Scraping when hosing - not outdated after all?

[Fieldlife]

i also think it's difficult to draw parallels between how people shower and how horses are showered, aside from their particular adaptations for cooling , for the most part people dry off after hot or cold showers whereas we usually leave horses to dry by evaporation.

Yes but it’s a fact that if you jump in a pool in hot weather snd then drip dry you will be cooler longer than if you fully towel as soon as you get out of pool. That’s how evaporative cooling works. And it’s the same with not scraping a horse after hosing in wet weather, enables greater evaporative cooling.

 

[milliepops]

I'm agreeing with you

 

[ycbm]

Cold showers increase core temperature which actually makes the horse hotter. You need to reduce the horses core temperature, not the skin temperature.

As long as you wet where the major blood vessels run close to the surface you will be cooling the entire horse internally. Yes if a person takes a quick cold shower the minor blood vessels will contract and reduce skin cooling. But if a person runs their wrists under a cold tap for long enough they cool the whole body down.

A quick sprinkle with the hose on a hot, sunny yard and returning the horse to a hot, sunny field is going to make it even hotter, particularly if there is no shade or breeze.
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Agreed, the soaking needs to be for an extended time to be effective.

 

[Elf On A Shelf]

ETA there is plenty of criticism underneath the BHA clip TP shared from other vets (and of course David Marlin) just despairing that the BHA is so out of date.

This myth just won’t die. That vet was probably a pony clubber who grew up terrified she would boil her pony and has never quite got over it!

It's a good job most of us stable staff don't listen to the BHA when cooling down our horses ? In summer you see a lot of horses drip drying, both flat and jumps.