Page 21 - July 2007 The Game

Canada’s Thoroughbred Racing Newspaper The Game, July 2007 21
Cars, Horses, and Pavlov’s Dogs
Complaining about the poor galloping etiquette of others continues to be a favourite pastime among the exercise riders at Hastings Park. I suspect it has less to do with unhappy riders than the bullring itself: on a busy morning there simply isn’t room enough for all the stock to be galloping round without adversely affecting everyone else’s fate. For the most part, common sense and a little bit of luck is all it takes to maintain a safe working atmosphere, but sometimes common sense is not so common as one might hope.
Judging from the amount of nasty rejoinders it engenders, "buzzing" a fellow rider ranks at the top of the list of most reviled galloping practices. Every time I hear someone complaining about being "buzzed" on the racetrack, it reminds me of the scene in Top Gun where Tom Cruise buzzes the control tower in his F-14, causing the unsuspecting air traffic controller to spill coffee all over his neatly pressed shirt. At fifteen it seemed like a pretty funny prank to watch on the big screen, but the equine version doesn’t feel quite so funny after it happens to you a couple of times at ground level. Even though horses are never in danger of breaking the sound barrier, the sudden appearance of a horse thundering past your previously relaxed and galloping mount has been the undoing of many a rider. This often results in one’s mount leaping sideways, which if not dislodging the rider, can at the very least dislodge his heart into his mouth. For some reason, certain riders seem to specialize in sneaking up out of nowhere and blowing past your mount at ridiculous speeds, usually when you least expect it. Proper etiquette demands that if you’re going to blow past your colleagues at high rates of speed, the least you can do is shout out a friendly warning before you get them dropped in the dirt.
From my observations, most galloping transgressions aren’t so different from the same kind of bad driving habits you see practised by motorists everyday. We’ve already touched on speeding; riders who are chronically overmatched by their mount are the ones most guilty of ‘buzzing’ their peers. However, speeding is but only one of the regularly broken laws of the land - there are a host of others.
One of the most dangerous driving habits is equally dangerous on the racetrack: erratic steering and lane-changing. Although the blame can often be laid upon the unable-to- protest horse, the fact remains there are some riders who never fail to amaze by virtue of their unpredictability. There are riders who’s mounts tend to careen aimlessly all over the track for no apparent reason, which is entirely different in execution from "failure to proper- ly merge." This transgression occurs most frequently along the backstretch wall, where some are slowing up from a gallop just as others are trying to move into the flow of traffic. Everyone who gallops horses has at least a couple of grey hairs courtesy of some- one threading their way through a perilously tight opening as their mount veers for the outside wall. Again, one would think that a simple bit of communication - along with a shoulder check or two - would be sufficient
to alleviate the
majority of these
potentially dicey
situations. And yet,
on a daily basis one
is liable to witness
any number of hair-
raising near-colli-
sions as riders pull
up without bothering to check if they’re about to cut somebody off. Hopefully this isn’t the way they change lanes when they’re driving their vehicles - no wonder Vancouver feels like Canada’s most dangerous city for driving.
Personally, my number one dangerous galloping pet peeve would have to the ubiquitous presence of cellphones on the racetrack. Hopefully it’s not a measure of my popularity that I don’t feel the need to have one; I certainly count myself in the minority. Some will no doubt argue that cellphones are a necessary tool for the contemporary free-lance exercise rider. But I wonder whether this is really true on a backstretch the size of Hastings Park, where anyone with a decent arm can throw a baseball from one side to the other. Despite being a Luddite at heart, I can admit that cellphones have their place and function in society today, but I don’t suppose that place is on the back of a racehorse moving at high rates of speed. I can’t help but imagine how some of the old Hall of Fame trainers would have reacted back if they knew in the future they’d be receiving phone calls from their gallop boys in transit:
"Hello, Bob? I’m just calling to let you know Lucky went real good...tell the groom to get the next one ready, I should be there in forty seconds."
