Not all the news from the world of horseracing is as bleak as the gloomy news from California’s Del Mar Racetrack reported last week on The Jurga Report. Breakdowns and cardiac arrests had led to the deaths or euthanization of ten horses.
But elsewhere, there is reason to smile. And on Saturday, that smile turned into a big grin as an underdog won one of America’s greatest turf races. Hardest Core wasn’t expected to beat the likes of a Coolmore invader from Europe, but he did just that in the Arlington Million outside Chicago.
Everyone likes to see an underdog win, but this underdog has a medical file an inch thick at the University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center. When his castration surgery was complicated by a hernia back in November, he ended up on the operating table at New Bolton, with surgeon Louise Southwood–who also operated on the intestines of colitis-surviving racehorse Paynter.
“Our Dr. Louise Southwood performed intestinal surgery that saved his life,” New Bolton Center announced proudly on their Facebook page today. The horse is owned by Andrew Bentley Racing Stable; the Bentley family lives near the famous vet hospital campus.
“We weren’t sure if he was going to get up, by some miracle he got up. We got him to the New Bolton Center (in Pennsylvania) and…they cut like 15-18 feet (of his intestines),” trainer Edward Graham is quoted as having told the Lexington Herald-Leader’s Alicia Wincze Hughes.
No two colic stories are ever alike, and the graphic details related by Edward Graham certainly trump the laid-back explanation of Kentucky trainer Charlie LoPresti about the colic “surgery” at Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital for two-time Horse of the Year Wise Dan this spring.
Did Wise Dan have colic? Oh, yes. Did he have surgery? Oh, yes. Or maybe not. How do you define colic surgery? Charlie does a great job of explaining the great gelding’s experience with colic in this video, courtesy of The Paulick Report.
So, yes, Wise Dan is a survivor of colic surgery but, if Charlie LoPresti’s description is medically accurate, his recovery would be not be as complicated as a horse whose intestines had been surgically altered. But he did still have the impact of a surgical incision, examination, and general anesthesia.
To achieve a proper saddle fit, your saddle gullet width needs to be appropriate for your horse. Watch this saddle fitting video to learn how to determine the saddle gullet width your horse needs and how to identify a saddle that has the correct saddle gullet width.
This video is the third in a series of nine great videos that will help you learn the points of saddle fitting. See below for links to the other saddle fit videos.
Brought to you by Jochen Schleese, who is a certified master saddler, a faculty member of the German Riding School and the founder of Saddlefit 4 Life and Schleese.
