Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Title: RE: Reducing risk

By the way, do you know that at FEI level, the horses are during and after the ride under the responsiility of the Treatment vets. They must check regularly the horse and especially the one that were eliminated for serious metabolic issue during the night after the competition. And the morning after, horses are again controled by the vets who allow or not the rider to drive them back home.

In the same domain, when you get pulled, the vet may force you to head to the hospital (or the treatment vet) if he determined that the horse needs serious treatment.

Please dont take that badly, this is just informative, to feed your debate.

Leonard, Belgium

=====================================================================
Good post, Truman.

Preparing the horse properly and riding properly certainly is within the
purview of the rider/owner and each of us probably understands that.
I believe that there should be things under the purview of the AERC and
those things, I feel, include the need to standardize the
availability/administration of care for the horse in danger of losing its
life.  Right now a lecture to the rider with the horse in trouble does
nothing for the horse, so, perhaps, as a matter of entry into the ride, the
rider should be required to sign a statement of some type which would allow
the Head Vet to determine if measures need to be taken to safeguard the life
of the horse, and if so, He/She should have the latitude to administer the
life-saving care, irrespective of whether the owner of the horse deems it
necessary.  At some point, I believe responsibility for the well-being of
the horse is SHARED if the horse is exposed to conditions which might harm
it at an AERC event, particularly if veterinary services are provided as a
matter of policy...which they are.  I know the sensitive nature of this
proposal, but how other could it be handled?

"Who's going to pay for the treatment?", some will ask.  As members of the
AERC, I believe the rider/owner (implied consent to the rider), should be
held accountable.  As a matter of enforcement and collection of fees, I
imagine the inability to participate in future rides until such a debt is
recovered would, perhaps, motivate resolution.  Until such time as the fees
are collected, the AERC would need to compensate the Vet for services
rendered.  (This would make it incumbent on the organization to recover the
fees.)

Not wanting to delve too far into it (in this forum), I know of at least one
case in the last year which possibly fit the above scenario.

Fear of litigation retards the process, for the rider and the organizaiton,
and does nothing for the horse in trouble.

Frank