As everybody knows, there are usually far more moments of disappointment than moments of joy in this business, and today was a downer for Shadow Play. After jogging this morning and scoping after, it was determined that now he has a bacterial lung infection as a secondary complication to the previously diagnosed reactive airway disease. There was an indication of this possibility Sunday, and that's why judgement was reserved until today. Shadow is now being treated with 2 antibiotics and Sputolysin and puffers and will stay off the track all week unfortunately. With time and proper treatment, as long as no lasting damage has occurred, he should recover and will now aim for the Des Smith on June 21 in Ottawa. As much as we (all the connections) have been hyped up, we will have to wait again and hope he fully recovers.
This type of scenario certainly highlights to me again what happens when horses leave their own environment and your management and travel to basically what is now a public barn with others and other problems. Here Shadow left home in May, raced 6 days later and looked very good, then boom all this happens and yes it happens a lot and basically, there is not much we can do with travelling horses to avoid it, but hope for the best. Hopefully, it will be just a minor bump in potentially a long road this summer.