In a malicious attack that garnered nationwide news coverage, five top American Saddlebreds were injected with an unknown, necrotizing (tissue-killing) substance the weekend of June 28-29 at Double D Ranch in Versailles, Ky. These were five of the most valuable horses at the 30-stall facility. The injuries were discovered the morning of June 30, and in the following weeks, three were euthanized due to complications from their injuries. As of July 30, one horse was still recovering at Hagyard-Davidson-McGee (HDM) Associates in Lexington, Ky., and the other surviving horse had recovered and was back in training.

Ric Redden, DVM, founder of the International Equine Podiatry Center in Versailles, Ky., was one of the horses’ treating veterinarians. He explained, “All of the horses involved had their left front injected in exactly the same area in the pastern.” He added that the flesh became necrotic (died) right in the middle of the pastern, “and there was necrosis of the skin in an area about 2.5 cm wide. The skin was totally dead. We took biopsies and sent them to Cornell to see if we can find if the (offending) substance is still residual in the tissue.” (Cornell’s report has not been made available to the public.)

“To find out what’s in there–it’s academic at this point,” said Redden. “Whatever it was, was a very caustic agent and there are a lot of things out there that would do this kind of damage