Barbaro in ‘Excellent’ Condition; Use of Hind Leg in Breeding Explained
by Blood-Horse Staff Last Updated: 6/2/2006 2:20:48 PM
http://channels.bloodhorse.com/images/content/BarbaroHeadBDL.jpg Barbaro continues to make progress.
Photo: Barbara D. Livingston
Edited from New Bolton Center reports
Dr. Dean W. Richardson, chief of surgery at the University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center in Kennett Square, Pa., reported Thursday that Barbaro was in excellent condition. “He looks great and everything is fine,” Richardson said of the Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands (gr. I) winner. Barbaro remains in intensive care at the George D. Widener Hospital for Large Animals at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine’s New Bolton Center. He continues to improve daily as he recovers from a shattered hind leg sustained at the Preakness Stakes (gr. I) on May 20.
Meanwhile, New Bolton Center reported it has received many inquiries about the importance of a stallion’s hind leg in the reproduction process.
“To register offspring from Thoroughbred stallions, all breeding must be done by natural service,” said Sue McDonnell, of the Equine Behavior Laboratory. “This means that artificial insemination and assisted reproductive techniques are not allowed.”
McDonnell explained that mares must be mounted, which is a fairly athletic activity, requiring good hind-limb strength and agility. The stallion needs to be relatively fit and free from discomfort; therefore, after an injury heals, the stallion needs to re-build his cardiovascular and musculoskeletal fitness to the fullest extent possible.
“In a case such as Barbaro’s, his medical team would plan and monitor physical therapy with breeding in mind,” she said. “Amazing things have been done to accommodate disabled breeding stallions, from custom-built breeding ramps to supportive splints or casts, to medications that reduce the amount of effort required. But in most cases, simple old-fashioned careful attention to detail, such as highly skilled stallion and mare handlers who can allow the stallion to compensate for his limitations, good athletic surfaces, and a breeding schedule customized to the stallion’s fitness and fertility, can help sports injured stallions enjoy remarkably normal and successful breeding careers.”
New Bolton reported that it has been among the leaders in developing methods of assisting aging and disabled stallions to breed.
FAQs About Barbaro; Colt Continues Daily Improvement
by Blood-Horse Staff
New Bolton Center has received many inquiries about Barbaro; below are the answers to some of those most frequently asked.
1. In addition to hay, what, if anything, is he being fed? Do you have a special diet for cases like his?
He’s being fed sweet feed (the same kind he ate while racing), three times a day. We do like to see cases like this gain or at least maintain their weight, so often we add corn oil to their diets, which Barbaro is getting in his grain. We also encourage him to eat alfalfa because it is high in calcium and helps with weight gain. Finally, he gets fresh grass several times daily, which we try to do for our horses that are stall-bound and can’t get out to graze.
2. How do you keep water from entering the cast while a horse is awakening from anesthesia?
The horse is not actually “in” water; he is inside a rubber raft. His legs are placed into extensions that are at the bottom of the raft – like waders fishermen use. In addition to being protected inside these leg holes in the rubber raft, the injured leg is wrapped in a thick plastic bag (like a shower curtain), the air is removed from around it, and then the bag is sealed to the leg with duct tape. So, he actually is completely protected from the water.
3. Can he be groomed, or would that be too stimulating?
Barbaro is groomed from head to tail at least once a day, not to mention all the “scratching” sessions he gets. We try to give all of our stall-bound patients as much stimulation as possible to keep them from becoming too bored.
4. What size is his stall?
Approximately 12’ X 13’, complete with a 2’ X 2’ window.
5. If he survives this ordeal and it is eventually deemed safe for him to be in a paddock, how would his leg be protected and supported? Will his hoof touch the ground in the normal position?
Ideally, if he survives, he will need minimal if any extra support once his leg is fully healed. His foot should touch the ground as a normal horse’s would, but the angle of his fetlock may be different.
