Cats Don’t Dance, the remaining injured Saddlebred under treatment at Hagyard-Davidson-McGee (HDM) Associates in Lexington, Ky., is recovering well, according to his treating veterinarian. On Aug. 27 he was ready to return home shortly.

The 6-year-old gelding is one of five Saddlebreds which were maliciously injected in the back of their left front pasterns with a necrotizing substance and left with debilitating injuries that were discovered June 30 (see https://thehorse.com/sbreds for archived stories). Three of the horses had to be euthanized after complications of founder from uneven loading on the front feet. Cats Don’t Dance and a 3-year-old filly, Sassational, are the survivors, and the filly is already back in training.

Cats Don’t Dance has been at the HDM medicine facility since July 17, the day that the first two horses were euthanized. Since his arrival, he’s received special growth factor treatments, hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT), and continual care by the hospital’s staff.

By Aug. 11, Nathan Slovis, DVM, Dipl. ACVIM, was changing the wrap and flushing the injury with dilute bleach solution every other day. Treatment frequency with HBOT had been reduced, and Lacerum A (a growth factor treatment made from the gelding’s own platelets; see article #4539) use had been discontinued. Slovis decided to keep the horse at HDM because he wanted to make sure that the horse didn’t split open the new tissue, and because the horse required sedation for flushing