In the world of barrel racing, it seems to be the million-dollar question when a problem arises, so here’s what some of the best in the business have to say about warning signs and determining whether your horse needs to add to its training foundation, tuning on the pattern or a trip to the veterinarian to assess potential issues.
In this sport of training, maintaining and tuning the most athletic horses in the world, problems will arise. Your horse will do something undesirable in a run. Understanding why it happened can save you so much time and money that knowing whether your horse needs a vet or a tune-up is truly the million-dollar answer.
We’re not talking, here, about a horse showing any obvious lameness. And you’ve got to realize that this detective work is much different for a seasoned, finished barrel horse than a youngster or green horse. If your horse is usually a winner – he or she knows the job and clocks consistently – you’ll know when something isn’t right. Take Jordon Briggs, the world champ whose standout sorrel felt a little funny to her last winter.
Famous Lil Jet (“Rollo”) is a horse she trained and knows very well. Granted, it usually takes Rollo a couple of runs at the start of a season before he’s clocking like himself. But after about four runs, he was still loading his front end and running by the first barrel. He just didn’t feel like he’d always felt.
“My mom always taught me that nobody knows your horse better than you,” she told us in July, when Rollo was back to dominating. “I knew in my gut something was off and couldn’t risk taking him to San Antonio without knowing from my vet that he was okay. Having to run three times in deeper ground could really make things worse if something was wrong.”
Sure enough. Dr. Marty Tanner discovered a torn sesamoid ligament in Rollo’s hind leg. Time and healing from March through May allowed him to barely miss the Finals after putting out the most epic three months in the WPRA, finishing No. 18 in the world with $103,192.57 earned on just 44 rodeos.
But on the other hand, we all know barrel racers who make more trips to the vet than they do to the grocery store. Longtime futurity champ and veteran NFR barrel racer Danyelle Campbell isn’t one of those.
Brokeness and training in barrel horses
“To me, everything’s a training issue,” said Campbell, who’s worked so many colts on the daily for so long that she can feel little holes in how they’re broke. She figures once they get broke better, the issue will resolve. So, what does she mean by broke?
“I’ve always been real big on how soft a horse is in the ribcage and whether it’s able to move its feet efficiently,” she said. “A lot of issues I run into are because the horse’s body is out of balance when you ask it to do something. It might be kicking its hip out or not moving forward enough. I’m not talking about bend, but actual softness in the ribcage. That’s how a horse collects and drives up underneath itself and gets lighter in the face.”
Anyone who rides 3- and 4-year-olds all day has been confronted with virtually every naughty, stupid or mindless trick that a horse can attempt while getting broke. But if a colt is doing something weird in a turn and keeps doing it after Campbell feels like her cues are prompting the right responses, then she considers soreness.
“I’m a big advocate of going to the vet, because you can’t out-train pain,” said Campbell. “But I will get a little stubborn about thinking it’s not a soundness issue.”
Know your horses’ nuances
Campbell has nothing against injecting young horses to alleviate soreness, because she feels like colts have a much lower pain tolerance than horses with some age who understand how to work through minor aches and pains. But even if her educated guess is stifle soreness, she doesn’t just go to the vet to ask for stifle injections – she wants a full exam and for the doc to watch the horse move.
“It important that your vet trusts you and your opinion and what you’re feeling as you ride,” she said. “Because it’s a lot different for a horse to lope under saddle and drive an inside hind leg in a circle than it is to jog a straightaway on asphalt.”
Not only that, but keep in mind that even if you pinpoint the source of the pain, your treatment can’t be certain without images. Campbell has had a 3-year-old quit working and be prescribed joint injections, only to discover later that an x-ray would have revealed something that, by that point, required surgery.
That’s why Kathy Grimes – herself a DVM as well as an NFR barrel racer and longtime trainer – recommends getting a full set of x-rays on a horse as a yearling or 2-year-old. If you know there’s some OCD in a front ankle, she said, and the horse starts doing something weird on that side or with that leg, you’ll have a better idea what’s going on.
“The expense of the full x-rays might save you hundreds of thousands of dollars when it prevents you from working a horse that’s hurt,” she pointed out.
Like virtually everyone, Grimes has gone too long thinking a horse needed tuned up when something was actually wrong. So now, she likes to give a horse the benefit of the doubt and look for a medical cause first.
“It’s a lot easier to guess with an Open horse that knows its job, versus a futurity horse where there’s so many variables that it might just be that they’re young or in scared in a new arena. One thing you can do, if you really know your horse, is also consider what you’ve done preemptively for that horse. Are you already using Lasix or ulcer treatment? If you’re doing all the things and being proactive about certain physical causes of discomfort, maybe something else is wrong.”
NFR barrel racer and trainer, Kathy Grimes, DVM
Recognizing pain in barrel horses
Campbell, who knows she’s spoiled living down a Texas street from some of the best diagnostic equine veterinarians in the world, at the same time has enough experience in the saddle to usually guess correctly. You might wonder, how does stifle pain typically present, anyway?
Halfway around a turn, a horse might catfish a little. He won’t stay in the ground and drive through the backside of the turn. Campbell is so attuned that she can usually tell if soreness is in a hock versus a stifle and vice versa, because it’s been proven later via flex tests or x-rays. But lots of veterinarians struggle to know that difference in a lameness exam.
To help your vet, she recommends paying close attention to your horse’s mechanics before and after treatment, even jotting down notes about what felt different. Because honestly, even great vets can have issues diagnosing something invisible. Fluid in a knee, for instance, can fly completely under the radar unless a vet is willing to think outside the box.
Tuning the right way
By the same token, Campbell’s advice is to do your tuning homework if your horse starts working differently, before dashing to see a vet after one bad ride. Go back to basics and slow work, and re-instill confidence in your horse. Then, if you’re still not getting results, load up and go to the vet.
“It’s the No. 1 thing you fight your head about,” Campbell said. “Sometimes you need a second opinion, no matter how phenomenal your vet is, or you need an acupuncturist, chiropractor or some other therapy.”
Notoriously skeptical about those therapies, Campbell actually swears by the Bemer application that helped Return Of The Mac blast a 16.7 this spring to clinch the aggregate win at the Ruby Buckle Central Derby. She’s one of very few that have ridden so many NFR-caliber horses and so many ignorant 3-year-olds, so her experience is golden when knowing whether a tune-up or a veterinarian is in order.
“On a colt, when you start adding speed, then you can expect to feel stiffness or they brace or float as they try to figure out what they’re doing with their body,” she said. “If you don’t like what you’re feeling, question whether it’s because you added a little bit of speed and your horse is trying to figure it out. Or whether something already sore is now showing up because you’re going faster. That’s what’s tough.”
Her best advice at that point is to take that horse away from the barrels. Get rid of the pressure. Now ask the horse to perform, say, a rollback on the fence. If the horse isn’t near a barrel, can it do the maneuver you’re having trouble with on the pattern? If the problem is that it’s not broke well enough, try and check for those same holes in a walk and trot.
“I walk perfect circles and ask a horse to hold its shape,” Campbell said. “I take walking very seriously, on and off the pattern. Backing in circles; sidepassing. That horse needs to move perfectly underneath me. Horses that aren’t broke will do a lot of things wrong responding to your cues. That makes it really hard to tell if there’s a soundness issue.”
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