First off, you have my sympathies!
Marisa wrote:
>I'd like to hear some about ride scheduling vs. layoff time & excercise.
>What do other people do as far as time off??
>What about when you're doing rides 2 weeks apart?? When you all give your
>horses time off before or after a ride, do you lay them off -totally- (just
>on pasture)?
>Or do you lunge them or do other in hand work for light excercise??
My horse Warpaint has a history of tying up so I try to manage his layoff time
very carefully. I don't give him time off before an endurance ride. I make
sure he gets a workout on Thursday before a ride. I sometimes will ride him on
Friday night at the ride if possible. After a ride I will give him 2 days off
and then do some lunging on the 3rd day. With this horse I wouldn't consider
giving him a week off and then riding him hard. If he has that much time off I
have to do a couple of days of easy rides. I usually give him a lot of food in
the 2 days after a ride and I don't want to set him up for a tie-up by leaving
him inactive. In general I don't like to leave him inactive for more than 2
days. I don't feed him anything with molasses in it and he doesn't get any
corn.
My conditioning schedule this year has worked out to be:
Sat. Long conditioning ride 3+ hrs
Sun. Long conditioning ride 3+ hrs
Mon. Lunging and/or turnout
Tues. Lunging and/or turnout
Weds. Light/medium trail 2 hrs
Thurs. Lunging and/or turnout
Fri. Arena work 1 hr
I am working him on this schedule with the goal of some slow completions on 50s.
We aren't getting real high mileage in (probably 30-35/week) but we're doing a
lot of hills. It would probably be ideal to have him rest a day between long
training rides but the weekend is the only time I can do a really long slow
ride.
>I'm going to give her vitamins to her regularly from now on to make sure
>she's getting enough Selenium.
This is probably a good idea. My veterinarian recommended Select which I
give Warpaint every day. I also give him DMG. This supplement is thought
to help with lactic acid buildup. (I believe that there is no scientific
proof of this). We periodically give Warpaint a Vitamin E and Selenium
booster shot, although I have not done this this year.
>I asked the vet if we need to do blood work, but she didn't think it was
>necessary. Should I insist? Or just give her time on the vitamins, and
>hope it's ok??
Blood work can tell you the severity of the tie up. I always have blood
work done so I can know how severe the event was and how long I should
wait before putting the horse back to work. When I do put him back to
work I start out with light work and build gradually. The last time
Warpaint had a significant event (which also was the worst one he ever
had) was in June 1993 at the Oakland Hills ride. We did the first half
of the ride and vetted through fine at lunch. I happened to be watching
when he peed at the trailer and it was the infamous "port wine" color!
Bad news. The blood work showed his enzyme levels were very very high
(CPK 145,000). The scary part is that he didn't looked cramped and we
were getting ready to go out again.
>Also, I've heard that a horse that ties-up once or twice is prone to
>tie-up again.
This has been the case with Warpaint. He has probably tied-up a total of
5 times, with at least 2 events being significant (greater than 60,000
CPK). I have gotten to the point where I know when he hasn't had enough
exercise and if a hard workout would cause problems. Since the 1993
incident he has had a few tying up events (I think 2?) but they have been
very mild. He got them from not working for a couple of days and then
running around wildly in turnout. Interestingly enough, he has looked
worse during the milder tie-ups.
> The vet said that there's a series of injections that she
>can give if Special ties-up again. Anybody know anything about these??
No. I have used Dantrolene (sp?) when putting the horse back to work.
Maybe she's talking about Vit E/Selenium shots?
Warpaint's tying-up problems used to be the bane of my existence and I worried
and fretted about it all the time. I understand how to control it now (knock on
wood) and have moved on to fretting about all sorts of other things!
Good luck!
Judy Long and Nachi Sunshine (aka Warpaint)
Hayward, Ca.