Barbaro's Survival 50-50 After Surgery - Yahoo! News

A bad leg fracture in any horse, much less a Thoroughbred racehorse, is usually a death sentence; this is the reason that horses are typically euthanized after such an injury, to save the animal from protracted suffering in what is an almost inevitably bad and painful death.

But when the horse in question is as special as Barbaro, who has never lost a race and was this year's consensus contender for the Triple Crown, everyone involved felt they had to try. Barbaro will certainly never race again, but if he survives the complicated surgery he just underwent at the large-animal veterinary equivalent of the Mayo Clinic, he has a promising and not-unpleasant future ahead of him as an equine gigolo a stud:

Barbaro underwent more than five hours of surgery Sunday to repair rear leg bones he'd broken in the Preakness, calmly awoke from anesthesia and 'practically jogged back to his stall' for something to eat.

His survival, however, is still 50-50.

Despite the huge first step on the road to recovery, Dr. Dean Richardson said the Kentucky Derby winner's fate still came down to 'a coin toss.'

'Right now he's very happy,' Richardson said after the surgery at the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center for Large Animals. 'He's eating, he's doing very good. But I've been doing this too long to know that day one is not the end of things.'

I am the furthest thing imaginable from a 'horsey' person, but I do wish this magnificent animal well.

Barbaro's Survival 50-50 After Surgery - AP via Yahoo! News