by Mike Curry

Scott Morrison, D.V.M., equine podiatry specialist at Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital in Lexington, visited on January 3 Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands (G1) winner Barbaro and applied a cast to the colt's laminitic left hoof at the University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center.

Gretchen Jackson said the return visit to the Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, veterinary hospital was scheduled when Morrison first examined Barbaro on December 19 at the request of Dean Richardson, D.V.M., chief surgeon at Penn’s veterinary school.

“[Morrison] was able to come up here on the third and put a cast on that foot,” Gretchen Jackson said. “He’s just trying to stabilize that foot enough for him to move elsewhere. It seems as if all of the fractured leg is all healed, that’s fine. It’s just getting the laminitic hoof to stabilize. [The hoof] is really touchy.

“I had no idea how touchy that situation is. It’s just a very fragile connection as the hoof wall grows, there is such fragility with those connections between the wall and the tissue surrounding the bone, this is how I understand it and that’s why you don’t just turn him loose or something. He has to have it controlled so that it stabilizes and it grows and connects in the proper way.”

Barbaro, a homebred of Roy and Gretchen Jackson’s Lael Farm, shattered his right hind limb in the opening stages of the Preakness Stakes (G1) on May 20 and subsequently developed life-threatening acute laminitis in his opposite left hind foot that required 80% of the hoof wall to be resected.

Richardson was able to stabilize the right limb with a locking compression plate and 27 screws, and the joint sufficiently fused to the point where the cast was removed on November 6. Amid widespread rumors of Barbaro’s imminent relocation, Gretchen Jackson said the cast on his left limb is a significant step to permit a move, most likely to Kentucky, in the near future. She said there is still no timetable, however, and Richarson will have final say on when Barbaro is released from the New Bolton Center’s intensive care unit.

“He’s really getting to a point where he will, hopefully, be stabilized and can continue his recovery outside of an intensive care facility,” Gretchen Jackson said. “He’s in there and doesn’t really require all of the attention. That’s the goal to get him to a point where he can leave, and no one be concerned as to his traveling and his distance away from New Bolton.”

The cast Morrison put on the left foot encompasses the hoof and extends to just below the ankle. Other treatments for laminitis will be explored once the laminitic hoof is sufficiently stabilized.

“That was Dean’s choice and I think the timing was right for Barbaro to move in that direction,” Gretchen Jackson said about extending an invitation to Morrison help with the care of Barbaro’s left foot. “It certainly has progressed enough that he can have that cast on there and we can start to think about getting him out of there. It’s a miracle that he’s gotten as far as he has.

“There are all of these different techniques, but we haven’t employed any of those. It’s just been allowed to grow on its own and the first sort of assistance we had was to try and stabilize it, it will have nothing to do with the regrowth of the hoof wall, but just to stabilize it.”

Gretchen Jackson said ideally his next stop will not be another hospital, but a farm that offers security already in place, experience dealing with laminitis, and proximity to excellent veterinary care. She said Kentucky is a very likely next destination.

Jackson said Barbaro remains in good spirits and continues to amaze her in what she considers a ‘miraculous’ recovery.

“He certainly has made the best of it, and all of us who were concerned if what we were trying to do was going to far, he just always was there with that look about him like I can do it,” Gretchen Jackson said. “I think if you saw him, you’d be amazed.

“He doesn’t carry himself the same way in the back because of the fused joints, he’s still adjusting to the fusion. He’s different gaited but he doesn’t give you any indication that he’s lost interest in life. He knows his people, too,” she continued. “The other day he was lying down, and we had been away for ten days, and I just walked in and they had, of all things, a mother goat in there with her four babies. She’s one of those little pygmy goats, and they are just the cutest little things. And I went right over to them before Barbaro, and he heard my voice and sprung up out of his bedding and was whinnying and everything, saying, ‘I’m over here, bring my grass.” He’s pretty with it. He’s a funny horse.”

Mike Curry is a Thoroughbred Times daily news editor