Water treadmills – what can they offer our racehorses?

By Carolyne Tranquille, Dr Kathryn Nankervis & Dr Rachel Murray

Issue 71 of European Trainer (January - March 2021) included an article titled “Understanding hydrotherapy and the benefits of water-based conditioning.” In this issue, we examine the best practices for using water treadmills as part of a training programme.

Water treadmill (WT) exercise is increasingly being used as a routine part of the training of sport horses and now racehorses. However, the research detailing their effects on our equine athletes has only emerged in the last 5-10 years. A WT allows the trainer to provide a pre-determined, very precisely controlled piece of work for the horse. With the addition of water, we can then overlay this most basic piece of work with additional tools due to the properties of water itself: drag and buoyancy. The combined effect of these two forces can yield movement patterns for our horses that are beneficial in supporting training programmes. The million-dollar question then is, how exactly do you select depth and speed of belt to achieve what you want within a training programme?

Contrary to popular belief, heart rates of horses walking in water are not necessarily increased as water levels rise, with horses merely adapting their gait pattern to accommodate for increased drag. Indeed, WT exercise never elicits heart rates of over 120-140 beats/min nor does it elevate blood lactate levels, even when carrying out what might be considered to be the ‘hardest’ type of exercise which is trotting in high water. So, the benefits of this modality clearly aren’t in its ability to act as a substitute for fast work; its benefits are in the responses it can bring about in the horses’ movement pattern and the consequent muscle adaptation that can be provided when horses use it on a regular basis.

In 2019, an international equine hydrotherapy working group produced a WT user guideline document. The following sections highlight the recommendations from the group to obtain the best out of a WT exercise session for our racehorses.

General best practice in water treadmill exercise

• Follow manufacturer guidelines for correct machine operation, water care and cleaning of the machine; and seek help from an experienced user to supplement the initial training received by the manufacturer.

• Handlers should wear personal protective equipment (e.g., hard hat and gloves) during a WT session, and two handlers should be present.

• Horse loading and unloading procedures should be specific to the make and model of the machine, and the environment in which the treadmill is located, with procedures devised to avoid the handlers being directly in front or behind the horse. Loading and unloading of naïve horses seems to present the greatest risk to the handlers.

• To help keep the water clean, the horse should be brushed and/or hosed off to remove superficial dirt, the feet are picked out and the tail wrapped.

• WT exercise should be avoided for horses with any skin lesions, cuts or abrasions that might be below the water level or for a horse that had received a distal limb joint injection within four days.

• If the horse is shod, the shoes should be secure. Shoes with road nails could damage the belt, and large extensions which may affect the flight of the foot in water should be avoided.

• Horses can be worked on a WT in a headcollar, chifney or bridle, provided the natural movement of the head and neck are not restricted.

• Leg protections should be avoided.

• Once the session is complete, the horse should be hosed and dried off, especially the feet, to avoid foot problems.

Introducing horses to the exercise

• Horses habituate to WT exercise more readily if they are given several short sessions (up to 15 minutes) on consecutive days.

• Sufficient time should be allocated to avoid rushing the horse and ensuring he has a positive experience. The horse can be prepared for the belt moving by asking him to step back and forth a few times; then start the belt as the horse takes a step forward.

• The water depth should be increased with each session, provided the horse remains relaxed. Water should be kept at fetlock depth during the first session.

• If a light amount of sedation is going to be used for the first session, this should only be done under the direction of a veterinary surgeon.

• Horses are considered habituated once a relaxed and rhythmical gait is reached.

Correct posture and movement patterns during water treadmill exercise

What is the correct posture, and how should a horse move during WT exercise?

• The horse should be in line with the treadmill and not leaning or rolling from side-to-side.

• The horse should be able to move its head, neck and forelimbs without being obstructed by the front of the treadmill.

• The horse should be able to maintain position in the middle of the belt without falling to the back.

• The horse’s face should be just in front of the vertical.

• The head and neck should be largely still.

• The horse should have a rounded lumbar spine.

• The horse should be ‘pushing’ from the hindquarters.

• A regular rhythm to the footfalls should be heard.

What should a horse not look like and not move during WT exercise?

• The horse’s face should not approach the horizontal.

• There should not be excessive movement of the head and neck (the chicken walk).

• There should not be extension of the thoracic and lumbar spine.

• The horse should not ‘pull’ from the forehand. 

• An irregular rhythm to the footfalls should not be heard during a WT session.

Factors influencing selection of speed, water depth and duration of exercise

• Speed should decrease as water depth increases.

