Treatments after Riding? ?

Question

This is kinda hard to explain but just try to stick with me please. I have never worked with the materials I intend to use but I know horses really well and will have the support of my trainer and upper level PC members to help me with them. Because of this some of the questions may seem kinda dumb. Im just trying to get background info and a few opinions.

Ok, I am hoping to do my science fair project this year on finding the best method to lower the heat in a horses legs after hard riding. I would like to find the best method for relieving soreness but can't figure out a way to test it. I remember messing with a bottle of liniment that had scans of the heat in horses legs before and after the use of the product so Im figuring excessive heat is a bad thing. Right?

I would like to test a commonly used poltince, liniment and rubbing alcohol for cooling three legs. I am leaving the 4th leg as the control. I know different people who swear by each and claim the other methods dont work. What are your opinions of each method? Favorite brand of each?

My procedure would be something like this: Take temp of each leg before riding. Do a tougher jumping lesson (about an hour on the flat with a couple jump courses at the end). My horse is up for it health and fitness wise. I would set an certain amount of time for walking trotting, cantering and jumping in an effort to remove variables. At the end of the lesson, I will immediatly take the temps of all the legs and begin applying each product (a helper will untack him and begin grooming him. I also plan to wait till the weather is cooler so he will not be standing there really sweaty) I will have seperate stopwatches for each leg and am going to start them when I begin applying the product. I will check the temps at 2 minutes (is this to soon?), 5 min, 10 min, 20 min, 30 min, 40 min, 50 min, and an hour. Do I need to spread the times out more? Do the products take more time to begin working? I havent figured out exactly how to take the temp but I have a few ideas.

Some questions:

What method do you use on your horses?

What brands do you like?

Am I missing anything blantanly obvious? (again never worked with the stuff)

Anything you would like to add would be greatly apprecited!

This question in a couple different forms will probably be popping up around here for the next couple weeks. Sorry, but I need some opinions and will probably have more questions once my teachers start asking questions. Just ignore them if you think this project is dumb but I would like some help on it.

REALLY sorry if this doesnt make sense. If you have any questions please post them and I will edit to answer very quickly.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

One thing to think about is: Has you horse ever had any leg injuries? If the horse has had a leg injury before, it's leg might be warmer, or might take longer to cool.  

Answer 2

What method do you use on your horses? liniment

What brands do you like? blue lotion (my favourite), alcogel, green cool

Am I missing anything blantanly obvious? (again never worked with the stuff) umm no sounds good

Anything you would like to add would be greatly apprecited!

Please post what you find out! I'm curious which method is best.

Answer 3

Well, first off, congrats for wanting to take this on!  

I have both studied research and statistics, and also participated in FDA protocol and research for many years.

The basic flaw in your research hypothesis is in the fact that you have no accurate nor controlled way in which to measure the temperature of the tissue in the horse's legs.  This flaw invalidates your entire experiment.  The other basic flaw is in your assumption that heat given off gives an accurate indication of blood flow in the area. The effects of heat and cold on the circulation of blood is what these treatments are about.  Even if you could measure the tissue temperature accurately, that is not a highly accurate measure of blood flow. And, the factors that can affect circulation from one limb to another makes using the fourth limb as a control invalid as well.

I also think you would have a hard time controlling the exercise level of each horse prior to gathering your data.

I feel this is too difficult to control in order to conduct research for a science project.  I would scale it down considerably, to something that you can control and measure, and actually be able to validate your conclusions.  I don't know how rigid the standards will be, though, so I could be wrong.  However, the conclusions you my arrive at from this will most likely be false.