[RC] New incentive to enter 100's/HR jump - sherman
What I’ve seen with my horses and my
several friends that use HRM is that every single big scary spike is a
misreading of the HRM. Most often a loose girth not making consistent contact,
or a shifting saddle creating contact/no contact episodes. Even when the horse
trips, spooks, etc, I’ve never seen a spike up around 200, more often
only 10-20 BPM. The fact that your horse had no problems later would be an
indication that the spike was not from being tired, from what I’ve seen. In
other words, if you hadn’t seen that blip, you and the vets would have
never thought there was any problem, right? If a spike happens again on a ride,
I depend on the evaluation of the horse more than that spike to determine if
the horse truly has a problem or not. Electronics aren’t perfect, just
another tool to aid us.
The last ride I did was on two friends’
horses, two days of 50s, we all had HRMs, not one of them worked consistently
all day and the biggest problem was them showing unreasonably high HRs when we
knew it shouldn’t be that high for the speed and terrain we were on. Once
we would get everything adjusted, they would be accurate for a while, but when
things started shifting again (no cruppers and girth loosening during the ride),
we’d get wild readings. We ignored it, the horses would always pulse down
within 2-5 minutes all day.
Just something to think about when it
happens again, because it probably will (:>)
Kathy
No I wasn't climbing. We were on flat terrain.
Throughout the day I had been mainly trotting but doing some cantering and her
heart rate would drop lower at the canter than at the trot, but I didn't do a
ton of cantering because she is not used to doing it for really long periods of
time. So at this point, I asked her to canter and she did, but felt tired,
and that is when her heart rate jumped to 200. I pulled her back to a walk and
it did hang there for several seconds before working its way back down. So I
didn't think it was a monitor problem. But it sure freaked me out. We walked
and slow jogged it back in to camp and the rest of the time the monitor had
normal readings. There was one last climb near the end - not too steep but a
long hill - and we walked up it slowly and her heart rate stayed around
140 if I remember right, no more spiking at all. At the end of the CTR, we have
a pulse taken four minutes after our arrival time and then pulse and
vetting 30 minutes later. She seemed perfectly fine at this point, drinking and
very concentrated on eating. At the 30 minutes, all of her metabolics were
good but she was off on a circle on the left hind. I don't know if it's
possible that the spike happened because something hurt at that moment, but
that the actual lameness only showed up once she had stopped moving and cooled
down??
I hadn't really thought about it like that until now
:)