• Walking more slowly than overland is recommended.

• Belt speed should be horse-specific, and a suitable speed for the horse should be found before water is introduced into the chamber.

• The horse should work in a correct posture (as discussed above).

• The benefits of WT exercise can be achieved without trotting. To ensure safety of horse and handler, horses should only trot in the WT once they are confidently walking at various water heights.

• Water depth should be training or rehabilitation goal-specific.

• The best combination of speed and water depth will vary between horses and should be judged according to the individual horse’s response.

• Individual horse fitness, stride length, joint range of movement and capability may change during an individual session or over multiple sessions.

• It is important to monitor movement patterns closely and to observe the horse throughout the session and how movement alters in response to changes in speed or water depth and whether these changes are indicative of fatigue. This is relevant at any given water depth.

Benefits of water treadmill exercise for racehorses

• Reduction of impact shock 

• Increased muscle development of the hindquarters

• Increased joint range of motion of the limbs and the back

• Increased hindlimb range of motion 

• Controlled straight line exercise without the added weight of the rider

• Improved aerobic capacity  

Conclusions

This article summaries the best practice for WT use based on the recommendations of the Equine Hydrotherapy Working Group and the Water Treadmill User Guidelines. WT exercise has many potential benefits if the correct protocols are used, and if the horse is in a correct posture and moving optimally when on the WT. Monitoring horse posture and movement patterns throughout the session are essential to assess whether or not the horse is working optimally. The final published guidelines can be found here: tinyurl.com/water-treadmills

Training - 'horses with attitude'

By Ken Synder

“One refuses to run. One can’t run. One gets hurt. One’s a nice horse you have a little bit of fun with.  And one’s a really nice horse that helps you forget the first four,” said trainer Kenny McPeek with a laugh, as he categorized new Thoroughbreds coming into his barn annually.

In some cases, that first one—the horse that refuses to run—really is forgotten, falling through the proverbial cracks of large stables with plenty of “really nice horses.”

 “There’s very few of them we can’t figure out,” he said, “but sometimes we can’t.”

That’s where people like 71-year-old horseman Frank Barnett of Fieldstone Farm in Williston, Florida, (near Ocala) get involved. “I wish you could get to it by skirting the ‘issues,’ but you can’t,” he said.  “That’s how they got to me.” Those issues are not loading into a trailer or starting gate, balking at workouts, throwing riders and—bottom line—acting as if they don’t want to become racehorses.

The principal issue underlying all the others, according to Barnett and Dr. Stephen Peters, co-author with Martin Black of the book Evidence-Based Horsemanship, is forgetting that horses are prey and not predatory animals. “Your horse is constantly asking, ‘Am I safe?’” said Peters.

The question supersedes everything else in a horse’s brain and, unfortunately, isn’t part of most Thoroughbred trainers’ knowledge of how psychologically a horse functions, according to Peters—a neuroscientist and horse-brain researcher. “One of our big problems is the only brain that we have to compare to the horse’s brain is our own, so we develop ideas like respect and disrespect.

“Horses don’t have a big frontal lobe. They can’t abstract things.

“Would you beat a child who couldn’t figure out a math problem? Of course, you wouldn’t. Punishment in a horse’s environment is a predatory threat,” Peters added.

The collaboration between Peters and Black, an Idaho-based horseman who teaches horsemanship,  began when the former observed Black allowing a horse to rest after a training task, waiting and watching for the horse to drop its head, and then waiting for it to lick its lips. Then he would repeat the task or move to a new one. Peters, a neuroscientist and horse brain researcher, immediately knew Black was giving the horse “dwell-time.” In the simplest terms, that is the time between adrenaline subsiding in the horse’s brain from the stress of something like a training task before a “dopamine hit”—relief and, most critically, a feeling of safety. Stress to any degree causes a horse’s mouth to dry. Licking the lips after the stress signals a dopamine hit. The stress is over. I’m safe. Black instinctively knew he needed to wait on the horse.

“It’s almost an art in creating a neurochemical cocktail for your horse,” said Peters. 

Black added, “Instead of drilling for 30 minutes, I would do an exercise taking maybe not even a minute.

“I will stress the horse--get the adrenaline going and then let it get the cocktail. They lick their lips and then they think about it, then they lick their lips again and the next time I ask them for it, it’s like we have been practicing it for a month.”

In their book, Peters and Black posit that dwell-time enables the horse to replay what it has just been through. Scans have shown brain areas used during something like a learning activity are still active while resting. Testing has also shown that subjects given dwell-time between a task learn faster than subjects not given space between learning exercises.

Black, who grew up working cattle on horseback and who also has a deep background with Thoroughbreds, recognized that “Peters had the science but didn’t have the experience. I had the experience but not the science.”

Peters explained, in part, the science: “What we do is introduce something to the horse, and we have to pause. We have to allow the horse a chance to assimilate the information. If not, the horse will get sympathetically aroused [experience increased heart rate, blood pressure, adrenaline activation and increased sweating] or tune you out. They disassociate. They put themselves somewhere else and they go through the motions. But that doesn’t mean they’ve learned what you have tried to teach them.

“Sometimes you’ll create a trauma, and now you have to take 100 good things to overcome that one bad thing because, as prey animals, they’re going to remember, ‘I was not safe.’”  

In practical terms, a horse who was whipped to enter a trailer, for example, will always be difficult when asked to load. McPeek believes horses not only remember abuse but remember who it came from.  “They do it on smell,” he said.

Peters’ and Martin’s book bridges the brain chemistry of horses and horse behavior and “language.”  

Barnett is a Peters-Martin disciple whose training of horses spans experience watching horses and neural explanations for horse behavior provided by people like Peters. He provides another huge key in understanding why horses do what they do from his work: Horses will get a neurochemical release or dopamine hit from bad behavior as well as good. Punishing a horse, like in the example of whipping a horse for balking at trailer loading, will reinforce undesired behavior. Barnett, who works with dressage and eventing horses, said, “A horse stopping at a hurdle gets a dopamine release—stopping is a good thing in the horse’s mind. A good horse who hurdles gets the same kind of neurochemical release in its brain: dopamine endorphins.”  

Barnett provides another example closer to Thoroughbred racing: A horse who fights or dumps an exercise rider in training is, in all likelihood, hurting. “If he’s hurting bad enough, he dumps somebody and then just stands there and stops. That’s going to tell you he’s not a bad horse. He’s just hurting.” 

The problem is not the rider but what the rider is doing, according to Black. For a horse who stops going forward or tries to throw a rider, he would push the horse from behind with the rider still mounted but with the bridle removed. The typical response from an exercise rider will be, “’I need to hang on,’” said Black. “That’s the problem: you’re hanging on to him.

“Riders ride real tight, and horses get sore in their mouths. They might have abscesses. People don’t listen to the horse.” 

Loading into a horse trailer is typically a difficult task for Thoroughbred trainers, particularly for young horses. In their brain, the horse is asking, “Am I safe?” Practically every horse, at least the first time, will balk. It’s a strange new environment. In the horse’s mind, according to Black, he or she might think they’re getting a big shove “off a cliff or into a black hole.” They don’t know if it is safe. 

The remedy is calculated minor stress followed by quiet. “You bring the horse up to the trailer and give him a nudge. He backs out of there. ‘Nope. I’m not going.’ So he leaves. You go with him, and as soon as he turns around to leave the trailer, I get him bothered. I’ll walk him in circles. I’ll cause him some confusion and discomfort. His mind is racing, and he can’t figure out where comfort is.  

“I’m not talking about twitching his ear or inflicting pain but making it so he can’t find relief or peace any place since leaving the trailer.  

“Then I guide him back to the trailer. The closer he gets to it, the quieter I get. It’s like he’s escaping from all the chaos by going to the trailer. He’ll get on.”

The obvious question is how long might this take with a horse. “Might be one minute...might be 15 minutes,” said Black.

“Why does a horse do anything?” asked Peters, “because they’ve created a brain pattern or pathway.  How are those pathways made? They’re dopamine reinforced. If I take my horse onto the trailer and he backs off and gets away and runs to a field, I’ve got to rewire its brain. If the horse gets punished for this, I’m creating a problem on top of a problem.

“Our job is to get dopamine hits set up.”

Black started (the term he uses rather than “broke”) Thoroughbreds for Calumet Farm for 10 years from 1995 to 2005 and believes much of bad Thoroughbred behavior is taught. “They get so many traumatic experiences on the racetrack.” 

He is also doubtful training methods will ever change in the Thoroughbred industry. “They’re not going to change because they can get one in a hundred to win something. So why change?

“I heard this all the time: ‘You don’t understand; these are Thoroughbreds.’ Ok, so your horse won a million dollars. With your program, you have one horse that won a million dollars. You’ve got a hundred of them that dropped out of kindergarten. Every one of mine graduated, so whose program is better?” 

Among the thousand-plus horses that Black estimates he started for Calumet, was Pleasantly Perfect, winner of $7.7 million and the Breeders’ Cup Classic in 2003.    

Akin to the example of a horse refusing to work out, there is the story of Seabiscuit, who ran 17 times before breaking his maiden. He didn’t want to run for legendary trainer “Sunny Jim” Fitzsimmons. He got moved to trainer Tom Smith’s barn. Tom was a Western cowboy with experience working with wild Mustangs. Seabiscuit’s behavior continued...for the first four workouts. Smith was known to sit in the stall for hours with a new horse he had gotten to somehow commune with and get an instinctual feel for that horse. He told an exercise rider with his hands full on the fifth day to drop the reins and let the horse do what he wanted to do. With that, the horse took off—apparently discovering the joy of running and then earned a carrot on the return to the barn, which became a standard reward. The rest is history.

Are methods like that espoused by Peters, Black and Barnett fool-proof? Peters simply said, “Horses are just like humans. Not every human being can play every sport.”

Sometimes, too, the “rehab trainer” like Barnett can only do so much. He recalled a promising horse sent to him by the old Waldemar Farm who wouldn’t load in the starting gate. Barnett got the horse past this fear. “The horse was doing scorching works, and everybody flew in to watch the first start at Gulfstream.

“I got a message on the answering machine after the race asking if, for the same money, I could teach the sonofabitch how to run. Ran last and never won a race.”

That would be McPeek’s category number two.

Chantilly - Looking ahead to the next generation

By Giles Anderson

Racehorses have been trained in Chantilly since anyone can remember. It would be fair to say that the horses are part of the fabric of the town, perhaps just as much so as the bobbin lace, which Chantilly was famous for in the 17th century.

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Matthieu Vincent, Trainer Centre and Racecourse Director and Marin Le Cour Grandmaison, Assistant to the Director, have the responsibility of managing the racecourse and training grounds.

Surrounded by forest and located some 30 kilometres from Paris, Chantilly is the iconic home of French racing and training. Managing the hectares of training grounds and the racecourse is no easy task, but the responsibility lies in the hands of Marin Le Cour Grandmaison and his boss Matthieu Vincent, who splits his time between Chantilly, Deauville, and Maisons-Laffitte. They see themselves as ambassadors for racing in Chantilly, evangelical about what the town has to offer and keen to expand the centre’s reach to up-and-coming young trainers.

Spending time in their company, it becomes clear that their primary focus is to give the trainers the tools they need to train horses better.

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Site plan of Chantilly Training Grounds

Take Montjeu, who according to Vincent was not only his favourite horse but quite a quirky customer to train. “The horse was difficult and John (Hammond) did a great job with him. We would have him working at the racecourse at 5am. One day Cash Asmussen came to the racecourse to ride but John didn’t want him to gallop, just trot. He wanted him trotting for 500 hundred metres. But after 20 metres Montjeu wanted to go. So John stopped him and we ended up opening the racecourse to repeat the exercise five or six times and eventually he relaxed. We would do that for any trainer and it wouldn’t make any difference to us if they wanted to do something special at 5pm in the evening, we are here to help our clients.”

Chantilly is home to 110 trainers and approximately 2500 horses, of which 250 are jumpers (National Hunt). “In 2010 we had 2400 flat horses and 600 jumpers here and the average trainer was maybe 60 years of age,” says Vincent.

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“If we compare Chantilly and Newmarket, Newmarket is more of a dream for some owners because they have a lot of classic younger trainers -- that’s good, the young. We need to have younger trainers, we want to help the young trainers here. It used to be every trainer’s dream to train here. Now we have the provinces, look at Jean Claude Roget: in 2005 he started to have classic horses but he’s not from Chantilly. So some said, ‘Maybe you can be a good trainer anywhere in France.’”

Chantilly Racecourse used to open for 12 days a year, but with the advent of all-weather racing in 2012 that number has jumped to 45. “But we have less and less horses in training in Chantilly since 2012. The track has helped us retain horses. It helps the trainers. Twenty years ago it was so quiet here and horses were just walking and trotting, but now with the all-weather tracks we’re training every day.”

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The all-weather track has proven to be a good investment for the local economy, partly funded by the town, which put in €1,500,000 of the €5,000,000 cost. The annual tax income runs into a healthy seven figure sum. On top of that, the town is home to 2000 workers whose income comes from the racing industry, with a staggering 50% of the workforce being stable staff or riders. Who knows what the shrinkage would have been like if the all-weather hadn’t happened.

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Acting up - the psychology of why horses can act up before a race

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First published in European Trainer issue 56 - January '17 - March '17