by Frank Angst

 In the urgent final months of preparing a talented horse for the Triple Crown races, trainer Richard Dutrow Jr. decided that completely healing quarter cracks in Big Brown would be more important than continued training.

The tough decision—Big Brown lost a month of conditioning in January—paid off as the Boundary colt’s front feet improved. He registered a 4 3/4-length victory in the Kentucky Derby presented by Yum! Brands (G1) on May 3. Tom Curl, an expert on quarter-crack care who treated Big Brown, said the Derby winner is racing on healthy feet.

AS BIG BROWN STRIDES OUT, HIS YASHA GLUE-ON SHOE IS VISIBLE (BELOW) ALONG WITH SOME OF THE HEEL REPAIR PERFORMED ON HIS LEFT FRONT FOOT

Photos by Z

“Back before the first allowance race in Florida, the one three weeks before the Florida Derby, that was the end of his quarter-crack problem,” Curl said, referring to a 12 3/4-length win in a one-mile allowance race on March 5 in his season debut. “His cracks have never been an issue again.”

All breeds of horses are capable of developing quarter cracks, which can be caused by concussion, hard surfaces, thin hoof walls, and medial lateral foot imbalance. Big Brown’s quarter cracks are atypical in that they started with a wall separation.

“His type start on the bottom of the foot. They start with a bruise. It will kind of get to an abscess and it can never really blow out the bottom of the foot,” Curl said. “It just sits in there and kind of stays on a low boil and goes right up the wall underneath it.

“The whole time it’s going up the wall, it’s separating the fingernail—the hoof wall—from the laminae. So you actually have some play underneath there. They’ll heat up, cool down. You’ll see a horse that’s lame but [the horse’s handlers] can’t find anything. They’ll back off a few days and it settles right back down underneath there. But then they put a big breeze in and, bam; it blows right out the top. … When you cut those cracks open, they’re already full of puss and highly infected. A regular quarter crack does not get infected in 24 hours.”

Big Brown first developed a quarter crack in his inner right front foot. That quarter crack was treated by Ian McKinlay, who used wire lacing to pull the crack together. Curl performed the same procedure to treat a quarter crack that developed in the left inner front foot. When Curl treated that crack on December 30, it showed significant infection.

“So you have all of the tissues in that hoof wall involved, from the bottom to the top. Most general racetrack horses, we can put them together in three to five days, but hoof-wall-separation type of quarter cracks just about guarantee a minimum of three weeks down time, and with Brown, it was longer,” Curl said. “I didn’t even let him go to the training track the entire month of January.”

That is where Curl credits Dutrow, who decided to completely solve the problem at the expense of training time and races.

“It’s hard to get a month out of a trainer, especially when they know what they got,” Curl said. “We met with them once or twice a week, and Rick knew things were tough so he listened well. His staff cooperated. His grooms did an outstanding job on a daily basis. If you don’t have that, the job becomes twice as hard. He had people in place who really did a nice job.”

Curl is based in Florida and McKinlay is based in New York, where he has seen an increase in quarter cracks in Thoroughbreds during the last seven years.

“I don’t think it has anything to do with the breeding. I think it’s because the tracks are getting harder,” McKinlay said. “These quarter cracks are fairly common in Standardbreds and those trainers know that if it happens, their horse is going to miss at least three weeks. It’s been tough for some of the Thoroughbred guys to realize that it’s going to take that much time.”

In Big Brown’s instance, Dutrow does not blame the surfaces. He agrees with Curl that a wall separation developed over time before finally becoming noticeable.

“It was probably something brewing in there, something no one [saw], and it just came out,” Dutrow said of the problem in the right front foot. “It happened again when we went to Palm Meadows [Training Center]. He was training on the best track you can have in the winter time. He's always been on good tracks. I can't blame any kind of tracks messing around with his feet to get him to pop quarters. I can't say that."

While Dutrow is not sure what caused the quarter cracks, he committed to a solution.

“The pride I feel is in Rick, because he listened to what we were telling him and stayed with the plan,” McKinlay said.

A return to training too soon could have resulted in more problems.

“When you have a wall separation that severe from the sole to the top of the foot, you don’t want to move too early or you’ll regret it,” Curl said. “You’ll go right back to square one. Cooperation is what it takes on both sides.”

With Big Brown racing in Florida this winter, Curl continued to monitor the situation with Dutrow and his staff. After Big Brown’s season debut victory, Curl recommended glue-on Yasha shoes, which feature a rubber composite that provides cushion to prevent further flare ups. He won the Florida Derby and Kentucky Derby in Yasha shoes, which were developed by McKinlay.

“Those shoes were glued on him 21 days before the Florida Derby. Within 24 hours, his feet went cold,” Curl said. “He never has had any more problems with his feet. Everyone keeps saying this horse has such bad feet, bad feet. He’s got great feet now.”

Curl, who has traveled more than 2-million miles to treat horses and consult with clients, takes pride in the part he played in assisting the Derby winner, noting that Dutrow’s staff did the daily work.

“When you take a horse that has a history of heat in their feet and a little bit of pulse every day, and all of a sudden you make a change just in the shoeing and correct all that, that’s a big jump,” Curl said. “That’s huge. When you get the feet right, the rest of the horse comes right with it.”

While the glue-on shoes that Big Brown wears cost $550, nail versions of the shoe are available for as little as $25. McKinlay has presented Internet videos on Youtube.com on the Yasha shoes and his lacing technique, which pulls the quarter crack together to allow healing.

“It helps for people to see what I’m talking about,” McKinlay said.

Both McKinlay and Curl view themselves as part of a team that helped a great athlete excel.

“No matter what sport, whether animals or human sports, there’s always situations where people do what they can to get the athlete to a basketball court or a football field or a dog track or horse track,” Curl said. “There’s all kind of people involved behind the scenes. …There is no athlete that does not have problems. You don’t sit around and point fingers. You work with the problem and find a way to not just patch it up, but we came up with a deal and the others that have followed with this shoe, that they have the best days of their lives on it.”

Frank Angst is senior writer for Thoroughbred Times