If I break both my ankles , they can fix me , right ?

Why couldn't they do the same for that poor mare ? Can someone enlighten me ?

Horses sleep standing up; without legs, I imagine life isn't worth living for a horse. :shrug:

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, a horse that breaks its legs is economically inviable. That horse will never race again.

I mean, as far as the horse being economically inviable - sure, if some one doesn't have much money, they may have to make a tough call.

I can understand the tendency to think that the ones who own race horses are essentially business owners and see it as such. But, I believe that while there may be some of that, others see do still truly care about their horses and spend large sums to try and make them better, even if the horse will never race again. This is how Barbaro's owners were, they knew he would never race again and there was no guarantee he would have been able to be used for stud. They still spent gobs of money trying to make him better and only gave up when they could tell it was hopeless - that the horse was in too much pain.

From what I understand, Eight Belles couldn't even stand up to limp off the track. At that point, there's nothing anyone can do.

be used for breeding.

The trouble here is, two legs out of four, how is she gonna stay standing? Horses and slings don't generally work out.

...actually, she needs to stand to digest, so she can't even live...

My point was that she no longer is economically viable, even if she could physically survive.

commission temporarily (in theory).

IF we could ever find a way to get horses to accept a sling and thrive with it, we might have a better chance with their leg fractures. But as it stands right now, one leg is bad enough. A horse with TWO broken legs is a candidate for the big blue needle. But it's not because the leg(s) can't heal - it's all the logistical challenges and complications associated with having to be able to shift all that weight onto the remaining legs for the duration of the healing process..........

They were, essentially, gone.

No horse would ever stand again with those injuries.

I'm glad I haven't seen any video clips or pics of it. It sounds like she did a "Double Ruffian".

They helped in the care of Barbaro. She was really torn over the effort to save him. She loved the horse but was not too keen on the efforts to save him. It was an emotional decision to attempt to save him, not a rational decision. The odds were stacked against him. If he had compound fractures on both legs, there would not have been any question on whether to euthanize or not.

Once a horse "goes down" it has very slim odds of living.

Infections set in and the bones don't heal because it is very hard
to get a horse to not stand on it's legs. Although brutal this is the
best thing for the horse.

orthopedists were able to work some major surgical miracles, and that was 25 years ago. Things have improved since then. But a broken leg (even one) in a horse is still a major crap shoot. Most the time it comes down to exactly which bone is broken, in which leg, and into how many pieces.

A horse with a broken leg and no medical insurance is definitely a dead horse. But AFAIK all the track horses are heavily insured so if this happens they can get the care they need (unless the vet decides it's hopeless).

has worked w/ large animals about this case ... he told me that a
horse's nerves & blood vessels after a break like this have a small
chance of coming back and that even if you could get the horse
to heal that it would break again (he thought w/ out seeing the
x-rays) as soon as the animal ran on it.

depends so much on how many pieces of bone, and if a joint is involved, and of course any damage to vital structures such as nerves and blood vessels.

These are high-speed, high-impact fractures and can sometimes be explosive.

Generally after an injury like this, even if they get the bone healed, the horse would NEVER be run on it again. It would either be retired to stud, or put to use as a brood mare, or made a pet. Their athletic careers are ALWAYS 100% over after this sort of thing.

Ultimately, that's why they had to euthanize Barbaro, isn't it? I don't remember his entire story, though. But I thought they put him doen because he was suffering.

Kestrel, aren't you a vet or in that field of work? (IOW, your opinion ranks with little old me.)

So sad that horses can't be "repaired"

counterproductive except for early on. Weightbearing provides ESSENTIAL piezoelectric stimulation of the calcium crystals in the bone which tells the osteoclasts and osteoblasts to get busy rebuilding bone.

If a leg is too painful, a horse normally has three others to take up the slack. In this case, the horse had TWO bad legs, so no way to take the weight off either leg without putting TOO MUCH weight on the remaining ones.

A horse with ONE broken leg can often be fixed. A horse with TWO broken legs - I have never heard of a fix.

joints to heal after a break. You do remember Barbaro who had a similar but less serious injury, and they tried everything possible to fix his injury, and ultimately, he was euthanized too. I know how you feel, and I feel the same. WHY can't modern medicine help this poor animal? Apparently the main problem is that horses never lay down so there's no way to take the pressure off the break.

either that or I been hallucinating when I came home from work and saw mine stretched out in the sun taking a nap, flat on their sides, legs straight out.

and warm ground, lol.

You're right.

They can, and do, lie down. They can't STAY down for an extended period and and live.

Blew my mind but yes, my old gelding snores. It is pretty funny.

Off topic but I love horse stories.

But in the end, due to long-term complications at the fracture site, he wound up getting laminitis in his other feet. Laminitis is a weird horse thing - the bone at the tip of the toe rotates due to blood vessel inflammation and can poke right out the bottom of the foot. A horrific thing when it happens, and completely untreatable if it gets to that point.

Some think equine laminitis may be a model for Raynaud's phenomenon in humans........interesting.