With Famous Equine Patient, Barbaro’s Vet Gains Celebrity Status
by The Associated Press
Date Posted: 6/2/2006 2:10:25 PM
Last Updated: 6/2/2006 2:18:49 PM
http://channels.bloodhorse.com/images/content/DeanRichardsonAP.jpg
Treating injured Kentucky Derby winner puts Dr. Dean Richardson in spotlight.
Photo: Associated Press
By Deborah Hastings, AP National Writer
The doctor who helped save Barbaro’s life strides out of his office, plops into a chair and bangs his hands on the table in front of him.
“So,” he begins, “what do you want me to say?” It is a strange and exhausting time for the cocky and self-confident Dean Richardson, head of surgery at the University of Pennsylvania’s George D. Widener Hospital for Large Animals, nestled near the Delaware state line where strip malls and multimillion-dollar horse farms live side-by-side but worlds apart.
He is one of the country’s best horse surgeons. And he reconnected the pulverized right hind leg of Barbaro, a dark bay Thoroughbred who charged ahead by 6 1/2 lengths to win the Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands (gr. I) – only to break down seconds out of the gate at the Preakness Stakes (gr. I) in Baltimore, his foot flaring at gruesome angles before a gasping crowd at Pimlico Race Course and millions of television viewers.
Since the May 20 calamity, Richardson has become an instant celebrity. He is as blunt as his crewcut hair. He says exactly what he thinks – in daily news conferences, on the morning talk-show circuit and during stand-ups on CNN. But his colleagues are not surprised that he is feisty and cracks wise.
“If he hadn’t spoken directly, like the way he is, I would have wondered, 'Who is that man? And what has he done with Dean Richardson?”’ said Dr. Corinne Sweeney, the hospital’s executive director. She has known him since he walked in the hospital doors 27 years ago as a first-year intern.
What was he like then?
Sweeney laughs long and hard. “Much like he is now,” she says. “Except he’s mellowed.” Then she lapses into more laughter. “As a surgeon, I would say he’s the best, but then he’d smack me on the head and say, ‘I’m not the only one who can do this’.”
What Richardson did, in more than five hours of surgery, was fuse a jigsaw puzzle of bones and flesh with a metal plate and 27 screws. The horse’s cannon bone, above the ankle, was broken. His sesamoid bone, behind the ankle, was snapped. The long pastern bone, below the ankle, was shattered into more than 20 pieces. His ankle was dislocated.
Richardson originally pronounced the now-beloved race horse’s injuries the “most catastrophic” he’d ever tried to repair.
Most horses with such injuries, he warned, “would have been put down at the race track.” Nearly two weeks out, Barbaro is not down. He improves daily, eats like a horse, nuzzles his visitors, astounds his doctor.
But Richardson remains unswayed by his patient’s high spirits.
“The problems we face with these kinds of injuries don’t always happen in the first five days or the first five weeks,” Richardson said in a recent interview at his hospital. “I keep saying that.”
Being direct is part of a plan conceived by medical center administrators.
“This is a huge risk for us to be so honest with the press. Because if it goes badly, we’ll all look worse. But we made a decision to tell the story as straight as we could tell it,” the 52-year-old surgeon said.
But after all his media appearances – and the added burden of treating the most famous patient of his long career – Richardson may have gotten more than he bargained for. He does not abide fools. Or what he deems foolish questions.
Asked what he thought when he first saw Barbaro’s battered leg, Richardson replied, “I don’t have X-ray vision, you know. I couldn’t see inside his leg.”
He is no less blunt in dealing with medical students, especially when conducting rounds, a process the more meek of heart find a terrifying ordeal, his colleagues said.
“His students are very intimidated. He expects a lot,” says second-year intern David Levine, who assisted in Barbaro’s surgery. “He’s going to keep asking questions until you get one wrong,” he said, and like Sweeney, started laughing.
Not a word was said about their patient’s fame during surgery.
“We all knew who the horse was, obviously,” Levine said. “That doesn’t need to be said. Everyone who works here is at the top of their game. We get a lot of famous horses in here. We treat them all with the same level of skill and care.”
