I’m scratching my head over my mare, Barely Black. She broke her leg at a walk back in late November (11/25/11), but prior to that she showed great promise. I started doing low impact workouts in July and after a month of no injuries and increasing intensity, I sent her out to race with bated breath. She has since bombed every single race I’ve thrown at her. I don’t know if this means she’s already over the hill, or if she’s still not yet 100% healed, or if her injury was such that she’ll never run successfully again even if she never injures herself again. Did I know wait long enough before throwing her on the track? Is there anyway to make her win again–in your opinion–or should I just cut my losses and retire her at the beginning of next year?
I’m just really bummed about her, because I had such high hopes for her and she broke her leg through a coding glitch (workouts being run twice in 1 day).
Broken legs take roughly a year to fully heal. Injured horses take not only a hit on their soundness (b/c they’re more likely to re-injure themselves), but also on speed, stamina, acceleration, etc., by running on an injury.
Good to know. For some reason I thought that it was 8 to 9 months, and the fact that she hadn’t injured herself again/was cooperative during rehab was a sign she was all healed. Hopefully I haven’t done too much damage by running her too soon.
This whole patience thing is just way too hard for me.
IMHO… I’d say race her till the end of the year. That way she’ll give an account of what she can and will do. With what I saw of her pedigree you could and maybe should retire her to broodmare and raise what I think will be wonderful babies!!!
