Posted on 05/27/2006 4:40:26 PM PDT by beyond the sea
The e-mails come from across the globe, deluging a University of Pennsylvania Web site with personal pep talks for an utterly oblivious beast.
"Barbaro, I am only 12 but if I was 30 I would become a vet and make you better in one second!" wrote Maeve Geismar of Annapolis, Md.
"You are such a sweet baby! Our love for horses is so represented by the outpouring of well wishes for you! Mend and have the best life!" wrote Mary Baird, 49, of Pflugerville, Texas.
"My Mom had a new hip and was just fine, and so will you be just fine," declared Kathy Fish, 63, of New York, N.Y.
The means of expression have changed since the Ice Age, when prehistoric man drew pictures of horses on cave walls -- more images of horses, according to one study, than of any other animal. The emotion behind the expression remains the same in the computer age. Barbaro's jarring journey from champion to victim to (so far) survivor serves as a societal reminder: Our bond with equine kind is indefinable, intimate and infinite.
"The horse is still sort of a shadowed deity in the culture," said John Jeremiah Sullivan, a writer-at-large for GQ whose fascinating 2004 book, "Blood Horses," in part examines the joined histories of man and horse. "There's just this inexplicable sense of attachment that goes back to the very beginning. … The closest thing I have to a theory is that this association has been part of the species for so long -- this instinct to venerate them -- that it has almost wired itself into our cultural DNA."
That wiring is rarely more conductive than when a thoroughbred is injured.
(Excerpt) Read more at sports.espn.go.com ...
Thanks for the ping. Barbaro bump!
"Horses kept me out of trouble all the way through high school."
Excellent points. Invaluable life lessons are learned while riding. Hard to be a rider and a helpless victim at the same time. Oil and water: they simply don't go together.
Horse magic works for disabled children too. Dallas had an Equest program that was outstanding. Some of the children were blind. Others were deaf, paralyzed, seriously ill, mentally challenged or any number of other maladies. Didn't matter. Nearly all of them LOVED horses and they loved to ride.
No mystery to it. Most young people "get" horses. Unless or until they invent something better, I'm confident they always will.
Well the cards are cute and maybe he can eat the fruit but flowers? Wouldn't it be better to just send a donation for research to the hospital?
BTTT --- thanks for the ping.
Thanks for the ping! Keep it up, Barbaro!
Some snips:
~~~~~~~
" .... Barbaro can expect to receive get-well wishes from fans at Pimlico next week. The track is shipping to the New Bolton Center a 3-foot-by-10-foot banner signed by fans. The banner is expected to be hung in the intensive care unit. ..."
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More than 4000 emails were received by Barbaro this week, wishing him well.
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[Good story--posting a few snips from it, but it's a must-read]
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/sports/14683947.htm
Richardson's tall task: Saving Barbaro
BY MIKE JENSEN
Knight Ridder Newspapers
PHILADELPHIA - A sinus surgery lasted 2 1/2 hours. Four more were spent taking a bladder stone out of a show horse. Dean Richardson was still at a friend's equine hospital in Florida on May 20 as Barbaro, the Kentucky Derby winner, was saddled for the Preakness Stakes.
Richardson wasn't going to miss the race.
"He had blood all over him, and he was doing it in flip-flops, so we hosed him off," said Byron Reid, a veterinarian in Loxahatchee, Fla., just outside West Palm Beach.
The two men watched the Preakness on a six-inch screen in the hospital.
"You could see enough," Richardson said. "That's the sad thing. It was just crushing. My stomach started churning. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was a "very bad injury. I knew which horse it was."
.....
Thirty minutes after the horse had "catastrophically" broken three bones, Barbaro's digital X-ray arrived in Richardson's e-mail.
"I knew it was going to be a bad fracture," the surgeon said. "When I saw the radiograph, it was worse than I had hoped. I tried to sleep, but didn't succeed real well."
.....
"The horse's tremendous athletic ability, to pull up," he said. "Look at that tape, and the horse literally galloped on three legs for a few strides. He didn't drive his bad leg into the ground hard. That saved his life."
.....
Roy and Gretchen Jackson offered immediately to rent a jet to get Richardson back to Pennsylvania, but he didn't think that was a necessary expense.
"That would be like grandstanding, I thought," Richardson said.
He got on a US Airways flight out of West Palm Beach bound for Philadelphia shortly before 8 a.m. last Sunday.
"I got the back-row seat, next to the toilet," Richardson said. "If you want a real news story, (the flight) was on time."
.....
The night he arrived at New Bolton, a helicopter buzzing overhead, Barbaro had calmed down considerably. First-year resident Steven Zedler saw Barbaro lie down for two naps that first night, both for about 45 minutes. The horse made sure he put his good limb underneath him.
"Horses have to lay down in order to get REM sleep," Zedler said, referring to rapid-eye-movement stage of sleep. "One day, two days, it doesn't matter. Long-term, they start to get really sleepy and stumble occasionally. For him, it was just perfect. Some (injured) horses won't do it."
.....
He's renowned for remembering the name of every horse and every owner who comes through New Bolton. But they got him once, a year or two back. One of his buddies who is a surgeon made a referral, and somebody showed up with a lame horse. Richardson gave a full evaluation, but kept saying, "This looks like my horse.' Finally, his residents and interns couldn't hold it together any longer and admitted it. It was his horse.
.....
"I was pretty confident we were going to wake this horse up," Richardson said. "I would have said the only reason we would put this horse down - the only reason, period - would have been if I'd taken the splint off and the foot was cold and there was an obvious loss of blood supply. I would have talked to the Jacksons at that point and discussed the possibility that it might not be fair to the horse to wake it up."
Before the first incision was made, he knew the foot was warm and there were strong pulses in there. The skin was very badly bruised. If it had broken, the risk of infection would have increased dramatically.
"There's serum literally kind of oozing through the surface of the skin," Richardson said. "That's very badly bruised. But the skin isn't broken. It's about as close as it could be to being broken."
....
"He maintained his normal body temperature throughout," said the chief anesthesiologist, Bernd Driessen. "Most, over time, get cold. ... Maybe we'll find out sometime that, like Secretariat, he has an unusually large and powerful heart."
....
The only good that has come out of this, a number of Richardson's colleagues around the country mentioned, is that a linchpin of their profession got some recognition.
Not that they intend to tell him that.
"I talked to him Monday morning," said Ruggles, the Kentucky surgeon who had trained under Richardson at New Bolton. "He's an extremely competitive golfer. I told him, `I shot 76. What did you do this weekend?''' ..."
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>>>I loved that Richardson didn't sleep Saturday night, but Barbaro did! Way to "Go Barbaro Go"!
Thanks for the ping. Loved the pics posted also, a good looking colt! Sounds like he has alot of intelligence because he's done nothing to aggravate his injury. Keep it up Barbaro!
YES, pattyjo.
Great post.
Thanks for that.
Thanks very much. Glad you liked it.
HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY TO YOU AND ALL YOUR SPECIAL PEOPLE!
I sure hope there are horses in heaven.
I volunteered one summer at a Riding for the Handicapped. The delight in those children's eyes was priceless.
"I volunteered one summer at a Riding for the Handicapped. The delight in those children's eyes was priceless."
That's great. And yes, the children do light up in an extraordinary way when it comes to horses. Very few seem to be immune to the wonders of horse magic. A phenomenon unto itself.
Hope you're able to volunteer again sometime. You sound like a perfect person for that program. For those children, I should say.
I'm sure there are horses in heaven. But I hope the wonderful Barbaro has a long, long wait until entry.
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