No, I’m not saying it’s a justification. Just that it would happen.
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I’d be grateful for references to dangers to tendons of retained heat. I know that icing the legs is recommended to bring down inflammation from hard work or injury, but was not aware of evidence that modest temperatures of 94 F were dangerous. As I mentioned, I found a reference to a contrast therapy in which legs were deliberately heated to over 100F before being cooled.
One of my criticisms of the study is that is looked at temperatures over a three hour period during which the leg remained wrapped after exercise. No one does that. The leg is unwrapped immediately and would cool from air circulation, even if the legs were not hosed or iced.
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I am also really a perfectionist about wraps. The velcro has to be perfect. Always on the outside of the leg, all 4 the same. Perfect. So…I can’t be bothered with that every ride. Hence the boots (horse brushes behind a bit). Or none if it’s really hot and we are just on a walk hack in the forest.
I own Arabs, and I’ve yet to find any boot on the market that offers significant impact protection while also fitting to my satisfaction. Therefore, I use polos when I feel like protection is warranted, which allows me to provide a custom fit and full protection from knee/hock to fetlock. However, I pull wraps immediately upon dismounting and hose the horse thoroughly (weather permitting).
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Re custom fit: I prefer polos for a similar reason. With boots, the boot applies pressure at the two or three areas where the straps are, and none elsewhere. Polos, correctly applied, provide an even, low degree of pressure over the whole leg from the underside of the fetlock to below the knee. As long as they’re not too tight, this seems preferable and more comfortable than the two or three straps.
Polos are cheap to acquire and last for years. Boots are expensive and last 6 months. I think polos are easier to wash.
Taking into account the time to apply polos and reroll them afterwards, I think I spend an extra 5 minutes on polos vs boots.
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@YankeeDuchess, I wish I had the reference. I head it from Lucinda Greene at a clinic years ago. She indicated it was a British study, but I didn’t ask for more (concentrating on the exercises). As I recall, Jimmy Wofford said he’d read about it too, in a clinic the same year. My understanding via their interpretations, was that even though it was a relatively short duration, using non-vented boots on a cross country course would build up enough heat in the tendons to damage tendon structure, albeit to a small degree. Thus, they were suggesting vented boots, although this most recent comparison seems to indicate that the vented boots don’t help. I agree that the study design as you’ve described it is flawed.
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Sounds like you are buying the wrong boots! LeMieux grafter brushing boots are great value for money - half the price of all their other boots and mine have survived years of hard use with no damage.
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Thanks. I do use boots for turnout; it just seems I’m replacing them all the time at a couple hundred for a set.
My Lipizzaner is 8 years old; he ran for 4 years in the Austrian Alps w other stallions, with plenty of running and playing over rough ground, and he doesn’t wear anything when he’s turned out.
For riding, when I’m doing collected or lateral work, I’ve been using LeMieux boots (which have been getting hot and sweaty during summer months) and have switched over (in hot weather, at least) to Eskadron Climatex liners (wick away moisture, keep legs cooler) under polos, to protect against brushing during lateral movements/pirouettes/etc.
The Eskadron were new to me (after 13 years of not owning a horse), but after researching them and getting feedback from friends, I’m sold.
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Just my anecdotal evidence but my horse sweats a LOT less under his plain polos than when I’ve used boots. Most rides I use polos (actually was upon advice of vet) because he is narrow and shod on all four. The few times he’s monkey’d around naked legs he has gotten cuts that caused swelling (chestnut OTTB… sigh).
I appreciate that less is more but for my horse and any horse I groom that has leg gear the gear is always pulled after the ride and legs cold hosed/rinsed/iced as necessary based on horse. I never leave them on more than a few minutes after dismounting…
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I understand your skepticism. People smarter than me claim that sheepskin’s more of a temperature regulator, not just an insulator 
Either way, I can attest that my horse’s legs sweat a lot less with sheepskin than with fleece polos or other synthetic boots.
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I don’t know that the pressure is that dramatic that it would actually cause a comfort issue.
Also, I don’t know which boots you were buying
buying, but mine last far longer than 6 months.
As for washing, they’re about the same. Both go in mesh bags in the washing machine. Boots can sometimes just be hosed off.
I think polos are more about a look rather than function for a lot of people. I think people have got a bit boot and polo crazy over the years.
Don’t get me wrong, you’re free to put whatever on your horses legs, I just have a different preference and experience. I can’t say that any instructor/clinician has given a hoot about what is on (or not on) my horse’s legs.
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The articles discussed the structure of the lower leg and how efficient it is for cooling, which is readily apparent when you notice the control leg is much cooler than the horse’s average body temp, so while it’s interesting that the target temp is cooler than the body temp, I’m not sure that’s as important as it seems at superficial glance. I think there’s something to be learned from the fact we make a practice of consistently raising those temps. Just like the days of slowly cooling off hot horses with tepid water… Will we learn that good intentions don’t ensure good results for the horses? (Honestly, the sheer number of times I read about someone looking for a “support” boot/wrap makes me suspects the odds are not in our favor).
But I’d love to know why lower leg tendons seem to hold at lower temps than the tendons that exists all over the body, buried deep in heavy muscle. Those other tendons are reasonably doing hard work eternally at higher temps. Are the cooler temps just a byproduct of the evolutionary design of the loading mechanism of the lower leg or is it an integral component of that process? Also regarding other tendons at higher temps, the lower leg experiences more stress/force probably than any other tendons, so maybe that created the evolutionary need to keep that part of the machine “supercooled”?
