With Hot Horse 2.5, things are not quite as obvious. When you first open the app, you will see the Current Heat Index. Navigation is through the tabs at the bottom of the screen. You will not find the blanketing recommendations, though. You need to go to settings and flip the switch to change from hot to cold, Heat Index to Blanketing(Rugging).
Unless you have subscribed to Hot Horse Pro, you will only see 1 or 2 tabs on your screen. For the Heat Index, you can see the Current and the Heat Index Chart Tabs. For Blanketing, you can see the Current tab.
Once you subscribe, you can get access to everything. For the Heat Index side, the Current, Hourly, Daily and Horses. For the Blanket side, you will see Current, Daily, Hourly and Horses .
Settings:
Gear Icon
You can access Settings from the Current, Hourly and Daily tabs. It is the Gear icon in the upper left corner. From this page you can:
- Change back and forth from the Heat Index or Blanket Index
- Changed whether you are asked to update your saved horses
- Add, delete and change locations in Locations Overview
- Show the Heat Index Chart
- Find the Version of Hot Horse that you are using
- Subscribe to Hot Horse
- Open this page on your device
- Review Hot Horse, Please review Hot Horse
- Share Hot Horse with others
- Reread the End User License Agreement(EULA)
- Reread the Privacy Policy. TLDR: We can collect things, but we don’t want to and only get the minimum necessary to run Hot Horse and allow you to subscribe. Essentially, this boils down to your location which is sent to our weather data provider (we don’t get it) and your Apple ID that is sent to the company that helps us manage the subscription (again, we don’t get it). EVERYTHING ELSE is only on your device or in your iCloud.
Most of the above is self explanatory, but if there is any confusion, please email us at [email protected].
Locations Overview
Location Overview is pretty straight forward, but very powerful. As you can see in the image, there is a map that will display your saved locations, a search bar to search for new locations, a place to manually add a location, and finally the listing of your saved locations. Add Location and Saved Location have disclosures that hide them until you tap them.
If you tap on the map, you will be taken to a full screen map page that will let you select the pins representing previously saved locations. If you tap on a pin and click the small information button on the right, you will be asked if you want to use this location as your current location.
If you long press on the map, a pin will be dropped representing that new location. You can now use it as above.
You can type in a place to search for in the Search Bar. You can search on a name or an address. When you hit return, a list of possible matching places will pop up. Choose the one you want, and that will be added to your locations.
Opening the Add Location disclosure allows you to enter a new location with a name, latitude and longitude. You can also choose if you want the location saved as a Favorite. Once you have netered the information, just click Add to Saved Places.
Lastly is Saved Places. Here you can see the currently set location, a list of your Favorites, or All locations saved. If you tap on an item in the list, that location will be set as your current location. You can swipe to delete any location. If you tap on the arrow to the right, you will be taken to the detail page where you can edit the location. Especially if you have used search, you may want to change the name to something a bit more user friendly as the database can be a bit long winded. You can also change whether a location is a favorite, as well as adjust the latitude and longitude. Just click the Edit button in the lower right corner. When things turn yellow, you can edit them.
Horses
Horses is where you can see the list of horses you have added to Hot Horse Pro. To add a horse, click the + button in the upper right hand corner.
This will add a blank horse entry to the list. Tap on this entry, and the detail page will open up. To edit the page, tap the Edit button in the lower right corner.
Enter the information and click Done to save it. If you want to leave things as they were, click Cancel. Do not change the Heat Rating or Cold Rating until you have used Hot Horse long enough to know that your horse reacts differently. Careful monitoring is essential if you need to change these settings. The Heat Rating changes how tolerant the heat recommendations are. If your horse is less affected by heat, you can increase the rating, and vice versa.
The Blanket Rating similarly measures how tolerant your horse is to the cold. The better the horse tolerates cold, the lower the rating. Again, please do not change this until you know that your horse reacts differently than the app predicts.
