Learning Lessons (was Death in Ridecamp and Syria)

["guest@endurance.net" <guest@endurance.net>]

K S SWIGART katswig@earthlink.net

Over the past few months there have been a number of posts about 
learning lessons from other people’s experiences on/off the endurance 
trail.  I meant to mention something when the “Death in Ridecamp” 
thread was being beaten to death after somebody (don’t remember who) 
said, “Howard has learned his lesson from this and that is the 
important thing” (or something like that).  And it came to the front of 
my consciousness again when Tom Ivers stated “Just thought I'd give 
those that think the benefit of this experience so that someday someone 
might avoid the same circumstances.” In giving the reason for his 
“syria” story.

It is unclear to me, in both these instances just what are the lessons 
to be learned from the circumstances.  In Howard’s story, there was a 
myriad of different opinions about what was to be learned from his 
experience.  The lessons that Howard claims to have learned (in his 
original postings) are “Don’t do endurance at all” and “There is a 
God.”  Upon reflection, he may have changed his mind about one or both 
of these things.  Jerry Fruth thought the lesson Howard ought to have 
learned is to not try to do endurance on a non-arab, many people 
thought Howard should have learned not to go so fast, or not to 
race…Angie :), or not to go so fast on an underprepared horse…

To be honest with you, there wasn’t any real solid information provided 
in Howard’s account of his experiences with Dance Line, to make any 
reasonable determination as to why the horse experienced such severe 
metabolic distress (as in what actually caused his gut to block).  I 
know of a horse that experienced reflux colic when standing in his 
stall, with absolutely no changed in his regular management routine 
which included regular feeding of an oat alfalfa mixed forage, regular 
turn outs, and light riding by a pre-teenage girl.  One can hardly say 
that that horse was over-ridden, or went too fast.  

Dance Line may well have experienced the same thing had he stayed home 
being a pasture potato.  He may have experienced the same thing if 
Howard had been riding slower (and therefore might have still been out 
on the trail, rather than in camp, when the horse crashed).  Nowhere 
near enough information was provided in order to determine what, if 
anything, ought to be done differently.

In the Syria story, what is “known” is that the horse suffered a 
fracture to the humerus  while walking down the trail.  Everything else 
(as far as I can tell from how it was reported) is pure speculation.  
But the first lesson that was expressed (by Katee) was “the horse 
should have had more LSD???”  Until we were told the horse “had more 
solid miles in her than you can imagine in your wildest dreams.” Even 
if the SWAG of “We guess that she incurred a "green stick" fracture in 
the earlier incident, then later the complete fracture occurred,” is 
accurate, there still isn’t enough information provided to determine 
what not to do next time.

Don’t hand riders bottle of water?
Don’t ride on if the horse appears sound?
Don’t ride on if the horse passes the vet check “easily?”
Do full x-rays at every vet check?
Don’t make a water stop and then proceed at a slow pace?

Hell, maybe it was all those “solid miles” that weakened the leg, maybe 
the horse had a congenital defect. We were provided with nothing about 
the training protocol of the horse, the previous ride history, how the 
horse was fed both during the race and for her entire life.  There just 
isn’t enough information to determine what the circumstances were that 
we now need to avoid.

The only lesson I can reliably say can be learned from these two 
stories is, “sometimes the bad things that happen to horses, happen at 
endurance rides.”  Which doesn’t mean that the events shouldn’t be 
reported...so that the circumstances can be noted...and maybe (when 
enough data has been collected) can actually determine the causes of 
these events.

And the statement, “You weren’t there, so you shouldn’t pass judgement 
on what happened” makes no sense in this context. The purpose of 
publishing at all is to share the experience with people who weren’t 
there, and if we are going to learn anything from other people’s 
experiences as they relate them, we are going to have to evaluate what 
happened (based on what they have written...because that is all we’ve 
got) and determine what was done right and what was done wrong.  If any 
group is going to learn from other people’s mistakes they must frankly 
and candidly discuss just what those mistakes were and what led up to 
them.  You can’t just relate and abbreviated version of the  “facts” 
and fatuously suggest that we all must “learn our lesson from it.”

Roger was much more successful in providing useful data in order to 
make an evaluation of why or why not his horse encountered metabolic 
difficulties at the Biltmore ride. Nowhere near enough data to form any 
reasonable conclusions, but at least we know what the horse’s history 
was, its conditioning protocol, what it was fed and supplemented with 
pre-ride, how it was managed pretty much during the whole day, he 
attempted to get good clinical data to evaluate what was going on 
inside the horse, and also provided some historical information about 
another horse that also encountered metabolic problems and what the 
history, etc. of THAT horse was.

The Pride Project is in the process of collecting a bunch of data both 
at the ride and by asking riders about their horse’s history, their 
conditioning programs, their feed programs, their supplement programs, 
with the hope of actually collecting enough information to draw some 
meaningful conclusions; however, even though it has now collected data 
on hundreds (I suspect) of horses it is still a long way from that 
point.  From reports that I have heard, the UAE is also collecting 
meaningful data.

Learning lessons from other people’s (or your own) experiences, ain’t 
so easy. And if you want other people to learn from your experiences, 
you had better be prepared for them to ask for a whole lot more 
data...and to brutally bring to light your mistakes.  That is, after 
all, the whole idea...to determine just what were the mistakes; 
otherwise, there was nothing to be learned.

kat
Orange County, Calif.