If you own, train, or ride thoroughbred horses, that’s the first rule. Horses are wonderful animals. They have personalities. They have heart. They are born to run. But sometimes they get hurt or sick, and sometimes they die.

Unfortunately, America didn’t know the rule, and last spring, we fell in love with a horse called Barbaro. But we weren’t the first to fall. This extraordinary article in Vanity Fair recounts Barbaro’s story from the inside — through the eyes of the owners, trainers, doctors and jockeys who helped hone him into a Kentucky Derby champion, and then tried to save his life after his devastating injury at the Preakness.

The problem for Gretchen Jackson was she did fall in love with a horse. She fell in love with him because when he was in his element on the racecourse there were moments he ran with such joy and abandon that he actually flew, all four feet off the ground. She fell in love with him because of the way he soldiered on after he was tragically hurt in the Preakness Stakes in May 2006, his sense of self so intact that he bit one veterinarian smack on the butt and ran a masseuse out of the stall. She fell in love with him because of the gleam in his eyes, still bright, during those dark days in July 2006 when both his rear lower limbs became a medical nightmare, and she wrote in the private journal she kept:

It’s not good. Oh my God I am so concerned. Dear Lord we cannot let the bright light fade, flicker, die. We must conquer. Where are you God in my suffering? Are you holding my hands showing me full moons and breezy nights? Yes Lord, they are magnificent but my heart is looking at Barbaro. That is not the horse that won the derby.

She fell in love with him because of the way he was trying to communicate, Don’t give up on me yet. She fell in love with him because of the way he rallied after that. And then she fell in love with him because of the way he died.

Barbaro’s trainers fell in love too. And his doctors. And they gave Barbaro a level care far beyond what most horses could expect.

The Vanity Fair story includes a number of revelations, including the degree to which the media put a positive spin on Barbaro’s condition, even as he struggled.

But more amazing is the degree to which Barbaro made it clear that he wanted to live and how he demonstrated through his personality that he wanted his doctors to succeed. He reveled in the comforts of his owner and trainer. And he fought. Fought hard.

Some might say that this was all false perception. That Barbaro’s human companions were merely projecting, seeking out human behavior in an animal. But anyone who has been around animals knows better. You can see hope, illness and despair. You can see it in their eyes and in their demeanor.

Thoroughbred horses are the world’s greatest athletes. And just like human athletes, it’s often that intangible, “heart,” that makes the difference between winning and losing. There are dozens of accounts of horses running side by side, when one realizes it is beaten, and simply fades back. There are even accounts of horses, beaten in tight races, out dueled to the finish, who literally never recover.

Barbaro had heart. He was tough. And he was special. It’s a tragedy that his body couldn’t keep pace with that heart. He would have been a champion for the ages.