"Hot Walker" Redefined: Thermographic Video of Horse on Treadmill Shows a Horse of Different Colors

This video is a simple example of the product of a thermographic video camera. Thermography is a system for measuring the relative temperature of body tissues close to the skin surface of an animal. In this case, the video clip was provided by the Flir company, which manufactured the system.

Please don't ask me any questions about this horse because I don't know anything about it, nor do I know at what point the video was shot, so the relatively high temperature (see scale on right of screen) may be a function of the horse being "warmed up".

And don't ask if the horse was shod or unshod. No info, unless someone out there recognizes this video clip.

Watch this a couple of times and you will start to understand why thermography has been recommended for the detection of soring practices in Tennessee Walking horses, as well as in use to monitor therapy or as an aid to other modalities of diagnostic imagery.

Note: if you are reading this blog as an email, the videos will not show up; you need to click through to the actual blog post to run the videos.

Once you are bored with the horse on treadmill, click the play button on the next video, below. What do you notice? (I don't know if the settings on the two videos were comparable, so this is just for fun.)



Thanks to Flir and Science Photography for these videos.