because millions of people care about him, because he captured peoples' imagination, because...well, if you don't get it, I'm not going to try and explain any further.

He probably isn't even old enough to remember Raffles.

Of course as long as we take two year olds and run them into the ground to make a buck, this can happen.

It is a sad state of affairs when some people can't even take a minute to mourn the death of a magnificent animal that gave pleasure just by existing.

I really wonder what's wrong with people like that, but they're definitely missing a compassion gene or something. Ugh.

in today's Washington Post. I love this paragraph:

..to those who don't care about horses, terrible things are happening all over the world these days, and they demand from many people an unprecedented level of endurance, but we horse lovers say: This, too? That this beautiful and innocent animal should also die?

Exactly.

I don't know that much about them, but have a sister who has raised them and competed on them, etc.  Horses are magnificent, graceful creatures who symbolize the wind and speed, and all things of beauty which are big but move very fast.  A great racehorse is a symphony of coordination, heart, courage, and single-minded purpose guided and conducted by his jockey.  Would you not mourn the loss of a great redwood tree or a beautiful painting or a magnificent singer?  Great racehorses are art and athleticism combined and to watch their performance can be exhilirating and to see their fall can be crushing.

Now do you understand?

Thanks for posting this, Lowell. The sad plight of this magnificent, gifted beast touch us even here in Yankeeland where the cold hardens us.

" . . . He kept vigil with his sick horses and dogs, not as a capitalist who guards his investaments, but as one who watches over his friends," - Frank Owsley, "The Irrepressible Conflict," 1930.

Some people like myself have spent a good part of our lives with horses.
Know what the special bond of a horse is like it is different then that of
a dog or a cat . Only one horse can win the derby and that makes it a
special club and to win the triple crown is not easy to do since it hasn't
happened in so long . So this horse could have done it and we will never
know. So I say BARBARO enjoy the fields of peace forever!!!!!!!!!!

I'm sorry this beautiful animal met this fate. However, I think it is a disservice to breed animals to have these long spindly legs merely for the purpose of racing and essentially entertaining humans. Normal horses are much more sturdy. Still, it's too bad horses aren't able to recover from these things like humans.

First by Andrew Beyer in the Washington Post's sports section:

...even for the most hardened racetrackers, the death of Barbaro yesterday was a painful and depressing loss. The catastrophic injury that the colt suffered in the Preakness, followed by his euthanization eight months later, constituted a double blow.

Next, Sally Jenkins:

In diagnosing the public's unreasoning love for Barbaro, maybe it comes down to the fact that he never lied to us. Human nature seems like a sorry, wastrel thing, compared to that horse...His survival seemed like one good thing, a balm for foreign wars, domestic deceit, and the bimbo cocktail party circuit, ruthless wealth-swappage, and cross-entouraging that we lately call American culture.

Barbaro was an honest, blameless competitor. Our ridiculously soft feeling for him was based at least partly on that fact. Unlike so many people in the sports pages, he was neither felonious, nor neurotic. He let us place burdens on him, whether a saddle, a bet, or a leg brace, and he carried them willingly, even jauntily.

[...]

There have been continual attempts to analyze why Barbaro's fight to survive so captivated the public, but maybe it's fairly simple: He had both innocence and greatness and it's not often you find those ephemeral qualities alive in the same creature. What's more, anyone who watched Barbaro run in the Derby felt that they saw traces of a distinct character: He was winsome. This gave his suffering specificity. We felt we knew him.

Possibly, this is anthropomorphic, and some have rightly pointed out that we should care as much about human beings. But it's not anthropomorphic to say that horses are irreproachably benevolent creatures, and this is surely one of the causes of our grief over Barbaro...

Beautifully stated.  Now, for those of you like "littlepunk" who have no compassion in your hearts for Barbaro (or probably for animals in general), all I have to say is that I pity you.  Perhaps you believe it's a zero-sum game between feeling for humans and for animals, but you couldn't be more wrong.  They are intertwined, part and parcel of the same thing - compassion and empathy for others.  If you don't get it, you don't get it, but in the end, it's your great loss.