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Re: Subject: RE: [RC] Rehydrating your horse's skin and coat - Barbara McCrary

I have heard that thin-skinned horses are able to dissipate heat more readily.
 
Barbara
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 2009 3:22 PM
Subject: Re: Subject: RE: [RC] Rehydrating your horse's skin and coat

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

Replies
Subject: RE: [RC] Rehydrating your horse's skin and coat, Dream Weaver
Re: Subject: RE: [RC] Rehydrating your horse's skin and coat, Kathy Mayeda
RE: Subject: RE: [RC] Rehydrating your horse's skin and coat, Kristen A Fisher
Re: Subject: RE: [RC] Rehydrating your horse's skin and coat, Kathy Mayeda
Re: Subject: RE: [RC] Rehydrating your horse's skin and coat, Dream Weaver