SWEAT!
Nature's Natural Cooler!
SWEAT!
Nature's Natural Cooler!
Nature has given all of us a wonderful defense against heat, sweat! What happens if your horse looses this precious gift? Let's say...
You and a friend are riding on a hot, humid day. After fifteen minutes, you stop to wipe the sweat from your forehead and you notice that your mare is blowing --- hard. You lean over to look at her, and you see her nostrils flared and her ribs heaving. Alarmed, you look at your friends gelding; is the heat getting to him? Nope. He's puffing a little, but nothing like your mare. Then you notice what's different: Like you, the gelding is shiny with sweat. Your mare's coat is bone-dry.
WHAT'S WRONG?
Your mare may have anhidrosis -- commonly known as dry coat, puff disease, or simply non-sweating. Common in hot, humid regions such as the Gulf Coast, where it affects as many as one in five horses, it can also strike in less taxing climates. It's a problem for this reason: Horses that can't sweat have no effective way to release the heat building up in their bodies.
This condition can come on suddenly: After a week or so of profuse output, her sweat production may have shut down abruptly or at least slowed significantly. Or it may have come on gradually: Over the past few months, she may have been sweating less and less -- and have tried to cool down by splashing herself with water from her bucket, lying on a moist stall floor, or standing in a pond or stream when turned out. At the same time, her appetite may have decreased, and she may have become increasingly balky about exercise, depressed, and/or easily tired. Also your horse may have thinning hair around her eyes, neck, or shoulders -- all signs of anhidrosis, according to Dr. Ralph Beadle of the Louisiana State University School of Veterinary Medicine, who's studied the condition since the mid-1970's.
Besides a dry coat (if the condition isn't severe, your horse may be a little damp under her tack, on her neck, and between her hind legs), she may breathe rapidly and shallowly, even at rest -- as many as sixty to ninety breaths per minute if she's severely anhidrotic, compared with eight to twenty-four breaths per minute for a normal horse at rest. Without help cooling off, the anhidrotic horse's temperature and respiration can stay high for as long as an hour or two, risking internal damage and even death from heat stroke.
