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A missed distance. The sickening crack of bone on wood.

That’s what Karen O’Connor remembers about the accident that gravely injured her advanced partner,Upstage.

She immediately jumped off, and he limped away after hitting a fence on cross-country at Over The Walls Horse Trials (Mass.) in August 2004.

“He jumped in a little too big and got a little short on the way out in the combination,” said O’Connor. “He must have hit his stifle just right.”

“Woody” was three-day fit and aiming for the Burghley CCI**** (England) when the accident happened. Instead of planning the overseas trip, they had to stabilize his leg and rush him home to the veterinarians at Virginia Equine Imaging in Middleburg.

“He wasn’t allowed to back up after the injury,” recalled O’Connor’s head groom, Max Corcoran. “We had to load him through the back ramp instead of the side ramp like we normally do. If they do have a fracture, that movement can pull the piece of the bone off.”

O’Connor, of The Plains, Va., began riding the diminutive Thoroughbred in the fall of 2000 after a catch-ride at the Radnor Hunt CCI** (Pa.) left them in third place. Dick and Vita Thompson purchased him, and he quickly moved up to advanced, running his first four-star in 2002.

“His courage and bravery cross-country have never been in question,” said O’Connor.

Hard work on his dressage and show jumping was beginning to pay off, and she had high hopes for the 15.1-hand, 14-year-old gelding.

But all of that was put on hold after he hit the cross-country fence at Over The Walls, fracturing his left hind tibial tuberosity.

“It’s on the front of the tibia, which is the lower bone of the stifle joint,” explained Christiana Ober, DVM, of Virginia Equine Imaging. “He basically cracked the front part of the tibia, right around where the patellar ligaments insert.”

Fortunately, the four-inch fracture was the only injury, and he avoided soft tissue damage to his meniscus or cruciate ligaments. Also, the bone fragment wasn’t tremendously displaced.

“Basically, all we could do was keep him as quiet as possible so that the fragment didn’t separate more,” said Ober, “because if they do, it’s more serious and may require surgery or ultimately euthanasia.”

There was no discussion of giving up on the game little horse. The challenge was how to explain to Woody that his routine had changed, and he would now have to stay absolutely quiet in a stall for the next three months.

“Our recommendation was to tie Woody up in his stall,” said Ober. “We didn’t want him to lie down and have that fragment come apart more when he was getting up or rolling.”

“We had the carpenters put a cable on the ceiling of his stall so he could be tied up, but it really worried him,” said O’Connor. “Max and I looked at each other and said, ‘We can’t do this to this horse because he’s so smart that I don’t think he’ll lie down until he knows he can handle it.’ “

Often, in these cases, the horse is his own worst enemy, according to Ober. “You’re really praying for them not to do more injury to themselves,” she said.

But one of the things that endears Woody to his friends is his amazing intelligence and ability to sense when people are trying to help.

“He’s that smart,” said Ober. “He knows when he’s injured. He doesn’t get threatened or defensive. I think he really knew that he needed to stay quiet.”

And sure enough, Woody deserved their trust.

“He didn’t lie down for two weeks,” recalled O’Connor. “And when he did, he lay down on his right side. He wasn’t lying on the side that had the fracture. When he got up, he got up just using the good leg.”

An Admirable Patient

O’Connor and Corcoran were relieved that Woody was sensible about his recovery. “We would cut him grass and put it in a big muck tub,” said Corcoran. “We had him in the shed row where all the horses are. He has a stall that’s right next to the office, so every day people could walk by him and talk to him and pet him.”

Woody got into a routine, patiently waiting for the grooms to bring him his grass when they finished cleaning the barn. “I thought he would have trouble when the horses all got turned out, but he seemed to know he was hurt, and he needed to be good,” recalled Corcoran.

After three weeks, they were able to walk him from his stall to the wash stall for a bath. “It was a huge deal,” said O’Connor. “It’s kind of like being in the hospital when you’re in bed and you get to walk down the hall and back.”

As the weeks flew by, the prognosis grew more hopeful. They continued to X-ray him every few weeks to monitor his progress.

“We used high-energy shock wave therapy to try and encourage the healing process even more and to stimulate bone formation,” said Ober. “We had good success and saw quite remarkable change in the X-rays.”

By November, O’Connor hoped Woody might be able to leave his stall and start moving around. “It was so hard to go off to competitions with a trailer full of horses, and he just had to stand watching,” said Corcoran. “Every time we came home I’d promise him that it would be OK, and that he was going to go again.”

But when they took him for his three-month check, Woody hadn’t progressed enough. “Kent Allen, DVM, said that the fracture was healing beautifully, but he really wanted more density in the bone,” said O’Connor. “From fracture to complete recovery on any fractured bone is six months, and we were only halfway there. He didn’t have the density to go jump and frolic in his paddock.”

After this minor setback, O’Connor and Corcoran resigned themselves to keeping Woody in his stall for four more weeks.

Disaster Strikes

But on a hot November day, a week before Thanksgiving, the unexpected happened.

“He’d gone to the wash stall to get bathed,” recalled O’Connor. “He had a very thick coat at this point. He got back to his stall, had a good old roll, and as soon as he got up he looked at the groom and had that look, ‘Something’s wrong inside of me; I’m sick.’ “

A quick phone call to O’Connor brought her running back to the barn, and within a few hours Woody was on his way to Marion du Pont Equine Medical Center in Leesburg.

