Itching to get better.

To horse lovers, to veterinarians, to everyone who brought flowers to the hospital where Barbaro underwent surgery, the happiest moment in the Kentucky Derby winner's recuperation from a broken leg must have been that moment when ...

... He scratched an itch.

Scratching an itch might sound simple to you. That's because you're not a horse. This was an itch behind the left ear. To scratch such an itch, a horse needs to perform an act of athletic contortion. He first looks comical. But you soon realize that scratching that itch is proof of the horse's flexibility, agility and, most important, his ingenuity.

Here's how a horse scratches his left ear:

He lowers his body by extending his front feet. He drops his head even lower and turns it to the left, as if listening to a mare with a whispered proposition. Then, he lifts his left rear foot and reaches forward until he can scrape his hoof against that damnable itchy spot.

For any horse to do that is impressive. For Barbaro, it's more. It's life-affirming. When his left foot stretched forward, Barbaro had to bear his hindquarters weight on his right rear foot. To shift his weight onto that leg once shattered--and to balance himself on it days after surgery put the pieces back together--is proof certain that Barbaro has a chance, a real chance, to outrun death.

"Be sure to say that all of us here are praying for him because there's a long way to go," says Dr. J.D. Howard, the resident veterinarian at a Kentucky horse farm, Walmac International. In 1987, Walmac's great stallion Nureyev suffered an injury nearly identical to Barbaro's. Then came a series of medical crises, some of which may yet threaten Barbaro.