From what I've seen of him I'm betting that BAF would go three parts nuts after a couple of weeks R & R. He's got a terrific constitution & you can bet your last dollar that the horse is one of those wonderful buggers that just LOVES to be in the stable environment in work & competing, that's how he rolls, that's what makes him the great racehorse he is. Golden Reign was like that too. They put him in a paddock and all he did was walk & walk & walk the fences. The bigger the paddock the further he walked. Retiring BAF could easily be mentally harder on the horse than keeping him going could ever be physically.
That is invariably why they're GC horses though breno. It's their attitude.
They LOVE it. I can't recall ever hearing of a GC horse that didn't like racing...can you?
How many really good horses have had to be forced to do it ?
Everyone loves the horse breno and they all fear something happening to him. I realise that. The story has been more than just a bit sensationalised too which doesn't help.
Diagnosed quickly and treated properly, if the resting heart rate is less than 60bpm, if the fibrillation has been going on for less than 4 months & if there's no associated heart murmur to speak of...then there's a better than 95% recovery rate from Atrial Fibrillation. Even with readings that exceed those parameters there's still an 80%+ chance of a complete recovery.
The reason I know all this is because we had one that this happened to so I read all about it & found out as much as I could. The drug that's used is called Quinidine btw. It is a very slow process, crush the tablets, mix them up with to make a drench and tube the horse every 2 hours for as long as it takes to bring the heart back into a normal rhythm with the Vet standing by in case of colic etc. Alistair took our one home with him so he could do the tubing & monitor proceedings.
For somebody who doesnt know anything about it the stats are good to hear; rather than people just automatically thinking it must be a be all and end all situation.
Just out of interests sake is the tablet swabbable and how long does it take to get out of their system?
i dont fall for the horse needs to be worked...
hes just used to the routine of it, leave him long enough and he'll be fine
G'day breno,
Quinidine is a pretty old school simple compound so I imagine it would stand out like dogs balls. It's a 4 score and 7 years ago substance, has been around for ever....used heavily by the troops throughout the Pacific during WW2. The thing is, for use in horses with fibrillation it's not just 1 tablet either. You have to get a whole heap of them, shell packets & packets thereof, and pound them into a powder/paste and then mix it with some water or a saline drench and then tube the horse every 2hrs or so until the beat goes back to normal. It does have a myriad of other influences but it is also toxic if used incorrectly.
He is out of the Inter market, after orignally being marked (doubtful).
BUGGER! I was looking forward to seeing him pound the Kiwis.