Top tips for cooling down your horse

With the competition season in full swing how can we help our horses recover quicker and therefore perform at their best and hopefully reduce the chance of injuries? Can a structured cool down help horses recover? We explore some tips for cooling horses down in this blog.

Ensuring proper warm-up and cool-down routines is crucial for equine athletes, mirroring the importance seen in human athletes. Just like a hard session of exercise for us, the horse will also get stiff muscles, but taking the time to add in a cool down session may help your horse recover quicker and suffer less pain and stiffness associated with exercise.

Simply dismounting and stabling your horse immediately post-exercise could potentially lead to a stiff horse as they have not had a chance to remove the lactic acid from their muscles effectively.

There is no hard a fast rules for cooling horses down but some simple tips will help for a happy horse.

Cool horses down suggestions whilst still riding:

The first phase of cool-down can start when you are still on board. Allow the horse their head and let them stretch down in walk. The ideal time period to do this will depend on the intensity of the exercise. If they have been doing fast work and are breathing heavily, sweating and have their veins popping out these are all key markers that you have to let subside. It may be a good idea to relieve the horse even more by getting off and walking home or back to the lorry or stable, so their walk cool down is weight free.

If you are schooling as the session ends think about “long and low” incorporating predominantly walking with intermittent trotting, really allowing them to stretch through the back and the neck.

If there is someone on the floor whilst you are still riding and your horse is booted, it may be a good idea to remove horse boots to get more air flow to hot legs.

How to cool a horse that is blowing very hard and sweating.

After competition or racing your horse will have exerted itself to the maximum. In the summer months when the ambient temperatures are higher it will be harder for the horse to cool itself. Get off, take the tack off and hose down immediately or if no access to a hose start throwing water over the horse as quickly as possible to bring their temperatures down and start dooling your horses down. Do not waste time with scraping it off, water conducts heat very well and through evaporation the horse will cool. Dr David Marlin covers off a few myths on scraping here

What to do after you have hosed the horse after exercise?

If the horse is still breathing hard, keep the horse walking until breath rate is normal, and after the initial dowsing of water they are beginning to dry off. Ice boots for horses have been found to lower tendon temperatures. There is evidence that a lot of heat is produced by the tendons in the lower leg during exercise, especially if the horse has been wearing boots. This takes us to the next tip of cool down – ice the horses legs. This will reduce any inflammation caused by exercise, help flush out lactic acid, provide much needed pain relief and minimise any swelling caused by tiny tears in the tissues. An ice and compression boot for horses will facilitate cold penetration and also target any swelling better. Time of icing is usually 10-15mins and then make sure the horse walks off to help stimulate the blood supply to the lower leg.

How can you help a horse to stretch after exercise?

As humans we are taught to stretch off after exercise and this should be now different to the horse. Most physios recommend the use of carrot stretches, weight shifting and tail pulls for every day exercises and these can be incorporated into the cool down. http://www.gilliantabor.co.uk/a-stable-base-to-horse-training-and-exercise/

Can you use compression wraps for use after exercise?

Once you have exercised the best thing is to allow the horse to go out in a field to wander around and help stretch off or if you are stabled at a competition then to hand graze for a while. If the horse is stabled later then it is a great idea to help those legs with some compression wraps. This will prevent any swelling occurring and enhance the blood flow back up to the body. So if your horses legs regularly swell after exercise when they are standing in, then add a compression wrap to your cool down routine. Swelling in itself causes damage to the tissues and also is painful for the horse so a compression wrap will relieve this. And no, using a compression wrap whilst a horse is stabled will not overheat the legs. The only time a horses legs may overheat when standing is if they are in a lorry where they are constantly moving and there is a lack of air flow. So try to keep them bare legged when travelling home! This is only if the benefit to your horse outweighs the risk, they may need travel boots.

In short top tips for cooling down your horse

• Walk off
• Stretch off
• Hose or water down
• Ice cooling boots
• More walk off and stable exercises
• Compression wraps