Question for the trainers/owners-
 

-Or anyone who knows more about this than I (which is a lot of people):

From the article on DRF: Mine That Bird Not Certain for the Preakness

"We'll let the horse tell us," Allen, who owns Mine That Bird with Dr. Leonard Blach, said Sunday morning as a light rain fell at Churchill Downs. "We'll run some blood work on him, make sure it's where it should be."

Is doing blood work SOP after a race, even if there's no sign of a problem? What would they be looking for?

I'm not implying anything; I've just never read a quote by an owner after a race stating they were going specifically to do blood work before deciding on a horse's next move.

"Blood work" often means simply a complete blood count (CBC), and you look primarily for normal red cell count indices (no anemia), and a normal white cell counts (no infection or immunosupression). It's pretty routine.

If you wait for things to "show" (become clinically evident) you've waited far too long, when you could have caught it early with blood work. Same applies to you.

Thanks- I've read many quotes after races where owners and trainers talk about seeing how the horse is doing, eating, etc., but this was the first one that specifically mentioned blood work, so I thought I'd ask. That makes sense.

It's the same reason barns take horses temperatures and feel legs first thing in the morning - to find stuff asap.

That kind of thing makes sense to me (especially making sure their legs are cold); blood work is just more involved since it has to go to a lab so I didn't know it was so routine. But I guess when an animal is worth seven digits, it shouldn't be surprising.