Today begins Part 1 of the story of how a former racehorse transformed the life of an inmate in this excerpt from the new book Equine ER by Leslie Guttman (Eclipse Press, 2009). 

On Sunday, April 6, 2008, a large dark bay gelding was on his back, anesthetized for colic surgery. Ten years earlier to the day, Marching Orders had slipped into this world, son of Captain Bodgit and Miss Stamper. Almost exactly six years earlier, he had been hurtling across the wire at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Arkansas, six furlongs in 1:10:1, nabbing the winning purse of $28,500. Now, outside the operating room, nurses sheared the big country that was his stomach with electric clippers, and then shaved a strip down the middle for the coming incision with a disposable razor. Plastic gloves were placed on his hooves to keep the operating room sterile. Dr. Scott Hopper tucked the horse’s penis inside its sheath and began suturing the sheath closed to keep urine from contaminating the surgical site. (The sutures would be removed after surgery.)

 Racehorse Marching Orders in his prime