Posted: 6/23/2006 3:45:09 PM
Dr. Liberty Getman checks out Barbaro's new cast.
Kentucky Derby (G1) winner Barbaro has adjusted well to his new fiberglass cast and continues to be comfortable as he recovers from surgery to repair a shattered right hind ankle at the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center.
"That's the absolute good news, because you don't know. Every cast is put on with the idea that it will be a perfect fit, but time tells and he's wearing this one very well," George D. Widener Hospital Executive Director Corinne Sweeney, D.V.M., said Friday.
"The fiberglass cast is a light type of cast. This cast is the same type of cast that was put on him right after surgery, it's just a replacement. It's not any different; it's just a new one."
Barbaro suffered a fractured sesamoid, a fractured proximal phalanx, or long pastern—which was splintered into more than 20 pieces—and a condylar fracture of the cannon bone during the opening yards of the Preakness Stakes (G1) on May 20 at Pimlico Race Course. The Dynaformer colt also dislocated his fetlock.
Dean W. Richardson, D.V.M, chief surgeon at Penn's veterinary school performed the five-hour operation on May 21 that required 27 screws and a locking compression plate to stabilize the joint.
"He's a lively, bright, happy horse," said Richardson, who replaced the cast on Barbaro's hind leg on June 13. "I'm very pleased with the progress he's made in the last month."
A graded stakes winner on both turf and dirt, Barbaro proved a standout on the track while winning the first six races of his career, capped by a 6 1/2-length romp in the Kentucky Derby. Nearly five weeks after major surgery, Sweeney said he does not appear too far removed from his racing career.
"He is a grand patient, he's all boy," Sweeney said. "He acts like, `Give me a chance to run, I'm ready to go.' He acts he's ready to go back to doing what he was doing. When you open the door to bring him out for his bath, he's like, 'OK, let's go.'
"He has a cast on his leg so he has to walk like he has a cast on his leg, but other than that he moves around just like you or I would walk if we were pretending we were stiff in the ankle," Sweeney continued. "He bears full weight on it and he still does his little romps in the stall, so it hasn't affected his style."
Barbaro, a homebred of Roy and Gretchen Jackson's Lael Farm, has been an ideal patient and accepted his new life confined to a stall with charisma.
"There's nothing mopey about him," Sweeney said. "He has adjusted to his current plight in life, probably with the same style that he adjusted to knowing that he was supposed to go out there and run races. He's maintaining his weight, if not putting on a little bit. He's not moping around, and that's important for any patient that has a long-term hospitalization. If a positive attitude has any effect on outcome, he's certainly got that positive attitude."
Nurses in the Intensive Care Unit at the New Bolton Center have helped Barbaro occupy his time with a variety of games in the stall, one of which he is particularly adept.
"To amuse him, besides feeding him some snacks, some of the nurses on the ward line peppermints up on the edge [of his stall], and he's gotten very clever at being able to get to each one between the bars before they fall off the edge," Sweeney said. "Any patient that is there for an extended period of time, all of the staff here forms a good relationship with. He's now been a resident of the hospital for almost five weeks, and he certainly has endeared himself."—Mike Curry
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