Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Dot Wiggins wrote:
> The long ago rides used to take temps as well as pulse and respiration
> numbers. (TPRs) I don't remember reading why this was discontinued.

One of the people in our endurance club was wanting
to actively reinstate the rule a year or so ago.

He and his wife went to the Eastern High Sierra Classic
to both do the 50 a couple of summers ago.

The trailer ride is ~5-6 hrs-ish. Their horses behaved fine
when they arrived, eating, drinking, etc. and they vetted
in without problems.

During the ride, at the 45 mile vet check, his horse
suddenly started acting odd (can't remember the specifics -
I think it acted colicky). He pulled and trailered the
horse back to camp.

The horse got progressively worse and was eventually
trailered up to Reno and subsequently to UC Davis where
they started colic surgery on it.

What the horse was actually suffering from was a lung
infection that nearly killed it. Luckily, they were able
to save the horse and today I believe he is back in work.
But only by the skin of his teeth.

The owner thinks that the horse aspirated (?) dust from
the hay during the trailer ride and that's what started
the infection. Although the horse showed *no* outward signs
at all until that 45 mile check, he felt very strongly
that it would have had an elevated temperature from the
infection and that, had it been taken, it would have
alerted them earlier to the horse's problem. BTW, he was
riding in the back of the pack.

I'm guessing that taking the temperature was abandoned
for obvious safety reasons <grin>, but see no reason
why people couldn't routinely take their own (assuming
they aren't Terre ;-)   ) as part of their normal check
up... Kind of like checking gut sounds. I was surprised,
when I recently went round to check our three how completely
unconcerned they were about having it done (of course, at
a ride, things would be different ;-)  )


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Lucy Chaplin Trumbull
elsie AT foothill DOT net
Repotted english person in Sierra Foothills, California
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