SHAKOPEE, Minn. - As people found ways to beat the heat this Memorial Day, horses at Canterbury Park raced in it. But not without several precautions.
"These horses are pretty well-conditioned athletes. Many of them come to us from Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Florida and they're ready to go. They're used to the heat," said Lynn Hovda, chief commission veterinarian for the Minnesota Racing Commission.
Hovda said they have extra staff on site, two hoses of cold water, and ice water all around the track.
"Our horse ambulance and our chase vehicle, that the track veterinarian is in, have big buckets of ice water in there," Hovda said.
They also keep ice blankets on hand for the horses.
"You just pick it up and put it over their back. Horses can't sweat off their back. They do most of their sweating off their belly. So we try and help them by putting a cooling blanket, or an ice blanket, right on top of them. That will absorb a lot of the heat," Hovda said.
According to Hovda, they also try to limit the amount of time the horses are in the sun. The heat index hit 100 degrees Monday.
"We have a series of heat indexes that we work with. We start listening a little bit more closely when we get to a heat index of 102. We start thinking seriously when we're at 104, 105, and by 107 we don't race. That's pretty much been our history here. We have a little wiggle room there because if it's overcast we get help and if we have a nice breeze, like we do today so far, that will help us cool the horses," she said.
Storms that rolled in later in the afternoon forced Canterbury Park to cancel its remaining races.
Canterbury Park announced Sunday that because of the heat, the Running of the Bulldogs event scheduled for Memorial Day would be rescheduled to Saturday, June 9 on Belmont Stakes Day.