Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Title: “He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster

I remember that, that’s a classic scenario for a lot of horses.  They’re pretty much okay without it, but what a nice difference with higher levels.  There have been lots of similar results from other parts of the country as well since those original discussions way back when.  One horse in the Central region went from a lot of LD and 50 non-completions to being a good 100 mile horse in less than a year or so.

 

Speaking of conditions in the SE, I taught that lecture in thermoregulation to my equine exercise physiology class last night, including your examples of riding in hot, humid conditions in the SE where the textbooks would all recommend cancelling the event.  Pretty funny, there are a couple of trainers in the class that thought horses would be dropping dead right and left if they so much as left their pen at indexes over 130 or so.  I included your comments from the ’96 ROC of ‘humidity, what humidity’, it was a nice segue into talking about acclimatization from one region to another.  I’m going to bug Otis and Ken at some point and pick their brains a little more, thanks for their contact addys.

 

sug

 

 

 

From: Truman Prevatt [mailto:tprevatt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2008 2:15 PM
To: suendavid@xxxxxxx
Cc: 'Lori Bertolucci'; 'ridecamp'
Subject: Re: [RC] Blood test levels

 

When this was discussed many many moons ago back in '98 I was having problem with the Jbird. His muscles just seem too stiff. He never tied up but his muscles just didn't seem to loosen up properly. I had him tested he was about 170 pbb. I calculated the Sb he was getting in  his feed - ignoring the hay and foliage since the Fl soils has virtually no Se. I supplemented so he was getting about 8 mg/day. Six months later I retested and he was running 220. In another six months I retest and he was running the same.

In about two months after starting the supplementation he was a different horse. His muscles were much looser. He warm up much faster and his stride was more fluid.

I think some of the soil in the SE is okay for SE - like over toward Northern AL and Northwestern GA and Western Tennessee. But FL is like the NW - what you get in your horse you put in either by using foliage you buy from other areas or supplementation.

Truman

Susan E. Garlinghouse, DVM wrote: