wonderful world of
Disney. There will be no lifting orchestra music, no gallop into
a sky-blue horizon, no big audience ovation as the story ends and the credits roll.
Barbaro's tale ends sadly.
Maybe not tragically, because as many have pointed out, this was an animal after all, and there are so many other things going on out there that constitute tragedy before this does.
Can we settle on a tear-jerker then? Can we empathize with the people who cared so deeply for this horse over the last 8 months, who invited us into their world,
who wore their hearts on their rolled-up sleeves as they went about
the day-to-day, sometimes
hour-to-hour task of keeping this horse alive?
Because in the end, this was not a horse story. It was a people story. It was about Roy and Gretchen Jackson and it was about Dr. Dean Richardson, the optimistic vet who tried all sorts of remedies to correct
Barbaro's mounting physical
ailments, and who made the
courageous call, along with the Jacksons, to end the horse's life yesterday morning rather than putting it through any prolonged pain.
In the end it was about us, too. Anyone who got drawn into the story, anyone who stopped what they were doing and felt a winter-chill sadness when they heard the news yesterday. For some, Barbaro was the racehorse that embodied and exemplified what that sport is about. Barbaro was our conduit into horse racing, a sport forever teetering on the thin line that separates sadness from euphoria, and high risk from high reward.
It is an odd mix of hot-blooded hearts and cold-hearted calculation, horse racing is. There are no in-betweens, just degrees on both ends. Richardson made that clear yesterday, clearer than any prognosis he ever
offered about the horse. He was asked if there was ever a time "or moment" when he "actually felt like [Barbaro] was going to make it through this?"
"Yeah," he said. "Because I'm human."
As we all are. Richardson
later was asked why he thought the world wrapped its arms around Barbaro. "I think he was loved because he was a great athlete," he said. "And
people love greatness."
It was the most off he has been in analyzing things over
the last 8 months. There have been plenty of horses who have captured our fancy over those spring months that constitute the Triple Crown season, great horses, but most have slipped from our collective conscious by fall.
We were sucked in as much by Barbaro's vulnerability as we were his majesty. We love animals for both these traits in
varying degrees, but ultimately what personalizes them for us is the former and not the latter. Horse-racing people will tell you every horse runs the risk of breaking down every time it
