Lud's horse used to refuse to drink along the
trail. On Death Valley ride one year, the vet check was about 35 miles
from the start. When we arrived there, the horse drank a little (but
nowhere near enough) and I gave him electrolyte past from a tube. He
promptly started thumping, then colicked. Apparently, one does not give a
full dose of electrolytes when a horse is dehydrated. Lesson
learned.
years and years ago I had my horse thump at a ride-Jim Steere was my vet.
He said to go back to my trailer and feed my horse some alfalfa. He may "right
himself" I did and my horse completed with no problems. I have crewed for a
horse that thumped and we gave him some calcium tabs and alfalfa (again) and
the horse again "righted himself". These are my personal experiences and have
not had a horse pulled for thumping. I know several top ten riders that have
had this problem and corrected their horse by adding Calcium tabs to their
electrolytes. I have read several articles about thumping and there are
several ideas on the matter. If someone has a recent article please send it my
way-I love to research and compare all research done on certain conditions.
A long time ago we used to make a homemade electrolyte mixture that
Courtney Hart had formulated. It consisted of calcium shell, salt and other
stuff...when I used that mixture (I probably had the ratio mixed up) that is
when my horse thumped.
