From hospital ward to chuckwagon track: device could help measure horse fitness
CALGARY — Researchers are studying whether a device used in hospitals to test the blood of severely ill people could also be used to measure the physical fitness of horses competing at the Calgary Stampede.
The handheld machines have been used this week to test the blood of outrider horses before and after chuckwagon races that are a nightly feature of the 10-day celebration of cowboy culture.
The readings can tell the horses’ trainers whether the animals are working too hard or not hard enough.
“We want to use it as a stall-side tool regularly to monitor the training of those horses,” said Renaud Leguillette, an equine internal medicine professor at the University of Calgary.