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[RC] Question about sweating - Maryanne GabbaniI have a group of horses who do a lot of Long Slow Distance for a living carting tourists and Cairo escapees around the farms and desert out here in Giza. When I'm busy, it's pretty common for a core group of about four of them to do maybe 150 km a week working and when I'm not busy they each get out for 2 to 3 hour rides a minimum of every other day. When I'm lucky enough to get clients who know how to ride and are not totally out of shape themselves, these boys can bounce to Dahshur through the desert and back through the villages (40 km/25 miles) in four hours and still be bouncing on the way back. Definitely fit to continue. The only endurance here is LD in the desert and as a rule I don't bother to enter if the horses have clients the next day, but on the 5th of May the local group is doing a 2 loop 30 km ride for farm teams that we thought it would be fun to take part in.So I've been evaluating my boys to see who would do the best at this particular ride, and in the process started checking heart rates. I've done LD with three of them who pulse down brilliantly but I tried out the fourth, who while he is strong and fast, seems to have a heart rate that is all over the place. I'm still checking whether it is the monitor or him, but even when we got back from riding this morning and I was checking his HR it would spike 10 to 15 beats and then drop a bit. This was at his own home, no unusual people or horses around, no good reason to be excited. His companion had been a great deal more active during the ride (mostly done at a walk since the weather was filthy hot and sticky....and the mulberry trees are bearing now calling to us along the trails.)..but he was at 43 when we walked in. As well, Doobie was very sweaty, while his calmer companion was bone dry. Ok, so I have two horses here getting the same work pretty much. Doobie is the sweaty one with the weird HR at about 6 yrs old and Nazeer is the cool cucumber at 9 yrs. Doobie has conformation issues (he was a gift horse) in that he has very narrow chest and shoulders, and he has the know-it-all attitude of a 15 yr old boy, but he really enjoys moving out. He has more non-Arab blood and during the winter I never worried about his sweatiness because he was a fuzz ball. Nazeer is full Arab and has no real winter coat to speak of. Now they are all pretty much shed out (I don't clip because they live out of doors) and this sweat issue is sort of bothering me. I haven't had a horse with this issue before and I'm wondering if this is a fitness issue? Could the weird heart rates be indicative of the fact that he isn't as fit as he thinks he is? Why would one horse in a group who are basically all working together be all sweaty when the others aren't? And it isn't nerves as far as I can tell. I've seen the horses work themselves up into a sweat if they are nervous or ticked off to be held back at a walk when they want to run, but Doobie is just walking along on a loose rein and not fretting about a thing. We are going to start a systematic monitoring of resting heart rates on all of them but if anyone has an idea of something I need to look out for I'd really appreciate a heads up. I have a number of these gift horses and I try to find the best work for each of them because selling them is out of the question. Maryanne Cairo =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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