Ridecamp: [RC] Green Horses - or is it really green riders?

I've been waiting for someone to point out that in our sport, some of the 
horses that are acting up the worst are not green at all, they're just 
pumped up with adrenaline and no place to put that energy until they get to 
start.  And why are they "acting out"?

Mike wrote:
> one mile into the ride, an out-of-control horse dumped its rider on his 
> head causing concussion (and was lost for a few hours wandering the desert 
> without his horse), and then several miles from the first vet check, yet 
> another "green" horse kicked at another horse but missed, hitting instead 
> the rider, causing compound fractures of her leg and requiring a medievac 
> helicopter ride.

Green horses or excited horses with less than perfectly in control 
riders?  Would either of these horses have acted this way with a more able 
rider?  Do you know for a fact that the *horses* were green - or is this 
really a rider issue?

I think many times - perhaps most - it's the quality of riding that 
determines whether these accidents will happen or not.  I would bet good 
money (if I had any money and if I wasn't so cheap that I'd risk betting 
it) that if you put a Hilda Gurney (just to pick a name out of the helmet) 
on one of those "green" horses they'd suddenly be not very green at all.

Let's face facts - endurance doesn't measure horsemanship in any direct 
way, and I'd put more of that good money on a bet that a *very* high 
percentage of endurance riders have not had any great amount of 
professional riding instruction in their pasts.  So let's forget expecting 
horses to behave properly if the riders don't know how to ask for that 
behavior.

Lif Strand
Quemado NM  USA
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