Re: Show and Tell

["Kathy Mayeda" <Kathy_Mayeda@atce.com>]

Title: Re: Show and Tell

You brought up some interesting points re: concern about horses welfare and speaking up as a newbie.

As a relative newbie myself, and surrounded by very conscientious endurance riders, I never really had to voice my opinion. I’m the one that asks for opinions for my learning curve. However, I have seen a vet and ride management trying to pin a negligent rider against the wall trying to get the rider to get real.  Guess what?  This rider still hasn’t changed despite how many miles of experience the vet and ride manager has. 

I have a friend of mine that tends to overtrain her horse.  She has one 50 mile ride under her belt.  Many people have commented to her that she does overtrain and she just gets mad at them.  When she complains to me about the other people, I just say “yeah- you DO overtrain”.  She’s probably mad at me too.  She may get the message some day, and I hope she does for her horse’s sake.  On the other hand, this horse is well cared for, beautifully groomed, sleek and in good weight.  I really leave it up to the horse’s veterinarian – who is always working closely with this horse-owner – to really lay down the law with her re: overconditioning.  I expressed my opinion but didn’t force it.

You could lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink applies to some endurance riders as well.  This is why a good ride vet is so indispensible for controlling these kind of abuses and for the education of the rider.  I wouldn’t want to take the responsibility of talking to another rider about their horses welfare without some pretty darn good credentials to back me up with.  Now maybe I would have a good talk with the vet and ride managemen, though, so they can properly assess the situation.  Just maybe what you see isn’t the whole story – there may be another side to it.

I probably have as many “miles” as a ride volunteer as I do a rider in endurance.  I can’t emphasize enough that if you really want an education in endurance riding that you hang around and volunteer at rides.  Some of the things you see and hear at the vet checks are real eye openers.  I’ve also crewed at Tevis for a few years and know that it’s an intimidating ride.  If I hadn’t crewed it, I probably would have attempted to ride it and not be properly prepared.  A 25 mile LD ride would not have taught me this!

K.