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Re: [RC] [RC] [AERC-Members] Ulcers - terry banister

Barney's study (as he himself pointed out) is a long way from "proving" a lot of
things that we'd like to, it is still noteworthy that racehorses (who only exercise for a few
minutes) have nearly double the rate of ulcers of endurance horses, who exercise steadily
for hours.

Yes, I have never read Barney's final study analysis, but his Clinic "proved" that my horse did in fact have ulcers, for any/all the "factors" I mentioned earlier.

When I ponied and groomed racehorese for two seasons at a flat-track back East, I saw their lifestyle: they are being fed high-energy diets and locked in box stalls 90% of their racing life with very little daily interraction or turnout. It is no wonder they have ulcers, and they also crib and weave and bite and have other stir-crazy neurosis.

It's really not so complex to understand that the farther horses deviate from their natural genetic lifestyle of being a constantly moving(mozying), grazing/drinking at ground level, socially interactive, barefoot prey animal, the harder we have to work at "tricking" their body and mind into not reacting to the artificial lifestyle we have created for them.

Now, moving down the trail is one of the most natural activities we can engage in with a horse. But we all know that doing it for more than 20 miles in 24 hours is not really "natural" to the horse, so in order to ride them in the Sport of Endurance, we have come up with many ways to circumvent the results of pushing the animal beyond their natural "inclinations", (electrolytes, high-energy supplements, joint supplements, horseshoes/boots, scoping/treatment for ulcers and IV hydration if they crash) And it works. The horses wouldn't have a purpose without the "sports" we create. And we do have boudaries. We draw the line at hard "drugs" within 72 hours of actual race day, we have vet checks and we have different levels of "competition," etc., etc.

And the point is . . . ?

I guess it would be to add ulcers to the list of "possible" captivity/endurance-related "hazards" along with sore backs and bowed tendons.

terry
"May the Horse be with you"


From: <heidi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <jsalas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
CC: <ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <AERCMembersForum@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [RC]   [AERC-Members] Ulcers
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2004 15:17:38 -0700 (MST)

>>             This study shows that gastric ulcers might be more the
>> rule
> than
>> the exception when we exercise horses. Ongoing studies should provide
>> more ways--dietary and pharmaceutical--in which we can normalize the
>> pH or cushion the equine GI system to minimize damage.
>
>
> I would read this to mean DIETARY first then pharmaceutical as a last
> resort. Certainly, we can't take it to mean that more horses should be
> on drugs, than not.
>
> The article describes how the stomach works when the horse is exercised.
> It sounds like it does what it is suppose to do. As the author
> indicated, the same thing happens in human athletes. However, not all
> athletes, and I'm going to stretch it a bit here, I would say most
> athletes don't get acid reflux and heartburn. Why?Because if they are
> serious about their training and competition schedule, they watch what
> they eat and how hard they train, including R&R.

I would further add some points of consideration to this.

1)  This relates back to dietary management, but keep in mind that food in
the stomach pretty well dilutes the acid so that it isn't damaging.
Hence, in a sport like endurance where the horse is encouraged to eat at
every opportunity, those horses that will do so are providing themselves
with their own preventative.

2)  Keep in mind that simply confining a horse to a stall increases the
risk of ulcers considerably.  As Kat pointed out, one needs to do
controlled studies to really look at this, but it would be interesting to
see if the rate of ulcers in stalled horses was really much less than that
in endurance horses.

3)  Although Barney's study (as he himself pointed out) is a long way from
"proving" a lot of things that we'd like to, it is still noteworthy that
racehorses (who only exercise for a few minutes) have nearly double the
rate of ulcers of endurance horses, who exercise steadily for hours.

4)  Keep in mind that the only thing that the study quoted here
demonstrated was the physical approximation of acid-containing contents of
the stomach with the walls of the upper part of the stomach--it did not
demonstrate that this situation caused an increase in occurrence of
ulcers.  There are a great many other factors at work here.

Heidi


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REAL endurance is sleeping in the tack compartment of your trailer w/the
door open, and your horse snorts/snots on your forehead every 30 min!
~ Heidi Sowards

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