SEATTLE — Just over two years ago, Dr. Mark Dedomenico, MD, a renowned cardiovascular surgeon with a passion for developing elite equine athletes, opened one of the nation's most luxurious and state-of-the-art equine training and rehabilitation facilities.

Pegasus Equine Rehabilitation and Training Center in Redmond, Wash., about 20 miles east of Seattle, provides five-star amenities for injured racing and sport horses in a scenic, meticulously tended, 100-acre setting.

The mission is not only to assist in the animals' recovery, but to study and refine rehabilitation techniques to restore equine athletes quickly to high-performance levels.

Every aspect of Pegasus' design has been considered to enhance horse health, safety and healing, its owner says. Horses walk on rubber-brick paths and similar walkways in the barn. Their stalls are bedded with wood shavings on soft-rubber, air-cushioned flooring.

The picturesque complex, which can house up to 130 horses, draws Thoroughbreds from Kentucky, California, Oregon and Western Canada, as well as those from Washington state. Other sport horses and dressage horses come to Pegasus for rehabilitation. And stallion barns, although not presently used for breeding, offer future potential.

Among the various Pegasus amenities are a 16-foot-deep equine swimming pool, an underwater treadmill called Aquatred, a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, eight Eurocisers, a 17,600-square-foot Polytrack™-surfaced indoor arena, and five-eighth-mile Polytrack-surfaced training track. There are several oversized paddocks, used mostly for exercise and to allow the horses some sun.

Dedomenico and the facility operations manager, Lynn Lockhart, traveled to horse farms throughout the country for two years gathering ideas before they built Pegasus. "We wanted to really set it up right," says Lockhart. "It has to work."

And work it does. The equine pool allows horses recovering from surgery to maintain their cardiovascular fitness without any concussion or stress to limbs, joints, tendons or ligaments. The underwater treadmill provides exercise with minimal load to limbs and joints, while incorporating some weight-bearing rehabilitation. Horses easily adapt to it and get a full-body workout.

Eurocisers allow for individual free movement at controlled speeds of 1 mph to 25 mph, allowing the horses to walk, canter or trot according to their needs. The 110- by 160-foot indoor arena and the training track both are surfaced with Polytrack, a combination of natural and synthetic materials including polypropylene fibers, recycled rubber and wax-coated silica sand. The cushioned surface allows for safe, higher-impact movement to properly condition the horse's bone, cartilage and joints to restore full function.

"You need to jar a horse's limbs to stimulate bone growth and cartilage development to get the osteoblasts and osteocytes functioning," Dedomenico says. "That's why the Aquatred works so well."

It's been said that swimming assists in this process as well, and they're trying to prove this at Pegasus. The regimen in the pool, the Aquatred and the Eurocisers are individualized, depending on the horse and its condition. "We start them out gradually, get them used to the equipment and see what they can take, watching them closely," explains Mary Knight, director of horse operations. Once they've progressed, they move on to the Polytrack training track for significant training.

Special therapies

Pegasus also employs several special therapies to assist in the healing process. The hyperbaric oxygen chamber is used in treatment of surface wounds, soft-tissue injuries, infections, tendonitis and laminitis. Recently a 5-year-old racehorse came to Pegasus for hyperbaric oxygen therapy to assist in the healing of a large surface wound on the foreleg. Within 90 days, the wound had healed and the patient was ready to start swimming and using the underwater treadmill.