Ruffian: Barbaro's Breakdown Through the Lens of Racing's Legendary Filly

"In the end, beyond all the screams and cries and the lifting of that ominous screen, at the center of all the clamor and the chaos and that scent of panic curling upward in the tremulous air, young Barbaro stood naked in the grandstand shade, his shoulder muscles quivering as he shifted on his three perfect feet. Gnawing on the bit between his teeth, his large eyes rolling white with panic, the bay raised and pumped the shattered remnant of his right rear leg, broken like a jigsaw puzzle in some thirty places. He touched the foot to the ground, raised it once more, and angrily punched the air.

"Seeing this, I felt as though I'd been transported back in time again, doing it all over once again, running madly through the clubhouse and down the stairs two at a time, gulping sunlight as I stepped onto the Pimlico racetrack. Piddling along with my head down, I walked toward the stricken horse as if in sleep, fumbling and feeling my way along the damp walls of the same recurring nightmare that long ago I'd come to know so well, the one where Ruffian had come and gone in a thrash of dying light.

"Jamie Richardson, the track superintendent, was crouching under Barbaro and working to fit him with a temporary aluminum splint. A handful of racetrack workers stood on either side of the horse, trying to keep him calm while Richardson worked under him. Barbaro was in deepening pain as the flow of natural adrenaline began to wear off. He looked worried and confused. In his brief and simple life, he had always had four legs on which to stand and move and now for the first time he had only three, and he had never known such pain, and all of this and the excitement were arousing fear in his eyes. Barbaro lifted and cocked his injured leg, then flashed it just past Richardson's ear, missing it by inches.

"Watch it, dammit!" said a voice. "He'll kick your brains out."

"Whoa! Whoa, son," said Richardson.

"Easy with him," said a voice from the crowd.

"Oh jeez, oh jeez, please be careful with him," said another.

"A man appeared carrying a walkie-talkie telephone. The crowd on the track grew larger. "Where's the doc?" the man said. "Get the X-ray machine to Barbaro's stall. Now! That's right. And make sure Doc Dreyfuss can get out on the track ... Who are all these people? Get these people off the track."

"From the fans pressed against the nearby rail came a woman's voice: "Help him! Please help him."

"Richardson was having trouble fitting on the cast. The colt kept moving the injured leg. "Whoa, son ... whoa," he said. "Hold him. Hold him."

"More fans gathered behind the fence, faces hung as in a still-life watercolor, hands on lips, fingers on cheeks, women in tears. "Don't kill him," one said. "Please, please don't kill him!"

"She had seen the screen, the one they always raise to protect the people from their feelings, to block the view of crowds when they have to destroy hopelessly injured animals through lethal injection, and Barbaro looked wild-eyed when he saw the large screen looming towards him. The horse's trainer, Michael Matz, shouted, "Get that screen out of here! You're scaring the horse."

"The cast was on and the ambulance door opened. "We're ready to load," said a member of the ambulance crew. "Get the horse turned around."

"Barbaro hobbled onto the back of the van and left to a flutter of cheers."

How amazing that one person could have been present at the breakdowns of both Barbaro and Ruffian, even though they occured 30 years apart. How fortunate that that one person should have been the bard of American horse journalism. The lines above the opening paragraphs of Bill Nack's new book"Ruffian: A Racetrack Romance", a slim but compellingly poignant tribute to one of the world's greatest racehorses...and to the tragedy of racetrack breakdowns. Nack's book has been made into a movie by ESPN and will be shown on ABC-TV at 9 pm tonight, starring real-life horseman Sam Shepherd as trainer Frank Whitely.

Barbaro's Laminitis Research Funds Will Be Disbursed in Winner's Circle at Saturday's Belmont Stakes

Via press release from the National Thoroughbred Racing Association (NTRA) today; photo above of Barbaro with Dr. Dean Richardson, Gretchen and Roy Jackson ©University of Pennsylvania:

The National Thoroughbred Racing Association (NTRA) announced today that the NTRA Charities – Barbaro Memorial Fund will make its first two disbursements, totaling $150,000, this Saturday at Belmont Park in the winner’s circle following the seventh race on the Belmont Stakes Day card. Also part of the ceremony will be a check presentation of $15,000 to the Fund from the New York Racing Association.

A disbursement of $100,000 will be made from the NTRA Charities – Barbaro Memorial Fund to the Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation (GJCRF).

A disbursement of $50,000 will be made to the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine’s Fund for Laminitis Research. Penn Veterinary Medicine is fighting laminitis through new and cutting-edge research to develop preventative and therapeutic management strategies. This work builds upon Penn Vet's extensive and renowned reputation for animal stem cell research and equine care.

In addition to the well-established international symposium on laminitis and diseases of the foot that Penn Veterinary Medicine has conducted every two years since 2001, the School has recently announced the appointment of a Senior Research Investigator, Hannah Galantino-Homer, V.M.D, Ph.D, to begin the work of the Laminitis Research Initiative.

Schedule Published for 2007 Laminitis Conference in Florida

I hope you will take a minute and visit the new web site for the 4th International Equine Conference on Laminitis and Diseases of the Foot. (URL is http://www.laminitisconference.com) The speakers and topics have been published and I hope you will agree that this is an exciting immersion into the serious study of horse foot problems. I'd love to know what you think! Click on the "Comments" button below or send an email to fran@hoofcare.com.

