KENNETT SQUARE, Pa. -- Among zookeepers, farmers and the horse set, the University of Pennsylvania's George D. Widener Hospital for Large Animals is renowned.
But it took Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro to make the institution - and the veterinary surgeon chiefly overseeing the horse's recovery from a devastating Preakness Stakes leg injury - the center of attention.
"Horses elicit a pretty deep, visceral response for a whole lot of people because of their strength, elegance and power," says Dr. Dean Richardson, the talkative and personable surgeon who - if all continues to go well - might become known as the vet who saved Barbaro.
"They're just beautiful animals and it doesn't make a difference if it's racehorses, show horses or pet horses," he says. "There's a deep bond between horses and humans."
But Richardson, keenly aware of the limelight, has also made it clear that chances of a happy ending for Barbaro are "a coin toss" - far longer than the betting odds that made the horse a prohibitive favorite entering the starting gate late Saturday afternoon at Baltimore's Pimlico Race Course.
Before a crowd of more than 100,000 at the track, and millions around the world watching on television, Barbaro stopped racing just seconds out of the gate, his right hind leg flailing as if made of putty.
It was broken in three places, and dislocated, a grouping of injuries that Richardson said he had never seen in all of his years of repairing broken animals. But the surgeon, who also teaches and researches cartilage repair at the hospital, emerged smiling nearly eight hours after Barbaro's operation began, telling of a walking, frisky, hungry horse who felt good enough to nicker at a few mares in nearby stalls.
In cautioning that Barbaro still has just a 50-50 chance at survival, he observes, "Things can be bad on a minute-by-minute basis, but things can only be good after many weeks or months."
Such declarations seem to pour out of the suddenly celebrity surgeon at the center of media frenzy attending Barbaro. He speaks plainly, but with verbal flourishes, about horses, their beauty and surprising fragility; at times he flashes a mischievous grin, sometimes a flushed face.
And just a day after perhaps the most important surgery of his life, Richardson in his nondescript blue scrubs was back at work at Widener - including surgery on another, uncelebrated patient.
