Horse Care | Horse Racing Free Tips

More Than 60 Breeders’ Cup Connections Pledge Portion Of Winnings To New Vocations

A growing number of prominent owners and trainers are showing their support for racehorse aftercare by participating in the New Vocations Breeders' Cup Pledge. Now in its 12^th year, the Pledge has raised over $800,000 with 100 percent of funds raised supporting the program's rehabilitation, retraining and rehoming efforts.

“Breeders' Cup is a very exciting time of year for our industry,” said Anna Ford, New Vocations' Thoroughbred program director. “It's a great opportunity for New Vocations to share its commitment to aftercare and spotlight those who are supporting our mission.”

To date, connections of more than 60 Championship contenders have pledged a percentage of their Breeders' Cup earnings. Participants include Al Shaqab Racing, Albaugh Family Stables, Jim Bakke, Bob Baffert, Richard Baltas, Bonne Chance Farm, Bing Bush & the Abbondanza Racing Partners, Cannon Thoroughbreds, China Horse Club, Coolmore, Brad H. Cox, Bradley Thoroughbreds, DJ Stable, Michael Dubb, Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners, Bobby Flay, Brad Grady, Hat Creek Racing, LNJ Foxwoods, Paulo H. Lobo, Madaket Stables, Michael W. McCarthy, Kenny McPeek, Elizabeth M. Merryman, Peter Miller, MyRacehorse, Patricia's Hope LLC, Todd Pletcher, Richard Ravin, Larry Rivelli, J. Kirk & Judy Robison, Reeves Thoroughbred Racing, SF Racing, Joe Sharp, Siena Farm, Speedway Stables, Spendthrift Farm, St. Elias Stable, Starlight Racing, Stonestreet Stables, Stud RDI, Three Diamonds Farm, Treadway Racing Stable, West Point Thoroughbreds, White Birch Farm, and WinStar Farm.

“We are thrilled with the record number of pledges we've received this year,” Ford said. “The number of horses needing our services is also at an all-time high, so the funds raised during the Pledge are vital to allowing us to find new purposes for these most deserving equine athletes. It's a win-win situation for all involved.”

New Vocations will continue to seek pledges from connections until Nov. 6. All Pledge information is available at newvocations.org/event_detail/26 or by e-mailing anna@horseadoption.com.

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Scientists Confirm Horseback Riding A Viable Mobility Treatment For Cerebral Palsy

Cerebral palsy (CP) affects around two out of every 1000 children born worldwide. Physical therapy is the foremost way of improving movement, balance and posture in children with CP. Research has shown that hippotherapy, a form of physical therapy involving horseback riding, is effective for treating CP. But how exactly does it help? In a recent study, researchers from the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) in South Korea explored this question and provided insightful answers as well as a baseline for future research.

Cerebral Palsy (CP) is a common disability among children, characterized by abnormal gait patterns and the inability to maintain posture and balance. While the condition is incurable, physical therapy treatments can go a long way in improving movement and balance. One such treatment approach is hippotherapy (HPOT), which uses horseback riding to improve functional mobility in children with CP. Although supported by scientific studies as an effective treatment approach for (CP), there is, unfortunately, little data concerning how HPOT results in improvement.

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Recently, a team of researchers from Korea and the United States addressed this question, investigating physical interaction metrics between horses and children with CP during HPOT. “My original research interests lie in the rehabilitation of people with neurological impairment, specifically gait and balance. However, I did not know about hippotherapy until 2016. After realizing how effective it is in treating children with CP, I was motivated to explore it further,” explains Dr. Pilwon Hur, who headed the study. This paper was made available online on September 6, 2021, and was published in Volume 18 Issue 132 of the Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation.

The research team studied four children with CP over the course of eight physical therapy sessions. They placed sensors on the horses and children to record their movements and track their acceleration and angular velocity. They found that the data from the horses and children began to resemble each other as time progressed, indicating a synchronization between the horse and the rider. They also gave the children mobility tests after each session and observed improvement in their motor skills at the end of the experiment.

