Vic Zast

These are thoughts that nobody wants written. Euthanasia is a topic that is off limits, and death as a function of life is misunderstood.

For the past eight months, a veritable national hero has been on the brink of extinction. For the greater part of the year, the captivating Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro, anesthetized to alleviate the pain from his surgeries, has spent much of his time in his stall, hanging from a sling with his leg cast in plaster.

Given what the horse has endured, is it not proper to harbor the thought that the time might come when a peaceful end would be prudent? Or do his owners and doctors, and less important, his rapturous followers, believe that a discussion of this possibility is somehow the equivalent of quitting?

Last week, Dr. Dean Richardson, chief surgeon of the New Bolton Center in Kennett Square, Pa., pronounced Barbaro “stable and acceptably comfortable” after treating the horse for painful laminitis by cutting away part of his hoof. 

Then, on Saturday morning, Richardson removed yet another part of the horse’s hoof and snipped a flexor tendon to ease the pull on the coffin bone inside the damaged hoof.

After an encouraging spell in which his caretakers thought he would soon be frolicking on a farm, Barbaro is resting again in intensive care. On Tuesday, the report from New Bolton was that the colt’s “comfort improved considerably” and that “his appetite has improved and his vital signs are stable.”

Chatroom fodder, newspaper fare
Meanwhile, the public eavesdrops on the daily proceedings and comments in chatrooms on the change of conditions as if the treatments were celebrity makeovers. And as a multimillionaire couple, Roy and Gretchen Jackson, fund a seemingly endless rehabilitation, the press feeds the frenzy with coverage that would fit a political race.

“Any other horse would have been put down weeks or months ago,” Dr. David Zipf, veterinarian for the Maryland Racing Commission, was quoted as saying in the Baltimore Sun a week ago. But Zipf noted that Barbaro, despite his travails, is still eating and alert and interested in the fillies — behavior that is not indicative of a young colt that has given up on life.

“Horses know when we are trying to hurt them, so why wouldn’t they know when we are trying to help them,” Hall of Fame jockey Mike Smith said assuredly this summer in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., when an audience member at a panel session at the National Museum of Racing asked him what he thought about Barbaro’s mindset.

“You put a horse down when his physical suffering becomes unbearable,” said Richard Bomze, president of the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association. He speaks from experience, having attempted to save an injured steeplechaser named Sports Reporter in the 1970s only to be talked out of doing so by the experts at New Bolton, who said it would be inhumane.

“It was cruel on my part to van the horse five hours in an effort to save her,” he said.

But Bomze sees a different situation with Barbaro.

Is sentiment clouding judgment?
“You keep an injured horse alive as long as the horse is intelligent enough to know that you’re trying to help him,” he said. “This horse seems to know that. The Jacksons would put him down in a New York minute, if they didn’t believe that.

“If you or I owned the horse, we wouldn’t have the wherewithal to go through this, and we wouldn’t be able to keep Barbaro happy,” he added, describing Gretchen Jackson as “intensely charitable.”

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The opinions of Richardson, Bomze and Smith notwithstanding, can the Jacksons possibly be making the decisions pertaining to Barbaro’s ongoing care impartially? Everyone believes so. Yet, even the clearest thinkers would be influenced by the inchoate adulation that colors this horse’s convalescence.

To understand that deep sea of sympathy it’s necessary to understand how Barbaro became so amazingly popular in the first place.

He won only five races before his dazzling Kentucky Derby performance, which led critics to suggest that the colt would be our first Triple Crown winner in 28 years. But those dreams were shattered, along with three bones in his right hind leg, when the colt stumbled moments after the start of the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico.