Art Collector, winner of more than $4 million, was euthanized today after suffering from laminitis. The 6-year old son of Bernadini most recently won the 2023 G1 Pegasus World Cup. Trainer Bill Mott said Art Collector first showed signs of an issue a couple of days after he worked five furlongs over Saratoga’s Oklahoma training track on Aug. 5. What first appeared to be a foot abscess quickly developed into laminitis, which affected all four feet.
Having recently lost a horse to laminitis, I know only all too well how quickly the disease can progress and how devasting it is to watch your horse suffer.
“He started to develop laminitis a couple of days ago and he went in a hurry,” Mott told the Thoroughbred Daily News. “He had a very good work on the fifth of August and was fine the next day. Then he developed what appeared to be a small foot abscess two days later. We were soaking it and treating it. We didn’t think it was going to be anything serious, but it developed into laminitis in all four feet. He was with us in Saratoga and was in his stall. He started to get real uncomfortable on Tuesday. Yesterday was a bad day and it was getting worse and we had to make the decision to put him asleep.”
My heart goes out to Art Collector’s connections. This was a hard decision to make but they chose to keep their horse comfortable.
The two great killers of horses: colic and founder. What a shame. I’m so glad they didn’t let him suffer once they realized what was going on. Just like you, they made the right decision.
Many years ago, as a teen, I worked at my neighbor’s QH breeding farm. They bred and showed halter horses. The only horse on the farm that was broke to ride was their stallion. I didn’t get paid, but..if you’re a horseman, you understand what we do when we’re horse crazy. . What I did earn was a wealth of knowledge that has stood me and my horses in good stead for my whole life.
In some cases, these halter people taught me what NOT to do. Inadvertantly, mind you.
Greed was at the base of some of their decisions. One of them was a black colt, they’d tried for years to get a black foal from their ‘sorrel’ stallion. (I call it chestnut, but the QH and westerners call it sorrel.) They finally got one out of a black Appendix mare who, at 25, should have been retired from breeding. Anyway, at two years old, the colt foundered in both front feet. (as an aside, so many of the stallion’s get developed navicular at five, six years of age. Being that he himself wieghed 1100 lbs and was 15.2, yet had 00 feet, …..it was no wonder.)
Anyway, the things they put that poor colt through. He’d rotated so badly he could nothing more than walk, painfully. Stall rest, daily applications of bandages, they used an ultrasound on him, soaked him…and to no avail. They finally had to put him down after what I can only say was torment for six months.
That’s such a sad story about the colt. One of the things I appreciate, although it can be difficult at the time, is my vet doesn’t pull punches. If it’s bad, it’s bad. He looks at the quality of life for the horse.