Need for a break from training may be caused by physical, mental fatigue

by Denise Steffanus

WHEN and how to lay off a horse is a highly individualized decision based on many factors, but the goal is to freshen the horse's mind and body. For some horses, this simply means turning the intensity of training down a notch. For others, it may require extended pasture rest to allow orthopedic injuries to heal.

Training and racing cause damage to a horse's bones and soft tissues. The strategy for keeping a horse sound is to adjust the intensity of training and the horse's racing schedule to allow the body's repair mechanisms to stay ahead of the damage. For some horses, keeping them at the track but adhering to a more relaxed training schedule does the trick. Other horses may need turnout time to heal thoroughly.

"Physiologic repairs are an ongoing process," said Eric Birks, D.V.M., Ph.D., assistant professor of exercise physiology and sports medicine at the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center. "If you take horses out of daily fast works, even if they are just short, fast works, all the repair processes--healing of muscles and torn tendons, bruises, and those kinds of things--will continue without any continuing insult [damage]. Whereas, if you keep them at the track and keep insulting them day after day with more stresses on them, they would still be healing, but you'd still be causing fresh damage every day."

Horses exhibit different ways of letting a trainer know it is time for a rest. Indications may be physical or psychological.

"It's just like with any athlete," Birks said. "If you move and you hurt, you're reluctant to run really hard. So trainers should look for horses coming back from their workouts sore--foot sore, leg sore, or sensitive when they are having a saddle put on. The grooms rub their legs all the time after running, but now they are sensitive to being touched.

"They'll become grouchy," Birks said. "They'll strike out at their handlers. They'll kick and buck when they are being saddled. They might reach around and try to bite the rider. There are a lot of behavioral things that can show you they just don't want to [train]."

Birks said physical discomfort may not be the reason a horse is acting out. Mental fatigue--just being fed up with the routine or the psychological stress of training and racing--could be the main factor.

"Again, just like any human athlete, they oftentimes will get so tired of going out day after day and doing the same thing," he said. "Just give them some time.

"We run horses on the treadmill [at New Bolton] all the time, and we can tell when they start getting [sour]. They'll start to shake when we bring them down to the treadmill because they really don't want to run today. And we'll turn them out for a couple of weeks, and they'll come back all fresh and ready to go."

Good trainers can tell when a horse is beginning to sour by observing its way of going and noting its attitude. If the trainer knows the horse well, he or she can decide whether the best approach would be to back off the intensity of training, change the training schedule, gallop or work the horse a little slower, or just give the horse some relaxation time.

According to Birks, for a horse deep in a racing campaign, the goal is to keep the horse fresh and interested in his job.

"Most trainers would not turn them out," he said. "They'd keep them in their regular routine; they just wouldn't work them as hard."

Every member of the racing stable's staff has a particular job to do, but one common responsibility among them is the welfare of the horses in their charge. Feedback from people working with a particular horse should help the trainer decide how best to help the horse.

"The way I run my particular laboratory, I get input from everybody," Birks said. "But there are trainers who don't listen to anybody. They're the boss, and what they say goes. I think that is more the norm in trainers than trainers who bring everybody in and get their input.

"A lot of trainers will listen to their exercise riders. If a particular horse has a specific exercise rider, they will listen to 'how did he feel coming around the corner,' or 'was he heavy on the bit.' The really good trainers are the ones who do bring people in and get everybody's opinion, but they still make the final decision."

Duration of layoff

According to Birks, horses that simply need a little downtime can benefit from one to two weeks' turnout without losing condition. For those with niggling problems, up to a month can be beneficial, still without compromising the horse's training program.

"We will turn horses out for a month, and then they are right back into the [training] program within a week," he said. "If you turn them out for more than a month, they have to start essentially from scratch.

"Layoff time really is going to depend on what the problem is. For a lot of respiratory problems that we see, a bare minimum would be 30 days of no work. That could go up to 60 days. If you're talking about minor muscle soreness or mental problems, a week to two weeks of just getting away from the daily grind is going to be enough.

"Horses that have minor tears in their tendons can take six to eight weeks to get those repaired. Horses that have major tears in their tendons may take a year.

"It's the same with bruises on the feet. It could take a week to two weeks to get an abscess healed up so they can be back on the track, or it could take six months. It just depends on what the actual injury is. There is really no rule of thumb.

"If you look at Smarty Jones when they thought he was going to come back, or Afleet Alex, when they waited for him to run in either the Travers [Stakes (G1)] or the Haskell [Invitational Handicap (G1)] last year, they just didn't come along as fast as they wanted."

Turnout check up

Dawn Hunkin, D.V.M., a practitioner with Von Bluecher, Prida, Blea Equine Medicine and Surgery, based in Southern California, performed the physical examination on last year's Kentucky Derby (G1) winner, Giacomo, before he was turned out for some much-needed rest and recuperation following his Triple Crown campaign.

Hunkin urged owners and trainers to have a veterinarian examine every horse they are contemplating turning out or laying off, even one that is not showing any obvious signs of injury or ill health. A horse that is wound tight and racing fit often explodes with a burst of energy when turned out and may injure himself, especially if he has an undiagnosed musculoskeletal problem that gives way when the horse is bucking, jumping shadows, or dashing around a turnout area on uneven footing.

"Most of the time, horses are getting time off because we've gone over them and have suggested that is the thing to do," Hunkin said. "In the majority of cases, we will work the horse up before that happens.

"The other issue is that if you turn a horse out without addressing a problem that should have been taken care of before he was turned out, it becomes a matter of lost time and lost income," Hunkin said. "For example, if you have a horse that's lame and has filling in his fetlock and you decide to give him a month off, the truth might be that the horse has a chip fracture in that fetlock, and it could have been removed and you could have used that time for the recuperative phase. Instead, some people will lay the horse off, put him back into training, and then discover he needs surgery. And they've wasted all that time and money laying him up without addressing the problem."

Birks recommends a complete diagnostic workup on every horse headed for turnout.

"The whole gamut of things starts with auscultation, listening with a stethoscope," he said, "then touching--feeling with your hands for bounding pulses or temperature differentials in hooves, lumps and bumps, fillings in tendons and joints; using your eyes to look for filled joints or muscles, and then going down into them with imaging techniques. On ultrasound, certainly, you can see tendons that you can't see with your eyes. You can do radiographs if you think it's a bone problem, and you can even do [whole-body] nuclear scintigraphy, and if anything specific 'lights up,' then you focus in on that.

Birks also advocates blood work, specifically a complete blood count with a differential white-cell count, which identifies the types of white blood cells present in the sample and how many there are of each type. White blood cells are the disease fighters in the body, but they also respond to heal injuries, cool inflammation, and react to allergens. He also looks at the hemoglobin concentration and the number of red blood cells present, which could indicate anemia if the count is low.

"And you look for muscle enzymes, cardiac enzymes, anything that might indicate that there has been a specific body system that's been involved," he said.

Birks said a veterinarian should examine the horse regularly during the turnout period to monitor repair of the injuries for which it was given time off to assure they heal properly and adequately before returning the horse to training

Denise Steffanus is a contributing editor of Thoroughbred Times who writes frequently on veterinary and farm management topics.