I got to thinking about horses like Icecoldbeeratreds who broke his shoulder and had to be euthanized. In the case sesamoid injuries, shoulder fractures and the like, what are some examples of automatic deal breakers in terms of needing euthanasia versus "slim shot but it might happen if we're lucky" recovery situations? You occasionally see horses with recovering sesamoid injuries up for adoption. What, if any, is the treatment for a broken shoulder? That last question was my main thought I'd like discussed but I also figured it'd be educational for me to hear "well if x, y, or z broke this way, then they'd have to be put down. There's no way at all to get out of it sadly." I'd just like to be more educated when something happens to a horse in a race to know the likelihood of survival when they say what the problem is. Example: How much chance did Exogenous ever really have? I got my hopes up that she didn't hit her head too hard but I didn't know if I had enough facts to base it on from the media at the time. Would horsemen/women watching on tv have been able to figure it wasn't gonna be good at all in the end?
Thanks
Question about injuries
Moderators: Roguelet, hpkingjr, WaveMaster
We had a horse fracture a sesamoid in a race. In his case, the injury wasn't life threatening, but we retired him (we didn't want to let him recover and run him again on sensitive joints) and gave him to someone on the condition that he never be raced again. He became a lovely riding horse.
I think it really just depends on the extent of the fractures and the horse's future endeavors. Some folks are simply not patient enough to wait for a racehorse to recover from a disabling injury. Other horses are too valuable in the stud to risk racing them again.
We had a really nice gelding who never raced for us because he tore a tendon as a two year old. We gave him nearly a year to recover, and he tore the same one again in a different place during a workout. His tendon was just like swiss cheese, and any racing strain was going to stress it. He was sold as a riding horse after the tendon healed sufficiently.
I think it really just depends on the extent of the fractures and the horse's future endeavors. Some folks are simply not patient enough to wait for a racehorse to recover from a disabling injury. Other horses are too valuable in the stud to risk racing them again.
We had a really nice gelding who never raced for us because he tore a tendon as a two year old. We gave him nearly a year to recover, and he tore the same one again in a different place during a workout. His tendon was just like swiss cheese, and any racing strain was going to stress it. He was sold as a riding horse after the tendon healed sufficiently.