Bleeders the cause and what to do?

barry am i right in saying that the dam of your big 2yo who won last year on breeders cup night secret heart was a serious bleeder?

Barry, I think we are singing from the same hymnbook. Although I'm not 100% sure how important breeding is to bleeding - and how much is due to environmental factors - or both - I'd hate for SA to become the site of an 25+ year experiment to check it out. Like you say there are other ways to control bleeding than using Lasix/furosemide.

One undisputed way that Lasix stuffs up breeding is by affecting race results, via temporary drastic weight reduction. How can anyone know they are breeding to a good stallion, or buying a well-bred yearling, if some important criteria for judging their class - the race results - are flawed? If a university awards degrees too easily, the advantage is very temporary and the potential employer will soon learn to ignore certificates from that U. Criteria, in awarding degrees or making up a stallion, are easily pushed aside, but the result is ALWAYS trouble ... the Americans are already finding that out ... do we have to repeat history or can we learn a little from it?

Yes, I see there are anti-drug rumblings in the USA these days ... be interesting to see if it's acceptable to most players to undertake the long hard upthehill slog back to where they went wrong years and generations ago. Or whether it will just fritter away in acrimony and dissent, like the global warming business.

A related matter Barry alludes to, is the use of the same drugs for athletes in several sports and more than one species, cycling, track-and-field, racehorses. I don't know if they have a drug problem with greyhounds but I wouldn't fall over with surprise to hear they do. Racing pigeons? I guess the physiology of emergency is similar to them all. In an emergency, adrenaline boosts the blood pressure, several physical systems like heart, lungs, arteries, sweat glands, brain and digestion switch to fight-or-flight mode, and the horse (or human) bolts away from the start with a massive exertion as if chased by a ramping lion.

OK, this is hardly a state secret, but why I state the obvious is this: could it be the case that racing performance will always be shadowed by physical repercussions like bleeding? (I am playing devil's advocate here). Are they inescapable, given what the racehorse is bred to do, to run as fast as possible and keep it up as long as the rider requires? I'm sure it is possible to breed out the tendency to bleed from the lungs but what if it's at an unacceptable cost - a horse that can't or won't run it's fastest? I've heard it said that the best horses, the ones that "run their heart out" are often the bleeders.

Is this true or just a perception based on the greater disappointment felt when a classy horse must be pulled off the track, whereas the permanent "also ran" is packed off to a riding school almost unnoticed? This is where figures would be a big help, in getting past our natural human tendency to remember some things and ignore/forget others.

SP piece from late last year:-

www.sportingpost.co.za/2010/09/21/racing...n-nocere-robyn-louw/

My first issue with putting any chemicals into a horse is the welfare of the animal and the people that work with it. If my horse is, for any reason, not 100% fit and sound to work or to race, then I don't want it working or racing. If its body is saying it's not up to the job, then is it really fair a) to the horse and b) to the trainer, grooms, punters, etc to have it there?

I am a racehorse breeder and owner. I acknowledge that I may be in the minority, but I do this for fun. I do this because I enjoy my horses. And if (providence willing!) I have any success, I want to achieve it fairly and with a horse that is genuinely strong and sound enough to stand up to training and racing as well to stay sound for the rest of its life. Idealistic perhaps, but there you are.

I agree 110% with Barry that (some) breeders seem to have lost sight of why we breed. Surely, if we are doing it right, the motivation and end goal should be to improve the breed (as we've seen in the older school breeders where they breed for themselves and often return their successful animals to their own studs to continue breeding). We should be wanting to produce better horses than the generations that have gone before and then use these horses to improve the generations to come.

These days I am not sure that I see much evidence of horses being bred (commercially anyway) for soundness or for more speed. The majority of news are stories about breakdowns and not a huge amount about any speed records being broken or improved upon. Ok, I am using anecdotal evidence, but the only conclusion I can draw is that we are not aiming to breed a better horse, merely a more expensive one.

