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[RC] Mentors - KarenA list of volunteer mentors can be found on the AERC page under the Education link. Or go here: http://aerc.org/Education_Mentor.aspIf you would like to be on the list, follow the instructions at the bottom of the page. As soon as I collect another handful of additions I will update the page. I think that it is a good idea for a person new to the sport to seek advice from somebody that is experienced. However, I don't think it should be mandatory; a lot of people may be new to the sport but know a lot more about horses than some experienced riders do. Take Dave Rabe for example, his first endurance ride was the Tevis, which he completed...and is now the third highest mileage rider in the sport and the highest mileage rider for 2003 in all of AERC. I have never seen him get a horse into trouble. I would recommend that those who are new to the sport take time to go read the interviews that are online of the Decade people. These people have been in the sport for a decade or more and have a lot of good advice to pass along. Quite a bit of it is in an article in the current issue of Endurance News. http://aerc.org/long_table.asp Endurance riders as a whole are independent, intelligent people. The knowledge we seek is out there and we just need to look for it. Which most people do. (start with www.endurance.net ) You can't legislate common sense, and some people will still need to learn the hard way regardless of who they have as a mentor. To say that there are no mentors now is dismissing all of those that already are mentors or who help out new riders every day. Any adult who has ever sponsored a junior is a mentor. Anybody who takes new riders on training rides, or refers them to a website is fulfilling that role. To be honest, I only have one horse that I would consider using as a mentor horse (i.e., forcing him to ride at another horses pace). It isn't fair to me, my horse, the new rider or the new riders horse to force them to go together unless they already know ahead of time that they are compatible. A lot of horses aren't compatible and this is why horses do get into trouble on rides -- because people are not out there riding their own rides. They are riding the ride of the person they are riding with. Karen in NV ============================================================ Arabians were bred for years primarily as a war horse and those requirements are similar to what we do today with endurance riding. ~ Homer Saferwiffle ridecamp.net information: http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/ ============================================================
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