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RE: [RC] rules and protecting the horse - David LeBlanc



Bob Morris said: 

You stated <<<I also think that horse death is too rare to be 
a useful measure. You could study endurance-related horse 
death for 5 years before you got a big enough sample to be 
significant. Metabolic pulls are more common, and measures 
taken to reduce metabolic pulls, and especially metabolic 
pulls that require treatment will help reduce preventable 
horse deaths.>>>

With metabolic pulls amounting to about 2% of the riders 
entered in endurance competition, the number is still not 
every large for analysis. 

I'm coming at it from the aspect of statistics - about 30 is what is
considered enough to come to a valid conclusion, assuming that conditions
are otherwise good. I think 2% of the starts comes to a number that from the
statistics standpoint is huge.

The greater problem is that we 
seldom, if ever, have knowledge of the extent of that 
metabolic problem. It could be ranging from the simply did 
not want to eat or drink to the total collapse of the horse.
The details for classification are missing.

That's the second part, and gets back to what Truman was saying a couple of
months ago. You can have plenty of samples and no data, or bad data, and you
can't draw any conclusions. We're in 100% agreement on this one. We have to
have more information, and there has to be some way to get it without
seriously inconveniencing the vets and RMs.

I have proposed a mandatory 30 day rest for any horse that 
experiences a metabolic pull. But riders protest that as to 
strict. "what about my horse that just would not come down to 
pulse criteria?" "It was OK the next day, why would I need to 
rest it for 30 days?" 

Could be - I've seen cases where it was too strict. There needs to be some
discretion, I think by the vet. I don't think it is a bad proposal overall,
but it needs some discussion. Automatic measures are tough to do right.

Well, we have to draw the line some 
place. The competitive venue, the ride site is not the time 
or place to perform a full work up on the horse.

OK, let's look at a couple of scenarios - horse runs away with you for 15
miles, pulses down (barely), CRI is terrible, vet is on the fence, and the
rider decides that he's had enough that day. Horse drinks home water back at
the trailer and is fine. Second case - rider is running way up front, horse
is clearly in trouble, rider insists nothing is wrong, horse is pulled and
needs treatment.

You've got that, and everything in-between. I think the ride vet is best
qualified to sort it out, but giving the ride vet the tool of requiring time
off is a good step. Right now, all they can do is pull you from one ride.

So, what do we do? We cannot intelligently asses the status 
of the sport with out knowledge of the problems. We cannot 
get this knowledge with out detail. We cannot get this detain 
unless the riders, the Ride Managers and the Vets co-operate 
in supplying it. A breakdown in any one of these entities and 
the entire set is not valid.

Your Suggestions?

We need data - in order to get data, we need to find some RMs and vets who
will agree to take extra notes in a controlled format. We don't need data
from every ride for a year - if the problem is 2% of the starts overall, we
only need about 4-5 big rides to get enough to make a decent sample. Then
you run into a problem with sample skew - what was the weather that day,
terrain, etc. So now you need some more - and you probably don't want
results only valid for big rides. I think we could get enough data to find
out something interesting and scientifically valid from a couple of dozen
rides. Also be good to do 3-4 rides in each region to avoid regional skew.

You'd also like to get a control sample - you need some base data from
random riders. For example, there may be a correlation between metabolic
problems and distance to ride, but you won't know that until you compare a
sample that did have problems and a sample that didn't.

Next step is to decide what data to collect - I don't know what this should
be, though I can guess the obvious ones, like temp. Vets need to define
this.

We also need to know whether gathering the data will incur any extra expense
and budget for it - this also depends on how you do it - if you send a vet
to a ride especially to evaluate this, we have to pay for that. If people
just fill out forms, that can be done at very little expense.

Then we need people to examine the data and try and see what it means. I can
do at least some of this - all that grad school ought to be useful for
something. I'm sure there's others out there with experimental design and
statistics experience - a collaborative effort would be best. It would also
be good if we found a professor who was interested and would see it through
to publication.

Then we try and see what the numbers all mean, which is the fun part.



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RE: [RC] rules and protecting the horse, Bob Morris