And to be fair, I can sort of understand it. With all the costs involved, there is little point in racing a horse long term these days as the stakes return is relatively low. Also, insurance goes up exponentially once the horse achieves some value. So you race your horse as lightly as possible and for as short a period as possible in order to keep your costs down and then you try and make some money on it as a stud animal. I do get that.

But as a result, there is no long-term view on anything. We don't care if the horse is pink, black or blue or what it looks like as long as it is either well bred enough to achieve a good price at auction (and quite interesting how many big sales lots never see the track) or alternatively will last just long enough to win a few races and hopefully make it a stud prospect. In some cases in the US (where they are hot on timing work-out gallops), they even send horses to stud merely based on their workout times in cases where these horses have broken down in training and not made it to the track !

Yay ! It's not sound enough to survive training, but hey, let's make some more of 'em ! And pick up any stallion brochure - they will bury you with races won and times achieved. Usually not a single word about the horse's racing soundness, temperament or anything. And while I can see that racing folk are possibly not that focused on temperament, it does actually have a role to play - no point having the next Black Caviar if it's so mad it won't eat / go into the starting stalls / etc. But again, that's just my humble opinion.

Sorry. I grew up with THB's and I come from the era when horses ran a bunch of races, then went on to a competitive home and for the most part, stayed sound and useful into their 20's. As an example, one of my childhood mounts was 18 YO when I got him. He'd already been a race horse and a career show-jumper and then went on to be my schoolmaster. And it was not a dignified retirement, I can tell you ! We show-jumped, evented, hunted, played polocrosse, etc and he was as strong and sound then as he'd ever been and he stayed that way until I retired him.

I'm a bit of a racing/hacking hybrid, so have some odd ideas, but if you look at the way serious competition breeds are being produced in Europe (using the Hanoverian, Holstein, etc as examples), there are incredibly strict rules in place to control breeding stock. All horses (stallions as well as mares) are performance tested, graded on conformation, rideability and temperament and then assessed on their progeny as well. The idea is to breed good, sound, sane (ie useful) animals who also have the physical attributes to make them elite athletes. And guess what - it works !

To use another example - the Lipizzaner horses in the Spanish Riding School. The majority of the horses you will see performing are in their late teens / early 20's. Not only are they sound, but they're still in full work and performing on a regular basis. As well as being stud animals in the off season. Now as far as I'm concerned, that is the epitome of a successful performance horse.

THB breeders are definitely nowhere near as choosy about what we send to the breeding barn and what we breed - as long as it looks good on paper. Paper and horses are two very different things. No wonder we're producing so much rubbish.

We (the grand we, not me!) stick needles and silly food into our babies to pump them up for sales, then we strip them back down again, then we break them in and subject them to a training programme at around 2 years old (do you know that most horses do not mature skeletally until the age of 8?).

But hey, doesn't matter, right ? Work that little baby till it looks like Mr America. Then pat ourselves on the back for doing such a good job. Looks good and strong, doesn't it ? Good job. Except for the fact that those stupidly big muscles are all attached to tendons and ligaments. And those tendons and ligaments are attached to those lovely little soft bones. And guess what - when the bones aren't very strong and the muscles are - well, something's got to give, hasn't it ??

Stick a nice heavy groom on that little baby every day of its life. Doesn't matter that the growth plates in the spine (which holds the whole damn thing up and is one of the most crucial parts of the whole running mechanism) are still wide open. How many of our race horses have back problems ? Quite a few (does the term kissing spine ring any bells?). Don't suppose it has anything to do with those nice heavy grooms who sit on them every day, does it ?

And guess what else. Getting back to those nice lovely soft vertebrae in the spinal column. A lot of the muscles that control the legs are either directly or indirectly connected to that back. So back problems affect the legs and leg problems affect the back. But it's OK, most of those problems won't even surface until the horse has retired from racing anyway and then it's someone else's problem.

I'm not saying all training is wrong and that trainers are horrible, but I do think we get very excited about symptoms and don't look at causes. We keep putting the cart before the horse. We focus on speed and not on sound horses. We focus on training and not conditioning.

