Our National Sick Pet

Mike Jensen of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote: "In just a few days—having suffered his horrifying misstep at the Preakness Stakes on Saturday—Barbaro has gone from being a dominant 3-year-old racehorse to kind of our national sick pet." That seems to capture a lot of the sentiment. We love to root for the underdog—when he has a fighting chance. For many people, the routine destruction of injured horses has always seemed callous. One thing that's come out of Barbaro's story is a better explanation for why a broken leg really is a life-threatening injury to a horse; not just a career-ending one.