Re: The Horse magazine/my rant

["jsalas" <jsalas@tampabay.rr.com>]

Well, write to them and educate them!! I didn't actually read the article
yet, just the titles. I swear, I have had more than a dozen vets recommend
the magazine and I have learned a lot. Maybe I just didn't know as much.
Come on Angie, your a writer, sit down with your facts and send them in! You
make very reasonable and valid points and I would like to know what their
response would be. There is no  point in printing outdated information. It
is a waste of paper and obviously aggravates some people :)  Lisa Salas, The
Odd FArm----- Original Message -----
From: "Rides 2 Far" <rides2far@juno.com>
To: <jsalas@tampabay.rr.com>
Cc: <ridecamp@endurance.net>
Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2001 2:33 PM
Subject: The Horse magazine/my rant


> > This month's issue of The Horse magazine has some wonderful
> articles,dehydration and thumps
>
> WARNING:  You struck a chord, and this is a rant.
> I disagree on the thumps article.  It sounded like a 17 year old's
> research paper where they're regurgitating a lot of info that they don't
> understand either.  If I'd never heard of thumps, I still wouldn't have a
> clue...it was full of technical info, but not much useful on the
> homefront.  I was tempted to write a letter to the editor.  I was
> offended that they used examples of horses run into the ground during
> endurance events years ago, described a mare "standing with her head down
> and legs splayed out" if I didn't do endurance I would have gotten an
> awful impression of the sport.  Their other example was of a rider who'd
> been released from the last checkpoint "only if he'd promise to walk" and
> he'd gone back to galloping as soon as he was out of sight. They did
> point out that they'd learned to add more checks, etc., they even...get
> this...decided not to let horses younger than 5 compete in a 50 the next
> year....
>
> One problem was that they kept describing it as if every horse that had
> thumps had been run to exhaustion.  Every case I've seen was caught when
> the horse looked darned good. (and I've seen more cases than their vet
> had) They described the diaphram "slamming" up against the lungs the
> mental image was of something traumatic.  You'd have pictured a horse in
> seizures!  Even the cover said, "Thumps is an obvious symptom" Hey, it's
> not that obvious...you have to sort of stare at that flank but you'd have
> never known it reading his description.  I could go on and on.
>
>  The vet they interviewed said he'd only seen 3 cases in his life, all
> endurance horses, (Duh!  How many pleasure horses do they see *while*
> they're being ridden hard?)
> "and fortunately all three of them recovered"  Horses die of thumps?
> Isn't that like saying, my car quit running because the light on the dash
> came on?
>
> It said, "The condition when it does occur normally appears in a horse
> that has not been properly conditioned for an endurance race or one which
> has refused to ingest sufficient quantities of water during the
> competition on a hot day"  My experience has been that it's more likely a
> problem adjusting that horse's calcium intake.  Some really good
> endurance horses are chronic thumpers until their owners come up with
> their own custom mixture. No change in training.
>
> They said, "The thumping horse breaths in time with its heartbeat"  LOTS
> of horses do that unless at total rest.  How many newbies are going to
> panic when their blowing horse is breathing along with his heartbeat now?
>
>  They spent time pointing out that endurance horses burn a different fuel
> than say, Thoroughbred racers, but when they talked about replinishing
> electrolytes they never pointed out that TBs get acidic and endurance
> horses get alkaline...that's important!  They don't need the same
> electrolytes replinished and they use the term "electrolytes" referring
> to what both need.  Who would know not to use the ones that are in every
> catalog for  the type thumps which they went into such detail to describe
> at an endurance event?  Wouldn't that be like trying to put out a fire
> with gasoline?  The only case of thumps I've ever been pulled for was
> when I gave the non-endurance electrolytes. I've often wondered if he'd
> have gotten thumps if he'd had no electrolytes at all that day. (Thank
> goodness he lived through it...actually grazed through it while dragging
> me around neighing at other horses leaving the vet check)
>
> So what was their suggestion?
>
>  "Nutritional fitness means that the horse is ingesting the appropriate
> amounts of energy in its diet and, if it is to be competing in something
> like an endurance race, that it is receiving additional electrolytes.
> This might involve supplementing them in the horse's drinking water"
>
>  Puleeeeeezzzz!  Did this guy uses a 1970 Encyclopedia for his research?
>
> I got Equus Magazine for the first 20 years or so, read every one cover
> to cover, then a friend started subscribing me to the Horse as a
> Christmas gift. Said she liked it better.  I have yet to make it through
> an article that really taught me anything.  I'm resubscribing to Equus.
>
> Angie
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