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Originally Posted by golfer
It certainly seems like the Vet, Dr Pelphrey, didn't do his job very well.
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This is the correct answer. They should be going after him for negligence.
If the horse came out of a 6/25 allowance race with shins, it's pretty standard practice of administering a course of anti-inflamatory and pain relieving meds.
Michael Meuser, a Lexington-based attorney who is representing the defendants, contends Reddam and his agents were informed of Big Picture's condition and "radiographs taken at the time showed that he had gotten over his shins. We're not aware of any other problems. Anything that was wrong with this horse, they were told about. We don't think there was any basis for returning" the horse to Ramsey.
Meuser said there is no evidence Big Picture's shin problem was chronic at the time. He said the injury was pointed out both to Pelphrey -- who did not report it, according to O’Neill -- and a representative of Reddam who watched the horse jog.
"I hate to think what would happen to the racing industry if everybody who bought a horse at Keeneland or some other place" could back out of the sale afterward, Meuser said. "There is no right of return."
Pelphrey claims in his deposition that he notified O’Neill and others about the condition, telling the trainer, “If you want a fast horse, he’s fast. But he’s not perfectly clean.”
The horse was sold on 7/10 with the expectation that he would go in the Oceanside stakes at Del Mar two weeks later.
Reddam had no horse for the race and was scrambling to get one, and no one plaintiff's side of the aisle wanted to hear a peep to the contrary - and the Vet staked his retutation on a bad gamble.
A report from Dr. Rick Arthur, now the CHRB's equine medical director but at the time in private practice, after an examination of Big Picture July 12, 2005, found "subchondral bone defects in the fore fetlocks…are likely to be progressive in nature and result in serious irreversible lameness."
Not sure how anti-inflamitories and pain relievers can mask bone defects, I think an X-ray by the inspecting vet would have been pretty definative.
I have no love for the Ramsey's, but they have become a staple in the industry based on their reputation...