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[RC] No "New" Rule - k s swigart

 
Mike Maul said:
 
> As far as setting something shorter for the safety of the
> horse - it would require extraordinary ambient conditions
> to justify this. If the only reason to do this is to slow
> down the riders - then I don't believe it would be a
> reasonable use of "safety of the horses".
 
 
It is worthwhile to note that the AERC Rule (6.2.1) that allows rides to have more stringent completion criteria than the minimum requirements laid out in the subsequent paragraphs to the same section does not require that these more stringent criteria be for the "safety of the horses."
 
The rule states (unless the on-line rules aren't current...which they probably aren't, but I have no recollection of this particular one having been changed recently):
 
6.2.1  The minimum criteria for the post-finish-line vet check are as follows. Any ride may adopt more stringent criteria, but these must be provided to competitors before the ride in written form. ...
 
Believe it or not, there is nothing in there that says anybody has to have a good reason for adopting these more stringent criteria.
 
I must confess, however, to being unwilling to attend one Ride Manager's rides because one of the "more stringent criteria" that he has adopted for his rides and sends out with the ride entry is (and here I am paraphrasing), "Ride management can change any of these rules at any time as they see fit."
 
I do consider it to be perfectly within this ride manager's rights to do this (at least, that is what the AERC rules say), and I appreciate it that he does so by informing people before they actually come that he reserves the rights to change the rules halfway through the event.  And that criteria DOES keep me from showing up at all.
 
So, while I don't consider it necessary according to AERC rules to provide the information in the ride entry form...the "pre-ride meeting" IS, by definition "before the ride" it would be POLITE for ride managers to inform people before they drive all the way to get there, that the criteria are going to be more stringent than the AERC minimum standards (I even think that it would be polite to inform riders that the pulse criteria MAY be more strict than the 68 bpm that the AERC requires since that criteria won't be set until the actual time of the event).
 
I would be extremely irritated if I were informed AFTER I had already shown up (even if it were, in writing at the pre-ride meeting) that the ride doesn't allow children under 10 (if I had brought an 8 year old kid along with me), that horses must be shod (if I had brought a barefoot horse along with me), that I had to wear a helmet (because I hadn't brought one along with me), or that pulse criteria were going to be 44 bpm (if I had brought Windy, who has a resting HR of 52 bpm, along with me).
 
The problem with what happend at the Mariposa Ride (by all reports) is that Ride Management and the Ride Vets were under the mistaken impression that the 30 min to reach criteria was a new AERC rule and that they had no choice but to adopt it...AND nobody had the current rules with them (and if one reads the rules that are currently on the AERC website, they can most definitely be read that way "The equine must reach a reasonable pulse recovery based on ambient conditions, within 30 minutes of arrival time at all control points during the ride."  The post-ride vet check could be construed as being "during the ride" since the ride is not considered completed until the post-ride check has been passed) to disabuse them of that notion. 
 
So, the question here, is not properly, "Were ride management/the ride vets within their rights in adopting more stringent criteria than required by the rules?" If they provided the information in writing, they were, even though they didn't know that they were.
 
But rather "What is the best way to ensure that the people responsible for enforcing the rules, ride management and the ride vets, KNOW the rules?"
 
And this particular problem is not unique to the Mariposa Ride.  I cannot count the number of endurance rides I have been to where nobody had the rules (for years a current version of the rules wasn't even available and nobody but me and Bob Morris considered this inappropriate. I am not even sure but what they still aren't--there is, I think, a clarification of this exact rule that was adopted at last year's mid-year board meeting....although it might have been at this year's convention). 
 
I remember going to one ride where management clearly stated that the hold time did not count towards the 12 hours elapsed time allowed for completion and that they knew this because they had called the AERC office to make sure, and one ride where neither the ride vets nor the ride management knew if something that a rider had done, after the finish but before the final vet check, was considered an "invasive procedure" and therefore disallowed under rule 13a.  To name but a few.  In this particular instance, a protest was filed (and upheld), but the penalties were slight for the very good reason that there was no way for the competitor to have reasonably known that he was in violation of the rules.
 
The fact that there is no way for competitors to reasonably know when they are in violation of the rules is a SERIOUS problem if you intend to enforce them (although, until recently, nobody has ever really tried very hard to enforce any of the AERC's rules). And while the state of affairs is better than it has been and a lot has recently been done in an attempt to rectify this, the AERC still has a long way to go...as this most recent example demonstrates.
 
kat
Orange County, Calif.