Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

> One person, one vote, majority rules, and your opinion doesn't count any 
more than mine or anybody else.

OT: AERC doesn't work that way. Representative (rather than direct) 
Democracy. So your vote counts a little less than Mine (b/c SE is a little 
smaller than NW) and we both count about twice as much as someone in PS and 
half as much as someone in SW. Plus, the only people that vote on anything 
are elected board members (minus the one elected board member who happens 
to be president) (and one of the NW regional directors happen to be pres, 
then my voting power is cut in half:(. So trying to hook people expressing 
opinions to votes is not to relevant. On the other hand, I value different 
peoples opinions differently, as do you:)

> If you're not part of the "horse death" solution, you're part of the 
problem.

Part of the horse death solution is for each member to actively participate 
in the appropriate management of their mounts before, during, and after 
competition. Every member that does the right thing IS part of the ongoing 
solution.

There are a large number of (potential) further refinements to that base 
solution which might be explored (and very few of these have been discussed).

IMO, excessively applying labels or categories which paint this as 
black-or-white re: a single solution de jour is a distraction. We have (in 
AERC):

* the Committee for the Welfare of the Horse
* the VET committee evolving their Equine Fatality Reporting procedures
* all vets and RMs sending in Treatment reports to the office (of course, we
  don't yet know what happens to them after they are submitted),
* proposed modifications to the (currently not required!!) gate-to-hold 
protocol
* the education committee (et.all) producing a new riders handbook
* real data analysis underway to help with myth.vs.real evaluation
* more use of the Protest and Grievance mechanism
and
* your own work (through your regional group) concerning training and 
conditioning education.

All the voices add to the cacophony through which the sport will evolve 
forward. But, because the rider is alone with their mount for 80%-90% of 
the time of competition, ALL administrative constraints will be 
after-the-fact-oversight and much to large grained to fully address the 
problem. ONLY the rider is there 100% of the time and ONLY the rider should 
be held responsible in the end.

Consider a solution which says that if the rider fails to ride 
appropriately, then they will simply be DQd. Use all the criteria which 
have evolved (including the one currently under discussion), but in the 
end, if the Vet (or RM or P&R person) determines that the rider should have 
pulled their mount but didn't, then they are DQd. In other words, ALL pulls 
should be RO (the vet should NEVER have to pull a horse and if they do have 
to, then it is a DQ not a pull). A DQ is the result of a rider not doing 
the right thing. Any RO is a rider doing the right thing (after MAYBE 
having done the wrong thing).

Any rider that consistently DQs is in jeopardy of being restricted from 
competitions (i.e denied entry for cause as is allowed in the current rules).

> one of the problems with this organization is that the people making the 
decisions have been doing
> that for too long.

That is likely true, the positive effects of longevity (continuity and 
historical perspective), are very like more than offset by an inability to 
accept change in an unbiased way coupled with long bred parochial world views.

johnt

(btw: on the particular issue of the modification of the pulse criteria 
measurement, It seems to me that it may affect the slow down of riders who 
have a pending problem. Not all problems will be noticed, (for example, 
Adios at the PanAm would not have been effected by this rule as he pulsed 
down within the suggested 15 min interval). I think in conjunction with 
extending the hold time, requiring an exit CRI, and removing the hold times 
from the overall competition time should also be integrated into the 
solution...) 


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