Re: Carbs -Water/comparison

[Susan Evans Garlinghouse <suendavid@worldnet.att.net>]

The group that ate more hay carried FAR
>  MORE WATER!!
> 
>  Now, in the endurance horse this is GOOD, in the race horse this is BAD.>
> 
> Hmm, I don't know about that. Certainly hydration can be a major problem in
> endurance, but carrying around an extra 100 lbs can be too.

I dunno, Tom.  Not that one study is the Last Word by any stretch, but
the data we collected on 360+ horses indicated that the weight carried
made very little difference---at least over a 100 mile course, this of
course doesn't apply to a racing TB.  We had a pretty big spread of body
weights, rider weights and relative loads between the two and
statitically, we couldn't find any correlation at all that equated to
More Weight = Slower Times.  So if I had a choice during a 100 mile
ride, I personally would rather have that extra hundred pounds of water
in there.  Especially since Carlson (recent references if you want them)
found that even under ideal drinking circumstances, horses won't/can't
drink enough to replace all the fluids lost through sweating.  Sounds to
me like a pretty strong argument that hydration factors are more
important than weight factors to the distance horse.


> I'm not against water, but there is a partitioning problem. Where the body
> wants water is in the circulatory system, not in the gut. And to the extent
> that you have a whole lot of roughage in the gut when it comes time to move
> the water into circulation, you can encounter problems one place or the other.
> Not enough water to move the roughage, or not enough water to support the
> exercise.

 I'll agree that you want the water in the circulation, but I would
think partitioning problems are only going to occur if either the horse
is clinically dehydrated (not enough water anywhere) or insufficient
blood flow to the gut = insufficient gut motility = disrupted
reabsorptive phase = impaction or diarrhea.  And insufficient gut
motility is going to be caused by either shunting of the blood flow from
too intense an exercise level; or not enough bulk in the gut to
stimulate peristalsis.  (Plenty of recent references on this, too).
Sounds to me that totally aside from the energetics question, plenty of
bulk is a good thing just from the hydration and gut motility point of
view---neither of which apply to racehorses, of course.

Susan Garlinghouse