Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

In a situation like that could you not speak with the vet and have the vet tell the person that his horse is needing him to slow down?

 

DaNel

www.Darswinkles-Delights.com

DVeritas@xxxxxxx wrote:

In a message dated 12/6/2004 7:59:28 AM Mountain Standard Time, tprevatt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:

It just gets down to a matter of respect.   Until that respect is there - what you call it will matter little.

And, in my opinion, it starts with the respect of the individual rider's for their horses...regardless of the distance (100's) or not so great a distance (50's) or really not so great a distance (25's).

Honor the horse, not the rider and most of the catcalling and sniping should stop. 

Honest efforts by the horse are just downright cool, regardless of the distance.

I've only ridden three LD's in my life.  All in Colorado.  At my last, I was dumbfounded by a man, riding his first "endurance" ride, trying to win, then, after his horse (a 1300 pound cold-blood cross) was having difficulty recovering at his vet check.  Recovering?....I mean "breathing"...dripping sweat standing at a watertank, where the rider was busy "impressing" me with how much faster he was moving along than I was (and I was riding a 50/100 mile horse).  I was there "mentoring" a never-before-rode-at-an-organized-AERC-function-rider-on-his-own-horse guy, who was loving his twenty-five miles in the beautiful autumnal day.

    I have to admit, I ground my teeth and told the guy that he had a beautiful horse who looked like he might prefer to go a bit slower in the deep sand and unusually warm day (the horse had his heavy winter coat already).  I really wanted to "help" this rider, but he was having none of it.  What do you do in this situation?  Do you just allow this guy to learn on his own, or do you step in and really talk to him, even though he wasn't open to any of it?

    "Well," he said, "we're almost done."

    "Yeah, you are," I told him and walked away.

    I'm not an elitist, I don't think I was there "judging" him....I really wanted to help him...

    It's disheartening to see this.

    I know this horse was suffering its rider and YES, I KNOW IT HAPPENS AT GREATER DISTANCES.  

    What do we do, just walk away from it and hope we don't have to see the horse collapse?

     Yeah, it all starts with RESPECT.

    ~Frank

 

DaNel Resha 
Darswinkle's Delights

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