A broken leg is a very serious, life-threatening thing for them. I've known a few horse people and when I was going to CSU (Colorado State Univ.), I knew a few people going through the veterinary school and the equine sciences courses.

They just can't heal from it like we can. They end up putting their weight on their other legs, which very quickly screws them up. Sometimes, you can save a horse by keeping him in a harness for a while, but even that solution has its own problems. If the fracture's a compound fracture (the bone fragments poke through the skin), then there's gonna be a serious infection, and antibiotic treatments just don't work very well on horses.

Horses, being dumb animals, just don't know to stay still and let themselves rest when injured like that. They'll keep trying to walk on the broken leg, hurting themselves far worse.

Read this.

http://www.slate.com/id/2142159/

I can't blame the vets on the track for putting the poor horse down on the spot. :(

of developing laminitis in your other hooves.

I'm usually against euthanasia, but this time it was the right thing to do. One ankle, she may have been able to heal. Two ankles would have been impossible. You can't keep her off both front legs. She would have suffered terribly even if they tried. It's doubtful she felt any pain from the breaks because of the adrenoline of the race. She still kept running, just wasn't as fast. The poor thing fell over when the shock of it hit her. The kindest thing they could have done is what they did. She didn't really have time to suffer. I'd spend my last dime to save a horse if there was any hope, but it really doesn't seem there is any hope for an animal of 1000lbs.

Yes, I own a couple of horses, one a Thoroughbred. She never raced although she was bred for it. NO way could I keep my girl off her front feet. It would break my heart, but if she broke both front ankles, I'd have to do the same.

They would shoot you -- but you would get to "choose" who shoots you.

Duke

:rofl:

A horse can't. They will lie down to nap a bit, or to roll, but they can't lie down for days, let alone months.

They have a primitive, delicate, digestive system. It doesn't work like cows or sheep, lying there chewing their cuds. Colic is the #1 killer of horses. It doesn't work properly lying down.

Horses put a great deal of weight on those four small (relatively speaking) hooves. Modern breeding for selective traits have horses standing on finer-boned legs and smaller feet, putting undue stress on their frames even with all 4 legs sound. Barbaro was euthanized because he developed laminitis caused by shifting too much weight to his other feet. Acute laminitis causes the hoof to separate from the bone of the foot, leaving the horse with no base to bear all that weight. Two front legs at once, even if you could stabilize them, would do so much more quickly. There was no way to get Eight Belles on to her back feet, no way to support her weight with no leg to stand on in front, even to get her loaded and moved to a clinic.

Even if she could have survived immobilized for the amount of time it would take to set and fuse those ankles, assuming that there was enough left to set, she probably would never have been able to bear full weight on them.

While many track injuries CAN be treated, there is no way that this one could. The decision to euthanize her immediately was the most humane thing to do at that point. Keeping her drugged, frightened (and a horse forced to stay down is frightened) and in pain when you know she won't make it has no purpose.

for her. Now the racing part, at least the way it is done these days, is anything but humane in many cases.

I have 7 horses and I love them like my kids but I would have made the same decision faced with those injuries. It would be a miracle if she had been able to heal but how were they even going to get her off the track?

I know it is sad and disgusting that this has happened, I shed more tears than I thought possible over this yesterday, but there is really no other thing that could have been done given the way horses are physically and mentally. It would have been torture to her to try and do more.

They are incredibly large running on the thinnest legs.

Compare a picture of Eight Belles or Barbero to say, Secretariat. The latter's legs look like tree trunks compared to toothpicks.

Unfortunately, there is no safe way to heal a horse with one bad break, much less 2. They flew Barbero to a clinic in Kennett Square PA (near some people I know) and still couldn't save him.

As sad (and ANGRY) as it made me yesterday, they made the right call putting Eight Belles out of her pain on the track yesterday. They pushed her and she responded by giving it her all in the last leg.

Sad all around.

is not necessarily true.

Generally the less complex a fracture is, and the lower down on the leg, the better the outcome. But equine surgeons have worked some major miracles over the years.

It's just always a crap shoot, because at any time that horse could founder (develop laminitis) like Barbaro and countless others and if they can't straighten THAT out PDQ, it's off to the glue factory.

One leg - potentially do-able. Two legs - not a chance.

I am just so heartbroken over the unnecessary death of this poor animal. I am just lashing out.

:(

why race horses tend to break legs just running--and two at the same time. I heard that the breeding lines actually select for weak ankle joints and that this kind of injury is not uncommon for racehorses. (i.e. the fastest ones have weak ankles) If that is true, then we should be asking why we insist on using these fine animals in such a manner.

but they can't STAY lying down. They will get lethal muscle problems. And they don't tolerate a sling under the belly to keep them on their feet. So when you combine that with TWO broken legs (one is plenty bad enough, believe me) you have a completely untenable situation.

Never gonna happen. Tragic.

This saying goes back well over a hundred years. They just can't fix some things, and putting her out of her misery is the best thing that can be done.

What I want to know is why they are allowing 2-year-olds to race? They are still children at that age and are not mature enough yet to withstand the punishment of racing. 3 is still very young, but at least the bones are hardened.

