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Re: [RC] sick to my stomach - Dyane SmithOn Sunday, May 04, 2008 9:29 AM"Truman Prevatt" <tprevatt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: " My wife told me yesterday that she read an in TB Times (I think she said it was) that the trainer wanted to scratch the filly from the Derby. The owner made the decision she would run over the advice of the trainer. I suspect the trainer thought something was not right before the race began." " In any horse sport it's human lust for fame and glory that our horses pay the price for, be it in trying to win the Derby, win a 50 or 100 mile endurance ride, win the Rolex (a horse died at the Rolex last week - he flipped when the caught a leg going up for a jump) or just showing off, No horse sport is free of that. Our horses would just as soon be in the field munching on grass." I'm no fan of racing two year olds, but as Truman points out, high intensity sports are high risk. Dr. Ross' (Equus May 2008) has developed a method to give a scientific underpinning to the horseman's instinctive awareness of the horse that "ain't doin' right". The method uses computerized formulas to examine a horse's heart rate variability. Many of us already have heart rate monitors and are aware that a higher heart rate could indicate trouble. Heart rate variability is different. It measures the interval between the heart beats. It's already being used in human medicine to do things like predict the survival rate of cardiac patients. Dr. Ross' method has been shown to predict the breakdown of race horses up to three months before there were any outward clinical signs. I wish that AERC could partner with Dr. Ross to do a large scale study of the method. It seems to me that we could all benefit from knowing that our horses were at risk before a ride. Probably Truman or some others of you who understand the science behind this could explain it all better here. But I was very impressed by the article in Equus. Dyane =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 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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