Also sharing the hoarfrost build up on my car from driving through freezing fog for 9 hours. It was terrifying Friday night and I actually ended up pulling over into a parking lot in a small town and sleeping in my car. Coming back Sunday was a bit better just super slow since I was dealing with some snow ruts and glare ice.
The straw did work wonderfully and kept the pups warm and the border collies amused themselves by breaking it up so I’ll have to replace it.
My surprise for this weekend: Streak is officially healthy enough to compete in disc again. We are taking it slow and only did enough this weekend to get his throw’n’go updif Q. Legit did not think this would happen this year after he dislocated his hock in May but he is a trooper.
A huge shout out to the Veterinary Mobility Center for getting him back a couple months earlier than expected and giving us this opportunity. 💙
Supplements arrived and apparently the BCAA adds taste because I needed to remind Prowl to breathe when eating (and will be getting a slow-tf-down thing for his bowl). Streak was highly suspecious at first because he wasn’t certain if new supplements broke the Food Rules. He tried to eat around them first, then decided they were actually good and enthusiastically ate them.
There were also even more labels that the supplements were banned under fei, so I poked around their banned substances list and omg horse sports. Are you okay? It seems a little excessive.
I fell down the rabbit hole looking at early exercise studies with relation to bone strength in race horses.
I found a study talking about how a third of race horses in a study had osteoarthritis by 3yo. I’m assuming that is because of early intense exercise before they are done growing? Can any of my followers point to a different equestrian sport that usually starts their horses later that I can search google scholar for similar studies?
Last time I fell down that rabbit hole I found these two studies (and a bunch more but I didn’t save them/haven’t fully investigated these, either).
Other sports do start their horses later (Warmblood hunters are usually older in the green divisions, from my experience). From a scholarly study perspective, however, the information is scarce – most of the key financial backing for the studies comes from the racing industry. The eventing world would also be really interesting to evaluate – compare the longevity of off the track Thoroughbreds versus non-raced Thoroughbreds in competing in eventing.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.2042-3306.2012.00651.x
Thank you for those articles!
I didn’t know that horses had some growth plates closed before birth, though it makes total sense thinking about it. The joint they measured in the bone strength study had the two nearest growth plates closed at birth in horses which def makes me re-evaluate. Unfortunately it doesn’t appear like they looked at the radiohumeral joint where the growth plates weren’t closed for the duration of the study (appears to close at 20 – 24 months and the study ended at 18months). I couldn’t find any other studies that looked at that – most seem to focus on the metacarpophalangeal joint or metacarpus bone.
I tried to look up any eventing studies, but yeah they are pretty non-existent. Ugh. Where is the crowdfunding research platform (huh. okay. Apparently experiment.com. so if any equestrian/canine sports scientists want to jump on this LMK)
Back to the original – I did find a study that looked at the surface of cartilage in exercised young horses and it found deeper grooves in than in non-exercised and it concluded that this could lead to early degeneration/osteoarthritis. So sort of answer within the racing horse research.
I’ve got another appointment with my physio vet so depending on how busy it is, i might geek out with her about this or see if they can pull the full studies (or maybe ask my mom, though I’m not certain it is on any place that she has a subscription for. She is usually human medical only)
Streak was getting a little too friendly with my pillow, so I got him some friends (they were bogo at Ikea).
I am not allowed to cuddle them though – I snuggled with the tri-toy and he then spent the next hour resource guarding me from the toy.
Total cost of dog stuff I’ve bought this weekend: 300$
Total cost of me stuff I’ve bought his weekend: 6$
Seems legit
It’s way too quiet in the house with only 4 dogs.
Prowl got to go on his vacation a day earlier. He is hanging out with some flyball teammates including another one of his younger brothers.
The rest of the dogs are packed and will be dropped off tomorrow.
All dogs are dropped off and I’m off to Edmonton.
It’s a new place so Tesla was Not Sure about it and the folks were great waiting for her to get better adjusted instead of forcing her. We finally got her moving by walking Ratchet beside her. They are also going to be doing some of Streak’s physio exercises for me as well. So super happy I found them.
The only dogs who are in as good of shape as you (Streak) are the police dogs
– At physio today