If your horse is fundamentally sound (in wind, bone and muscle), you should not need drugs in anything except a therapeutic capacity when it gets injured.

So, to finally address the EIPH problem, I believe studies have shown that most horses bleed to a greater or lesser degree under exercise stress. In fact, I'd vouch that most humans do too. You know how if you're a bit unfit and you go out and run hard and you get that nasty, metallic taste in your mouth ? You've busted something slightly and you're tasting blood. You're not going to die - it's just your body saying 'hey dude, we're not quite ready for that kind of thing'. Horses bleeding is the same thing. They are simply not quite ready for the stress they're being put under. Hence the enforced rest period.

Small tears, bruises, bleeds, etc are normal in the course of the conditioning process and a kind of marker / indicator of the body's reaction to training. But when you start experiencing big tears, bruises, bleeds, you have to step back and wonder whether there is a real structural problem.

When you are building up fitness, muscle mass, etc you do it gradually. There is a reason for that. It takes your body time to adapt. Building muscles means effectively making newer, bigger bits of you that weren't there before. So that in turn means that you are placing additional demand on the rest of your body because you now need to eat more food, breathe more oxygen and get all those good things to that new bit of muscle and also remove waste. So your body extends its transport network of capillaries and effectively builds / extends into the newly generated bits of muscle (I believe the process is called proliferation). The lungs expand their capacity in the same way - more blood vessels increase the contact area, so more oxygen can be exchanged, etc.

If you push the envelop before the structures are in place and functioning properly, you are going to have the odd problem. But this is normal and a part of the body's feedback / protection system (similar principle to experiencing pain when we've hurt ourselves somewhere). It's part of the body's defense system and warns us that we are not quite ready / strong enough for that level of work just yet and need to slow down.

If we go and mask / inhibit that warning system with drugs and deliberately ignore the information the body is trying give us, we'll it seems to me we're shooting ourselves in the foot a little. If we ignore / don't see those little early signs, and deliberately blindly continue to overload the system, well, then we have no-one but ourselves to blame when there is a proper big breakdown further down the line.

And again, I might be in the minority, but I don't want a broken horse.

Oh - sorry - forgot to comment about AHS.

As Mavourneen said, I don't think there is necessarily a link between the AHS vac and horses bleeding.

The US horses don't get AHS vacs and they are also struggling with the bleeding issue....

Great thread this(tu)

Interesting stuff zsuzsanna04

I garnished this off the net many moons ago, and have posted it on various local racing sites. Even our own local trials on lasix were not any more as conclusive-

"Rather than treating Lasix as the ugly festering sore that it is, thoroughbred racing deliberately ignores the effects of a drug that not only artificially enhances performance but also may be causing irreparable harm to countless future generations of horses-

Lasix, a trade name for the diuretic Furosemide, is used to treat horses who experience bleeding in their lungs, a malady known as exercise induced pulmonary hemorrhaging (EIPH). Controversy surrounding the drug first appeared more than a decade ago when a University of Pennsylvania study, sponsored by the Jockey Club, revealed what most horseplayers have known for decades: Lasix improves performance. The study also found that Lasix fails to prevent bleeding, the primary function for which the diuretic supposedly is prescribed.

What's more, the study found that horses treated with Lasix improved an average of nearly two lengths, a margin significant enough to have altered the course of racing history in 1987. Racing with Lasix, Alysheba won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes, each by less than two lengths over Bet Twice, a colt who had not been administered the drug. In New York, where race-day Lasix was not permitted at the time, Bet Twice won the Belmont Stakes by 14 lengths over Alysheba. You do the math. Bet Twice may have been chemically denied racing's greatest honor, the Triple Crown.

