The day starts at the crack of dawn in the chuckwagon barns for 2012 Calgary Stampede Rangeland Derby champion Troy Dorchester.

It’s feeding time for the horses before the rest of his crew arrives at a quarter to six in the morning.  Then they hand walk the horses, some get baths and others get their legs mudded.

“Then I cook breakfast out here every morning on a grill,” Dorchester said.

Bacon, eggs, hashbrowns and sometimes pancakes are on the menu before the nine-person crew finishes up their morning prep: Changing the tarps, washing down the harness and greasing the chuckwagon wheels.

That keeps them busy until around 10:30 a.m., Dorchester said. Then they keep the barn pretty quiet until noon, when the horses get an oat lunch.

Around 3:30 p.m., the horses that will run that night will get baths and outfitted with back-on-track blankets. Those are meant to relax the horses and massage muscles.

“Four o’clock comes and you start getting in the afternoon, you do the same thing as you do in the morning,” Dorchester said.

“It’s like Groundhog Day here.”

After barn tours are complete, Dorchester said he likes an hour to himself before he sets out the harness for the night’s run.

“I just sit in the barn and envision my race 30 to 40 times,” he said.

That’s a relatively typical day for many of the chuckwagon drivers in the Cowboys Rangeland Derby – with a few tweaks for each crew – but it’s a full time job to keep often 18 head of horses taken care of in preparation for each night’s run.

Horse management has evolved over time

Rae Croteau Jr. was in his barn this week during the heatwave, and he had the fans blowing, along with the misters.

“With the high temperatures, we have these fans and the misters go on to try to keep things cool,” he said.

The horses seem to enjoy it, too. They run their heads through the mist every so often, shaking their manes and giving a snort of approval. 

These are just some of the new ways drivers are minding their stock, prepping them like their bonafide athletes – no different than the NHL, NFL or NBA, Croteau said.

“There’s a spot in the barn to ice up horses that just need a little extra maintenance, just like ballplayers, hockey players, ice in their legs, things like that,” he said.

Aside from the track safety changes the Calgary Stampede has made over the years to limit the harm to animals and drivers, crews also have to manage their horses differently.  The biggest change was in how often teams are allowed to run, Croteau Jr. said.

“That, in turn, turned us into better horsemen than the generations before us,” he said.

“Because now, we actually need more horses that are just as capable, where 10 years ago, 15 years ago, they’d go nine out of 10 nights, win the aggregate, get into the dash to be super competitive.”

They’re trying to stick around six runs per team, with no more than four in a row before a mandatory two nights off, Croteau Jr. said. They can go three in a row with one night off, but most drivers stick with around six runs per team.

Croteau Jr. said the horses tend to run more consistent with the dedicated rest, but there’s no doubt they’re sharper having run more nights in a row.

“Some horses, the more you use them, the sharper they get, to a certain point,” he said.  

“Last night (Tuesday) was the third night in a row for that outfit of mine and that’s the hardest they started all year.”

Research and vets guiding ongoing care

Tal Hogbin with the Calgary Stampede chuckwagon committee said they’re constantly collecting data on the horses, and they’ve built a program that tries to go above and beyond with horse care, so the animals are fit to compete.  

They work with University of Calgary veterinarians and other experts tied to animal health. That’s led to some of the changes in horse care, including a recent paper on heat exhaustion in horses.

It’s timely as temperatures at the Calgary Stampede were well past 30 Celsius this year.

“We’re going to be sharing that with these guys, and a few things that we’ll probably do a little different because of the study that’s gone out,” Hogbin said.  

“We’ll pass it on to these guys so they can carry it on.”

Hogbin said that they’ve fine-tuned their program to the point where it’s starting to be used by racetracks across North America. Not only is it being used by riders, racers and caregivers in chuckwagons, but it’s being used by other equine disciplines as well, he said.

 “It’s been developed here, and it’s been pushed here because we are in such an eye,” he said.

“But it’s something that can be spread everywhere.”

They’re treating the horses as they would any professional athlete, Hogbin said.

“It’s no different for a football player, bobsled, if you’re a figure skater, to be the top athlete that you can be.  You have to eat properly, you have to train properly, you have to cool down properly, you have to rest properly,” he said.

“It’s the same thing with the horses as any human at the height, Olympic-level or NFL-level or any at NHL level. It’s that same type of mentality and same thought process that goes into a lot of this.”

Every bit matters, too. When you’re racing for hundredths of a second over 10 consecutive nights, the science, the care and the horsemanship can mean the difference in the Sunday Dash for Cash. Technology has changed, said Chad Fike, leader of the Cowboys Rangeland Derby after seven nights.

“There’s been so many studies on different things that people are just more knowledgeable now as to the caretaking and all the different things that you can do to help the horse,” he said.

Fike said everyone does the big things: Training, feeding and the like. It’s the little things that separate the drivers.

“A little thing might be that much off the finish line,” he said, holding his hands a couple of inches apart, before stretching them out.

“But if you add a bunch of little things together, then all of a sudden you’re at that much. That can be the difference between five or six spots in the day. It’s all about doing all the little things you can that maybe the other guys aren’t doing.”