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Steph said:

> Kat - I don't agree with your statement that any horse
> which is removed from competition has been over-ridden
> or 'ridden beyond its level of ability'.
I did not say that any horse that is removed from competion, I said any
horse that has been removed from competition because it is deemed by the
vets to be no longer fit to continue.  If you started out with a horse
that was fit to continue and somewhere during the course of riding it
you have a horse that is not fit to continue, then you HAVE ridden it
beyond its level of fitness (that is what going from fit to continue to
not fit to continue means).

And I am willing to concede that there might be a handful of situations
where it can be put down to nothing other than just bad luck; however
none of the ones that she mentions:

> Regarding lameness .. (e.g. bruised foot, twisted ankle,
> blow from an object, thrown shoe, etc).
If your horse bruised its foot during a ride it is because you rode it
into a situation where it could bruise its foot, if you were more
careful, it might not have.  If your horse went lame from twisting its
ankle it is because you rode it into a situation where it twisted its
ankle and had not properly conditioned it for the possiblity. If you
rode your horse into an object that hit it (assuming we aren't talking
about a person leaping out of the bushes and taking a baseball bat to
the horse's leg), then it was because you rode the horse into the object
that hit it.  If your horse went lame from a thrown shoe it is because
the shoe wasn't applied properly in the first place, or you rode it
through footing that pulled the shoe off, or because the horse is prone
to throwing shoes (probably for comformational or hoof quality reasons)
and isn't suited to a sport that requires it be kept shod.

> Likewise not every metabolic pull (e.g. dehydration, travel stress,
> sickness, anxiety, ulcer, extreme heat, extreme cold, azotoria, etc.)
Horses that are dehydrated, overstressed by travel, sick, anxious, have
ulcers, can't deal with the prevaling weather conditions, or tie up
shouldn't have started at the world championships in the first place.
Simply by entering the horse in the world championships you are stating,
I have brought a fit horse to do this ride.  It is possible that you
have brought a horse that is incubating a disease that doesn't show
until after the start of the ride, but I contend that this is a huge
exception and rarely ever happens.

> There is a lot of risk associated with asking a
> horse to travel 100 miles in one day, whether
> it is fast or slow, and to punish or ban riders
> who do not complete the course is an arbitrary
> punishment.
You didn't read what I said carefully enough.  _I_ said that riders who
present their horses to the vet asking for permission to continue on
their horse and the vets determine that the horse is not fit to continue
should have their COC for championship rides revoked.  I.e. it is only
those riders who don't know that the horse they have been riding for the
past X number of miles is not fit to continue that have the COC revoked.
But that it does not apply if you remove the horse from the competition
yourself because you know the horse is not fit to continue.  So, if the
rider goes up to the officials and says, "I know my horse is lame, and
not fit to go on, I withdraw from the competition" there is no loss of
COC of the rider for this.  However, riders who present their horses to
the vet and say, "I believe my horse to be fit to continue" and it turns
out that they are wrong...well, they need to be told to go home and
learn a bit more about how to properly evaluate the condition of a horse
before they come back to the world championships.

I don't consider it unreasonable to require championship level riders to
be able to properly evaluate the fitness of their horses to continue,
and the biggest reason for having this penalty is so riders don't try to
sneak unfit horses past the vets.

I am NOT suggesting that these requirements be imposed on all riders at
all rides, just on those who are claiming to be skilled enough to
compete at the world championship level.

Let me give you an example of a situation where I over rode my horse to
lameness on a 100 mile ride:

A number of years ago (don't ask me how many) I took my horse to the
Swanton Pacific.  A few miles after the first vet check we had to ride
along a paved two lane highway.  I was on a horse that (at the time)
wasn't really good with traffic.  While we were riding along this road,
a car went by, spooked my horse and she bolted down the road, then
another car came by in the opposite direction, spooked her again, she
spun around, slipped and fell on the pavement and scraped a huge hunk of
skin off of her fetlock.  She was moving fine immediately afterward and
the wound was fairly superficial; however, when this wound got dirt in
it (a number of miles down the trail when we went into some soft dirt
getting around a gate post), it hurt her alot and she became quite lame.
I walked the next few miles into the next vet check and pulled/was
pulled for lameness (actually the vets put down RO, but when Barb
McCrary called me later to ask my why I pulled I told her it was because
my horse was lame).

Did I over ride my horse?  You bet.  If I had properly prepared my horse
for the conditions of the ride (a section along a paved road with
traffic on it), she wouldn't have spooked in the first place (or I
wouldn't have brought a horse that spooks at traffic)...and none of the
rest of it would have happened.

It was NOT bad luck that caused my horse to spin around and slip on the
pavement, it was lack of proper preparation for the conditions at hand
(I know this, because I was riding with Becky Glaser at the time and her
horse saw the same cars and didn't injure itself, so obviously Becky was
on a better prepared and conditioned horse than I was).

Lame horses aren't caused by bad luck.  They are caused by bad riding.
I.e. you did not ride the horse in such a way that was suitable to the
conditions and the level of fitness/schooling of the horse.

Does this mean that endurance horses need to be well conditioned and
well schooled?  Of course.  Is it unreasonable for the FEI to expect
that the best riders in the world on the best horses in the world are on
horses that are well conditioned and well schooled before showing up for
the world championship, and for countries to only field teams of horses
with riders that are well conditioned and well schooled?  I don't think
so.

And it certainly isn't unreasonble for the FEI to expect the best riders
in the world to KNOW when their horses are not fit to continue and to
not even ask for permission to do so.  Those that don't know are the
ones who should have their COC revoked.

kat
Orange County, Calif.



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