On numerous occasions I have actually witnessed riders fumbling in their pockets to answer their phones while galloping along or trying to pull up. Trying to answer a telephone while attempting to manage a thousand pound animal seems to me a questionable assessment of priorities. But I suppose the cellphone chatters probably can’t help themselves anymore than Pavlov’s dogs could stop from drooling when the old Russian rang the dinner bell. Invariably the horse is forgotten in the rider’s panic to see who is calling. I see the same thing half a dozen times a week on my motorcycle. On a bi-daily basis I am nearly run over by some fool talking on his phone instead of watching where he’s steering his 2000 pound automobile. That might be one reason my racetrack cellphone tolerance is low - it’s bad enough I have to worry about getting run over by a cell phoner on my way to work, I feel like I shouldn’t have to worry about it while riding horses too. On a couple of occasions I’ve even watched an exercise rider make a call while he’s mounted, as if riding a high-strung racehorse had become too boring and he needed a better way to temporarily pass the time. Personally, I would like to take this opportunity to recommend to anyone who finds exercising racehorses boring--it might be time to begin considering a new career path...I guarantee your peers will thank you for it.
by evenSteven
FEED-THROUGH FLY CONTROL ... AND OTHER OPTIONS FOR BATTLING BUGS
Equine Health
by Karen Briggs
Dave Landry Photo
Suddenly it’s summer. Every season has its trade-offs, and while we’re all grateful not to have to scrape ice off our windshields for a few months, summer comes with squadrons of flying scourges which torment our horses, spread diseases (including potentially deadly ones like West Nile) and make our lives pretty wretched, too. These days, it’s not enough to rely solely on a bottle of flyspray to combat buzzing, biting flies: we need a multi-pronged approach to fly control which can be implemented throughout the season.
Flies, of course, congregate and lay their eggs in manure, so wherever there are equine byproducts, there are going to be flies. That also means that one of the most effective ways to implement fly control is in and around the manure pile. Get ‘em where they live, so to speak.
Consider nature’s own double agents, fly predators, which infiltrate and destroy populations from within. These tiny parasitic wasps lay their eggs in the pupae (cocoons) of pest flies such as houseflies, horn flies, and face and stable flies. Their own larvae then devour the pupae of their hosts and prevent them from ever maturing to the flying stage. Unobtrusive and utterly harmless to humans and horses (they don’t bite and have no stingers), fly predator wasps are com- mercially available by the thousands (usually by mail-order) and can go to work whenever they’re spread on or near fresh manure, where pest flies will be laying eggs.
The only downsides to fly predators is that they need to be re-applied monthly throughout the fly season, and that because they don’t travel far, you won’t see much of a reduction in flies if your livestock-keeping neighbours don’t follow suit with a similar program. Also, any insecticide you are using on your horses will kill your fly predators too, so it’s best to designate an area away from where you’ve applied them, where you put fly spray on your animals. On the up side, there are now cold-hardy species available which can be used in most parts of southern Canada (some suppliers provide a mix of species with varying degrees of survivability).
The other main way to attack flies before they mature is by using “feed-through fly control” products, which make your horse’s manure a hostile environment for fly breeding. Added like any other feed supplement, they’re designed to pass through the
horse’s system untouched, but be toxic to flies which gather around the manure pile later. There are two basic types of feed-through products: organophosphates (usually a chemical called Rabon ®), which act as a nerve agent to kill larval flies, and insect growth regulators, which interrupt the growth of chitin (which makes up the insect exoskeleton) and prevent the bugs from maturing, while remaining harmless to beneficial insects and mammals.
The advantage of feed-through products is that they can help keep fly populations down generation after generation – but like the fly predators, they’ll be of only limited use on your property if large populations of flies are congregating at your neighbour’s. You’ll also want to read the label carefully to see which type of feed-through product you’ve got. Insect growth regulators have a wide margin of safety and no reports of adverse events (so far), but one organophosphate product, Farnam’s Equitrol, was involved in a California lawsuit in 2004, in which a jury awarded over a million dollars in damages to plaintiffs who claimed the product caused or exacerbated a variety of health problems in their Thoroughbreds and warmbloods, including birth defects, stunted growth, hyperexcitability, neurological problems, laminitis, hypothyroidism, colic, and immuno- suppression. The prosecution successful- ly argued that although the product has a wide margin of safety in cattle and other livestock, that the product is not inert when fed to horses and that some degree of organophosphate is absorbed. Farnam, which did not withdraw the product from the market, said in a statement that it “does not agree that there are any legitimate medical studies or any other medical literature demonstrating that the use of Equitrol on a pregnant or nursing mare would be harmful. However, the company recommends that horse owners discuss with their personal veterinarians its use with specific horses and their particular situation.”
Rabon-based feed-through products remain popular because they are considerably less expensive than the insect-growth-regulator types. If you’re considering using a feed-through fly control product, read the labels carefully before you buy, so you know which type you’re getting. Many of these products have very similar names.
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