One of the denizens of Cattown is a horse. Abdul Cinder and I have been together for twenty years now, and if he survives the winter in North Georgia, he'll be 31 in April. Cinder has always been a wonder horse, and he deserves honorary status as a cat because he has darn near had nine lives. Cinder has survived two colic surgeries, at least three bouts of laminitis, and hurricanes Isidore and Lili (a week apart) and Katrina two years later. Post-Katrina, I moved Cinder to a retirement community in the foothills of the North Georgia mountains, out of hurricane territory. He spent most of his life in the countryside north of Atlanta, and I plan to let him live out his days there -- with his longtime vets nearby.
Cinder is the horse my mother wouldn't let me have when I was ten. Back in those days, I was a horse crazy little girl (I still am, for that matter). Through Walter Farley's Black Stallion novels, I was introduced to the world of horse racing. My mother was embarrassed to hear me spout off about race horses like some racetrack tout, but there was no holding me back. I followed the races at the New Orleans Fair Grounds, watching them on television every chance I got. Back then, you had to be 18 to get into the track, because you might be corrupted by all the gambling going on. (I have been to the Fair Grounds twice this season, and trust me, there are little kids running all over the place. Clearly, I was born a generation or so too early.) I had no interest in gambling. I just loved to watch the horses run. (I still do.)
I loved a horse named Tenacious, who won a number of stakes races at the Fair Grounds and held the track record for six furlongs for quite awhile. (I was tickled to discover that the Fair Grounds now has a stakes race named for him.) I watched my first Kentucky Derby on television in 1961 and loved the winner, Carry Back, who had a distinguished racing career as well. I haven't missed a single Derby since 1961, and one of my life's goals is to go to the Derby one day, although friends in Louisville tell me that it is like Bourbon Street on Mardi Gras, not one of my favorite places to be, and I can see a lot more at home on TV.
Twenty years ago, when I was looking for a horse to buy, I learned a few things about horses that I didn't know when I was a child. (I have learned a LOT more things about horses in the years I've had Cinder, and I still have lots to learn.) One thing I learned was that a horse's legs don't fully develop until it is five years old -- its knees don't fill in until it's five. This is why the hunter-jumper people don't start training horses to jump over fences until they are five.
The horse racing people start running colts and fillies on the track at two and three years old. The Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, the Belmont Stakes and many of the other top races are exclusively for three-year-olds. These young horses are being raced before their legs are fully developed.
When I found that out, it cooled my ardor quite a bit for horse racing. I had always known it was dangerous, but now I began to learn about the toll it takes on a young horse's legs -- and back as well. In my days of hanging out with Cinder at various boarding facilities, I ran into a number of folks who had bought thoroughbreds off the track, and I learned a lot about the injuries they can develop by being raced so early in life.
And beautiful Barbaro was one such horse. I saw him break down in the Preakness, and I bawled like a baby. What a beautiful, talented young horse, so full of life! If you watched the race, you know that he was so eager to run that he broke out of the starting gate before the race and took off down the track. His jockey had to pull him up and bring him back. It was at the second start that his leg snapped in three places.
It is a great tribute to the progress that has been made in veterinary medicine that they were able to take such heroic measures to save Barbaro. And I give a lot of credit to his owners. It would have been a lot easier to put him down right there at the track and collect the insurance money. (Race horses are insured out the wazoo for just such injuries.) They really tried to save him.
I know a thing or two, but by no means everything, about laminitis. Cinder has had it and is at risk for getting it again. It is an inflammation of the foot or feet. A horse's foot is encased in a solid hoof wall. When it gets inflamed, the swollen tissue has nowhere to expand. So the inflammation actually pushes bones in the foot out of place as it tries to find ways to expand. This is called "rotation of the coffin bone." As far as I know, when that coffin bone is moved out of place, it's permanent, and it can cause lameness -- sometimes to the point that the horse has to be put down. And laminitis -- which is also called "founder" -- is extremely painful. It is awful to see your horse standing in the pasture, his feet hurting so much that he can't walk. He rocks back on his heels to take some of the pressure off his toes (the front of the hoof), where the pain is worst. Anti-inflammatory drugs help, but they also eat up the stomach lining, so there is a limit to how much can be given. Cinder's laminitis comes from a thyroid problem called Cushing's Disease. Barbaro's laminitis developed because he had to put the weight normally distributed between two back legs onto one while the broken bones healed. (There are other causes for laminitis as well.)
I recently got to see some two-year-old fillies in the paddock area before a race. Their legs were like matchsticks, so thin and so fragile. The following week I was up in Georgia with Cinder, and his thirty-year-old legs are at least twice the size of those fillies'. Yet he could take a misstep and break a leg out in his pasture one day too -- just like humans when we get old. But he's managed to make it all these years, and beautiful Barbaro never had that chance.
Barbaro, we hardly knew ye.
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