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Re: [RC] It's not the distance... - Heidi Smith[Heidi] What I'm trying to get at here is that "making rules" makes us "feel good" that we're somehow "doing something" about the problem. But in reality, the "feel good" rules don't change a thing. ------------------ [David] I would be you lunch that if you went back in time and checked out the discussions around lowering the pulse criteria from what it was (72?) to the 60-64 that seems to be a standard now, you'd hear about the same arguments - "It won't save ALL the horses", "More rules won't help", etc. You don't have to bet me lunch, David--I was there. And yeah, there was a lot of yelling. The difference between these two scenarios is that the successive drops in pulse criteria were done after ride veterinarians made observations over a period of time that the horses who did all right continued to recover and the ones who didn't continue to recover didn't do all right. It wasn't a "rule by internet concensus that this sounds like a nice thing to do." So far no one has made a case as to just HOW a rule about putting a time limit on newbies will change anything--no one has come up with any reliable indications that it is newbies doing the damage--etc. We all agree that speed is the issue--but no one has any grasp on how you can educate newbies by simply putting a rule in place. In fact, several folks have given pretty good arguments as to why such a rule would cause MORE problems by making newbies think they could go as FAST as the max speed (min time) suggested. I don't recall one single solitary soul who argued that dropping the pulse rate could HURT horses. We had several who squalled that they didn't think their horses COULD recover to 68, or 64, or 60. But no one had any argument against the fact that the horses who DID recover to the lower numbers were indeed horses who tended to go on successfully. We get back to the issue of making rules based on good clinical observation vs making rules because "somebody ought to do something and this sounds like a good idea." Therein lies the difference. BTW--at the risk of being chastized for sharing info posted on the AERC list, this idea has been held up as something that has worked in Australia to prevent ride deaths. Well, whaddaya know--Australia has been running about 2 deaths per year with about 9000 starts--pretty close to the same percentage we're running. So I guess it doesn't change much... I'm not opposed to change per se--but I do like to see some evidence that the proposed change might actually do what it is intended to do. Heidi =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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