After a month or so the vet decided that we should take the horse off of
dex. He gave me a "weaning schedule". The horse had to be weaned since
there was the real possibility that the adrenal cortex had become lazy and
would not be able to produce the necessary amounts if we went cold turkey.
That is what we did.
What is the moral of this? There is more to conditioning an endurance
horse than conditioning the legs, heart, lungs, etc. Biological systems are
controlled by hormones. Hormones are those substances, usually a peptide
or steroid, produced by one tissue and conveyed by the bloodstream to
another to effect physiological activity, such as growth or metabolism.
Yes the hormonal system is critical for the performance of an endurance
horse. Hormones cause the heart rate to rise in response to exercise or
fright. Hormones control the movement of the gut.
An aside, one of the effects of over training is to overly stress the
hormonal system so that it cannot do its job. Here is an superbly
conditioned athlete whose performance as fallen off for no apparent reason.
In many cases it is because the hormonal system cannot keep pace with the
physical demands placed on it by the training regiment.
The hormonal system has to also be conditioned to respond to the stress of
exercise. For a horse in tip top shape then the hormonal system is capable
of controlling the heart rate, the oxygenation of the muscles, the
metabolism of energy, etc. The production of these necessary will be
sufficient for perk performance of that particular horse once the hormonal
system has been trained. I don't know how long this process takes, I'll
let one of the vets respond here - but I would suspect that it takes
several years of conditioning.
Now what happens when we interfere with this conditioning and acclimation
process by adding all sorts of "nutrients" - MSM, DMG, etc. Are we really
helping or are we inhibiting (with all good intentions) the natural
acclimation process brought on by exercise?
As far as PSGAG's (Adequan and Cosequin), it is a nutrient that supports
the regeneration of the cartilage matrix and supports the production of
hyaluronic acid. Since the effect of PSGAG is to provide the nutrient for
the body to regenerate the cartilage it should not be required be provide
on a continuous. Many people use a regiment of an Adequan shot on a
periodic basis (say every three months). At any rate it is hard to
conceive that the "withdrawal " of Cosequin for a period prior to a ride
should cause any harm on the horse. Jeannie Waldorn, DVM has a good
article in the 1994 Feb-March EN on this subject.
Of course we have to provide a balanced ration to our horses which means
testing for missing minerals and providing these. This biological system
called the horse is an incredibly complex system and the ability to adapt
to exercise is truly amazing - but there are no short cuts. My concern of
using many of these nutricuticals is they may be providing a crutch and
minimizing the adaptation to exercise of the biological system as a whole.
Thinking that we need to use DMG, MSM, etc. or our horses can not do a ride
may very well be (as Dane said) "the only person we are fooling is the
person in the mirror".
Truman
BTW the other option for Misty was to leave her on low levels of dex for
the rest of her life (crutch). Of course if I did that I would not be able
to have had such a good time in Utah this summer and would have not meet
some really great people.
I have to be out of town most of next week - so I want to take this chance
to wish everyone a happy hoilday season.
Truman Prevatt
Sarasota, FL