So to scrape or not?

[MotherOfChickens]

Depends upon the individual horse too - our nearly-black pony appreciates a bath more than his bright bay fieldmate. He seems to feel the heat more, especially if there's a sudden change in temperature.

yep, the Fell is my first black pony and he feels the heat way more-attracts more flies as well, than the Exmoor and my last bay and grey horses (although they were a finer build also). Fell is happy to have a bath and is more sweaty just standing in the field than the other one, even at 15-20C.

 

[Pearlsasinger]

Depends how many pairs of hands you have available and what amount of water!

For an overly hot horse you need to keep applying cold water non stop. So if you are limited on hands, then just keep applying cold water - don’t stop to scrape. If you have plenty of people then it’s fine to have someone scraping as you go.

Essentially scraping wastes time that could be spent applying more cold water.

However, in reality for most of us we aren’t bringing horses in hyperthermic and so it won’t hurt to wash-scrape-wash-scrape.

We once had a mare seriously over-heat in 30 degrees, just standing in a field with her friends. She took to cantering round, presumably to create a breeze(!). She had very poor temperature control all her life and shivered easily, too. We brought her in, wrapped cold wet towels round her ears/head and poured as much cold water on her as possible, we certainly didn't stop to scrape her off. We did get her back to a normal temperature, made sure that she drank well and she was fine afterwards. We left her wet so that she continued to cool down as the water evaporated.

 

[ihatework]

To be honest, if you are heavily exercising your horse in high temperatures and you run out of water then you kind of need to re-evaluate your management!!

I can only speak for Eventing but it is quite variable the cooling facilities available, often non at mid level events.

 

[Leo Walker]

Yes, I read his research some time ago. I respect him greatly but it does not work on my big muscled cob - I have tried as suggested and it has not worked for me but may do for others.

It does work. People really struggle getting their head round it as the water on the horse feels warmer and they then assume its heating the horse up. Its not.

As someone else said in this country under normal conditions and work then it really doesnt matter very much in the big scheme of things.

I hose or chuck buckets of water over until mine is cool and then leave her to dry in warm weather or scrape and rug in the cold.

 

[ihatework]

We once had a mare seriously over-heat in 30 degrees, just standing in a field with her friends. She took to cantering round, presumably to create a breeze(!). She had very poor temperature control all her life and shivered easily, too. We brought her in, wrapped cold wet towels round her ears/head and poured as much cold water on her as possible, we certainly didn't stop to scrape her off. We did get her back to a normal temperature, made sure that she drank well and she was fine afterwards. We left her wet so that she continued to cool down as the water evaporated.

That would be pretty rare but lucky you caught it!

I suppose my main experience of this is doing the Xc finish box and one horse caught us by surprise and runs high temp, although doesn’t look heat exhausted by any means, but will sit >40 for a number of minutes at the finish - so have to be hyper aware of cooling

 

[oldie48]

When daughter was doing FEI ponies we went to a vet talk and we were advised to have one person sloshing the water with a second following up doing the scraping, keep going until the water scapes off cool and then get them walking. this is obviously for a horse that has come off XC course and is very hot. She also advised against clipping as the water ran off too quickly but we did clip as pony was part connie and was a bit hairy even in summer. Marlin research was interesting and makes sense to me.

 

[Goldenstar]

Another thing ,if drips make your adrenaline soaked post xc horse fractious and kicky you should always scrape and then towel .

 

[Ambers Echo]

To be honest, if you are heavily exercising your horse in high temperatures and you run out of water then you kind of need to re-evaluate your management!!

I can only speak for Eventing but it is quite variable the cooling facilities available, often non at mid level events.

There was no water at the end at Frickley. At Eland and Somerford they had large troughs of water and sponges which was helpful. We had plenty of water at Frickley but we did use it all and it made we think I need to take even more next time - I carry it in large water carriers and most events offer a tap somewhere but not always nearby.

 

[Fruitcake]

Is he the same guy who was so rude to some posters on here last year? I must say, I don't like the way he writes. All those exclamation marks and emphasised words make him sound arrogant.

To be fair, he knows his stuff and is an expert in his field. I suspect the exclamation marks and curt tone probably stem from frustration at the people challenging science with old wives tales. (There are many on FB!)

 

[Ambers Echo]

Yes he was very rude and his tone is annoying. He was also talking outside his area of expertise on that occasion. But in terms of cooling horses down after exercise that is kind of his 'thing'. He was sent to the Beijing olympics etc - ie hot and humid conditions. You can be an arrogant rude man, and still be right!

 

[Follysmum]

I get his thinking and he explains it like this
Your in the shower you stand there continuously getting wet and you start to cool, you don’t keep drying off and getting back in

 

[Mule]

For people (I don't know about horses) a great way to cool down with minimal water is to put a pad soaked in very cold water on the jugular vein.

 

[Pearlsasinger]

That would be pretty rare but lucky you caught it!

I suppose my main experience of this is doing the Xc finish box and one horse caught us by surprise and runs high temp, although doesn’t look heat exhausted by any means, but will sit >40 for a number of minutes at the finish - so have to be hyper aware of cooling

Fortunately the horses are at home, my sister was also at home, I happened to only be about 10 minutes away. It was a Sunday lunchtime in August about 15 or so years ago, mare was in her 20s with health problems. At the time it was unusual to have such a high temperature here (top of the Pennines). It only happened the once and the others were absolutely fine. That mare lived another couple of years (?) and never over-heated in the same way again but we probably didn't have any more days approaching similar heat in her lifetime.

 

[DabDab]

I mostly wash and scrape because I'm not really trying to cool (since I hardly ever finish a ride with a hot horse), I'm just trying to remove the sweaty residue, which scraping helps with.

With legs or if I'm trying to cool them down on a very hot day I just hose and leave so that they continue to cool after the hosing as the water evaporates (though I have to get the drips off little mare's belly otherwise they'll annoy her, make her dance around and get hot again).

If you're trying to rapidly cool a very overheated horse then people have different preferences. You're not relying on much evaporation in those instances so it's just a case of how quickly you can get the heat transferred water off and replace with more cold over and over again. There's probably not much in it between getting it to continuously flow off by pushing it off with more water applied to the area and having someone scraping it away while someone else applies more cold to replace.

 

[Abi90]

For people (I don't know about horses) a great way to cool down with minimal water is to put a pad soaked in very cold water on the jugular vein.

Yes or run cool water over your wrists as there are a lot of small blood vessels near the surface there. Cooling the blood and cooling you down.