“We found that physical interaction between the children with CP and the horses, characterized by the children adapting to the horse's movement and vice versa, is extremely important for the rehabilitation to be effective,” says Dr. Hur.

Excited by these findings, the team hopes their work will provide a baseline for further research on HPOT. “To the best of my knowledge, ours is the first study to quantify these interactions and relate them to effectiveness,” says Dr. Hur. “Such an understanding would help us optimize physical therapy programs, improving the quality of life for children with CP.”

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Horses Often Adept At Hiding Dental Pain

Though most horse owners and caretakers will investigate a horse's mouth for pain if he's refusing to eat his feed entirely, equines often offer other clues that their mouths may hurt, reports EQUUS magazine.

Scientists from the University of Helsinki surveyed the owners of 47 horses that had cheek teeth surgically removed because of root infections. Tooth root infections can be caused by several things, but most of these removals were the result of dental fractures.

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The survey asked 23 questions of these owners regarding horse behavior. Respondents noted that the behaviors that were eliminated after the surgical tooth extraction included dropping hay, eating slowly and adjusting hay in the mouth while chewing.

Before surgery, horses with dental pain often avoided the bit, raising their heads or getting “behind” the bit to avoid contact. Painful horses also behaved more antisocially toward people and horses. All of these behaviors dissipated when the painful tooth was removed.

Dr. Jaana Pehkonen, lead researcher, said that avoiding the bit was the most common indicator that something was amiss. She notes that this may be because this behavior is easiest to notice.

In half the study horses, tooth infections were not discovered until a routine dental exam took place, indicating that many owners miss behaviors that can be linked to dental pain. Only six of the 47 horses had obvious signs of tooth issues like external swellings or sinus drainage. Nearly all the owners said that their horses were more comfortable after the teeth were removed.

Pehkonen concluded that some equine behaviors, like self-mutilation, aggressive behavior or withdrawnness aren't regarded as pain behaviors by horse owners. However, once the pain is removed and the horse returns to acting “normal,” it's easier to see that the behaviors indicated discomfort. Pehkonen recommends horses have annual dental exams so that any problems can be identified.

So Scary: Handlers Can Help Horses Overcome Fear Of Novel Objects

Polish researchers recently completed a study designed to help determine why horses are afraid of other animal species. Dr. Anna Wiśniewska and her research team focused specifically on cattle, which many horses seem terrified of.

Cattle and horses have traditionally lived together and were familiar with each other. In many modern operations however, most cattle and horses live separately, so they very rarely encounter one another. Horses kept in suburban areas may go their whole lives without exposure to bovines or other hooved animals.

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When horses that are not used to cows are exposed to one outside of their familiar barn, they may act fearful and try to avoid the cow. The research team from the University of Life Sciences in Lublin, the University of Chester in England, and the Polish Academy of Sciences created a study to determine if horses were more fearful of cows than other novel objects.

They created an experiment using 20 healthy riding horses; they put each horse individually in an arena familiar to them and exposed them to two different cows tethered in the space and a box on wheels. They also exposed them to nothing so they had a control.

The arena was marked off in sections, with section one being closest to the cow and section three being furthest away. The researchers then measured how much time the horses spent at different distances from the cow, as well as the horse's heart rate. The horse's reactions were also recorded.

Two months later, each horse was led either toward one of the cows or toward the box. The horse's heart rate was monitored. While loose, the horses avoided the area closest to the cow and the box; horses that were led became more fearful the closer they got to the cow and the box.

The results showed that the horses were as afraid or more afraid of the cow than a box. The scientists say this reaction suggests that the horse's fear of novel objects may also be a part of a horse's fear of unfamiliar species.

The team concludes that as prey animals, horses are sensitive to unknown and frightening stimuli, and they often act in fear despite years of domestication and selection against fearful behavior. This instinct to avoid fearful objects, living or not, may be exacerbated when the horse is restrained (in this case led toward the object). They also concluded that with handler support, trained horses can be easily habituated to objects they once found scary.

Read the full study here.