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Re: [RC] New Poll up - Truman Prevatt

Tiffany,

We don't know what the mortality rate of the population of endurance horses is at home. Nor do we really know what it is as a result of endurance rides. Some I respect tell me the increase is not from some change in the sport but better reporting. I;ve also heard vets I respect say the risk is going up. If it's better reporting it could rise to 20, 50 or 100 - we just don't know. If we have better reporting the risk is going up - how high could it get. We don't know.

My real issue with the AERC on is comes down to one simple fact. We have a "zero tolerance" drug policy, but somehow we are willing to accept deaths. If we can take the moral high ground on drug use, why do we not take the moral high ground on endurance related deaths? Sure deaths will happen, however, that does not mean we have to find that state of affairs acceptable and not work toward the elimination of deaths from endurance rides. The sport will not get safer unless we make the commitment to make it safer - the first step to that is a policy that states equine deaths at endurance rides are unacceptable and build education programs, research programs, vetting standards etc. based on that policy.

Truman



Tiffany D'Virgilio wrote:
Re: [RC]   New Poll up on 11/20/03 6:00 AM, Truman Prevatt at tprevatt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

One in 400 to 500 is getting right on up there - may not be quite as bad as TB racing but when we start comparing ourselves to TB racing to make us feel better about one in 4 to 5 hundred dying, I have to agree that we are in deep trouble.

That would be .2%. That is getting up there? Much less than 1%? What if in a certain year 10 horses die from a blown aorta? The fact is that it is very hard to quantify the actual REASON a horse dies in many cases. I don't want any horses to die because of an endurance ride, but horses die from weird stuff all the time. Heidi is right on this one. If you want no horse deaths at all, there should be no more endurance rides. Then you may have 10 endurance horses per year die in their pastures. You are going to have deaths racing, doing endurance, showing, doing gymkhana, eventing, etc.

Horses die, people die. S@#% happens. Maybe I am just a realist after working in a hospital for over 13 years. I have seen crazy and unexplained deaths. I have seen children die before their parents. You can't stop all death. And a poll or people deciding how many deaths is unacceptable is not going to help. How many horses out of 500 competition horses die each year at home? I'm willing to be it is a sight over .2%.

It isn't that I think any deaths at rides are unacceptable. It is just how do you arrive at an arbitrary number that pleases everyone, and how can you say that the horse was killed by the ride itself and not from existing medical problems that were a time bomb waiting to go off? Len Bias dropped dead from heart failure playing basketball when he was 18. Did basketball kill him> No, his faulty heart (cardiomyopathy) that had gone on previously undetected did. Did working on John Ritter's show kill him? No, a dissecting aorta did. Just because you die doing some sort of pursuit does not mean the pursuit is what killed you. It takes science to figure this out, not a poll. You can come up with a number all you like, but I doubt it will help the situation. Seems like the vet committee might be trained to decide this stuff better.

Tiffany

Replies
Re: [RC] New Poll up, Tiffany D'Virgilio