“The biggest risk was that we had an unhealed fracture,” explained Ober. “Not only did we have a horse that was colicking and needed colic surgery to save his life, but we also had a horse that was going to be waking up from anesthesia with a 90-day tibial fracture. That didn’t make anyone happy.”

Nathaniel White, DVM, took Woody to surgery when they decided there was no other option. “They didn’t have to do any resection,” explained Ober. “They just basically had to untwist him and de-gas him.”

The tricky part was helping Woody stand up when he was still groggy from the anesthetic. “We had great cooperation from the equine clinic and the anesthesiologist,” said O’Connor. “They used different drugs to help him recover slowly and be cognizant before he tried to get up.”

O’Connor and Corcoran took a short break to grab a bite to eat before Woody woke up, and when they returned he was already in a stall, screaming for his friends.

“He’s so into his people that he finds a lot of comfort in us,” said Corcoran. “So we sat with him for a few hours to make sure he was OK and just carried on visiting him so he wouldn’t get depressed.”

Another set of X-rays confirmed that he hadn’t further injured the broken bone, so after six days in the hospital, Woody was allowed to return home.

“When a horse has colic surgery, the [veterinarians] want them to start moving soon after, hand walking,” said O’Connor. “Now we were up to the four-month period and the [bone] density had gotten better, so he needed to hand walk for both the colic and the broken bone, and it worked out really well.”

“It was a fine balance of how much he was allowed to do,” added Corcoran. “I think moving around helped the leg heal more. But there were those November afternoons where it was pouring rain, and I’d put a turn-out rug on him and suit myself up. It was a long battle.”

The Slow Road To Recovery

Hand-walking turned into ponying, and Woody gradually built up to five minutes a week of trotting.

“We didn’t know what to expect when we ponied him,” said Corcoran. “We tranquilized him the first day, and he almost fell asleep. He was great. Hanging out with the guys again made him happy.”

They postponed going to Florida until late January to give Woody the chance to get stronger before making the long trailer ride. By Jan. 21, he was trotting for 20 minutes at a time behind his pal Joker’s Wild.

Ober traveled to Florida with the O’Connors to keep an eye on everyone. “We were very slow and constantly checking in with Christiana,” said Corcoran. “We still X-rayed [the fracture] every month. When he was up to 20 minutes of trotting, we started riding him. Getting back on him for the first time was a treat.”

Even more of a treat was O’Connor’s first jump school on Woody, which happened to fall on her birthday, Feb. 18. “All things seemed to be continuing as planned, so he started jumping and never looked back,” said Ober.

One surprising benefit that came from Woody’s downtime was that he had lost all of his muscle tone. “His muscles were a little bit wrongly shaped when I first started riding him,” said O’Connor. “We were able to shape the muscles the way we wanted to, and his back muscles are much stronger because we were able to get them fit from the beginning.”

Woody ran advanced at Poplar Place (Ga.) on March 25-27, finishing second. “He went beautifully,” recalled O’Connor. She then took him to the North Georgia CIC*** (Ga.) on April 8-10.

“He’s an exceptionally fit horse anyway, and he got fit very quickly,” said Ober. “But watching him progress through the winter and get stronger and put his muscle back on was quite remarkable. He has a great work ethic, and he really never looked back. He exceeded all of our expectations in making it to [Rolex Kentucky CCI****].”

O’Connor never pushed, but Woody continued to stand up to the work and let her know he was ready for the challenge of returning to the four-star level at the end of April.

“I was a little concerned about his fitness for Kentucky, but not really, because it’s Woody,” said O’Connor. Three clean runs beforehand convinced her that he was ready.

“This was his fourth trip to Rolex,” said Corcoran. “This year when I drove into the Kentucky Horse Park it struck me way more than it has before. I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’ve got Woody here, this is so cool!’ “

Woody jumped around Rolex like he’d never been injured. “I started him out a little conservatively,” admitted O’Connor. “Then I made a mess of the water jump, and I was 35 seconds down and finished 28 seconds over. I really needed those extra seconds!”

Regardless of time penalties, O’Connor and Woody finished in seventh place with one of the only clear show jumping rounds. Now if all goes well, he’ll head to another three-day this fall.

“He’s a very special horse,” said O’Connor. “He’s really intelligent, but also very loving. He loves interacting with people, but he’s good out in the field with other horses. He doesn’t have any enemies anywhere.”

And it took a special team for Woody to make such a spectacular recovery. “Max was critical in monitoring him,” said Ober. “If he was going to be bad that day and had that look in his eye, then he didn’t get to go out and hand graze. It takes the kind of management that they have at the O’Connors’ and someone who’s with the horse that much and knows the horse that well to really keep your finger on it.”

“It was frustrating at the time, but we’re just so blessed that it all worked out,” said Corcoran. “There have been a lot of other horses with the same injuries that haven’t had the same luck. It could have been a career-ending injury, and he’s come back to better than he was before. And now competing he’s so careful behind. He’s not going to let his stifles hit anything again!”

“I don’t love him for what he is, I love him more for what he’s been and what he’s going to be,” said O’Connor. “He’s my pal, and he’s definitely one of my all-time favorite horses. It’s not every day they come back, and when you go through one of these things with your horse, every day is a great day.”