Lasix proponents quickly dismissed the results of the University of Pennsylvania study. Too small a sample, they claimed.
Now comes a new study, conducted at Ohio State University, that examined 22,589 horses running 3,346 races at 49 tracks. The OSU study found precisely what the University of Pennsylvania study did: Lasix improves performance.
Of course no amount of scientific evidence will convince the die-hard Lasix users. They argue that Lasix simply allows horses prone to bleeding to race up to their full potential and that, in a highly competitive environment, the use of Lasix is an economic imperative. Without Lasix, they insist, their horses would spend more time in the stable than earning money on the racecourse. One has to wonder then why Lasix dependent horses such as Real Quiet, Victory Gallop and Free House are early retirees but a pre-Lasix horse such as Citation could race 20 times in 1948. And how did thoroughbred racing survive for a century without Lasix? Maybe there were no bleeders prior to the 1980s.

The prescription of Lasix for horses who do not need it has become so widespread that trainers add it like a piece of equipment. Even conditioners who would prefer not to use Lasix often do, fearing that if they don't, they'll be at a racing disadvantage. The Ohio State study proves them right.
But aren't horses supposed to bleed before they get Lasix? At Del Mar, 97 of 104 runners, including every horse in the $1 million Pacific Classic and every 2-year-old in the Del Mar Debutante, used Lasix, Aug. 29. That's a lot of bleeding, especially for lightly raced juveniles who have yet to endure the rigors of sustained racing. No matter, five of the seven Debutante 2-year-olds, including the highly regarded filly Chilukki, were administered Lasix in their first start. Lest you think, like pineapple on pizza, that Lasix is a West Coast predilection, seven of eight starters used Lasix in the $1 million Travers Stakes at Saratoga, Aug. 28. Only Allen Jerkens--bless his giant-killing little heart--resisted the temptation to medicate his horse, Best of Luck.

As a diuretic, Lasix can be used to mask the presence of other performance-enhancing pharmaceuticals. Thus, by endorsing the use of Lasix, racing jurisdictions are, in effect, assisting unethical trainers and veterinarians in hiding more powerful performance-enhancing drugs. It amounts to the states aiding and abetting larceny.

And what has been the impact of Lasix on the breed? Hard to say but we know that pregnant women who take cocaine or heroin are likely to give birth to babies addicted to those drugs. Doesn't it seem plausible that if stallions and mares can pass on their physical and racing characteristics to their offspring, that their drug dependency also can be inherited?

Given the latest data, the issue is not whether Lasix enhances performance; clearly, it does. The issue now is whether thoroughbred racing, finally presented with irrefutable proof of the drug's sinister effects and capabilities, is willing to ban Lasix.

No less than the integrity and future of thoroughbred racing may hinge on how the industry chooses to answer that question."

True stuff, Muhti. Only item I'm not so sure of is that foals born to Lasix mares could inherit their addiction, like heroin or cocaine addiction. We call all of them "drugs" but actually they are very different substances. Needs more careful looking at. Don't want to jump to confusions.

The other thing to keep in mind is that when flexible scopes came into use (when? approx 20 years ago, I think) they allowed much easier and deeper examination of the horse's trachea. Before that I believe it was a mission, So it's maybe not correct/incorrect to say horses didn't bleed before Lasix came on the scene ... just not provable.

What would be highly interesting is to check out Lasix use in first-timers and lightly-raced horses in the USA, also horses without a prior history of bleeding. (Here again, one needs to define what one means by "bleeding" ... any athlete leaks a bit of blood into the lungs during strenuous exercise, but Barry suggests it should be defined as actually bleeding out of the nostrils.) If it is used in horses with little/no evidence of bleeding, then it is pretty obvious that it is not being used as a remedy for bleeding but to cause speedy and easily reversable weight loss before a race = x lengths advantage.

Imho, the crux of the matter is in the sentence, "in a highly competitive environment, the use of Lasix is an economic imperative". That asks everyone who uses it a hard question, "What is actually your motivation?"

The other thing to keep in mind is that when flexible scopes came into use (when? approx 20 years ago, I think) they allowed much easier and deeper examination of the horse's trachea. Before that I believe it was a mission, So it's maybe not correct/incorrect to say horses didn't bleed before Lasix came on the scene ... just not provable.

