Comeback Horses!

[Rupert Pupkin]

Originally Posted by Sightseek

It was Insurance Premiums that kept him from coming back not a condylar fracture.

It wasn't the insurance premiums. It was the injury. The owners had their hearts set on bringing him back. When I saw him work in the Fall, I could see he wasn't the same horse. He wasn't moving right. They did some more x-rays and realized that the horse could not run any more. The vets would not give him the go-ahead when they realized the extent of the damage to the bone. He had something called avascular necrosis which means the bone had become brittle and lost its spongy characteristic. According to Dr. Bramlage's diagnosis, the horse would have needed another 9 months for the bone to heal and even after that, the bone still would probably not have looked good enough for the horse to get the green light to run again.

So the best case scenario for AA was that there was a small chance that he could run again if they gave him a year off. That's not a very good prognosis. That's why he was retired.