Maybe we could start the conference now, with a discussion of the heel bulbs on the hind foot of the horse from the web banner...To view the image at full size (as with any image anywhere on this blog) double-click on the image and it will open in original size in a new window. Just don't copy it, please, without permission. (and that is usually easy to arrange)

The Price is Right: Behind Bob Barker's Million Dollar Smile Are Several Million Dollars of Donations

Are you ready for the media blitz, ad nauseum? The Price Is Right TV game show host Bob Barker is retiring on June 15, after 35 years of hosting the show that you probably have seen only when you were home with the flu. Or maybe you really do know how much that dinette set is worth and want to pit your wits against the TV audience.

Before you throw something at your television throughout all the upcoming tributes to Barker, consider this:

Six of the nation's premier law schools--Columbia, Duke, Stanford, UCLA, Yale and Northwestern--have each been given $1 million endowments to train future animal law attorneys. That $6 million came from Bob Barker, who was here in Boston recently to soeak at the 2007 Animal Law Conference at Harvard Law School.

The new legal study institutes at the Barker-funded universities will help train lawyers to specialize in cases involving animals and provide a resource for lawyers and lawmakers in the field who find themselves involved in interpreting, making or defending laws that affect all animals, including horses.

Harvard received a separate endowment from the producers of TPIR to establish the Bob Barker Endowment Fund for the Study of Animal Rights. The Fund will support teaching and research at the Law School in the emerging field of animal rights law.

Bob Barker heads his own DJ&T Foundation, the purpose of which is to help control the dog and cat population. He funds the foundation's work through his own resources.

Barker made news two weeks ago by donating $300,000 to rescue Ruby, a foot-sore elephant, from her concrete-floored pen at a Los Angeles, California zoo. Thanks to Barker's donation and the publicity it generated, Ruby now lives at the Performing Animal Welfare Society Elephant Sanctuary in San Andreas, southeast of Sacramento. Meanwhile, the LA Zoo has announced construction of a $39 million, six-acre Asian elephant exhibit called the Pachyderm Forest, where elephants will be able to roam more freely, on natural footing.

The final episode of Barker-bedecked TPIR will be broadcast Friday, June 15. The 83-year-old Barker has won 17 Emmy awards, including 13 as TV host, more than any other performer...and is nominated for more this year.

"I'm going for the Featherlite slant, Bob..."

Photo courtesy of the DJ&T Foundation

Amy Tryon Abuse Hearing Date Set for June 25 in Switzerland; Charges and Defense To Be Heard in Injury to Le Samurai at Rolex Three-Day Event in USA

This just in from the FEI:

"In relation to the case of alleged abuse involving rider Amy Tryon (USA) and horse Le Samurai which occurred on 28 April 2007 at CCI 4* Lexington, please be informed that rider Amy Tryon has requested a hearing and in turn, the FEI has scheduled a hearing to be held on 25 June in Lausanne."

Vets in Court: Charges Cleared in Fracture Case; Non-vet Witnesses Testimony Not Relevant

LONDON, ENGLAND (May 31) -- The Disciplinary Committee of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons last week dismissed a case against a veterinary surgeon having found that her actions during the treatment of an injured horse did not amount to serious professional misconduct.

Margarida dos Santos Correia MRCVS was practising at the Lady Dane Veterinary Centre in Faversham, England at the time of the incident. She was attending a Thoroughbred gelding called Prune that had a puncture wound on his hind leg, causing increasingly severe lameness, swelling and seepage.

The charge faced by Dr Correia was that, having identified that Prune was severely lame in his left hind leg and that it might be fractured, she caused Prune to be transported some 50 miles to a referral centre, without providing adequate physical support.

During the hearing the Committee heard that when Dr Correia first examined Prune, she had not ruled out a fracture, but decided that cellulitis from the puncture wound was more likely. It was alleged by lay witnesses that she did not examine the horse properly three days later and that, prior to transportation, she again failed to palpate the leg properly.

The Committee, however, preferred Dr Correia's evidence that she examined the leg properly on all three occasions; further, it accepted that a lay witness could easily have mistaken stance-related distortion for displacement.

The Committee stated that it was sure there was neither a detectable limb fracture, nor visible distortion to show that a fracture had occurred; it noted the opinion of both expert witnesses that this was not unusual in a non-displaced unicortical fracture and that sometimes, even with the benefit of a radiograph, it could be an impossible fracture to detect. It agreed that Dr Correia's diagnosis of cellulitis was consistent with the symptoms presented at the time.

Professor Derek Knottenbelt MRCVS, expert witness for the RCVS, described the case as a very difficult one for Correia - a "young and relatively inexperienced veterinary surgeon" - to face so early in her career. He stated that, "cellulitis is far and away more common than tibial fracture," adding, "[Correia] made a genuine error of judgment that she is unlikely to make again".

The Committee heard that Dr Correia had spoken by telephone with a senior colleague who had agreed with her diagnosis, but had not been talked through the protocol for transporting a horse so injured. It found it a "matter of great regret" that this colleague did not see fit to examine Prune himself, before allowing him to be moved.

Both experts agreed that transportation in 'Robert Jones' bandages with splints applied by an inexperienced person such as Correia possibly could result in more harm than good. Neither Correia's senior colleague, nor the equine referral clinic, had suggested to Dr Correia that she employ any such protective procedure.

Alison Bruce, chairing the Disciplinary Committee, said: "We wholeheartedly concur with the expert witness for the Respondent, Professor Tim Greet FRCVS, when he concludes in his report that: 'Under such circumstances, it is my opinion that Dr Correia's actions could not, at any time, be construed as demonstrating seriously deficient professional care, nor was her conduct disgraceful in a professional respect.' The case is dismissed."