From the time of his catastrophic breakdown at the Preakness Stakes on May 20, this was a most-feared complication for Barbaro.
Dean Richardson, the chief surgeon at the University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center, said Thursday the Kentucky Derby winner had developed laminitis in his left hind foot. The potentially deadly ailment, which Richardson called “catastrophic,” is caused by putting too much weight on the uninjured foot.
It makes Barbaro’s odds of survival “a long shot,” Richardson said in his typically frank manner.
“As long as the horse is not suffering, we’re going to continue to try” to save him, Richardson said. But he added that the inflammation of the tissue in the left foot, which caused Richardson to remove 80 percent of Barbaro’s left rear hoof Wednesday, is “basically as bad as laminitis gets.”
Both rear legs now are in casts because Barbaro’s right hind leg was surgically repaired the day after the horse suffered multiple fractures during the Preakness.
Any decision regarding euthanasia, Richardson said, is not “minute-to-minute.”
But, he said Thursday, “it could happen, I think, within 24 hours. . . . It’s a judgment that you look at the horse over a period of time.”
The surgeon is in constant consultation with Barbaro’s owners, Roy and Gretchen Jackson of West Grove, Pa., who visit the nearby Kennett Square facility daily and have said since the accident that their only goal was for the horse to live without pain.
“If you asked me two weeks ago, I really thought we were going to make it,” Richardson said. “Today I am not as confident.”
This is no ordinary horse Richardson has been treating. Even among top thoroughbreds, Barbaro stands out. He and Smarty Jones were the only undefeated Kentucky Derby winners since Seattle Slew in 1977. His 6 1/2-length win in the Derby was the most in six decades.
After Thursday’s news conference, huge baskets of apples and carrots began arriving at New Bolton, as they had after his initial surgery.
Barbaro is receiving pain medicine and spends several hours in a sling for support.
