Herbie - 2015-12-22 1:50 PM

DipDip - 2015-12-22 1:23 PM Not disagreeing with Herbie, but racehorses are excersized, heavily conditioned, breezed, etc and they still bleed? My personal thought is many causes of bleeding is anxiety, high blood pressure, and certain types of footing....yes some horses have allergys and mucous and other deformities in the airways that contribute....have a scope to rule those out... Good luck doing it solely herbal or nutritional...i run 2 bleeders and have for years....im "au natural" mindset and have tried a number of things and went back to good ol lasix and a calming drug (Most of the time CP) I also nebulize essential oils and silver... They occasionally bleed thru at certain arenas, hence why i thinl the footing is a factor.

I agree with you that footing is a factor, specifically because it makes a horse work harder, again, not something they are accustomed to. As well as stress. Stress itself is an inflammatory response and the release of cortisol by the brain can create an increase in blood pressure and constriction in the blood vessels, hence the reason heart attacks and strokes are stress related. We can manage the inflammation caused by the corisol production as well as the inflammation in the hind gut. We can resolve any allergies, mucous, phlegm, and breathing issues with herbs, believe me, i've been at the bottom of the barrel with these issues and have really had to do alot of research here.

Actually race horses aren't conditioned to what they are asked to do in a race, therin lies the problem. They are slowly galloped for a mile to mile and a half then put up. Their "works" consist of short works, usually a quarter or half the distance of the race, and they are infrequent even then....some trainers only due speed works every couple of weeks. How can we expect a horse to be competitive at a distance that we never work him at??? Now, that being said, these horses aren't capable of being worked at that distance, as they have no foundation under them. During a race, we surpass the horses's level of fitness, fatigue sets in, and it's a recipe for disaster internally and structurally. No different than a human athlete who never experienced game speed, then they were asked to go perform....this increases the percentage of injury, usually catastrophic, exponentially.

Now all of that being said, there are some things to consider. It takes a long time to build a horse up and get them fit. In the book I referenced earlier, Mr. Ivers suggests that if we gallop a horse at a 2 minute clip for a quarter mile daily for a week (after a quarter jog to warm up) and all goes well, increase to a half mile the next week. If all goes well, increase to 3/4 mile the next week....and keep going until you're working this horse at 6 miles. Now, 6 miles may be excessive, or is it? We don't know as no one is doing it, but I can certainly see the value in the distance to condition lungs. Not until we have reached the distance should we work on speed, as the distance prepares the body (bones, soft tissue, lungs) to begin to withstand the speed. Speed should be introduced the same as the distance, short and frequent. If all goes well, then increase the distance a little bit each week until we exceed the distance (or whatever) we are wanting to compete at. I want a horse to be able to give maximum effort 110 yards of a 100 yard race, not 80 yards of that race. The only way to do that is to condition them beyond what where we are asking them to perform, no different than human athletes train, but it has to be built slowly to avoid injury. An on board heart rate monitor comes in handy as well, as you can actually tell if a horse is sick or in pain simply due to their resting heart rate and respirations if you know your horse. I actually have one of these that links to my watch and use it occaionally. Need to make myself use it more, as it's an eye opening training tool.

The last thing for bleeders I think is important is the warm up. The spleen contains oxygen rich red blood cells that don't normally circlulate through the horses system. Once the horse breaks and runs (whether this be a race at the track or a barrel race) the spleen contracts releasing these red blood cells into the blood stream and in essence "thickening" the blood. The heart pumps harder and forces this thicker, heavier blood through a vessel that is not dialated, and therefore causes a rupture. The vessels are conditioned and don't have enough elasticity to accomodate this increase in volume, and then we have a bleeder. It has been proven scientifically that through long slow distance we can increase lung capacity and capillary volume in the body, so that alone would reduce the pressure, as there are more "roads" for the blood to take, in essence reducing the traffic, so to speak. Then when we have done our homework and built our horse up week by week, all the time keeping those red blood cells active, we are conditioning the blood vessels to accomodate the thicker blood, increasing their elasticity, and therfore reducing the liklihood of a bleed.

I think our mindset as humans is to do less with these horses that have issues, when in many cases, we need to do more. More preparation, more conditioning, etc. We need to let them be horses and turn them out so they can break and run when they feel like it, which is also a natural way of dumping the spleen, accomplishing the same thing as what speed work does.

Do I think we can heal a bleeder with herbs and a little bit of exercise....nope. But I think that it's a step in the right direction in reducing a few of the contributing factors. I do think that healing a bleeder is possible through conditioning their body to withstand the pressures of competition, through patience, incremental distance and speed work, and a thoughtful horseman.