Re: RC: Re: Long holds, Heart Rate, tying up, electrolytes

[David LeBlanc <dleblanc@mindspring.com>]

At 02:37 AM 12/22/99 EST, Tivers@aol.com wrote:
>In a message dated 12/21/99 11:09:19 PM Pacific Standard Time, 
>dleblanc@mindspring.com writes:
 
>> When confronted with a non-linear system where you're not sure that you
> even have all the causal parameters, and some of your inputs appear to be
> stochastic in nature (random), even the best scientists are likely to
> resort to empirical methods.  For example, we design aircraft that way -
> even though aerospace engineering is much more of a science than horses
> are, there's still quite a bit of it that is just based on testing and
> seeing what works. >

>What I call "applied research". Or "what works is real".

No - applied research is when you take theoretical research and try and
come up with a way to make it work in the real world.  Just one step below
putting something into production.  That's a different problem than what we
have here.  In this sort of situation, you don't actually know the theory,
and can't model behavior based on first principles.

At this point, the only option you have is statistical analysis.  For
example, it isn't possible to predict exactly what the air speed is going
to be close to a surface when you have a high speed (turbulent) flow - but
we can predict pretty closely what the average air speed will be over time
- and we can do so well enough that planes stay in the air.

When you're dealing with something as complicated as a animal, it gets
worse.  Now we collect data on everything we can, throw it all into a
program like SAS or SPSS, and try to see where the correlations are, how
much of the variance they explain, etc.  So what we end up with is studies
that say things like "when a given condition is encountered, treament with
X results in Y% cases improving".  Means that what will happen when they do
that to _your_ horse is anyone's guess, since we often don't know how to
tell whether that animal is in the group that improves or not without
trying it.

> Although I think the sport could seriously benefit from some dedicated,
> scholarly research, unless we're all willing to stop riding until the
> scientists do have a better handle on what's going on, we're stuck just
> doing the best we can with what we can determine in the field.  Heart rate
> is a good surrogate for a lot of parameters, and will tell you a lot of the
> time whether an animal is exhausted (we're talking mammals here).  The
> problem is that there are many other cases that heart rate won't explain,
> and too many times that animals surprise us with what they do.>

>And there are at least several environmental factors that can move the 
>heartrate around enough, and at such magnitude, to make it meaningless for 
>reading other parameters accurately. 

No, it isn't meaningless.  It is an indicator, but isn't the only
indicator.  Horses whose heart rates won't come down are often in trouble.
Problem is that some horses whose heart rates do come down are in trouble.
How to tell which is which in the field isn't easy.

> So what it all comes down to in the end is that we've only got some pieces
> of the puzzle, and we have no better alternative than to rely on people's
> intuition - this often works better than science does when you have a lot
> of unknowns.  Exhaustion is going to be a function of the individual, heart
> rate, hydration, several enzyme levels, diet, and even attitude.  I'm all
> for giving vets better tools to do their jobs with, but dismissing years of
> real-world experience just isn't realistic. >

>But whose real world experience? 

That's a real problem.  You need well-trained vets, but if you don't have
enough vets everyone complains.  Some riders have good judgement, and have
the advantage of knowing their horse better than anyone else, but they
aren't detached - and are often suffering from some level of exhaustion
themselves.

The officials are a factor in any sport - it is rare to see a baseball or
football game where there isn't a call someone disagrees with.

>I'd tend to trust not only Valerie's judgement, but her motives, 
>over those of the checking vets. 

I'm not aware that anyone has studied vets motivations at rides.  All the
vets I've seen were trying to do the best they could to take care of the
horse.  Some tended towards pulling people more than others.  It's a
judgement call.  However, if the vet doesn't pull me when I ought to be
pulled, I could lose a horse.  I'll get over being unfairly pulled a lot
faster than I will having an animal I care about hurt.  Questioning the
vet's motives is very inflammatory.
 
>Do it enough times 
>and you can discover the three vets in the world who actually know what 
>they're quacking about.

There's lots of studies you can do.  Some might even be useful.  If we had
a surplus of ride vets, it might be nice to get them to 'apprentice' with
an experienced vet for a couple of rides.

Calling people quacks is just an insult.  I wish you'd be less prone to
insult people and phrase things in an inflammatory manner.  There's no real
point to this statement other than to anger people.  I've seen some very,
very good vets show up at rides.  

It's a lot more productive to address the real problem, which is that the
state of our knowledge can be improved, we might be able to develop better
field tools that can be used to quickly evaluate an animal's condition, and
that it would be nice to improve the overall training level of the vets
that work rides.  Problem there is that vets time is valuable, and I don't
want to have to spend $200 per ride because we have to hire a super-vet
with a mobile hospital for every ride.

Even if you did come up with a better test, the problem is more difficult
than that - you need something that can be done quickly, in the field, and
most preferably non-invasively (a rodeo in the vet check is a Bad Thing).


David LeBlanc
dleblanc@mindspring.com


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