Injury To Art

With little Art on Friday effortlessly keeping up with the oldsters in a speedy riderless paddock workout on drying mud, going through my mind was his stride. You see classic striding horses, and there are the Arts of the world pogoing themselves along in similar fashion as I recall Chief's Crown. Hardly pretty, but very effective. Instead of increasing the speed of turnover as they accelerate, they merely lenghten the stride a bit creating an illisuion of floating along. I became a specator for a time instead of a trainer, and it may have cost us.

Toward the end of a far more strenuous than planned workout little Art suddenly pulled himself up, very lame on his right front. I was some distance away, but saw him refusing to put the leg on the ground and then stamping the ground in pain. The end of this blog, small deal i know, and the racing end of my little horse blurred before me. Bowed tendon, supsensory or, in the mud, pulled sesamoid or low bow seemed the only plausible explanations.

What the heck was I doing driving the little fellow at full speed for way too many heats under these conditions and at the present level of de-training that was caused by the weeks of bad weather? To set the stage the horses have done very little speed work since early January, and last week due to weather they did nothing at all. Additionally, this workout was the fourth in five days all in deep mud, and, to cap it, I'd done a speed workout the day before.

I had good intent going into this, but, in retrospect did everything wrong. Primarily I violated two basic rules of my training, part of the RR rules i developed way back in 1993 to avoid injuring horses:

1. Never do a more strenuous workout than planned.
2. Always take the conservative route.

These rules work if the human handler will observe them. You violate them and Murphy's Law will bite you every time.

You never exceed the planned work because competitively you always plan the most difficult workout you think you can get away with. Exceeding this risks injury. Additionally, we're frequently faced with choices due to competing interests. Do we breeze 5f safely, or, do we go 6f which might be pushing the envelope? I solve these sorts of dilemas with the second rule above that you always, every time, make the conservative decision. You do what you know you can do instead of what you speculate might be possible.

Friday, but for the two inches of rain coming in Saturday, was a scheduled Burch Day 1 of rest or very light work after the Day 3 speed work Thursday. But, facing two or three days off with weather, I thought we might get away with a second day of speed. I made the decision pre-workout to go ahead with this, BUT, to let the horses dictate the pace and to avoid driving them at all.

When the actual workout started the horses were hepped in brisk blowing wind. They were moving but then trainer, between spectating over Art as stated above and getting caught in the ever dangerous "they're going so good" syndrom, started to drive the horses and move them even faster. I forgot to count the heats and we probably did six or seven before the injury, which would qualify as 2 or three more heats of speed than I'd ever done with Art.

I had exceeded the plan, skipped conditioning steps, and forgotten all about being conservative, which the state of conditioning absolutely required. Result: injury and for all you young fellows that want to be trainers, prima facie on how never to proceed.

The irony that this came on a day I was posting of lack of injuries for six years prior is hardly lost on RR. However, lady luck may this one time have been with us.

Injury checks revealed lack of heat, swelling or pain. There was a big hard mudball in the shoe of the leg, and when i removed this with the hoof pick he seemed immediately better but still limping. Due to lack of symptoms I decided we might have a bruised hoof. Immediate adminstration of bute, and within the hour the limp became slight and then non-existent. The horse is walking normally today, and unless there's a chip of some sort or a hiding fracture we've dodged a bullet.

Today's training:
1/22/07 Day 3 Burch: riderless fast work and nice walking under tack.
1/25/07 Repeat a Day 3: riderless fast work at volume resulting in injury to right front.
1/26/07: Rest due to rain and mud. Horse walking normally today.