Page 86 - March 2016

PREVENT DEHYDRATION
IN RACEHORSES
“Horses have developed as incredible athletes compared to humans. We breed horses and train them and think we can make the system better, but we can’t.”
by Heather Smith Thomas
Dehydration can be a serious issue in any equine athlete, especially in hot weather. Exertion produces body heat; the working muscles
create heat that must be dissipated. The major way a horse’s body gets rid of heat is through sweating. The evaporation of sweat helps cool the body. Sweating takes fluid and electrolytes from the body, however, and excessive fluid loss creates dehydration—which can be detrimental in many ways. If the horse loses too much fluid he can no longer sweat and becomes seriously overheated. Fluid is lost from the body via sweat, urine, bleeding, etc.
Bill Casner of Flower Mound, Texas (former co-owner of WinStar Farm, Versailles, Kentucky), has been working with racehorses all his life. He feels strongly that much of the dehydration in racehorses today is due to overuse of medications like Lasix and bute.
“I first started working on the race track in 1963 when I was about 15 years old and began a career training horses. This was the era before permitted medication. We used a lot of ice. At that time, buta- zolidin was not a permitted drug for racing. Everyone used it for training and thought it was the savior of racing in the states that allowed it pre-race.” You just couldn’t use it on the day of the race.
“There are always consequences when using medication. I don’t think very many people
understood how toxic some of the side effects were for butazolidin. First of all, it’s been well documented that with as little as two consecutive administrations the horse may start experiencing stomach ulceration. It is also a blood thinner and one of the primary causes of ‘bleeding’ in race- horses,” says Casner.
“We had a ‘perfect
storm’ in the 1970’s when
butazolidin was the first
permitted medication.
It was allowed in most
of the states by the end
of the 1970’s. Then, the
flexible endoscope came
along in the 1980’s.
Initially, those were very expensive and very few veterinarians had them. And, the technology wasn’t very good yet. A few vets had these, however,
and started seeing blood in some of these horses when they were using the endoscope to check the airways,” he says.
Bill Casner, the former owner of WinStar Farm in Versailles, Kentucky, feels much of the dehydration in racehorses today is due to overuse of medications such as Lasix and bute
84 SPEEDHORSE, March 2016
EQUINE HEALTH