Yet Richardson seems a bit baffled by the Barbaro limelight he has stepped into. And by the avalanche of flowers, apples, carrots and oranges from everyday people who also send along suggestions for treating Barbaro – as if he were a human being.
“Every amateur thinks he’s invented something when he suggests we put him in a wheelchair,” Richardson says, shaking his head. “There is no such thing.”
He has specialized in orthopedics since joining the staff after serving his internship and residency here. At the University of Ohio, he scrapped every plan he had for the future after he took a horse-riding class and felt the synch of beast and man while sitting in the saddle, and turned to veterinary sciences.
His wife also is a veterinarian. Their 21-year-old son wants to be a doctor – a people doctor, as was Richardson’s father.
The horse surgeon operates on other animals. He recently stitched up an injured gazelle for a private owner. He does consulting work for zoos on exotic animals such as lions and tigers; he also treats cows and sheep and goats.
Another reason the hospital has been so public about Barbaro’s convalescence, he said, is to show how far medicine has come in putting animals back together.
“We’re better at this than we were five years ago,” he said. The improvements come from innovations as simple as building bigger operating tables to breakthroughs that have kept pace with human treatment – safer anesthesia, better antibiotics, sophisticated monitors to meticulously track the functions of major organs.
Those advances were not available to brilliant horses such as Ruffian, who broke her leg in two places in a 1975 match race at New York’s Belmont Park. She survived surgery, but thrashed so violently afterward, she shattered her cast and had to be euthanized. In 1990, the filly Go For Wand snapped her ankle at the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, collapsed and was put down in front of the grandstand.
In Barbaro’s case, one innovation that made a world of difference was a raft with legs, into which he was placed after surgery, while still sedated. The raft was lowered into a pool of 97-degree water. When the 3-year-old colt woke up, he couldn’t thrash or bolt.
“Horses have two responses – fight or flight,” Richardson said. “Their response is going to be to get up and run away. You can’t pat them on the back and say, ‘Hey, calm down, Barbaro. You need some rest’.”
He watched the Preakness in Florida, on a six-inch hospital television. He had just come from surgery on a horse when he saw Barbaro break down.
Richardson picked up the phone and called his office, told them what equipment to get ready, and then booked himself on a flight out at 7 a.m. the next day.
He knew without asking that he would be the surgeon to repair Barbaro. He had worked before with trainer Michael Matz, who lives down the road, as do owners Roy and Gretchen Jackson. He also knew he didn’t have to rush back.
“Roy Jackson offered to send a chartered jet to pick me up,” he said. “I told him he didn’t have to.”
A suddenly lame horse needs time to figure out that something is wrong, so it doesn’t panic after surgery when confronted with being unable to stand normally, Richardson said. He operated the next day.
Jackson credits Richardson with saving his horse’s life.
“I just don’t know if any other doctor could have done the same thing,” Jackson said. “He’s done a lot of good things over the years. He just didn’t get this kind of recognition.”
Surgeon Midge Leitch has known Richardson, who also is fiercely competitive on the basketball court and on the golf course, for as long as Sweeney has – but in a much different way.
Leitch supervised his first internship. She was six years his senior. Even so, they argued so loudly and so vehemently that “the students went to the head of surgery and said we should be separated because we hated each other,” she said. The memory still amuses her. They still argue. “We shout. Neither of us is intimidated by a good argument.”
But the good doctor is a dear friend, she said.
“He always wonders if he’s made the right decision. He comes across as totally confident, but in fact I know that he worries a lot. He struggles. Anybody who doesn’t appreciate that about him doesn’t get it.”
Thank you, VirginiaBred, for the updates and articles. It’s heartening to hear of his progress.
Jingles to Barbaro. Thanks so much for all the updates. I have been facinated and really moved by all of this. He is a great horse.
Yes, thank you so much, VirginiaBred!
Jingling for Barbaro.
Thanks so much for the updates, and for the reminder thread in the H/J forum. The tragedy and triumph (so far, fingers crossed) of the story still move me to tears. The extraordinary talents of all involved, especially Barbaro himself, are inspiring!
