Meet Cruz — Catherine Sauer

A brief intro to Cruz was provided in the Catching Up post, but this sweet not-so-little girl deserves a proper introduction.

To tell more about Cruz is to also tell a bit of the story of the lower levels of horse racing. In sharing this information, my hope is only to share her story and not to point fingers at any person or pass judgment on things that happened that I did not control. As a reader, I encourage you to embrace the reading in the same light. Additionally, there are X-rays of Cruz’s injury and recovery - while none are graphic, if X-rays aren’t your thing…well, you’ve been warned.

Backstory

Cruz (JC Cruzin Carter) is a 2019 American Thoroughbred filly. She’s plain bay, with long legs and two front socks. Her face speaks to how young she is - a mid-April baby, when I met her in September of 2021, Cruz was barely 29 months old. Over the last four months, I’ve watched her face start to mature, just as the rest of her has. It will be curious to see how much continues to change as she grows up!

At the time of this writing, Cruz stands a quarter inch shy of 16.2 hands. When I got her in September, she was 16 hands and half an inch. Over the course of four months, she’s grown over an inch.

Cruz’s history before my meeting her is being relayed through my construction across Equibase and the racehorse aftercare program that connected me with Cruz.

Before she became mine, Cruz made two starts as a racehorse, showing some quick turn of hoof in both races, and arguably no real stamina for those sprint speeds just yet. But considering she was racing at 26 months old and is a long-legged youngster to boot, who can fault her for needing to develop a bit more?

She was bumped in her second race, which I speculate may have contributed as a stress force to the injury she ultimately sustained, but that’s just an over-active brain fabricating ideas. Otherwise, watching her race replays, and looking at the youngster sitting in a stall in the barn, I can’t believe she was zipping around as quick as she was.

After her second start, Cruz came up lame from during exercise. The track vet was called out to x-ray her left forelimb, where it was discovered that Cruz had a mid-body sesamoid fracture.

New Goals

So, let’s back up to the beginning of the summer of 2021. My gelding, Factor, has been coming along well, my relationship of almost a decade has ended, and the greatest goals as yet unaccomplished in my life have been with horses. As a long-time OTTB enthusiast/rider/trainer, the Thoroughbred Makeover is definitely one of those dreams-that-could-be-goals, and something I almost targeted Factor toward.

With the ability to take a left turn on the life plan I’d been building, I began putting out feelers for a youngster that was RRP eligible. Feelers - I can’t stress this enough.

I had a move still to carry out, and wasn’t entirely sure what the situation would be like, living with family again on a temporary basis. I figured the earliest I might find a horse and feel settled enough to pull the trigger would be October or November, if not after more permanent living situation decisions had been made.

Be that as it may, the stars aligned to put Cruz in my path shortly after I submitted an application to a racehorse aftercare program in upstate New York.

Ignoring the Idioms

Immediately, the age old “never buy a horse sight unseen” comes to mind… and thinking about Cruz I just laugh. Of course, I was blessed the day Factor became mine, and I have long considered my luck that he is as brilliant as he is considering I bought him sight unseen. But then, it was peak COVID, and going to Kentucky to visit a horse made no sense. I digress.

A short while after submitting my information to the aftercare program and getting approved as an adopter, they left a voicemail about a 2 year old the aftercare program couldn’t take on for medical reasons. For one reason or another, the rehab couldn’t be done in her current situation, and it put the filly’s life in jeopardy. The program manager had been contacted by the track vet, who really felt the filly was a nice one and that the injury might not be a career ender if someone could give her a soft landing.

At this point, I didn’t even have the horse’s name yet; I asked to be emailed the X-rays. They were forwarded to my vet, who in turn consulted a surgeon (see right).

The at-a-glance prognosis with surgery wasn’t bad - it couldn’t be said without evaluation if she would make a full recovery, but she certainly could be made comfortable at the absolute least.

The Injury

Cruz had a mid-body sesamoid fracture on the outside sesamoid of her left forelimb. The sesamoids come in pairs on each leg and are critical for the suspensory apparatus and articulation of the distal limb. The suspensory ligament, the deep digital flexor, the collateral ligament all get involved around the sesamoid and…well, it’s just a masterpiece of biomechanics where a single failure can truly destroy the entire animal stacked on top of those tiny bones. The bone itself is under constant cross-tension as an anchor or supporting connection for these ligaments, so literally all aspects of her using that leg to exist put stress on the bone.

So before jumping in and truly securing my “crazy horse lady” title, I called the vet and asked to schedule an ultrasound.

The same vet who took her initial X-rays also did the ultrasound, and both the suspensory and the deep digital showed no signs of damage. In fact, the vet laughed with me, other than the broken bone there really wasn’t anything worth noting about the leg.

Fracture Progression X-rays

Repairing the Leg

Cruz waited patiently for a ride to New Hampshire for a few weeks, then loaded up with a cool cast on her fractured limb and headed to her new home. She arrived six hours later little worse for the wear, and settled into her new stall. Across the aisle, Factor watched on, as curious as he was skeptical that his human was spending time with this other horse.

She was almost instantly added to the surgery list at Tufts Large Animal Hospital in Grafton, MA, where the equine sports medicine department would evaluate the injury, conduct a surgery to repair the limb and clean up any debris in the joint nearby. At the beginning of October, we loaded her up for a three-day stay with them.

The surgical team found the fetlock joint to be clean of debris, and a relatively “clean” break of the sesamoid itself. They were able to clean up the pieces and position them back as a single body with one screw, which was an improvement over the initial assessment that skeptically suggested two screws might be necessary. After a day of monitoring, and another set of radiographs to ensure the screw was staying correctly in place, Cruz was given the “all clear” to return home and begin her 16-week long rehab schedule.

And Here We Are

Aside from some of the nuances of getting to know this youngster and learning that sometimes ace really can be your friend, that pretty much catches things up on Cruz. Her recovery is going really well, and the 8-week check on her surgery in early December went fantastic. She presented no lameness when she trotted out for the vet - which was the first time I’d seen her trot, well, ever - and the X-rays showed significant bone regrowth through the recovery period. We were given instructions to continue her rehab plan, including clearance to begin walking under saddle.

Though a colic episode delayed some of this rehab, it allowed us a lot of longer walks together, and hopefully has helped put a bond in place that will only strengthen with time. Cruz has been tack walked twice at this writing, and has so far shown herself to be handling the progression of her exertion well. Some cold New England temperatures have added delays to the rehab timeline, but as with all things horse injury related, there is no rush.

She’s only 32 months old, after all.