Here in is yet another no no.....imvho scoping of horses just aggrivates the problems associated with "bleeding" it is said to be non- invaisive yet the tube itself causes displacement to the muccial membranes and exasibates not ony nasal bleeding but horses become suseptable to further upper resipirtory infections. I worked in a stable more than 30 years ago and never did we experence a single case of bleeding.....I do believe that in our more modern times we have many more stresses and pollutants in the horse racing environment and prevention is far better than cure.....I am a firm believer in introducing nutricuetical feed additives to strenthen the muccial membranes in the respiritory system and not trying to cure it once bleeding has occured.....I also firmly believe Szuzanna's post is on target in that the equine athlete needs to be built up slowly and not be overworked....

USA: Senior racing officials from Britain and Ireland have joined forces with their Hong Kong counterparts to urge North America to abandon the widespread use of raceday medication.

In particular, the debate has focussed on furosemide, the anti-bleeding diuretic better known under the trade names Lasix or Salix used since the 1970s and banned on racedays in all major racing jurisdictions outside North America owing to its alleged performance-enhancing qualities.

The subject provided the chief talking point of a two-day international summit on raceday medication at Belmont Park this week, at which Irish Turf Club chief executive Denis Egan advised his US colleagues to outlaw Lasix.

"If the US is serious about the breed, it should eliminate Lasix now," said Egan. "The view in Ireland is that racing in the US is tainted because of the use of drugs in racing.

"That is the perception in Ireland - whether we're right or wrong, that is the perception inIreland at the moment."

Egan added that the endemic use of anti-bleeding medication has consequences for the US industry in business terms.

"European buyers are drifting away because we view the performances of US horses with scepticism because of the medication policies, and the stallions are not comparable to ‘clean' European stallions," he said.

"They believe the genetic pool has been damaged," Egan added. "Not only bleeders but horses with wind problems are being bred and they're passing on those traits."

The BHA's senior veterinary adviser Anthony Stirk told delegates the US was out of step with the rest of the racing world.

"We're not trying to tell you what to do but my worry for American racing is that you've become isolated," he said. "We want to see more international racing. We're trying to tell you what we do and what the consequences are."

Such is the interest in the topic that the New York Times has covered the Belmont summit, leaving no one in any doubt about the prevailing mood.

"The American thoroughbred industry has acknowledged recently that it is in trouble," said the paper. "Its counterparts from around the world told it why: it races too often, allows race-day medications that prop up inferior horses and is paying the price for these flaws with plummeting sales at breeding auctions."

Another to address the conference was Bill Nader, former chief operating officer of the New York Racing Association and since 2007 executive director for the Hong Kong Jockey Club.

"I left New York in 2007 thinking it [Salix] was part of racing," he said. "I've now seen another part of the world and it gives me no satisfaction to tell you day-to-day racing in Hong Kong is much better than racing in New York or California.

"The quality of our racing is at a very high standard, our customers demand it, and horse racing is the number one sport by far. It's really quite refreshing coming from America.

‘This is a prettyserious topic," added Nader. "In America we came to accept the administration of Lasix on race day irrespective of the rules of the rest of the world. That view is now changing and why we have gathered today.

The paper by Alan Guthrie and others was, “Efficacy of furosemide for prevention of exercise-induced pulmonary hemorrhage in Thoroughbred racehorses” and was published on July 1st, 2009 in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association.

The use of Lasix was shown to lessen or prevent bleeding in most of the horses that ran in the trial. The change was considerable.

The trial dealt ONLY with the effect of Lasix on bleeding, not on performance, though it has been mistakenly stated otherwise in some newspapers and online articles. Prof Guthrie emphasised that they only looked at the effect on bleeding for several good reasons:
(a) the sample was too small (less than 200 horses),
(b) each horse's time would have to be recorded not just the winner's time, and
(c) each horse would have to be ridden out to the same degree in the race, regardless of it's chances of finishing in the money.

That lessening bleeding does affect performance is already known anyway. That reducing weight carried affects performance is also well known, though this trial did not address this matter.

(Just btw, Gary Player was one of several funders of the trial)

Lasix to be banned at the Breeders Cup,2yos this year and everyone from next year