Edited to add: And I am still jingling like crazy!
I am so happy to do a little something for this brave horse. I have been so moved and touched by his story, and to help bring the recovery story, be it even in a small way, is a happy thing for me to do.
Keep the jingles and prayers coming everyone!
We can do this for him!!!
jingles for barbaro
I think it’s wonderful that non-horse people are so attracted to the sport and to this horse. It’s wonderful for horses around the world. If they can feel this way about a race horse (that I also think could probably have taken the Triple Crown) how much more will spill over to the other aspects of the horse world? This could help other horse sports, and it could easily help with people supporting the care of horses when their careers have come to an end. Look at what it’s already doing for the research at New Bolton. Just redirect some more and let the rest spill over and hopefully we’ll be able to save and help even more horses. Doing it in Barbaro’s name is a wonderful tribute to a horse that helped show the world that horses aren’t just mindless beasts, but that they have feelings and desires–that they are noble creatures.
Continuing jingles for Barbaro! Bless his vets, owners and trainer for giving him all they have. I know they have the entire horse community pulling for all of them and hoping for the best outcome.
Saturday Morning Update, Tim Woolley Racing:
Update 56: Barbaro had another good night last night (friday night). I spoke to Michael Matz who had heard from Dr. Dean Richardson this morning. It seems he is doing very well at this stage, and everyone is very happy with his progress.
update: 7:55 am, saturday morning
Surgeon agrees Barbaro likely bumped during Preakness
[B]BY DICK JERARDI[/B]
Philadelphia Daily News
[B]PHILADELPHIA - [/B]Dr. Dean Richardson is much more interested in the now and the next than the then, but the surgeon who operated on Barbaro said, "My impression from the beginning was that the horse was bumped right before the injury."
While saying “I’m not a forensic scientist” and "This isn’t `CSI: Pimlico,’ " Richardson thinks Pimlico executive Lou Raffetto’s theory that Barbaro’s right rear hoof was inadvertently struck by Brother Derek’s right front hoof during the first few hundred yards of the Preakness is “the most reasonable explanation.”
Raffetto, after thoroughly scrutinizing the tapes, said in Tuesday’s Philadelphia Daily News he is “80 percent certain” that the two hooves coming together might have caused Barbaro’s foot to twist awkwardly, resulting in the three fractures Richardson repaired.
“I did not examine the tapes,” Richardson said. “But if this helps dispel all the notions that he was lame going to the gate, that is a good thing.”
Richardson understands that when something so unexpected happens, everybody wants an explanation, even one not terribly satisfying.
“It is just possible to have a catastrophic accident, and that is all there is,” Richardson said.
Like trainer Michael Matz, Richardson, chief of surgery at the New Bolton Center in Kennett Square, where Barbaro continues his remarkable recovery, is much more interested in the recovery than the reasons for the accident.
“I completely agree with Michael that it is not important in terms of assigning any blame, but it might help lay to rest some of the concerns about the horse injuring it while breaking early from the gate,” Richardson said. “The concept of just bad racing luck is difficult for some to grasp.”
Richardson has seen enough races to know that “horses come together all the time.” With 1,000-pound animals running 35 mph in tight spaces, this happens in races every day at every track.
Almost always, nothing more happens. This time, something terrible happened. That is the really bad news.
The really good news is that, according to Richardson, Barbaro continues to be “more comfortable than I had hoped” at this point of his recovery. And each day that goes by gives just a bit more hope that what looked so ominous on May 20 may very well have the happy ending everybody had hoped to see on a race track.
Thanks so much for keeping this updated, I check it on a daily basis to see what is going on. I’m so happy that Barbaro is progressing nicely, even though we all know he still has a long way to go.
Update 58: Peter Brette visited Barbaro again today (saturday afternoon) and reports that he is doing very well.
It seems there have been three significant ‘events / decisions’ this week, Barbaro’s second week post surgery:
- He was taken off antibiotics early this week (reportedly tuesday).
