Come on, John, this is far from being a perfect world, and the sport of
endurance is far from that also. And, I do believe your numbers are
incredibly off. It isn't that .001% of our members consistently do the
wrong thing, it's that ten to twenty percent of our horses get into trouble at
our rides. We have to quit risking the lives of these animals by
us counting on the riders to do the right thing. Some of them might
have difficulty understanding what that concept actually means.
Until we make this sport 99.99% about the horse, in favor of the horse,
with rules based on the horse, things will remain as they are. There
really is a problem; horses are dying because of our rules (or lack
thereof), and, it is this sport that is creating the problem. And, believe
it or not, we can make the effort to change it around and do something about it
all.
Have the courage to add your name to it. Show the BOD that you care
about this issue, that action must be taken in this direction. Otherwise,
we'll just leave it up to the riders and, in case you've missed it, it's
the riders who are getting some of these endurance horses into trouble in the
first place. And, it's because of how the rules are set up in our sport
that allows them to do that.
Let's make the decision that they no longer have that option. Make
the sport more difficult for those who are ill prepared, protect the horse, and
start applying rules that make some sense. It really is time for us to
quit pussy-footing around here.
Lower the numbers, make the checks tougher, it's the first direction we
need to travel here. We can continue to do studies until the cows come up,
distort statistics to support our particular view, or, we can make some changes
in an area that is already in place. I know you guys know that tightening
the reins here will save some horses in our sport. Ask yourself
this: "Could it possibly make things any worse? Will the number of
horse deaths attributed to metabolic problems or metabolic treatments increase
because of this proposal?" I don't think even Heidi or Joe would say that
would happen.
99% (an arbitrarily chosen number) of our members do the right
thing. 99% of our riders don't need or benifit from vet gates or CRIs or
rigid rules concerning being at the starting line on time or only entering
one event (oops that rule disappeared w/o notice??) etc. 0.999% of our
members infrequently do not do the right thing. maybe .001% of our members
consistently do the wrong thing.
There are many ways to deal with
the problems which are caused by not doing the right thing. Whatever
approaches are taken, one of the criteria for a good solution should be to
minimize the impact the solution has on the 99% who do the right thing, to
not overly react to those members that sometimes do the wrong thing, and
to fully and completely correct members who consistently do the wrong
thing.
hmmm. New Rule 14: members who are deemed to consistently do the
wrong thing (as arbitrarily and unquestionably determined by the
Sanctioning Director Zar of their home region since that person already
has unquestionable responsibilities) will be required to ride in the
Junior Division until such time as they stop consistently doing the wrong
thing.