Please also choose appropriately in the Reasons for Blanketing section. These switches do change how Hot Horse Pro recommends blankets. The Senior switch is there to account for a horse that we would consider senior not by its age, but by the bundle of symptoms and conditions that are known to affect elder horses, such as Cushing’s disease. These conditions tend to make a horse less tolerant of the cold.
The next item is Height. You can set your horse’s height in hands in quarter inch increments. The Hands setting will start at 15 hands, and you can adjust it up or down as needed.
The next two items are extremely important for Hot Horse Pro to determine the proper blanket, Coat Length and Body Condition. The Coat Length is self explanatory. Body Condition should be assessed using the Henneke horse body condition scoring system developed by Don Henneke at Texas A&M University. A step by step guide to using the system can be found at thehorse.com.
These two items are so important AND changeable that Hot Horse Pro will ask you to update them weekly. This behavior can be changed by toggling the switch in settings called Saved Horse Update Reminders. The default is On.
Scrolling down, there are five more items that can be set: Color, Breed, Gender, Markings and Temperament.
These are self explanatory. Markings are selected one at a time, and then must be added with the Add Selected Marking button. Lastly, you can choose between four basic temperaments: Interested, Nervous, Quiet & Stubborn.
Switches
For each of the Current, Hourly and Daily Tabs, you will see a switch, just above the page title. If you are showing the Heat Index, the switch allows you to set whether you are in Sun or Shade, as that makes a big difference for your horse’s ability to work. For Blanketing, the switch sets whether there is a run in or not. Leave it to none if your horse avoids the run in like it will eat him or her.
Selections
For each of the Current, Hourly and Daily Tabs, you will see an area, just below the page title, that displays the Current Location and the Horse that the recommendations are for. If you tap on the location, your will be taken to a page that works identically to the Saved Locations on the Locations Overview page. If you tap on the horse, a list of all saved horses come up, and you can switch around which horse the recommendations are for.
Heat Index
Regardless of whether you add a horse, when you subscribe to Hot Horse Pro, you will get a week’s worth of the Heat Index for each day and separate blanketing recommendations for both day and night. You can see these in the Hourly tab for 48 hours, or in the Daily Tab for the week. The Daily tab for blanketing recommendations takes into account the changing hours of light where you live, so the night recommendation starts at sunset, and the day starts at sunrise.
The Heat Index itself is based off of the continuing work from the FEI (WBGT Index). This is the most advanced and up to date information on dealing with horses as things get hotter. Please read the documents as there are a great deal of recommendations contained in it.
The index itself is colored coded:
- Green for optimal conditions,
- Yellow as it gets hotter,
- Orange tells you to be even more careful,
- Red is getting dangerous, and
- Black is extremely hazardous.
In the Hourly Tab, each bar will be colored for the worst condition of the hour. In the Daily Tab, you will see the range of conditions for the entire day in a gradient. As you get within two days, you can switch to the Hourly Tab to see the best time to ride.
Blanketing
Regardless of whether you add a horse, when you subscribe to Hot Horse Pro, you will get blanketing recommendations for the week, for both day and night. These recommendations take into account the changing hours of light where you live, so the night recommendation starts at sunset, and the day starts at sunrise.
If you don’t set a horse, Hot Horse Pro will use an “Average Horse”. You can see the details if you select “average horse” in the Horses tab, but essentially you have a healthy, moderate body condition, moderate coat, non senior horse. Your mileage may vary using this setting, and we recommend putting your specific horse’s information in for a better recommendation.
The recommendation will take your horse’s Lower Critical Temperature into account, based on the settings and then compare it to the expected weather, accounting for rain and wind chill, among other things. At the top of the screen with Hot Horse Pro, you will see a switch that allows you to account for whether the horse will have a shelter if turned out.
Similarly to the Heat Index, Hot Horse Pro uses color coded bars so you can see at a glance what blanket you will need, for both day and night.
You can also view the recommendations hourly for short turn outs:
If you have any questions after reading this, please email us at: