Does Your Horse Need Ice or Heat?

Does your horse need ice or heat?

In a horse world with easy questions and even easier answers, it’s hard to say if your horse needs ice or heat on an injury. But here are some guidelines that can point you and your veterinarian in the right direction. We want to always take care of and possibly pamper our horses, and that means caring for them in times of injury, or as a preventative measure.

Ice also acts as an analgesic – so your horse feels less pain! #bonus

Do you choose ice or heat?

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Ice or other cooling techniques are used for acute injuries.

Acute injuries occur suddenly. A good example of this is the horse that is doing his best rodeo impression during turnout and careens into a fence. When you take him to the barn, he has a swollen lower leg and a hitch in his giddy-up.

You may also want to cool your horse’s legs after he exercises. This takes the heat out of your horse’s soft tissues, tendons, and ligaments to help prevent long-term damage.

Heat can sometimes benefit chronic injuries.

Chronic injuries or conditions develop over time. A good example of a chronic condition in a horse is arthritis of the hocks. Heat can often help your horse’s back loosen up for riding. This is especially helpful if your horse likes to be cold backed before a ride.

You can find heating packs, just like you can find cooling packs.

Horses are masters of “getting by” until it really stinking hurts.

If a horse has a sore left hock, he may appear and feel sound for months, until possibly his right front tendons are a bit sore from compensating, and then he becomes “off”. You may think, oh, he has an acute tendon injury, or you may find the hock soreness first. It’s difficult to determine the egg vs. chicken in this scenario, therefore it’s hard to determine a chronic vs. acute situation. You and your veterinarian together can figure it out, and with that information, proceed forward with an icing or heating plan.

How to cool and ice your horse:

Cold hosing (read this about cold hosing vs. ice packs)

Ice packs

Cold water compression machines

Poultice

Cold hosing is one way to cool an injury! It just takes hands-on time and can use a lot of precious water. But it’s great in a pinch, and will help your ice product of choice work better if your horse’s leg is wet.

And some ways to go about heating up your horse:

Sweats
Therapeutic ultrasound
Some classes of lasers
DMSO
Liniments
Heat packs

It’s not uncommon to treat some injuries with both cooling and heating.

You may find that you initially treat an acute injury with cooling methods (usually the case), and after the initial inflammation goes away, your veterinarian prescribes a sweat or other heating treatment.

You may also find that your veterinarian suggests icing immediately after exercise, and treating with heat later in the day. This may be the case for arthritis.

It’s important to remember that when icing and heating, more is not always better. Using ice for more than 30-ish minutes can actually increase inflammation, and using a heating treatment like DMSO in the initial stages of swelling can add more swelling to the injury. You may find that your horse needs short treatments several times a day.

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