“Barbaro is doing very well. He’s actually better today than he was even yesterday, and he was pretty good yesterday,” Dean Richardson DVM, Dipl. ACVS, reported in a Tuesday morning news briefing at the University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center, where the classic winner was resting two days after surgery to repair multiple fractures in his right hind leg suffered in Saturday’s Preakness Stakes (gr. I) at Pimlico race course in Baltimore, Md.

“He’s feeling very good,” said Richardson, who led the surgical team through a lengthy procedure attempting to fuse Barbaro’s ankle Sunday afternoon and evening. “He’s walking very well on the limb. He’s got absolutely normal vital signs today: his temperature, pulse, respiration attitude, and appetite. We have no shortage of volunteers to handpick him grass, so he’s grazing at a distance. He’s doing very well.”

Richardson, who was joined at the New Bolton Center by Barbaro’s breeders and owners, Roy and Gretchen Jackson, said he wanted to clarify one comment he made following Sunday’s surgery about saving the horse for the breeding shed.

“I made a big point about the optimal outcome is that he’d be salvaged for breeding,” Richardson said. “Some people are taking that the wrong way. I want everyone to know that if this horse were a gelding, these owners would have definitely done everything to save this horse’s life. I’ve known the Jacksons a long time. This horse could have no reproductive value and they would saved this horse’s life