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Re: [RC] rider weight studies, part 1 - Sisu West Ranch

When this thread was active the first time I was severely chastised for expressing skepticism about some of the conclusions reached when I had not read and digested the journal articles posted on http://shady-acres.com/
 
I have since read the articles.  For a few of the assertions on Ridecamp of which I was particularly skeptical I could not find either data or anything in the conclusions about them.
 
The findings about body condition score appear to be very valid.  I suspect that they are universally applicable.  I have notice that during the last 20 years endurance horses do appear, on the average, to have a higher body condition score.
 
Statistically the weight of the horse increased the chances of a lameness pull.  This is significant at the .1% level (As I understand this area of statistics, this means that 0.1% of the time you would be wrong in concluding that heavier horses are more likely to go lame)  In general, I can readily accept this conclusion, with a possible question or two about the universal applicability.
 
I still have doubts about the universal applicability of some of the horse+rider weight findings.  The source of my problems are:
 
1. Tevis is a different ride than many rides.  In general it has more elevation change, and is significantly down hill.  The usual ride times are quite high.
 
2. As stated in the article the cannon bone circumference is practically unchanged with the weight of the horse.  Does this mean that it is impossible to find a suitable larger endurance horse prospect with bigger bone or that the larger horses selected and trained for Tevis were not selected for this trait?
 
 
3. I was not able to find in the published results any conclusion supporting the conclusion that TRW (total ride weight) is important.  in the 1998 study  the following appears "Table 2 shows mean values of RW, BW, RW/BW and TRW..."  Unfortunately, the table referred to does not contain a row corresponding to TRW.  I could not find the results of the statistical analysis of TRW.  It may be that one line in the table, and the results of the statistical analysis has been inadvertently left out of the article as published on the web.  This is indeed unfortunate, as it could be an important criteria for endurance prospect selection.
 
ED
Ed & Wendy Hauser
2994 Mittower Road
Victor, MT 59875
 
(406) 642-9640
 
ranch(at)sisuwest(dot)us

Replies
RE: [RC] rider weight studies, part 1, Kristen A Fisher