RE: lowered pulse criteria and CRI

Steph Teeter (step@fsr.com)
Fri, 21 Nov 1997 18:21:10 -0800

I have to agree with Teresa on the significance of the CRI -
I did a ride this fall on my Orlov - he's very fast and competitive
but doesn't have a good distance base on him yet. We went
too fast in the beginning - one of those rides where I thought
my heart monitor wasn't working because it was reading higher
than I would have expected ... duh. He pulsed down great all
day - dropped quickly into the 50's but his appetite wasn't as
good as I would have liked and he was content to go slow
(which is unusual for him). At completion he dropped
right down to 52 and the vet said he looked great. He hadn't
felt right to me though on the last loop so I asked for a CRI.
It was 14/18 (went from 56 to 72) - not good. He dropped
back down to 56 a few minutes later, so we did it again to
be sure, and it shot up again to 72. This is a pretty clear
signal of electrolyte imbalance - or some metabolic problem.
Bunchuk didn't have any other problems and his appetite
and brightness improved after an hour or so, but the lesson
here was that a good recovery does not necessarily
mean that everything is ok.

I think the CRI is a *very* usefull parameter - and would
personally like to see it used regularly at more rides. It
really doesn't take much longer to do - the vet can check
all the other parameters while waiting for the second
pulse check.

Steph

-----Original Message-----
From: Teresa Van Hove [SMTP:vanhove@unavco.ucar.edu]
Sent: Thursday, November 20, 1997 8:44 PM
To: ridecamp@endurance.net
Subject: lowered pulse criteria

Hi,

Interesting discussion about pulse rates. I think that the CRI gives more
information for catching tired horses early. Why not demand that horses
have to meet a set CRI standard within 10 minutes of recovery if you are
trying to slow down people who are deliberately pushing their horses?

For the vast majority, who may be pushing their horses without realizing
it (And I have been there and done that) just having a 10 minute CRI
at every vet check and warning riders to slow down if the CRI is high
would probably be sufficient. I now will request a CRI, or do one myself,
if the vets are busy and CRI's are not part of the check; but beginners
as well as their horses can get caught up in the excitement of a ride,
and even monitoring the time to recover to 60 or 64 is not sufficient
to catch a horse that is starting to tire from an over-enthusiastic pace.
My horses have to be pretty tired or have other problems before they fail
to come down to criteria within a few minutes.

Teresa