A new book written by BloodHorse senior columnist Jay Hovdey, "Well Armed: A Thoroughbred of Destiny," tells the story of the horse overcoming physical setbacks to win the 2009 Dubai World Cup (G1) as well as the story of the owners, Bill and Susan Casner, and how the horse provided hope after the loss of their daughter Karri Casner in 2002. Well Armed was born in 2003 on what would have been Karri's 24th birthday.
The publisher has shared an excerpt for readers of BloodHorse Daily. The excerpt, Chapter 7, "A Miracle Recovery," looks at an extended rehabilitation for Well Armed at age 3 and 4.
The book can be purchased at www.WellArmedBook.com.
A Miracle Recovery
When it comes to the results of equine joint surgery, there are no guarantees, even though orthopedic procedures had improved by leaps and bounds through the last decades of the 20th century.
Cannon bone fractures could be stabilized with stainless steel screws, while bone chips found in knees and ankles could be removed arthroscopically, making for faster and better chances for recovery and rehabilitation. Where once an owner was grateful if their injured racehorse would be declared "pasture sound," medical procedures had progressed to the point where that same Thoroughbred might be able to race again.
The bone chip found in Well Armed's left knee was of no particular consequence. Its position allowed for removal with an excellent prognosis for complete recovery. Dr. William Baker, who pioneered arthroscopic equine surgery in the early 1980s, performed the procedure shortly after the horse returned from Dubai at his Woodford Equine Clinic in Versailles, not far from WinStar Farm.
"Everything went very well," Bill Casner said. "Then three days later I got the call from Dr. Natanya Neiman, the farm vet. He had fractured his right hip, and knocked off a pretty good chunk of that bone. I was devastated."
Casner had every right to be. Not only was Well Armed a valuable Thoroughbred commodity, with solid prospects of a profitable career once the relatively minor knee injury had been resolved, but he also was nothing less than Karri Casner's spirit animal, a manifestation of her missing presence in the lives of her family. For this horse to have incurred such an unnecessary calamity was almost too much to bear.
"How he did it will forever be a mystery," Casner said. "We can speculate, but we will never know for sure."
Casner rushed to the barn and beheld Well Armed standing on three legs in obvious discomfort.
"You could tell he was in a lot of pain," Casner said. "I was devastated. At one point, a vet said that euthanasia might be necessary if he developed laminitis in the opposite rear leg. But that was out of the question, at least until every possible option was exhausted. And I know, if Well Armed could have spoken, he would have said, 'I'll beat this.'"
The equine pelvis represents the largest bone complex in the body, a joining of matching spheres that supports the hind legs and is laced with an intricate network of muscles, ligaments, nerves, and blood vessels. Viewed from above, the top of the bone structure flares to the left and right in the form of wide, flat wings, whose edges present themselves from the outside as the hips flanking either side of the spine. It was the right hip Well Armed fractured.
"Dr. Neiman saved Well Armed," Casner said. "She used all of her skills to mitigate the pain where he could put occasional weight on the injured side, allowing the opposite rear leg to rest periodically and prevent laminitis.
"It was several months before we could bring him home to the Texas ranch," Casner said. "By then, there had been so much atrophy that the whole hip had dropped. We began his rehab and started swimming him as soon as we could."
Well Armed swam as a yearling. He swam in England with Clive Brittain. And now he was swimming again, back in the Casners' deep, invigorating pond just down the road from the main barn. The initial goal was to salvage a quality of life Well Armed so richly deserved. Casner set his jaw and devised a plan that would take consummate patience and dedication on the part of both man and beast.
"When we started swimming him, we only gave him one lap around the swimming island," Casner said. "Then after a while, I'd do some interval work with him--swim him out and around the island, take him out, and then go back in the pool a little while later. He was so weak on that side, he was basically swimming with three legs. It forced him to use the injured leg. But that was the only way he was ever going to build that leg back up, if he was forced to use it."
Well Armed's program included time spent on a surface of deep sand in an automatic walker, designed to let him move at a steady pace as he tested the recovery of the hip.
"The strength came back to it over a period of time," Casner said. "His pelvis was actually tilted, then as the strength came back, everything started to correct as the muscle balance returned. We played it by ear, determining what he could take. We were going pretty lightly until he got to a point where we saw he was starting to handle it better and better. So we poured a little more into him. There came a time when he was walking two hours in the morning, then going down and swimming after lunch."
