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Actually, John, there is more to the report than just determining the cause
of death.  Horses die for all kinds of reasons, from pre-existing illness,
injury, overriding, etc.  Necropsies can provide important information in
SOME deaths, but not all. There has been some discussion regarding AERC
providing funds for necropsies at ride deaths in order to collect data. (If
my horse died, whether at a ride or at home I would want to know why) IMHO,
we will never eliminate all horse deaths in Endurance, but we need to try.
The Vet Committee Report provides more data than just the exact cause of
death, and the HWC does additional research. 

Investigating the death of ONE horse, in Susan Garlinghouse's words, is a
"one rat study".  The HWC is creating a database that includes not only just
WHY a horse died, but what conditions may have put that horse in harms way.
For example, let's say a necropsy showed that a horse died from a twisted
gut.  There are all kinds of things that could cause that, and taken by
itself, provides little insight into how the horse ended up in that
situation, if it was ride related, or if it could have been prevented. It
may be been a combination of things. The HWC interviews the rider, other
riders, ride managers, vets, reviews weather conditions, how many vet
checks, humidity, terrain, feed, electrolytes, etc. and record all this for
future study, looking for patterns, and ways to prevent horses from "falling
over the edge". They look at the experience of the rider, the experience of
the horse, and the experience of the rider with "that" horse. For example, a
look at the metabolic pull rates where a horse died might tell us that we
were lucky there was only one death at that ride. An investigation of a
horse death might result in an additional investigation as to why the pull
rates were so high at that ride.    

Once we have compiled a database over many years, we might be able to see a
"pattern" that some tiny tweaking of the rules or procedures would break.
Then when a rule change WAS proposed, we would have statistical data to back
up the proposal, justifying the rule change. In the meantime, the HWC
reports their findings to the BoD and the membership and makes
recommendations to the Education Committee regarding training and
conditioning articles and other information that needs to get out to the
members. We can also share that database with other organizations through
grants for even greater benefits.   

The Education Committee would also have reference data to determine what
conditioning and training articles are most needed to help riders safely
compete their horses. Stagg Newman has written some really good articles for
EN lately on getting your horse through a ride.  The welfare of the horse is
the rider's responsibility, but it is AERC's responsibility to the
membership to provide them....and our ride vets...with as much data as
possible to help them make informed decisions.

At some point, we may wish to expand this to study to metabolic pulls to
help us better recognize when a horse is in distress.  SERA already has a
scale and is working on purchasing a blood analysis machine.  Each and every
one of us should "do our homework" and take advantage of the data, training
and equipment available to us.

After all, it's about the horse....my world would be pretty empty without
mine.

Jim, Sun of Dimanche+, and Mahada Magic


Subject: [RC] Question

Please Reply to: John Bass jbass@xxxxxxxxxxxx or ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
==========================================

The Vet Committee makes a report on a horse fatality.
How much information is expected without a necropsy?
Must be difficult to pinpoint a cause without one (a necropsy).
Anything else is just speculation.

John


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