Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro euthanized

Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro euthanized

Barbaro, winner of the Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands (G1) whose battle to overcome injuries suffered in the Preakness Stakes (G1) attracted worldwide attention and a legion of fans, was euthanized on Monday morning at the University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center.Gretchen Jackson, who owned and bred the Dynaformer colt along with her husband, Roy, said that Barbaro’s front feet were beginning to become affected by the limited ability of both his laminitic left hind foot and his fused right limb that was shattered in the Preakness Stakes to bear weight.The decision was made early Monday after consulting with Dean Richardson, D.V.M., chief surgeon at the University of Pennsylvania’s veterinary school."There was not a foot that was not affected," Gretchen Jackson said. "He just would not lie down. He had not layed down for two days now. That can’t be good for him. He’s got to get the weight off of his feet. They were bringing him in and out of the sling, but his front feet were showing signs of laminitic changes and we just thought rather than put him through any more else. He had been good up to the beginning of this month, and then everything went."Dean wanted to think about the options, you know you can always go on," Gretchen Jackson continued. "But it’s when to get out that’s hard, and it was agreed upon to let him go."Gretchen Jackson said she was very pleased with the care Barbaro got while at the New Bolton Center and was especially thankful to Richardson for all he did to try and help save Barbaro. She also said she believed every option available was exhausted to try and save Barbaro’s life. "We feel like we did," Gretchen Jackson said of exploring every possible way to save Barbaro. "That is certainly what we were trying to do as well as consider the quality of his life. You could go on forever, but we didn’t want to see him on life support, we wanted to be sure he would have a quality life, too.”Even in his final moments Barbaro displayed the grittiness that he demonstrated throughout his recovery from a shattered hind limb in the Preakness Stakes (G1) on May 20 at Pimlico Race Course.“I don’t know if things were catching up with him or not, but he was biting at people today," Gretchen said. "He bit Dean’s hand I believe today. I don’t think going forward it would have been good to allow him to stay. It would have just been selfish on our part.“I almost feel a sense of relief in some ways, I certainly cried more than I have in years,” Gretchen Jackson said. “It’s not easy to ever put an animal down and make that decision. It’s very hard. And he’s given us so much joy, and you still envision the Kentucky Derby winner every time you see him. That’s what is so hard. It wasn’t easy, we just tried to do the best we can by him."Barbaro won his first three starts on turf by a combined 20 1/4 lengths, including resounding wins in the Laurel Futurity at Laurel Park to close his juvenile campaign and the Tropical Park Derby (G3) at Calder Race Course in his three-year-old debut.After a victory in the slop in the Holy Bull Stakes (G3) on February 4 at Gulfstream Park, Barbaro cemented his status as a leading Derby contender with a score in the Florida Derby (G1) April 1. He broke from the outside post with a short run into the first turn and wore down Sharp Humor in the stretch, after which regular jockey Edgar Prado commented that he believed Barbaro was toying with his rival.Barbaro’s connections exuded confidence leading up to the May 6 Kentucky Derby.“Why shouldn’t we have felt that way? Every time he had run before, he never let us down,” trainer Michael Matz said. “His will to win was obvious in whatever he did.”Barbaro delivered emphatically with a 6 1/2-length romp in the 1 1/4-mile classic, the largest margin of victory since Assault’s eight-length win in 1946.“I don’t think we ever really knew how good he was, that was the most exciting thing about him,” said Barbaro’s exercise rider and Matz’s assistant, Peter Brette. “I could never get to the bottom of him, and I don’t think Edgar [Prado] ever got to the bottom of him. I think that was the most exciting thing about Barbaro, what the future held. I’ve said before that he was the type of horse, I’ve been in racing 24 years and he was going to make all of my dreams come true. He was the one. In 24 years he was the first horse I sat on and said, ‘There’s nothing this horse can’t accomplish.”“A horse like that, you weren’t going to be afraid of anybody,” Brette said. “You could have taken him anywhere in the world, and for me, he would have beaten any three-year-old in the world. He would have belonged in any Group 1 in the world, and I still think he could have won an [Epsom] Derby (Eng-G1) as well. That’s how good he was. He won a Kentucky Derby, and I think he probably would have won the English Derby as well, he was just that good.”The Jacksons, Philadelphia natives who own a 190-acre farm in West Grove, Pennsylvania, have a broodmare band of 27 mares. They had never even come close to breeding a classic contender until Barbaro won the Derby and George Washington won the Stan James Two Thousand Guineas (Eng-G1) on the same day.“We were really lucky, really lucky,” Gretchen Jackson said. “I just appreciate the heck out of him, and I think he knew it. He was well loved. Such luck; at least he’s out of his damn stall, and running around with Secretariat, I hope.”