- The decision to remove his cast early this week has been postponed to a day-to-day situation. This is a positive sign.
- He has had at least two baths this week!
We have added a couple more Barbaro pictures, taken (by Jennifer Duffy) the saturday after the Kentucky Derby. They show Peter Brette observing Barbaro, after he had trained.
Update 57: A couple of recent stories touch on the impact Barbaro is having on many people. Author J Carson Black wrote this story: The Hero’s Journey which starts with the story of the American soldiers delivering their flag to Barbaro which we reported in Update 52. Clearly that story has impressed many. The Hero’s Journey includes the following excerpt:
Nothing was spared in saving this horse. People waited and watched and prayed and hoped and cried.
The story is far from over, but we are more hopeful every day. Why? Because this horse is creating a miracle with every day he lives and thrives. By being the individual he is, by accepting his fate with grace and a good nature, by taking care of himself.
This story is also included as one of the comments below.
Randy Moss, writing for the NTRA has a story: Barbaro injury reveals racing’s heart that includes the following excerpt while trying to analyze the public’s overwhelming response to Barbaro:
The outpouring of support for Barbaro has been dramatic and even perplexing to some.
One newspaper columnist wrote that Barbaro briefly became the world’s most popular sports figure “who is not a female racecar driver named Danica.”
Another theorized that Barbaro’s plight resonated more powerfully than if Barry Bonds had stumbled and broken his leg while rounding the bases after hitting home run No. 715.
Plate & Screws Composition
I’ve seen different information in several different stories on the composition of the plate & screws in Barbaro’s leg. Some say stainless steel, some say titanium. I’m no expert on this stuff, so can someone clarify this form me?
Thanks.
Glad to the Barbaro doing so well! 
Are the owners’ barn colors yellow with black lettering? Or is it pink with black lettering?
I’m trying to find out their barn colors and have seen pics off a lot of different colors…
The Kentucky Derby shows pink with black lettering, another exercise photo shoes yellow with black letters? Could someone tell me?
Thanks,
Goldylox
As far as I know, the barn colors are the same as the jockey silks: green, blue and white.
Compliments: Tim Woolley Racing
Update 61: The Bloodhorse has a nice article on Peter Brette: Assistant Trainer Brette Maintains His Composure in Triumph and Tragedy. The article discusses Peter’s career before working for Michael Matz (via Dubai), and the special relationship he and Michael have developed. The following excerpt notes the story of the two soldiers who delivered the american flag to the wounded warrior, we mentioned in update 52 as well as the special relationship between Peter and Michael.
Brette still can’t believe all the attention the colt’s injury and recuperation has received around the world. “It’s unbelievable how many people he’s touched,” he said. “Some soldiers came the other day with an American flag that was sent for him from Iraq. And that’s over at New Bolton now. They flew 19 hours from Iraq and drove another three hours just so he could have this flag.”
It is rare to find the kind of relationship Matz and Brette have had in only a little over a year together. During that time they have formed a special bond and trust that has enabled the soft-spoken and low-key Matz to go about his business with the serenity and peace of mind that befits his personality.
Update 60: No new news to report for sunday evening. Spoke to Peter and Kim Brette late afternoon, and they were busy painting their deck. They had not visited Barbaro today, but certainly would have heard something if there was different news to report. Two weeks have now passed since the surgery, lets hope things continue as they have done so thus far.
Update 59: Barbaro had another good night last night (saturday night). I spoke to Martine (exercise rider of Michael Matz) on the track this morning, who gave me the good news; that Michael had received another positive report from Dr. Richardson. I later saw Michael who confirmed the news.
update, sunday 8:10 am
I admit I’ve been lurking and not posting (probably something everyone’s gald for HA!), but I’m also grateful for the updates. It’s so heartening to know Barbaro is doing well at this point!
I still swear that any bump came from SNS, but I may also just be crazy. I’m not saying he was bumped, just that I’m not in the consensus that any such thing would’ve come from BD. Like I said, I may just be crazy.
