Ridecamp: [RC] Wine Country/Gastroguard

I went to the Wine Country ride so I could participate 
in the gastric ulcer study. What a ride! Very technical -
 probably the most technical ride I've been on in my 
short endurance career. Good riding weather. 

Trail markings were nonexistent in one critical place, 
but there were hikers and bikers out there so we suspect 
vandalism. Good thing I was riding with Lisa Jordan and 
friend who knew the trails somewhat and RM Jessica wrote 
a verbal trail description to cover such a problem. 
Thanks, Lisa! 

Unfortunately, Beau started thumping at the out vet 
check at app. 39 miles into the ride. I got him 
trailered out and both Michele Shaw and Melissa Ribley 
(DVMs) gave me the same message - GET HIM OFF ALFALFA. 
I've been told that before, but sometimes it takes more 
than one knock on the head before messages get through. 
I'm going to have to take him out of that beautiful 200 
acre pasture that he's in because they feed alfalfa once 
a day. Bummer. BTW, Michelle Shaw got BC on her bay 
horse. 

The guy who won the ride in app. 4 hours was a yahoo 
cowboy from "a ranch on the other side of the mountain" 
who wants to do Tevis next. This was his first ride. 
Jamie Kerr made it clear at the awards that he was lucky 
that the weather was cool because his lack of endurance 
experience may cause problems if the weather was hot. I 
don't think that he's very popular with the vets right 
now. 

The Gastroguard story. Fascinating talk by the vet doing 
the study. He showed some slides of the ulcers, although 
it was difficult to see in the outdoors venue. He was 
the Olympic vet so he does "high performance" horses 
experiencing stresses of competition. One of the "cures" 
for the gastric ulcers was a couple of weeks turnout in 
pasture after competition. Hah. He got a big surprise in 
finding out that the majority of the endurance horses he 
scoped were pasture horses to begin with. 

This is going to rock the "no drug" AERC rules a bit: 
way over half the horses scoped at the ride had 
ulcers...... This is the first time they ever scoped 
endurance horses and they were still scoping at the time 
of the awards so I'm not going to quote the percentages 
that were announced at the meeting. The bad news for me 
and Beau continued. I had him scoped because I suspected 
that he may have ulcers by some of the symptoms I 
noticed from him at rides. He had a ulcer on the gland - 
4 on a scale of 6. 

So I have samples of Gastroguard and a "thumped" horse 
to take home and ponder what other thing I could learn 
from my glorius grey gelding. These issues are both 
manageable, but at what cost, and I may be at the mercy 
of AERC to be able to keep my horse in endurance. 

I guess I'll have to move out of the country and just 
compete FEI! 

JUST KIDDING FOLKS. 

K. 

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