Update from Dr. Dean W. Richardson on Barbaro’s condition

Update from Dr. Dean W. Richardson on Barbaro’s condition

January 28, 2007

KENNETT SQUARE, PA — On Saturday, January 27, Barbaro was taken back to surgery because we could not keep him comfortable on his right hind foot. That foot developed a deep subsolar abscess secondary to bruising when he went through a period of discomfort on the left hind foot. It is not laminitis but the undermining of the sole and part of the lateral heel region are potentially just as serious. We attempted to manage the right hind foot in a cast and then in a custom fabricated brace but it was impossible to have access to the foot for treatment as well as acceptable stability and comfort. We elected to place his right hind in an external skeletal fixation device in order to provide the foot a chance to heal. This means that two steel pins have been placed transversely through his right hind cannon bone. These pins are connected to external sidebars that in turn are connected to a lightweight alloy foot plate. This results in the horse eliminating all weight bearing from the foot; the horse's weight is borne through the pins across his cannon bone. There is significant risk in this approach but we believed it was our only option given the worsening of the right hind foot problem. The major risk of the external skeletal fixation device is that the bone bearing the weight can fracture. Unfortunately, we felt we needed to take this risk because this approach offered our only hope of keeping Barbaro acceptably comfortable.He had a perfect recovery from anesthesia and has been in and out of the sling since then. His left hind foot appears to be stable at this time. We remain concerned about both front feet. Remarkably, his attitude and appetite were excellent overnight.We will continue to treat Barbaro aggressively as long as he remains bright, alert and eating. This is another significant setback that exemplifies how complex his medical situation remains because both hind limbs have major problems. Barbaro remains in the Intensive Care Unit of Penn’s George D. Widener Hospital at New Bolton Center. Updates will be provided when new information is available.
For more information on Barbaro, please see www.vet.upenn.edu.

They gave Barbaro the chance

Los Angeles Times

Bill Dwyre:

They gave Barbaro the chance

January 23, 2007

Back in Pennsylvania on Monday, a horse named Barbaro remained full of life, eating well and checking out the female horses. All things considered, he has a good quality of life.
Here in Los Angeles, the people most responsible for that quality of life were getting a day's worth of public pats on the back for actions in the last 8 1/2 months that have turned a potentially devastating horse racing story into a "possible" positive.
If Barbaro lives, the positive stands alone. If Barbaro recovers enough to makes babies that could go on and win a Kentucky Derby, as he did last year, then the movie producers start lining up. Seabiscuit becomes old news.

Roy and Gretchen Jackson and Dr. Dean Richardson haven't allowed any of that to deflect their attention from a horse still on the serious-to-critical list. For the moment, the Jacksons, who own Barbaro and have done everything possible to give him a chance to live after his terrible breakdown only seconds into the Preakness, will smile and take their special Eclipse Award for service to the sport.

Same for Richardson, the surgeon from the University of Pennsylvania's veterinary medicine center, who put Barbaro's right hind leg back together again after that fateful May 20 in Baltimore. With bones shattered into 20 pieces, all the king's horses and all the king's men had a better chance at success than Richardson. But nine hours and 27 screws later, he did it.
The Eclipse that went to the Jacksons at racing's annual awards dinner at the Beverly Wilshire Four Seasons Hotel also went to Richardson's hospital. So he shared in that, as well as receiving a special award from the Turf Publicists of America at a luncheon in Beverly Hills. His award, the 41st annual, was called the Big Sport of Turfdom, a strange name that becomes more meaningful when the list of past winners includes Bill Shoemaker, Eddie Arcaro, Jim McKay, Bob Baffert, Wayne Lukas, Julie Krone, Tim Conway and Laffit Pincay Jr. (twice).

