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In retrospect, Veterinary Dr. William O. Reed, who runs the hospital, remarked, "I would have preferred to have been able to wait a day or so prior to surgery simply because the filly's condition was anything but stable." But most believed that the contamination in Ruffian's dirt-filled wound required an immediate operation. Once Ruffian was trucked to the equine hospital behind the Belmont track, Dr. Reed removed bone chips, repaired some of the ripped ligaments, flushed the wound with antibiotics and saline solutions and inserted drains. Then Dr. Edward C. Keefer, an orthopedist, put on a cast and special shoe.
Untimely Death, The second-guessing among the experts was intense. Some questioned the failure to use more care in easing Ruffian out of the anaesthesia. When she awoke, she knocked off her cast in frenzy, which led to the decision to destroy her. Would other methods of treatment have worked? Continuous sedation is unrealistic because a horse lying too long on its side develops radial paralysis; placing a horse in a sling often impairs circulation and waste elimination and could cause death; finally, putting a horse on a rubber raft in a pool, so that kicking off a cast becomes impossible, is still an experimental technique. At 'week's end Jack Dreyfus, chairman of the board of the New York racing association, said, "The inadequacy of knowing what to do was the problem. It happened to strike an area of incompetence in the whole industry." Meantime, Ruffian had been buried quietly at Belmont, mourned by millions who knew little of racing but were moved by the untimely death of a great horse.