My bright niece, Marianne Kirkendall, is entering her final year as a graduate student in veterinary medicine at Iowa State University in Ames. As you might expect, Marianne — who has always loved horses — is all over Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro’s horrific leg injury, so she passes along this fascinating Barbaro website page for the New Bolton Center, which is the University of Pennsylvania facility where Barbaro’s injury is being treated and one of the premier equine clinics in the country (a NY Times article on the same subject is here). Marianne comments on Barbaro’s surgery:

The top picture on the left shows them lifting Barbaro out of the recovery pool. Equine surgery is obviously made very difficult given the size of horses, and their “flighty” nature. Cranes are used to lift them on and off of surgery tables. I’ve gotten to help with several surgeries, and the induction and recovery from anesthesia can get every bit as complicated (and even more exciting!) as the surgery itself!
Most equine hospitals recover horses by putting them into a dark, padded stall and using a tail rope to help them get up when they are ready. The anesthesiologist literally sits with the horse until they start trying to get up, then must leap out of the stall to avoid the commonly flailing hooves! Unfortunately, horses recovering from anesthesia sometimes break their legs as they wake up and try to stand before they are ready. This pool technique is a newer method of recovery that only a few clinics have as yet, but is really neat! Cool to see it in action!