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Before we look at this, it's important to keep the horse moving, leading it at a walk. This keeps the blood circulating through the muscles and skin to help along the cooling process. The muscles relaxing and contracting while walking also help push blood through the vessels.

Failure to keep the animal moving can result in blood pooling in the dilated blood vessels of the animal's legs.

The circulating blood is also removing waste products from the muscles, which will help their recovery.

If there's a cooling breeze, use it. If you can walk your horse in the shade, head for it.

As we're walking, we want to get a handle on the horse's heart and respiration rates.

A horse's normal respiration rate will range between eight and 16 breaths a minute. You can monitor this easily by watching the horse's flank. Count the breaths for 15 seconds and multiply by four.

At first, the animal will be taking big deep breaths to replenish the blood with oxygen. However, once oxygen levels in the blood have stablised, the horse is likely to take shallower breaths, possibly with an even faster respiration rate.

This shallower breathing is a more efficient way for the horse to get cooler fresh air into and out of the lungs, taking away excess heat with it.

The next piece of information you need is the horse's pulse.

An easy place for find the horse's pulse is under the jaw bone.

The easiest place to get this is on move is with the arteries that run either side underneath and inside the lower jaw bone. Using three fingers, press inwards and upwards, and you should detect the pulse. Again, count for 15 seconds and multiply by four.

A horse's resting pulse is likely to be between 30 and 40 beats a minute. Straight after exercising it's almost certainly to be above 140 and may even be nudging 200 beats a minute.

As a general rule, you know your horse has got some serious heart onboard if its respiration rate is faster than the pulse rate. Both should drop rapidly a few minutes after the end of exercise, but the higher respiration rate remains a good indicator of a serious heat problem.

Some horse owners take their animal's temperature with a rectal thermometer. A horse's temperature will normally range between 37deg C and 38deg during the morning, a half to one degree warmer in the afternoon. It may be higher still during warm weather and foals will be a little higher again. In Fahrenheit, that's 98.6deg to 100.4deg.

After hard exercise, the rectal temperature could be around 40deg C (103-104deg F). Above that, and your horse is seriously overheated.

Opinions vary among horse owners as to when the saddle should come off. Some feel the cool air hitting where a saddle once sat will cause the blood vessels to contract. Others point out that the vessels are dilated because the horse is wanting to cool down, so removing a saddle shouldn't make any difference. As a general rule, it shouldn't present any problems getting the saddle off quickly on a warm day. On a cooler winter's day, let the horse cool a little before removing it.

In winter, you may want to put a light rug on the horse once it's shed the bulk of its heat to ensure the rest of its cooling doesn't progress too rapidly. On a warm summer's day, this shouldn't be necessary.

You can help cool your horse by sponging or hosing. This takes the place of sweat and is a very effective way to helping your horse shed body heat. Like sweat, it takes the heat away as it either falls on the ground or evaporates away.

Opinions again vary on the best way to do this. Some only hose or sponge their hot horse around the neck, head and chest, as well as cleaning up the sweat between the hind legs.

This is probably fine in moderate temperatures in any case. However, if conditions are hot, an all-over sponge bath or gentle spraying is probably wiser.

Those who speak against it, argue that cold water will cause the blood vessels beneath the skin to contract, reducing the cooling effect. However, it's important to realise that this cooling process is driven not by the skin, but by the brain's orders to get the core body temperature down.

Opinions differ on whether the water should be cold or tepid. Some argue that cold water on hot skin can trigger cramps. However, the reality is that tepid water on a hot day is not likely to help the horse's cooling much.

There is no doubt that the use of cold water on a hot day will greatly increase the rate at which the horse can shed heat. Bracing temperature or not, that's what the horse is wanting to do.

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