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Re: [RC] Preventing Treated Horses - Merryben

I am sure I am missing something here and Jim and Bob will surely jump on this but I still cannot see how making all the details of every horse death available to the general membership can possibly help anything.  In my experience, in general mind you, horses die at rides from exhausted horse syndrome, aneurisms, colic and or injuries. 

The injuries are self explanatory and no one needs to know who treated, how they treated, and on and on.

The other reasons seem to come in two types.  The rider has simply overridden their horse for whatever reason, ego, stupidity or whatever.  How is knowing all the details of treatment, sypmtoms. etc., going to help.  There is really no way of knowing what was in the rider's mind and how they contributed to the horse's death. 

Two examples are the NASTR horse and the horse in California.  Neither of these riders has been seen or heard from since.

The other type is the kind of thing that just plain happens at a ride.  These are horses that would die in their pasture.  I personally had a horse calmly eating and suddenly start going in circles like a cat chasing his tail.  He trotted (sort of) down the fence line and fell.  After the vet tried everything with no response of any kind, he was euthanized.  He was tested for EPM, rabies and a whole bunch of other things that were negative.  His only history was a bad neck injury a few years before.  She felt that he had a brain tumor or a stroke.  He was a top ten endurance horse and it could have happened at a ride.

I also had a mare that I had ridden endurance that on a simple training ride just took a couple of stutter steps and went down.  She was dead before she even hit the ground.  Once again I thank God that it did not happen at a ride.

Trilby was not so lucky with Lad.  What about Julie Suhr's horse Q-Ball.  These two horses were taken care of with all the love and care anyone could expect.  I sold Q-Ball to Julie and know that. 

Why are all of these things so important to people to know.  I have no doubt that an necropsy on Lad would not have shown anything to help us keep horses from dying.  I would have had one done on the mare but she was on a park trail in March in mud and we simply could not get any type of vehicle up there soon enough.  I would be willing to bet that it came from poor parasite management at an early age.  She was a horse that was a backyard horse that I got at 5 who had never had any parasite care I would bet.

I just don't see how knowing all the details will help a member keep horses from dying on the trail.  If you care that much, you probably already take the best care of your horse that you know how.  What can you learn from hashing over all the gory details. 

The BOD is not sweeping things under the carpet.  We devote a great deal of time to discussing the problem of horse deaths.  We just don't know the answers and I don't think having all the information on each death at hand truely helps.

mb