Piss, Blood

Shawn used to work at a greyhound park. Among other responsibilities, his job was to take the ugly yet swift dogs out to relieve themselves before a race. "The dogs that poop the most always win," Shawn would tell us, "but we're not allowed to bet on the races. If we could, I'd make a ton of money. But then I'd have to spend it all fixing my stupid goddamn car because my car is a big pile of dung, much like the piles the greyhounds make so near my Adidas."

Well, maybe he didn't say that last part, but the beginning of the quote is fact. Kim, a med student, does her best Bill Nye impersonation:

for all your horse racing enthusiasts

when a race horse runs, they run really fast (no … I did NOT need medical school to tell me that part).

to supply the increased need for oxygen in the muscles the cardiac output increases (ie the heart pumps a heck of a lot more blood out) – and this increases blood pressure. When you increase the blood pressure too much – especially in the capillaries (which are thin and small and weak because they are supposed to leak) – blood will leak out. So sometimes when a horse runs really fast – bp increases – capillaries blow blood - and the horse will leak blood out it’s nose at the end of a race – aka “a bleeder”.

To stop “a bleeder” from bleeding – you want to decrease the blood pressure without losing any of the oxygen carrying red blood cells – but all the rest of the fluid in the blood system is fair game for removal. To remove the fluid you give the horse a strong diuretic like Lasix – and the horse will pee a ton – and with less fluid in the blood system the pressure isn’t as high and they don’t bleed – and apparently they run faster. Hence the phrase “piss like a race horse”.

Note to those of you gamblers – the first time a horse gets a diuretic they are reputed to run their fastest race – and it will be quite a bit faster than what is expected for that horse. The horse will be listed with a subscript “L” (for Lasix) next to their name.

The charisma of Bill Nye in the body of a ballerina - that's our Kim!