final."

Afleet Alex' first foals were born within the last several days. A daughter of Alex was born

Saturday night at Mark Reid's Walnut Green Farm, a few miles from New Bolton.

"We got really lucky with

Alex," Jen said.

Remember how close Alex came to going down in the 2005 Preakness, a few hundred yards from where Barbaro's leg blew apart last May at Pimlico?

"He wasn't able to be a horse, walk around," Reeves said of

Barbaro.

The people, inside and outside racing, got it. They sent e-mails by the hundreds wanting to know every little detail about Barbaro, sharing their innermost thoughts and feelings, because it was important to them.

"The Barbaro story hits me in a different place," wrote Suzy Stepnowski, who grew up in a small town in North Jersey. " I love horses."

She befriended a "blackish gray named Donny Brooke" and visited him whenever she could.

"He looked forward to seeing me everyday," she wrote. "Never wanted me to leave. When I would start to pack up his brushes at the end of the night he would close the stable door with his head knowing I was too small to get out.

"He even saved my life one day when we were riding. We landed in a rabbit hole and were going down. He threw his body in the other direction so that he wouldn't land on me. He got cut up by the fence and I didn't have a scratch. He crawled over on his belly and hit me with his head to make sure I was OK. I was but he was bleeding. Nothing bad but I was just a kid and scared as could be. He was fine and we had many more years of great afternoons together."

She watched the Preakness like millions of others.

"When Barbaro went down my heart stopped as so many others did," she wrote. "I watched the news and the Internet for word every moment of the day."

Sandie Dennis from Greensboro, N.C., summed up so many feelings up so well when she wrote: "This horse and his caregivers have captured something in many, many people - horse lovers and regular people alike. They give us hope and they show us courage."

The owners, Roy and Gretchen Jackson, got it. The trainer, Michael Matz, got it. The vet,

Dr. Dean Richardson, got it.

"I have very positive thoughts," Gretchen Jackson said. "It was a brilliant time . . . It was great that we had so many people that adored him."