enough or new enough to the horse world not to remember a shy smiling horseshoe salesman in a Hawaiian shirt. It’s also a roundabout way for me to say good-bye.

For 20 years, Clint gave his heart and soul to making and selling some of the very best horseshoes ever manufactured at that time. He did it very quietly. He was an unlikely legend -- and one of the very best friends the horse world ever had.

Summary timeline: What's behind US Equestrian, American Horse Council calls for delay of USDA's new Walking horse soring regulations?

UPDATE: On January 24, the US Equestrian Federation announced that the US Department of Agriculture had indeed pushed back new rules to prevent soring in Tennessee walking horses and similar breeds until April 1, 2025. The article below describes the background to this decision. 

Since then, however, sweeping changes in Washington, DC have affected many cabinet agencies, and are expected to impact the USDA. Whether these changes will impact the APHIS horse inspection program remains to be determined.

Readers in the USA may be aware that long-anticipated changes to the federal Horse Protection Act are scheduled to go into effect on February 1. These new rules change the way that Tennessee Walking horses will be inspected at horse shows, and by whom, in an effort to prevent deliberate "soring" practices to enhance gait.

If only it was that easy.

Canadian boost for UCalgary racehorse injury prevention research will have global benefits

Professor Thilo Pfau of the University of Calgary demonstrated the use of wearable sensors at the Rood & Riddle International Equine Podiatry Conference in 2022. This horse was subjected to before/after  analysis as farriers and veterinarians used imaging, trimming, and shoeing methods to help the horse. (Hoof Blog file photo)

Horse Racing Alberta invests in racehorse injury prevention research with $185,000 donation to University of Calgary program led by Dr. Thilo Pfau.

 

Canada's Horse Racing Alberta (HRA) has generously committed $185,000 to support pioneering research by Dr. Thilo Pfau and his team at the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Faculty of Kinesiology. This significant contribution will fund research aimed at improving the prediction and prevention of racehorse injuries, a critical area of focus for the safety and protection of equine athletes.