Thursday News & Notes from Kentucky Equine Research

Sometimes you gotta get REAL creative to reach that green grass. Photo by Tylir Penton.

Sometimes you gotta get REAL creative to reach that green grass. Photo by Tylir Penton.

Clipping season has me driving home at 2pm on a weekday and looking in the mirror to find that I am, in fact, sporting a beard. Having just body clipped two horses in a row yesterday in record time of 3 hours total (I am a speed demon) I found that while the chestnut made me sneezy, the dark bay made me look like I was one of Sleeping Beauty’s seven dwarfs. Not only did I have hair coming out of my ears, but I had a shockingly realistic looking pair of sideburns and a nice beard line right on my jaw. Just in time for halloween??

U.S. Weekend Preview:

Viriginia CCI/CIC & H.T. [Website] [Entry Status]

Chattahoochee Hills H.T. [Website] [Entry Status] [Ride Times]

Holly Hill Fall H.T. [Website] [Entry Status]

News From Around the Globe:

The Virginia Horse Trials is expecting record breaking entries for the fall show this weekend – Oct 27-30, 2016- and they need a lot of volunteers! You can sign up really easily online with the new Eventing Volunteers website, which is now available for select competitions in the area. Remember you can also earn $20 per day if you work 4 hrs or more toward your designated non-profit organization! Get your group to come volunteer and it can be a great fundraiser! [Volunteer at VAHT]

Stop what you’re doing and check out the Washington International Horse Show’s silent auction. Happening all this week and weekend in our nation’s capitol, the WIHS silent auction is straight out of control. I can’t afford a single piece, but it’s still fun to dream, right? From an unlimited shopping spree at Tailored Sportsman to tickets to Saturday Night Live, all the way to a week in Paris in a beautiful apartment in the Latin Quarter, I swoon. [WIHS Silent Auction]

Do you know an outstanding owner or groom in the sport of Eventing who deserves an award? You can nominate either (or both!) here on the PRO website for the As You Like It Owner’s Award and/or the Liz Cochran Memorial Groom’s Award. The As You Like It Owner’s Award is offered annually to an outstanding owner who has had a large influence on a rider’s career and made an exceptional contribution to the sport. The Liz Cochran Memorial Groom’s Award is also awarded annually to an outstanding groom of a PRO professional who has had a large influence on a rider’s career and the health and well being of the horses under their care. BOTH winners of each award receive $5,000 in addition to other prizes. Nominate your people today!! [Nominate Owners and Grooms for PRO Awards]

Hot on Horse Nation: 10 Reasons Having Horses is Like an Election Year (But Better)

Lots of people are trying to find answers to the controversy surrounding the Eventing blood rule. This blogger takes on an approach to understanding how each equestrian sport within the FEI deals with blood in their own way, and shows that maybe some more inter-sport collaboration is the way towards better horse welfare and fairness within the legal system. [One Way to Clean Up the Mess with Blood in Eventing]

KER ClockIt™ Session of the Week

This week’s KER ClockIt™ Sport session demonstrates the effectiveness of using hills to improve a horse’s fitness. Looking at the graph below, you will see a horse jogging for twenty minutes up hills.

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As you can see, the rider hardly increases speed yet the horse’s heart rate increases each time it goes up a hill. By using a hill, riders can easily raise their horse’s heart rate into a higher conditioning zone without the need for extreme speed.

Multiple KER treadmill studies have shown that exercising horses on an incline greatly increases work intensity as measured by oxygen consumption, heart rate, and lactate production. These studies have shown that at a canter speed, a 1% increase in grade increases a horse’s heart rate 6 bpm—the same effect on heart rate as increasing speed 35m/min on a level treadmill. Therefore, equal heart rates can be obtained by cantering horses on a 6% grade at 490 m/min as from galloping on the flat at 700 m/min.

To see a detailed report like the one above, go to the KER ClockIt website and log in to your account. Once you are signed in, you can view your detailed sessions under the “Sessions” tab.

Don’t forget to share your ClockIt sessions for a chance to win the KER and Eventing Nation Show Us Your Sessions Sweepstakes. Between now and tomorrow (October 28), use the GPS on your KER ClockIt Sport app to draw or write something fun and submit your sessions for chances to win.

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