Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Equilab -- Fitbit for horses


Just found out about this free app Equilab which tracks training time, energy consumption, time spent in each gait, etc., by horse ride.  You can select Icelandic as one of the options for an individual horse.  The app will probably work for any gaited horse that racks/ambles from Tennessee Walkers to Peruvian Pasos.  I wonder how if it could handle a fox trot?    If you select "Icelandic," Equilab displays how much time was spent in walk, trot, canter, and tolt at the end of each ride.

Magnús Skúlason recommends it and he is a World Championship rider of Icelandics.  Plus I found two master theses from universities in Sweden based on graduate students refining the software of Equilab to better track gait.

I needed to upload ios11 on my iPhone to get the Icelandic version.  (Not sure how this works on Android phones.)  The user sets up a profile for each horse indicating desired weight, weight of tack, weight of rider.  The user turns on the app when the ride starts and it tracks the path ridden, time, and how much time spent on each gait.  Some reviews indicate that Equilab does not always accurately track gait but considering the gait salad that some horses demonstrate, this is probably to be expected.  Think of the app as fitbit for horses.

Has anybody used this app with gaited horses?

No comments: