Vet Exams, Soundness, and Horsemanship

Recent pic above courtesy of the Paulick Report who had a piece this week about the 2 year old star Looking at Lucky and how he was passed over at a Keeneland sale by many because of a bone chip showing up in his xrays.

With traditional subjective, qualitative measures - many failed to realize this one's potential. 'Horsemanship' became the cloudy reason for either taking a chance, or passing on this equine athlete.

In my book, 'horsemanship' would be defined as taking ALL AVAILABLE DATA in regards to the animal in question before deciding on whether or not said bone chip would be a problem in his future development.

Ideally, one could hook up this colt to a heart rate/GPS monitor during a gallop, take blood lactate measurements before/after/during the workout, and/or submit the horse to an easy treadmill workout to collect further data.

Comparing these objective and quantitative numbers against other 2 year olds gleaned from around the world could definitely help the Horseman pin down whether or not Looking at Lucky was worth the risk.

All of the above testing can be done for under $100 and could be the deciding factor that turns a $40 investment into a $40 million one.

That is quite a nice Return on Investment I would say!