Dauntless Duo aka Bryzzo

While driving home one day from the Kentucky Horse Park, my roommate Tori Tedesco asked me what my dream horse was. I without hesitation replied, “a black one!”. After a few moments of silence, she said “wait a minute, I know the perfect one!”. Tori previously worked at Darby Dan managing one of the weanling barns. This barn is where she met baby “Bryzzo”!

From his weanling-yearling times Tori had the pleasure of prepping Bryzzo for the sale. With a top pedigree being out of Ellie’s Moment and by Medaglia d’Ora, Bryzzo was destined for the Derby trail. Despite having Tieback surgery, he still sold for $500,000 which is quite a lot considering that when a yearling has a tieback it usually drops their price nearly 50%.

Once sold, Bryzzo had a great start to his career but unfortunately didn’t turn out as everyone had hoped. After switching hands several times, Tori and I found him on the track and got in contact with the current owners and trainer and secured Bryzzo for his future retirement. Fast forward 6 months of following him around and plenty of phone calls, we finally got to go get our boy. We acquired Bryzzo on December 27^th, 2019 a week or so after his last race.

After picking him up, we took him straight to Hagyard Equine Medical Institute where Dr. Cole Sandow and several Hagyard interns did a full flexion test. After having everything flexed, we found that he had the typical racetrack soreness that is common for horses that are fresh off the track. Additionally, we knew his left knee would further investigation as we noticed that when he was racing, his knee was quite “juicy” which basically means that joint fluid is building up around the joint in the knee causing swelling.

Next up was a full-body X-Ray to get a better look at what was going on inside sweet Bryzzo. We found the onset of kissing spine which is where the vertebrae in the spine start to interfere with each other and can start causing some discomfort and can alter mobility in the spine. Another finding was that Bryzzo had quite a few chips in both knees. After completing the X-rays, we headed home and waited to hear back from Dr. Sandow for a game plan. A few days later we received an update from Dr. Sandow that after careful deliberation, and with multiple consults from other top surgeons at Hagyard, recommended surgery to remove the chips from Bryzzo’s knees as the next step.

So that is what we did. A few days later, we took Bryzzo into surgery where Dr. Sandow graciously allowed us to sit in on and talked us through the whole process. Many hours later, 30 some odd chips were removed from both of Bryzzo’s knees. We are still in the recovery phase and so far, everything is going well! Doctors’ orders were four weeks of stall rest, two weeks of hand walking along with stall rest, then restricted turnout. Eight weeks after surgery, Bryzzo was released for normal turnout where like all the other horses on my farm, he was out for twelve hours and in for twelve hours. Three months after the surgery, we decided to take Bryzzo to my mom’s farm down the road where he is turned out on 14 acres 24/7 in lush grass and comes in twice a day to eat and then goes right back out. For the first time in his life, Bryzzo is enjoying his time where he just gets to be a horse.

Currently, our plan is to allow Bryzzo to spend three to six months out to pasture where he can gain some weight and work out his body soreness naturally. As far as his future goes, our plan is to compete in the 2021 Thoroughbred Makeover – Retired Racehorse Project. Our foremost concern is his health and soundness so if at any point he lets us know that he can’t handle the workload, we will retire him out and let him live the rest of his live out in peace but as of now, he’s as sound as sound gets!

My motto at Dauntless Performance Horses is achieving the impossible. A huge part of that is trusting your gut and following that feeling you get when you look into a horse’s eyes and it simply stops you in your tracks. You do not know why, it just does. In that moment you can respond, or you can retreat. In this moment, Tori and I chose to respond by committing to giving this everything we have because we believe in Bryzzo as a horse and in his character. Despite each of his setbacks, he never stopped running, he never stopped trying, and most importantly he never gave up on his people.

So now it is our turn. Our turn to give him back what he has been giving to so many people all these years. We believe in Bryzzo! It is times like these that remind us that it does not matter where you came from, it only matters where you’re going!