Something not quite right (was: RO)

[guest@endurance.net]

K S SWIGART   katswig@earthlink.net
While I can agree that it is meaningful to distinguish between
whether the horse/rider team did not complete because there
 was something wrong with the horse or ecause there was
something wwrong with the rider; I cannot agree that it is not
also meaningful to distinguish between a horse being disqualified
(and therefor not allowed to go on...no matter who made the decision)
and a horse being withdrawn by it's rider despite the fact that it
would be allowed to go on.

Additionally, it is naive to think that "something not quite right"
can easily be correctly allocated between Metabolic or Lame.  If a rider
is very in tune with a horse's normal "way of going" and decides to
withdraw the horse from competition because "something" is not
quite "normal."  The cause of this abnormality may be a) transient
(but the rider doesn't want to find out he was wrong the hard way),
b) incipient lameness or c) incipient metabolic problems.  And the only
way to know for sure why "something" wasn't quite right would be to
go on and see which system might then exhibit problems and/or fail.

This is, of course, different from a horse that is withdrawn from
competition by a rider because it is, say, Grade-I lame and that while
the vet isn't going to pull the horse, the rider elects not to continue
anyway.  THAT horse was pulled because it was lame.

However, _I_ pulled a horse from a ride, "because she wasn't having
any fun."  Since this particular horse enjoys everything she does, it
was an indication that there was SOMETHING wrong with the
horse (not to mention the fact that I am not going to make a horse
do something that it isn't having fun at even if there isn't anything
physically wrong with it).

In retrospect (after another 300+ miles of competition over the next
few months and an ultrasound of her lower leg that was exhibiting some
persistent "thickening" which showed a three inch tear on her suspensory
ligament--despite the fact that she never took a lame step), the
"something" that was wrong was probably incipient lameness...but there
was certainly no way of knowing that at the time.

All I knew was that she wasn't having any fun.  It could just as easily
have been some incipient metabolic problem...but because we didn't go
on...we will never know.

That is, after all, the whole idea.  To stop BEFORE it becomes obvious.

So, yes, if the AERC wants the pull codes to have some relevant
statistical
meaning, it cannot lump all lamenesses together, it cannot lump all
metabolic
problems together, and it has to have a code for wounds and/or surface
factors, and it has to have a code for "something not quite right, but we
didn't have enough data to know exactly what."

If the AERC is only concerned about horses (and not riders), it CAN lump
all "rider problems" together; although an arguement COULD be made
that knowing why riders elect not to continue might be as meaningful
as why horses don't continue.  While this may be meaningful to endurance
riders, it may not be of concern to the AERC (or at least not of
sufficient
concern to expend resources finding out).

The way the pull codes stand right now...even if they were being applied
uniformly (which, currently, they are not), they are virtually
meaningless.
It would be a mistake to rely on them for providing valuable information
regarding what causes endurance horses to not finish endurance rides.

However, it is also true, that until the AERC started reporting the pull
codes to the general membership in the ride results, the fact that there
are serious flaws with the way the data is collected (which it had been
for years) did not come to light.  So...maybe this reporting of pull codes
is the first step down the road to the gathering of useful information.

But if this is the case, it becomes important not to consolidate the old
data (using a clearly flawed system) with any new data collected using
different criteria for describing why horses do not finish.  Especially
if some of the same codes are used in any new system.

kat
Orange County, Calif.