The problem is, three still isn't age of maturity for horses. They shouldn't race until they are five, but here is where economics comes into play.

but figured that this was another case of $$ trumps everything.
:hi:

For racing Thoroughbreds, Jan 1 of the year after their birth they are considered a year old. That is why you want your foal born as close to - but after - Jan 1 as possible. If a mare foaled on Dec. 31 2007, for racing purposes, that foal would be a yearling on Jan 1, 2008. That is where the confusion is coming in on the age of the horses here.

While they are, technically 3, some of them are actually 2. Most fall in the 2 1/2 to 3 year range.

For want of a shoe, the horse was lost............

Even way back when that was written, they understood how important a single foot or leg is to the usefulness of a horse.

Think about it. When was the last time you saw an amputee horse toolin' around?

in replacement hooves for foundered horses. The problem is their anatomy, they are far weirder than anybody not involved with them realizes. For example, horses cannot breathe through their mouths, therefore a cold can kill them very quickly by stuffing their nasal passage and the horse suffocates. Their hooves are essential to their heart function.

My sister worked in the industry (Hunter Jumper and Dressage competition) for many years before she switched to dogs (herding), and my family has had them forever, so I have been around them most of my life.

I'm a vet.

We had a weird horse case at CSU when I was in school. A stallion had apparently been covering a mare right after the St. Helens volcano erupted (he was in WA at the time) and the fine ash caused terrible abrasive damage to his, er, "male parts". They brought him to CSU for reconstructive surgery which went very well. They paid us students to babysit him in his padded stall (away from the mares, lol) and keep him from getting "excited", though exactly what we were to do if he did was not clear. It was important that he did not get anything resembling an erection until completely healed.

So his surgery healed beautifully, and they had to anesthetize him to remove all the sutures (don't you just LOVE how horses are??). When he was recovering from the anesthesia in the rubber room he fell down and shattered both femurs. End of story. Very expensive glue and dog food.

He was a really great horse, so gentle and sweet and not at all pissy like so many stallions. I think he was a QH? We were all in shock at the outcome. So, with horses you just never know what they are going to do to get themselves killed......

are early developers and are very strong at that time in their life.

ALL two year olds are not forced to run at two. There are few
races for them this time of year. In mid summer there start to
be more and by late fall there might be a few a week on
the card at most tracks.

Most of you who know nothing about horse racing believe
that all two year olds run in races. This is bullshit. No two
year old starts in a race unless it has progressed through its
training without any physical problems. But according to you
guys, all two year olds should be forbidden from racing based
on your misinformation about the sport.

It has been proven that there is no better way to produce a horse
with soft bones than to leave it in a field until it is three or four
before you start training it. Sensible, intelligent training at two
produces a horse with bones strong enough to race successfully.

:eyes:
:kick:

There is absolutely no way in the world that horse could survive having to shift all her weight to her back legs long enough to get any healing in those front ankles. I had a mare about six years ago who got an infection in her right front foot. While we were treating the foot and trying to keep her comfortable, given she had to assume the burden of extra weight on her other front foot and hind feet, her other front foot broke down, too, and finally she went down and could no longer get herself up, to say nothing of the horrendous pain she endured for far too long. We had to let her go and still mourn her loss. A horses' hind legs are built to drive the horse forward at speed, not for weight bearing much above 15% for each hind leg. Unfortunately it is just the physics of a horse's anatomy. A horse is built to stand on four legs--anything less is a disaster 99.99% of the time. Same thing with Barbaro a couple years ago. That was one damaged leg, but in the end it took the other three legs down, too, slings and pulleys not withstanding. There was no, zero, zilch chance to save that mare. If there were, you can bet the owners would have tried. Second place in the Derby. Belle could run with the big boys, and she proved it magnificently. May she rest in piece.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Lundstrom, we had to put your husband down. There was nothing we could do."

1. you are not a horse

2. the anatomy of a horse is significantly different from a human. horses get infections, they cant really lie down

3. cows are eaten, by that logic should we start feeding on children too?

Or, you'd be a goner.

but she kept trying to break free and injuring herself further.

In any case, they actually did try the best that veterinary science had to offer, and it was no match for the physiology and temperament of a horse.

As a child, I'd see cowboys and soldiers kill their injured horses on TV, so I assumed it was a macho thing. Finally, I asked somebody qualified and learned the truth.

:headbang:
rocknation

you don't stand most of your life.

look it up. 2 broken ankles, the dude keeps on fighting

i.e., one quasi heart in each hoof called a frog, the broken ankles would not only prevent the horse from standing, which they need to do, but most probably cut off circulation to the legs, probably causing gangrene and other complications etc.

horses sleep standing up, you can't put them on their side or back for any length of time. And it's very difficult for them to heal - their ankles are thin relative to their body weight and have poor blood flow. To take the weight off both ankles, you'd need to put the horse in a sling, but then the body weight would lead to breathing problems and lung compression.

Racehorses, especially, have very complex vasculature and enervation in their ankles. The poor horse could never eat, or breed, or stand, or anything she would find worthwhile.