Recommendations for the prevention of hydration problems in performance horses. During the week before competition ensure that the horse has a high quality diet which includes added electrolytes. While electrolytes cannot be "stored" in the body, you do want to ensure that all the horse's body needs are being met and that no deficiency situation exists prior to athletic work. Utilizing a high fiber diet in the days prior to competition will also create a reservoir of soft, wet ingesta in the gut that can be used as a source of both water and electrolytes early in a competition when horses normally show poor inclination to drink. Horses working at speed over short distances may not wish to carry the added weight of a large volume of wet ingesta so an alternative approach may be needed. There are countless formulations of electrolytes available and it may be beneficial to analyze blood samples taken before and after a hot, humid competition to determine the very best electrolyte mixture for each specific horse. During competition a dose of these electrolytes may be given orally every two hours. You may need to buffer these electrolyte mixtures since high salt formulations can be irritating to the mucosa of horses' mouths and tongues. Keeping a horse hydrated is not exceedingly difficult and the physiology of heat stress is not difficult to follow. Yet each summer veterinarians will deal with a number of such cases. Prevention comes from education so it's important to learn the facts about heat stress, fluid loss and electrolyte replacement so you can graduate with honors from Hydration 101. The proper way to cool a hot horse... Many owners and trainers have never been taught how to properly cool a hot exercising horse.
How hard can it be -- just hose your horse down with water, right? Actually it is very important to understand how to safely and quickly cool down a hot, sweaty horse.
The 1994 FEI Samsung Equine Sports Medicine Conference in Atlanta addressed problems that were anticipated in the intense heat and humidity that was likely to occur during the 1996 Olympic Games. Research that came from that initiative showed that simply hosing off a horse did little good -- it did not significantly drop the horse's temperature and may in fact have been detrimental. Researchers showed that cool-to-cold water being poured or sprayed over a horse's skin wets the horse and the very thin layer of water actually contacting the horse's skin is super-heated quickly to the horse's body temperature. The rest of the water being sponged or dumped or sprayed on the horse merely sheets over that initial one- to two-cell water layer on the horse. The initial water actually acts like a raincoat and does not allow other water molecules to contact and cool the skin, so the horse may in fact become hotter in the process. The best method for cooling a horse is to spray or sponge on water with one hand and to almost immediately scrape off the now super-heated water with a sweat scraper in your other hand. "Spray, scrape, repeat" is the cooling method of choice. This means of cooling can significantly drop a horse's core temperature and requires less actual water since large volumes are not being wasted as they are usually dumped on a horse with little chance of having any effect.
The water can be fairly cold with this method of cooling because it does not stay on the horse's body long enough to cause muscle cramping which had been a previous concern when cooling horses with the application of cold water.
Increasing airflow can also help with cooling, so fans and a location with a breeze may help cool an exercising horse but researchers have shown that water is still 20 times more efficient at cooling horses.