Well Armed was walking those two hours under a stock saddle, which can weigh about fifty pounds. As Well Armed grew stronger, Casner would drape over the saddle what he described as an "old Pony Express mail pouch," while gradually adding more lead weight. This went on, month after month, the man and his horse, with the help of the dedicated ranch crew, devoting more and more time to the recovery process.
"When a horse has a layoff, they lose bone," Casner said. "Mother Nature is always looking for efficiency. So when they're idle, their bone becomes less dense. We needed to account for that. Bone responds to muscle contraction, and when that muscle contracts, the signal is going to the bone, as well as the endocrine system, to build more bone. A lot of horses coming back will fracture their shoulder, a common injury, because you haven't paid attention to bone loss. That's why swimming is such a great rehab tool.
"You see, horses breathe heavy after a race because of heat dissipation," Casner said, explaining how body temperature is so important to recovery. "They're a huge animal, and they have all this internal heat, so they're trying to cool down. That's the great thing about swimming. It keeps their internal temperature down, and they recover a lot quicker. It allows for a much more intense workout.
"Well Armed was up to swimming twenty-two, twenty-three laps, a whole lot more than most horses," Casner said. "Some of them you'll see trying to swim only with their front legs. They have to learn to use all four, get their butt up, so that they get the most benefit on their top line. Well Armed was like a cigarette boat going around there. When he'd come out, he'd take about three or four breaths, and he was stable. Wouldn't have blown out a candle."
As Well Armed progressed, life went on beyond the gates of Casner Ranch. Out in the racing world, the 2006 season drew to an end with the presentation of the Breeders' Cup at Churchill Downs. Invasor won the Breeders' Cup Classic for the Shadwell Stable of Sheikh Hamdan al Maktoum, Sheikh Mohammed's older brother, while Sheikh Mohammed finished second with Bernardini. Bluegrass Cat, the star of the WinStar racing stable, did not make it to the Classic, having fractured an ankle while finishing second to Bernardini in the Travers Stakes that summer.
At one point, as Well Armed began to thrive during his recovery program, Casner had to leave the ranch on business.
"I thought we were ready to top out on his laps," Casner said. "I told Chop Chop, my man in charge, that in a couple of days he could increase him a lap. I guess there was kind of a miscommunication. He thought I meant increase him a lap every two days. So he did. When I got back, I asked him, 'Quantos vueltas?' How many laps? He answered, 'Oh, treinta cinco.'
"Thirty-five! That was fifteen more laps than any horse before."
By then, Well Armed's day looked like this: Two hours on the walker in the morning under stock saddle weighted to about 125 pounds, followed by lunch, then those thirty-five laps in the pool. Soon they added thirty minutes in the covered arena, with Casner in the saddle--the same Bill Casner who was paid a dollar extra for galloping tough horses in his racetrack youth.
"It was during those last thirty days that I rode him myself around the arena," Casner said. "Getting on him in the afternoon, you would have thought he would have been tired after all he'd done in the morning, on the walker and in the pool. But nope. He was a fresh horse."
Almost too fresh.
"He was so quick," Casner said. "I had to watch him all the time. I mean, he was tough and strong, and then boom! He'd do a do-si-do, and you'd better be screwed down. If you weren't heads up, he could drop you in a second. And he was always looking for an excuse. Birds. He'd see a bird and boom!"
The cowboy in Casner was loving the challenge, mostly because of what Well Armed was communicating by his emphatic behavior.
"When a horse is like that, you know they're not hurting," Casner said. "I'd ride him for about thirty minutes every day--jog, jog, jog--and then I'd gallop him some. I threw so much at him, really poured the coal to him, but I never threw him more than what he could take. It was all done over a nine-month period, gradually building him up."
Come the spring of 2007, Casner proclaimed the horse sound and fit enough to head back to WinStar for more formal training, with the goal of a return to racing. Well Armed had been gelded. He had grown to nearly 17 hands and was close to what would be his optimum running weight of 1,275 pounds.
"When I sent him to WinStar, they jogged him for a month," Casner recalled. "They were very conservative. That's when I called Eoin Harty. I told him, 'It's time for him to come to you. You test this horse. I know he's got talent. And he's fit. After what he's been through, he's got nothing to lose.'"
