Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

  It's been fun reading the memories put forth about the 1987 ROC, and 
other stories about the "good old days", as I am old enough to remember 
some of them. However, I disagree with the opinions put forth that there 
has been no significant progress in horse welfare measures since that 
time. Here is a short list of things that have come into existence since 
the 1987 ROC:
    1) The Welfare of the Horse Committee, of which I'm honored to be a 
member.
    2)  The Pride Project
    3)   The AERC fund that will pay for a post-mortem on any horse 
that dies at a ride.
    4)  The statistics that show that far and away the majority of 
horses that die at rides are either being ridden well within their 
limitations, or die from some occurrence entirely unrelated to riding. 
(Fractured leg from a kick, CVAs, falls, blister beetle poisoning, 
spontaneous spinal fracture, and the list goes on)  Oddly, the "racing" 
horses don't seem to die very often. 
     5) The post mortem results that show that almost none of the 
horses reflect siginificant ulcerative disease.
     6) Susan Garlinghouse's study that showed the correlation between 
body condition score and completion rates.
      7) Complete death reports written by a certified AERC 
veterinarian and published in Endurance News.
      8)  WSTF recently raised the minimum participation age to 6 for 
the Tevis, and instituted mileage prerequisites for the rider before 
entering.
      9)  There has been a steady decrease in pulse criteria, now most 
commonly 60 or even 56.
      10)  A recent rule proposal that will likely pass, will require 
that a horse meet criteria within 30 minutes of the finish as opposed to 
60 minutes. This will influence those who race harder later in the ride 
when fatigue is at it's greatest.
     I could go on.
  I have heard it said that when we are convinced of an opinion, we 
will accept weak evidence in it's favor, and ignore strong evidence to 
the contrary.
  Cindy Collins said: " I do believe that good people with good 
intentions are trying hard to make things safer for horses...just not 
sure they've accomplished that much in changing people's basic 
personality and behavior."
I think there are only so many human factors we can control or 
effectively influence.   Is there anyone else who agrees that the job of 
AERC is "changing people's basic personality and behavior"?     This 
ought to be a lively discussion...............  Dr Q
  




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