Of course water conducts heat. Otherwise the watched pot would NEVER boil.
But it only conducts heat when the water is cooler than the heat source (in this case the horse).
Once the water heats up to the horse’s body temperature, it is no longer providing any cooling effect, so you need to get it out of there, either to replace it with fresh cold water, or to have a thin enough layer that the evaporation provides a cooling effect.
When your brow ix covered with hot sweat, you wipe it off. You do not just leave it there.
I have always cringed every time I saw a horse walk away from a race with a sheet on, especially in the summer. All these horses are given Lasix, are considerably dehydrated, and we walk them off the track in cool out sheets all the way back to the barn with no offer of a drink until they get there. Not to mention the rush to get the photo op after the race. Let the horse have a drink and a at least hose of their neck with cold water before the photo and the untacking and long walk back to the barn.
It is a known fact that water left on a hot horse becomes the temperature of their body or worse and holds the heat on their body. It’s even worse in the heat of the summer with the sun beating down. This is why, even if you have a hot horse on a hot summer day sweating, if you hose them off you must scrape the water off of them and keep them in the shade until dry. Otherwise the water just reheats even hotter and heats up the horse again
Even if you were to hose down with warm water; that water is going to sit on their body and become even hotter very quickly. The goal after a race should be to get their body temperature down to normal quickly and the way to do that is cold water or cool water and scraping and re-doing that process several times and HYDRATION and even cool fans.
The racing industry could learn a lot from those in the endurance discipline and how they hydrate and cool horses even mid race. They’d probably be horrified but they have it down to a science and the correct way to properly go about cooling the horse.
I don’t know anyone who puts a full sheet on a horse after racing. I cannot say I have ever seen that.
There are plenty of people who will put a scrim sheet on the horse in the summer, which has a purpose. The scrim sheet keeps the sun off the horse’s back while walking back to the barn, and prevents the sun from heating up the wet horse. The scrim sheets have huge holes, so there is lots of airflow. They also don’t absorb much water. Often they are soaked in ice water before placing them on the horse so they are good and cold.
The routine after a race is generally catch/untack the horse, hose or sponge them down at the wire, then scrape the horse and throw on a scrim sheet (a cold one if possible). Sometimes offer a drink at the wire, but most horses wouldn’t drink then even if you offered. Then head back to the barn or test barn to finish cooling out, where there is plenty of water available.
Sometimes when it’s really hot, the track might even place hoses and fans along the way walking back to the barn, so you can stop and cool the horse further or offer a drink. Same on the walkover and in the paddock prior to the race.
If the horse wins, someone usually hands the jockey a sponge and the horse gets sponged quickly with cool water over the head/neck before the photo, which has a dual purpose. It starts cooling the horse and it rinses off some of the dirt. It takes less than a minute to take a win photo; they don’t mess around in the winners circle. Then the horse gets cooled out like described above before walking back to the test barn.
In the winter, they generally use a thicker knit or wool cooler, which prevents the horse from getting too chilled.
I think racing people do a MUCH better job cooling out and hydrating their horses than the average show/pleasure rider. I’m not sure how hydrating a horse mid-race would be a benefit? It’s a very different sport than endurance racing. Horses are not going to stop at the quarter pole and take a drink, even if you wanted them to. It sounds like you have a lot of misconceptions about the racing industry.
I wasn’t saying that they should stop mid- race and take a drink. obviously that would diminish the purpose of thoroughbred racing, they are not racing 100 miles like endurance @Texarkana
This whole argument is kind of pointless. How many people ride their horses so hard on seriously hot days that they are dangerously overheated and you need to hose/scrape/hose/scrape to get their body temp back to a safe place? I think very few, unless you are eventing in the heat. Race horses only race for a minute, and their body temp does not usually get elevated to a dangerous place in that minute. What you mainly see is increased respiration and heart rate. I think dehydration is the biggest risk with race horses on a hot day, and the hose/scrape has nothing to do with rehydrating. Getting them to a bucket of drinking water is more important. Anyone want to benefit the hydrating effects of cold water vs. tepid/room temp water?
Thanks, I used to post on the P-R a far bit for years. I use my real name. Too much drama for the last few years. Too many people that mean well but don’t have a clue at what they are talking about.
I got you PM the other day. It came to my inbox from the Chronicle a bit cryptic, hard to read. Anyway I don’t use Chronicle PM and don’t respond to it that way anymore. VERY sorry to a lot of people who have sent me PMs in the last 6++ months.
I don’t like the format, I find it a PITA to work with.
If you want, if anybody wants, please email me direct, larryensor at gumtreestables dot com. It can be a nice or nasty email I don’t care. I am not a very nice person to be nasty to in person. I have a pretty loud bark, short fuse at times. I am usually much nicer to deal with by email or in a forum. I can digest my comments, soften, take the snark out before I hit send/post. Or just ignore and move on, lol.
Here’s a post that seems to say the opposite about scraping. It’s a little confusing, but basically says conduction (putting very cold water on the horse) removes heat faster, while evaporation (leaving the water on the horse to evaporate) removes more heat over time (when the water can actually evaporate, which means low humidity). Scraping means there’s nothing left to evaporate to continue cooling the horse. You only scrape if you are going to keep putting more cold water on the horse.
My horses are mostly “cooled out” by the time I am finished riding. The respiration and heart rate are no longer elevated, although they may be sweaty from working hard and because of the air temperature. I hose and scrape to remove the sweat and get them dry enough to put back into the stall. I think very few of us ride so hard that it becomes crucial to get the horse’s body temp back down to avoid harm, so it’s not an issue as to whether we scrape and when we scrape and how often we scrape. When I worked in racing and it was hot, we hosed, scraped, walked a few laps and let the horse drink, and then hosed again.