Richardson has not only been praised for his way with a scalpel, but for his way with words. His is a rare brain that works out of both sides. Were it not for him, many in horse racing say, the story of Barbaro would have cloaked itself in medical mystery and locked out the public, which would have quickly drifted away in confusion and skepticism.
"There was so much interest," Richardson has said, "that it would have been bad for the horse racing industry if I hadn't been forthcoming."

Not only was he forthcoming, but his dealings with the press and public became frequent, candid, reliable and image-perpetuating. Barbaro's condition went up and down, but Richardson was always there to tell the world why.
"I even got to the point where I respected the press — well, some of them," he joked Monday, adding later that he has been misquoted sometimes, "like Charles Barkley was in his autobiography."

On the day Barbaro's right hind leg shattered, Richardson was in Florida, watching on TV. When the Jacksons offered to rent a private jet and fly him back, he declined, saying that would be "grandstanding." He got on the last seat of a commercial plane, "back next to the toilets," and got himself back to do surgery immediately.
"The big story was that my plane was actually on time," Richardson joked.
From that point to now, Richardson and his medical team have been a rock to the Jacksons, as well as to Barbaro.

Roy Jackson, Peter O'Malley's roommate and fraternity brother at Penn, has owned minor league baseball teams, been president and/or commissioner of several minor leagues and, as recently as 2002, owned his own sports agency that handled as many as 25 major leaguers.
Gretchen is the more knowledgeable horse person in the family, having grown up riding in equestrian and fox hunting events. According to an article in the Blood Horse Magazine, Barbaro was named after Roy and Gretchen found a fox hunting painting, vintage 1880, in his mother's house after her death. There were five dogs chasing the fox, and each had a name listed underneath. The Jacksons chose the dog on the right, Barbaro.

Now, the saga of that horse has filled, and in many ways redefined, their lives. Many in racing saw their efforts to keep Barbaro alive as foolish and sentimental. Others saw a public relations ploy that would distance the horror of the accident from the inevitable outcome of euthanasia. None of that ever occurred to the Jacksons.
"He deserved a chance," Gretchen said. "He never looked like he didn't want to live. You can look at him and see it."
She sees it twice daily, which is how often she visits Barbaro.

The fight to keep Barbaro alive and progressing has attracted international attention and has not waned. Horse racing refers to it as the Barbaro Nation, and that includes a website that remains filled with notes of concern, encouragement and love.
At Monday's luncheon, TVG's Todd Schrupp, the master of ceremonies, read one from a 7-year-old who wrote to tell Barbaro he was "very pretty." He read another from somebody presumably much older who wrote to the horse: "As long as you continue your brave fight, the nation can rest assured that the terrorists won't win."

This month, when Barbaro had a setback, a website on which well-wishers can burn electronic candles to show their concern had 14,000 candles lit. That represented 41 countries. The volume temporarily knocked the website off line.

Horses the caliber of Barbaro are insured for their lives. Had he been put down, the Jacksons would have collected and been made whole. But the sort of medical envelope-pushing that has taken place with Barbaro over the last 8 1/2 months is a different story. Clearly, the Jacksons are people of means, but many wonder about the cost of all this for them. So do they.
"We have no idea," said Gretchen, who indicated it is a concern. "We haven't seen a bill. We can go and pick them up on a monthly basis, but we just haven't. Right now, we just don't want to deal with the money."

If Barbaro eventually stands at stud, money issues disappear. It would be a Homestretch Miracle, a validation of the efforts of the Jacksons and Richardson, a happy time for millions.

In at least 41 countries.

>>>>

Finally a writer who can summarize why we love Barbaro and his connections. Bravo Mr Dwyre, Bravo.