Plastic Surgery Helps Stud Put His Best Face Forward

URBANA, Ill. — So what if the mares don’t care? Robins Parteebuilt is a stud, and his owners care. They want the stallion to look his best.

So a plastic surgeon who normally works on patients of the two-legged variety was summoned to repair the dent in 11-year-old Robins Parteebuilt’s forehead.

The stallion, nicknamed Partee, got the dent in 1989 when he galloped head-first into a fence post. This week, a team at the University of Illinois veterinary school filled in the mark with a sort of body putty.

“This is one of the top 10 sires of halter horses in the nation--a precious animal,” said owner Roger DeWitt.

University veterinarians had patched Partee’s face as best they could in 1989, using wires to hold together broken bones.

But when it came to a face as pretty as Partee’s--the subject of oohs and aahs at the university clinic--the veterinarians decided a plastic surgeon was needed.

They called in Dr. Jim Sheridan from Carle Clinic in Urbana. One of his specialties is repairing faces.

It took 19 people using a hoist to get the anesthetized, 1,350-pound stallion onto the operating table.

“Boy, he’s a handsome dog,” veterinary surgeon Gordon Baker said after the dent was filled in. And everyone in the operating room agreed.