Hang on Barbaro!

Some very interesting parallels with Secretariat's losing bout with laminitis and Ruffian's failure to respond to surgery. Check out this article on DRF site:
Stopping treatment a complicated choice

Sabina Louise Pierce / Univ. of Pennsylvania Dr. Dean Richardson said Barbaro's comfort level and long-term outlook are foremost.

By GLENYE CAIN
LEXINGTON, Ky. - Thursday's news that Barbaro's prognosis had darkened because of acute laminitis in his left hind leg does not mean, his surgeon said, that the colt's destruction is imminent.

"I think you always have to weigh whether the treatment is going anywhere, and obviously you don't want the animal to suffer," said Stuart Janney III. Janney's family campaigned the champion Ruffian, who suffered a catastrophic breakdown in 1975 during a match race with Foolish Pleasure at Belmont Park. The Janneys agreed to surgery, a new and unusual option at the time, but the effort failed and Ruffian was humanely destroyed on July 7, 1975.

"We felt we had to do it," Janney said of the surgery. "But it had to be with the understanding not to put an animal through senseless suffering for a result that wasn't going to be positive."

"It's a gray area," said Gus Koch, manager of Claiborne Farm in Paris, Ky. Claiborne stood 1973 Triple Crown winner Secretariat, who died in 1989 after battling laminitis for several weeks. "In Secretariat's case, we went into it with the attitude that we are not going to let this horse suffer needlessly. He started to recover, and we thought he was improving, and then he regressed. It's a painful condition, and when he regressed, that's when the decision was made to euthanize him. He was in pain. The main decision was that the horse was suffering and it looked hopeless."

Veterinarians could tell objectively that Secretariat's condition was worsening, Koch said, because they could measure the rotation of the coffin bone, the main bone inside the horse's foot, which rotates down and eventually through the sole of the hoof in severe cases of laminitis. But it wasn't just the X-rays that indicated Secretariat was in trouble; it was his general deme anor, including a decreased appetite, weight loss, and general discomfort.

"He had pain, and he showed it like any horse," Koch recalled. "He was sore, and it was hard to keep condition on him."

"If we can't keep him comfortable, we will not continue," Richardson said.