Your horse’s heart rate will drop dramatically
(hopefully) in the time it takes to stop, get off, get
out the stethoscope. It’s nice to know what the horse’s working
rate is, some riders use 180 BPM as a marker that they
don’t like to go over for more than a minute or two at a ride, claiming that
it will cause early fatigue. I don’t know if it’s true or not. I go
over it briefly on conditioning rides, climbing long steep hills. When the
grade changes slightly, the heart rate can drop 20-50 BPM within seconds. I was
thrilled when my horse could trot 2 miles up a steep hill, gallop another mile
a lesser grade, and have his HR drop from 180 to 70 in a couple minutes of
walking when we reach the top. Without
a monitor, I wouldn’t know that. Of course, the monitor is not a replacement
for knowing your horse, just another tool to help us to get to know them a
little better.
I love my heart rate monitor.
Kathy
Alice wrote:
I recently was
able to purchase a used heart rate monitor and I was really excited to get
it. (well, I don’t have it yet, but I will soon) I was telling a friend
who rides, but doesn’t do distance riding, about the new monitor and
she asked why I needed it, why I couldn’t just take my horse’s
pulse as I would a person. She’s a paramedic and she thought it sounded
like an incredible waste of money. I told her that it must not be that easy
to get an accurate pulse reading without a monitor or stethoscope or plenty
of people would be doing it. She really thinks I’m just being lazy and
promised to research it and get back to me. I figured I’d do my own
research.
So, tell me why
it’s a good or bad purchase and how you would just take the pulse of a
horse without getting off and using a stethoscope? If you’re taking
pulse with a finger and a wrist watch where do you do that?
