Horse Soundness

[Steve Wildermuth]

I hope this is a not a stupid question, since I do not have a lot
of knowledge about real life horses, if you were to have the same
soundness categories for real life horses, that are in the game,
could they improve with maturing, training and possibly fixing issues
they may have.

Just curious.

Steve

[Nick Gilmore]

Many racehorses who spend their racing careers fighting soundness issues will overcome a lot of them when they retire and no longer have the stress of training/racing. Horses don’t fully mature until they are 5 years old, but their toughest races are at 2 and 3. Realistically, what can we expect?

[Cleo Patra]

There’s definitely a balance. Large scale studies of Australian racehorses have shown that horses who were *lightly* raced as 2yos have significantly better long term outcomes than horses who didn’t start until age 4+ and were also ahead of those who started at 3. The main reason for this is all racehorses go through bone remodelling and muscle conditioning regardless of when they start. Younger horses handle this process better. There are factors that complicate this of course, such as offset knees or turned in/out feet. Shin soreness is a strong indicator of this effect. 2yos who go shin sore usually won’t ever do it again. 4yos going shin sore for the first time will often go sore again, and even possibly a third time.

To give a human comparison... say you ask two similar 16 year old people to run 5 miles. One has always played sport and one has been mostly sitting on the sofa. Sofa kid will injure something and not handle it well at all. Sporty kid will handle it because they’ve had conditioning.

There’s plenty of situations where young horses get worked too hard too early, but it’s also nearly as bad (sometimes worse) to leave them standing in a paddock until they are 4 or 5. If you leave them to finish growing without any conditioning they WILL break under racing conditions, and often even in dressage or low stress disciplines. Especially given it’s not just their physical level of growth but also their knowledge of where their feet go. A horse who knows how his body works is more likely to save himself without injury if he steps in a hole or gets on another horse’s heels.

In my experience, you should always look at the individual and work with them. Industrial type set ups where they have 1000s of horses and train them all the same way have much higher breakdown rates than small stables who have to really look after their horses to get a return on their money.

[Steve Wildermuth]

Thank you for the responses.

Steve

[Regina Moore]

Enjoyed reading your thoughtful post, Cleo!

[Stormy Peak]

Cleo, I am assuming that Australia does not allow the use of Bute?

I know of a study done about 1999/2000 here in the States, and they found out that Bute, which is commonly used here, stopped the healing of bone micro-cracks, as you described in two year olds. But I don't think our racing industry did anything about it. So from the time they are two year olds on up, and if on bute, those cracks never heal up and the report concluded that it was one of the reasons why so many horses at age 3 and 4 were ending up with shattered legs. The also found out that bute actually dried out joints, and caused damage there due to that. It's been a long time ago so I can't remember exact details, but it seems like they had 15 two year olds they monitored while on bute and and 15 that were not on it...and the bone tests they took for the next year to 2 years showed how it affected bone repairs.

At that time, I was taking a LOT of ibuprofen for my back pain, and also in the mornings, my left knee... it was just Agony trying to straighten it out in the morning, before I could get out of bed. I had injured it some years prior and just figured arthritis had set in. After reading that report, and knowing that bute and ibuprofen were similar drugs, I decided to see what would happen if I didn't take any for a while.

I was UTTERLY shocked that within 3 days of stopping the drug, I woke up with my left knee bent, and was able to normally just straighten it out with No Pain! Prior to that, it was about a 2 to 3 minute process of s l o w l y unbending my knee and feeling like I had a handful of gravel grinding around in it as I did so. I was hoping for good results when I stopped taking that drug but did not realize how fast the healing happened. What makes me sick is the medical community still issues prescription strength doses of it for people with arthritis and it's probably not helping things in the long run. I went from taking it daily to only taking it once or twice a month when my back was really acting up.

Anyways, I never dug into it much further, but I hope the USA racing authorities ordered that horses can't constantly be on that stuff...that sometimes rest is what is needed, instead of covering up the racing/training soreness with bute....but I have a feeling greed and time schedules keep that from happening and horses are still being dosed with it when all they really need it a little down time from training and racing.

Stormy

[Cleo Patra]

Bute is allowed but it must be prescribed by a registered vet and be labelled with the horse's specific name. You have to record any treatments like bute in your treatment record book, which the stewards check periodically. It also has a 7 day or so withdrawal period so you can't actually race a horse with any bute in its system. If you get a positive swab then the race gets taken off the horse, you get a $2000-$8000 fine and you have to pay back all prizemoney. All winners and some placegetters are tested post race, and they also do random pre-race swabs. Most people who use bute here for racing purposes give it to horses post race, especially if they travelled a long way to attend the meeting. Otherwise bute is used for pain management after medical procedures etc. when the horse will usually have a period of at least several weeks before they race again.

[Nick Gilmore]

Just as an aside, like people, horses are all different and react different to many things. As Cleo eloquently put it in her first post, they all need to be treated as individuals.

[Cleo Patra]

One thing I forgot to mention, and everyone who has ever cared for a horse will scream YES THAT IS TRUTH at the screen:

Horses are the single most jeopardy friendly trouble magnets that god ever put in this green earth.

And:
Bubble wrapped horses usually take that as a challenge to find even more creative and destructive ways to harm themselves

So you can have the soundest horse on the planet and he will probably find some obscure way to permanently disable himself. For example, I have this lovely big gelding we call Robby. Robby was fantastically balanced as a 2yo. His legs are straight and solid like tree trunks, he was already 600kg+ (I think that’s about 1300 pounds?) when he was 23 months old. He was a smooth, clean galloper. All the makings of an early 2yo who could handle 4 or 5 races as a 2yo easily. One day an arsonist set fire to our neighbours property, so the fire brigade turned up with 24 trucks, a grader, a bulldozer and a water bomber. Robby was asleep in his stable (seriously this horse is 4 now and he still takes at least 3 naps a day). The dozer rolling past the stables gave him a fright, he got up too fast and oddly and cracked his pelvis. After a long rehab, he came back and immediately bucked his shins about a furlong into his first up run. And THEN, when he was nearly ready to run again, he reached out of his yard and ate mushrooms (ignoring his feed, hay and all the green grass around said mushrooms) and tried to die of poisoning. So Robby just turned 4 and has only had 4 runs meanwhile my other gelding who had 2 knee operations before we got him, who has terrible feet and is a very thundery, heavy, hard on his legs galloper has had 12 starts in 18 months, only missed two cheques and remained sound the entire tIme.

[Mara Jade Vess]

One thing I forgot to mention, and everyone who has ever cared for a horse will scream YES THAT IS TRUTH at the screen:

Horses are the single most jeopardy friendly trouble magnets that god ever put in this green earth.

And:
Bubble wrapped horses usually take that as a challenge to find even more creative and destructive ways to harm themselves

Can confirm, my gelding stepped on himself while being a moron on the walker and ended up being scratched this weekend over fears of blowing a quarter crack. He's not sound at all (also has had two knee surgeries), has a stride that's very tough on his body, and runs on a track that's really hard right now, but all that and he gets injured while being himself. Such a ridiculous creature.