INJURIES AND CONCLUSIONS
The blog has painstakingly established conclusively what we all know. Horses get hurt even in the stable of yours truly.
With my small sample and sporadic racing all I can say over twenty years is that with appropriate training and persistent attention to detail I "believe" you can race injury free. As I posted, for us the test is still to come when we get a season of consistent racing.
I've also written that the injury problem is the bane of racing, catastrophically affecting small owners and stables, and untalked about and ignored at the upper levels.
For those small owners that tire of and basically cannot hear "that's racing" concerning injuries, in my opinion there is only one thing to do, which is to develop a system of training and care that minimizes the injury problem. I'll be bold enough to say that unless you do this your stay in the game will be short.
The above analysis essentially explains why I have never trained any horse by conventional methods. Think I have exposed rather conclusively that except for those few owners struck by dumb luck, none of you or almost none of you will succeed with conventional training. If any reader disbelieves this pronouncement, ask your current public trainer where his prior year's trainees presently reside.
This is other than to say that conventional public trainers are unaware of injuries or are without any method of dealing with them. How injuries are dealt with in current racetrack environmenst, next post.
Training:
2/23/07: Day 3: 6 or 7 speedy riderless heats on drying mud. Horse injured with probable hoof bruise. We'll know when we next exercise.
2/24/07 Rest--rain.
2/25/07 Rest--an inch of rain on top of what we already had. Newsflash--good weather to 3/15.
With my small sample and sporadic racing all I can say over twenty years is that with appropriate training and persistent attention to detail I "believe" you can race injury free. As I posted, for us the test is still to come when we get a season of consistent racing.
I've also written that the injury problem is the bane of racing, catastrophically affecting small owners and stables, and untalked about and ignored at the upper levels.
For those small owners that tire of and basically cannot hear "that's racing" concerning injuries, in my opinion there is only one thing to do, which is to develop a system of training and care that minimizes the injury problem. I'll be bold enough to say that unless you do this your stay in the game will be short.
The above analysis essentially explains why I have never trained any horse by conventional methods. Think I have exposed rather conclusively that except for those few owners struck by dumb luck, none of you or almost none of you will succeed with conventional training. If any reader disbelieves this pronouncement, ask your current public trainer where his prior year's trainees presently reside.
This is other than to say that conventional public trainers are unaware of injuries or are without any method of dealing with them. How injuries are dealt with in current racetrack environmenst, next post.
Training:
2/23/07: Day 3: 6 or 7 speedy riderless heats on drying mud. Horse injured with probable hoof bruise. We'll know when we next exercise.
2/24/07 Rest--rain.
2/25/07 Rest--an inch of rain on top of what we already had. Newsflash--good weather to 3/15.
posted by rather rapid at
12:46 PM
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4 Comments:
I've been reading you blog to expand my horizons, but wanted to mention my current trainer. They only had 10 horses in training last year and all ran a minimum of 9x last year except for one, which got hurt in the stall, and all are currently racing.
Welcome And, txs for your comment. Would you know it, one got hurt in a stall. Congrats to your trainer and yourself on this great success! If they still have this record in a few months, and you're still with us, I'll definitely want to know more!
If you don't have a $50 infrared temperature gun (available from most auto parts shops), I would recommend it as we have been able to monitor a foot bruise in the past with this device, by noting a subtle temperature difference between LF and RF soles.
Ideally I think an IR thermal camera is an essential part of the toolbox, but the hand held IR gun can work too for these type of injuries...
KH
Greetings KH. Surprise that you should mention the IR Gun as I had just bought one off the Tom Ivers website for $250.00. Wanted to get it before the website disappeared. Never thought to use it to check bruising. Txs for the heads up. Will post a report, if I can figure how to use the thing.
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