Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

At 02:16 PM 3/11/2009, Kathy Mayeda wrote:
> Sooooo Karen - I never heard the
> thin skinned horses being the best
> for endurance.  Does that have something to do with heat
> transference?

I have no idea, but I have read that somewhere and had people more
experienced than myself tell me that - could be all fiction for all I
know, but I have had horses that are more skin sensitive than others and
those are usually the better recover-ers.  To me sensitive skinned
just means that you have to be really careful to get sweat cleaned off of
them, keep their armpits washed off in all types of weather and that I
need to be a little more delicate when brushing or currying. Oh, and also
very careful about fly sprays or other topicals - always test first.

I checked out that study on skin tenting and really, it probably doesn't
mean much for our endurance horses.  Looks like out of 60 horses
used in that study, 33 of them had a body condition score of a 1 as this
research was done on working horses in Pakistan.  I think that most
of us would recognition that something wasn't quite right if our horses
had a BCS of a 1.  ;)  

http://vip.vetsci.usyd.edu.au/contentUpload/content_2873/VerityAmbler.pdf
Pritchard
et al.
(2006) found that skin-tenting
was not an accurate method of predicting clinical
dehydration because horses with low body-condition scores (BCS) (those
with BCS=1 comprised
33 of 60 horses in the study) were more likely to show positive skin
tenting regardless of their
behaviour or blood results.

 From pub med: 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16986604?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DiscoveryPanel.Pubmed_Discovery_RA&linkpos=3&log$=relatedarticles&logdbfrom=pubmed

What is more useful for us I think is to know what parameters are
normal for our own horses, that way if something changes we'll know what
normal is, or pre-ride conditions were to compare to.  If a vet
gives my horse a C on gut sounds and he's eating super well then I won't
worry as much as I would if the vet gave my horse an A on gut sounds and
my horses was staring off into the distance not interested in food. 
Same thing for the skin tent or other hydration scores - if the horse has
been drinking and his pee looks good and things are going well then I'm
less likely to be concerned if I don't get an A over if I do get an A and
I don't think the horse is behaving normally.    

Karen
http://www.enduranceridestuff.com/blog