Re: RC: Posted today on a mostly Dressage Riders' BB . . .

["Susan Garlinghouse" <suendavid@worldnet.att.net>]

> So here you have this guy on an extremely overweight, out-of-condition
> Arab telling people about his experience with endurance. Was he telling
> the truth? I suspected not (no sponge on the saddle made me suspicious),
> but how would a person outside the sport know? He rides Arabs, has an
> endurance saddle, talks the talk. Must know what he's talking about.
>
> Comments?
>
> Deanna


I'm sorry to say we had a horse belonging to a similar mind-set guy come
into the CSU teaching hospital not too long ago.  The owner decided he
wanted to give endurance a try and bought himself an Arab (not particularly
suited, mind you, just an Arab, but one that had been described as a
prospect because "it never got tired of running") and to "train" it for
distance, took it out right off the bat and galloped it about forty miles.
He said he was planning on fifty, because of course that's how far the
endurance ride is, except the horse collapsed under him at forty.  Honest to
God, he thought that was how you trained a distance horse.  When asked about
water, he told us very proudly that he knew all about how you don't give
water to a hot horse, so the horse apparently went that far without a
mouthful.  They had the horse on fluid therapy for several days, but the
poor horse's kidneys and muscular system were totally shot, he started
foundering, his guts were a mess and they eventually had to put him down
after three days.  I saw the horse's chart and under "diagnosis", one of the
clinicians had written STUPIDITY.

The frightening thing is that this isn't the first horse I've seen come into
hospitals like this---when I was working at an equine hospital as an
undergrad, one very similar came in, and also died.  Almost the exact same
scenario of an owner that thought that was what endurance was all about.

Maybe we need more general lay articles from our resident writers in
magazines like Equus or Horse Illustrated explaining what endurance is all
about and what it is NOT about.  JMO.

BTW,  fantastic response, Angie. :-)

Susan G