Yes...this is nothing than a purely sentimental blog piece on a horse no one knew personally, but symbolized so much. And if you have ever loved and lost a pet, you will allow this segway without sniping...
Barbaro, in case you all have been out of the country, was the Chester County horse who won the Kentucky Derby by over six lengths in May 2006.
His leg snapped a couple weeks later at the Preakness.
Barbaro survived so much, we all took it for granted he would get better. Today, his owners said good-bye when it became apparent he wouldn't get better.
That is the thing about owning animals - (and they aren't just investments or furry accessories with legs) - knowing when to say good bye.
Just like two of our SAC members recently shed many a tear saying good-bye to their cat, we're sure it isn't any easier for the Jackson family and the vets who knew that today they had to say good bye to Barbaro.
RIP Big guy. May there be forever fields of clover and apple trees for you now.....
Kentucky Derby champion Barbaro euthanized
By Mike Jensen
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Eight months after he romped to a 61/2-length victory in the 132d Kentucky Derby in front of 157,536 people at fabled Churchill Downs, Barbaro was euthanized, according to co-owner Roy Jackson.
Owned by Roy and Gretchen Jackson of West Grove, Chester County, Barbaro became far more famous for his battle to live at New Bolton than he ever had been for his great feats on the racetrack.
"We knew we had to put him down," Gretchen Jackson said today. "It was too much, and the guy didn't need to go through anymore."
Both Roy and Gretchen Jackson were with Barbaro when he was euthanized by injection in his stall around 10:30 this morning, Gretchen Jackson said.
"He was the same, which made it hard," she said. "It's just so hard for Dean [Richardson, Barbaro's surgeon], and it wasn't great for anybody."
They had talked about the options with Richardson, earlier in the morning.
"It is rough, but not to be there is rough," Gretchen Jackson said of being in the stall at the end.
"He's been a friend or whatever, everything to us... I think we've been concerned about him for a while. We just wanted the right moment where he's still himself. I think it had reached the point where it was timely."
A champion until the end
Barbaro touched us with his grace and fighting spirit
The first flowers arrived on the morning after the Preakness, a breezy and sunlit springtime Sunday that turned the rolling hills a brilliant shade of green in Pennsylvania horse country south of Philadelphia. Signs were hung from the wooden fence rails outside the New Bolton Center, where Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro was being treated for what surgeons would soon call "catastrophic'' injuries to his right hind leg. A family arrived with a bunch of carrots and asked that they be given to the horse.
The love never ceased. When May turned to June and then June to July and it appeared that Barbaro might steadily be winning a battle for survival that surgeon Dr. Dean Richardson called, from the very beginning, "a coin toss,'' the tokens came less frequently. It was as if the public felt the big horse no longer needed its care because he was doing so well on his own.
But in the second week of July, when Barbaro developed a terrible case of laminitis in his left hind foot -- the good one -- the flowers again began piling up at the hospital. After Christmas he appeared to be doing better, but he suffered a severe setback last week when he developed an abscess in his right hind foot and had to undergo another surgery. The pain was too much for the horse to bear. When he was euthanized on Monday, a profound sadness fell across the sport, and far beyond, touching humans in ways they could not explain.
His passing can be measured in many ways. The sport lost a giant talent who might have won the Triple Crown (he might, in fact, have dominated the Triple Crown; more on that later). It lost a sire whose impact might have been felt for many generations to follow. It lost a champion whose class and bravery -- before and after his injury -- were inspiring and lent a visceral touch to a sport that is rapidly becoming disconnected from human emotions.
His passing, upon further review, is immeasurable.
