Ridecamp: [RC] Strange stuff at OD

Something really strange happened this year at the OD.  And I was proud of
the response by ride management and the veterinary team.

During the spring, the OD sponsored several clinics, mostly for new distance
riders.  These were fund-raisers and educational forums.  For instance, I
was involved in one clinic which focused on a talk about electrolytes.  Then
two experienced endurance riders led a fast and a slow group out on Graves
Mountain.

At one of these clinics, there was a fellow who got all excited about doing
the OD 50.  Sent in his registration and was contacted by ride management to
tell him that he could not enter his four year old horse in the 50, though
he could ride in the LD.

He showed up, with a friend and that rider's mount, to ride in the 50.  And
the horse he brought was the four year old.

The examining vet immediately spotted what was clearly a four-year-old (or
less) mouth.  And the other horse was judged to be lame.  Ride management
told them they could enter another mount in place of the lame horse, but
they showed up at 10pm to have the substitute horse vetted, after all the
vets had gone to bed.  They were given a ride card and told to have the
horse ready for vetting at 4am, but they did not do so.

At the first vet check for the 50's (about 12 miles out from the start) a
horse was presented and found to be lame, but when the card was given to me
(as recorder for the head vet), I saw that there was nothing entered in the
section for pre-ride vetting.  Just a number for the horse.  I alerted the
ride manager, who was at the VC, and he went off to talk with the rider.  As
he approached, he also saw the four-year-old horse, which had not been
presented for P&R.  Evidently, the rider of the underage horse had planned
to ride along, skirting veterinary control.  But when he saw the VC layout
and that he could not get past the out-timers (and the ride manager coming
to check out the situation), he raced back to camp.  The underage horse was
found, fully tacked and lathered, in one of the treatment stalls.  The rider
had taken off with his trailer to rescue a horse that had tied up very
badly, early in the ride.

What to do??

Many of us first reacted by wanting to ban the offending riders for life
from any OD-sponsored ride.  But then,.at the post-ride veterinary caucus,
someone pointed out that the rider of the underage horse really was
instrumental in helping a horse in serious trouble, and that he spent many
hours doing so.  The assembled vet staff and ride management concluded that
perhaps these yahoo riders were mostly just ignorant, that they flouted our
rules because they didn't understand the reasons for them.  And that,
possibly, they left a lathered, fully-tacked horse in a stall also out of
ignorance.

The decision made was to have some very tactful person from the organization
contact these riders and try to explain our approach to horsemanship.  The
vets hoped that these riders might come around if they were educated and
encouraged to consider the needs and limitations of their horses.

Who knows whether or not this approach will work.  If they turn out to be
uneducable, they can always be banned later.  But I was impressed at a
response that sought to bring out the best in people rather than just
condemning them for their stupidity and scofflaw behavior

Cindy



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