I’ve never booted or wrapped my horse’s on turnout so that’s not a concern for me, and while I want to put boots on when I ride or drive, and look at boots in the tack store like some women look at shoes… The reality is that 99% I’m too lazy to put them on and that’s probably a good thing. So I’ll continue to boot up for marathon and use the front boots for cones. That leaves dressage lessons where I usually use polos (mostly so the trainer can see leg movement a little easier). Guess I will switch to boots if I use anything at all.
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Good overview of the physiology @DMK. Thank you.
Being antediluvian, I remember wrapping polo ponies’ legs with wool knit bandages (no stretch) that had string ties. We didn’t wrap for support so much as to prevent “Bamboo Fever”: polo mallets whacking legs. I have no idea what the current philosophy is on this subject. I don’t remember a particularly high incidence of bowed tendons, but there were some. Most were successfully rehabbed, and many ponies went on to have long careers at lower levels.
Interesting subject. Maybe more research mimicking real world conditions will bring clarity. At the very least maybe thermocouple sensors under the wrap/ boot during use would give more info.
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Lots of valuable, real discussion on the pros & cons of boots vs polos has already been had. I use both, although with how humid our summer is turning out to be, I am using my polo wraps more.
Now, if we were looking at your question from a fashion/matchy-matchy point of view, I would say polos. Buying a set of 4 polos to match my saddle pad is a heck of a lot cheaper than buying a full set of boots and easier to store. 
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An insulator is a temperature regulator. If you wrap a carton of ice cream with sheep skin, it will keep the cream cold by insulating it against the warm air. We wear sheepskin coats to insulate our body temperature at 98 against cold air.
The issue here is that any boot or wrap, sheepskin or otherwise, reduces the exposure of the limb to air and reduces the extent to which excess heat generated by exercise can be dissipated.
The fluffy wool layer of sheepskin next to the skin would have some air in it. Sweat from the leg can evaporate into the air in the sheepskin, and it’s the process of sweat evaporating that provides the cooling effect. If a horse or human sweats, but the limb is not exposed to air because it’s wrapped in neoprene, the sweat itself does not provide the cooling effect- it has to evaporate to provide the cooling effect.
I’m not selling sheepskin boots, but I can believe that by allowing the evaporation of sweat better than nonfluffy materials, they would not be subject to the overheating of dense materials.
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I’m not saying the pressure at the straps is dramatic. I just think a gentle, continuous pressure over the whole cannon bone would be kind of pleasant.
My horse moves very narrow. Even with the pads underneath, the polos don’t add much to the diameter of the limb. Boots add a good 2” to the diameter of the booted leg, which, in my horse, is probably enough to cause brushing that would not occur in bare legs or polos.
Polos have a slimmer profile than boots, which are pretty clunky. I claim my preference for the slimmer profile is based on the functionality of less brushing of legs in his narrowness, and not just esthetics.
Now that I think about it, I think that my boots would last just for 6 months because in the hind legs, he’d be brushing them against each other on a daily basis.
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That would be because the wool wicks the moisture/sweat away, not because there is less sweat generated…
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You’re making definitive statements that are simply not true. My Air Motion boots are not so thick, breathable, and not bulky. There is no way they add a good 2" diameter to the booted leg. I mean, I can measure 
but I’m quite sure. Polo wraps with a pad (such as climatex) would be about the same. Could be more bulky depending on the padding underneath but the Eskadrons aren’t so bad. So maybe your boots are too bulky, but not all boots.
Mine does brush with his hind legs and there are wear marks on his boots, but they still exceed the 6 month mark. Depends on how extreme the brushing is I suppose.
I also don’t use full neoprene boots on my horse because I think it makes him too sweaty and, possibly coincidentally, he ends up with skin funk after repeated neoprene use.
I do understand what you’re saying about the distribution of pressure in polos vs boots. I’m not arguing that, I just said to me the pressure at the straps isn’t so dramatic. I’m not saying that you said that, it was purely my though/not reason enough for me not to use them.
There are also boots such as Equilibrium Stretch and Flex boots that aren’t so bulky. I also saw some odd looking compression sock style boots that I cannot recall the name of. Then we have “snug boot” style such as the LeMieux snug boots. Then we have open fronts. So when we say “boots” a lot can fall unto that category. So some variables are presented there which makes making definitive statements a bit tricky.
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I will keep my mind and my eyes open for research that provides evidence that heat damages lower leg tendons, but the article provided zero evidence that a mild temperature of 94 F (on the external skin) actually causes damage.
I am convinced that warming up the horse for 15 minutes at the walk protects the tissues, especially ligaments and tendons, from injury. Part of the effect of the “warm up” walking is mechanically moving the muscles and tendons to get them flexing in a non stressed way, but part of it is literally warming up the tissues.
In that study, the temperature of the bare limb actually dropped before starting to rise at the 15 minute mark. Perhaps the study should have been titled “If you don’t use boots or polos, it’s especially critical that you walk for at least 15 minutes before going to the more concussive, suspended gaits.
It appears they subjected the horses in the study to the twenty minute work session without a preliminary walk session, otherwise they would have mentioned it. That is reason #14 that I’m not taking advice from the article on protecting my horse from tendon injury.
My practice: wrap with polos over a thin pad, walk for ten minutes, exercise for 35 -40 minutes with lots of collected and lateral work, remove polos. I often hose off the whole horse and sometimes ice the legs. The study reflected my use of polos not at all; not the warm up walk, the length of the work session, and particular not the post work routine.
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