Many people keep informal log books - in the form of
vet cards. Many
people include their own notes on the cards.
<snip>
Most newbee's keep their vet cards. So to some
extent there is an
informal log book system in effect.
<snip>
**********
From our first ride on, for any of my horses, information from the
ride has been logged in a 3-ring binder, along with keeping a map of the
trails, ride flyer, specific ride instructions, and the horses’ vet cards...and
usually 2-3 pages of hand written notes. As the rides have gone by, we’ve
tweaked what information we include (discovered info we *wish* we would’ve
included the previous year when the questions we were asking did not have
relative info written down.)
I do most of the journaling (Aarene drives the RV) which starts
with the mileage reading on the RV, the time we are leaving, the weather, and
so on...with special emphasis on any “problem” (horse, RV, human) we
encounter during the whole weekend. I can look back and say...”yes,
this is the ride where Cabby didn’t feel like eating as much as we would’ve
liked at the last out vet check and we walked the last 8 miles” (and yes,
by the time we got back to ridecamp for the final vet check, he was hungry and
trying to eat whatever he could find.) We concluded (since Cabby is our “canary”
for appetite) that we had been going a bit too fast on flat terrain (they’re
conditioned in mountain foothills and it was easy for them to hit a pretty fast
cruising speed) and that we will approach this ride a bit differently next
time. Jim, the third person who rides with us on a regular basis, also
does part of the journaling so we have more than one reflection on the ride
(not just my opinion or what I can remember.) It has
worked for our purposes and we are still revising what we include as we do
longer or faster rides.
I have one question regarding this notekeeping --
Why do the vets keep the cards of a horse that gets pulled?
Are they being used for some sort of data collecting? It’s almost
as if keeping the card will make sure that the rider doesn’t continue...which
is a totally ridiculous reason considering the pull code will be written on the
card at the time of the pull. I would think that the card would be of
more value to the rider in trying to prepare their horse for future
rides. I know, personally, I’d like to see where the problems were,
where they might have started, and use that information for the next time we do
that ride.
Sue
