Here is my opinion on lowering the criteria to "save" horses. At every AERC ride we have 30 minutes to reach criteria. So lowering the criteria to save horses is really only going to work if a horse takes longer than 30 minutes to recover and is pulled for non recovery. Yes, a lower HR criteria will keep marginal horses from continuing especially those that are borderline recoveries close to the 30 minutes.
As far as lower HR criteria go....For riders who put the horse first, they will adjust their strategy to meet the lower criteria. But of course, they would be doing that for normal recovery criteria. For riders that do not put the horse first, all they will do is go faster the next leg to make up for the extra time they "lost" having to recover to a lower criteria. In the case of Mariposa, would having a lower recovery criteria keep the "cowboy" from pushing his horse? Was that horse so marginal as far as recovery at the previous check that this would have made a difference?
From a lot of the reports I have read and what I have learned about horses that get into trouble, the majority are not borderline recovery cases in the sense that it took the horse 25 minutes to meet criteria at the previous vet check or 55 minutes at the finish. Many horses seem to have an average or above average recovery time and still run into problems.
Sometimes I think the sport puts too much emphasis on the HR recovery number. This is really a relative number. Some horses, because of genetics, are normally in the low 50s when they get into a vet check without even having to slow down coming in to the check. Some of these same horses are being stressed when it takes them 5-7 minutes to recover to 64 or 60. But of course, other than an observant rider/owner who knows what is "normal" for his horse, who would ever think that horse was slow to recover? I think a CRI is a much better measurement of stress then just the HR alone.
So, in my opinion, lowering a HR recovery for new riders is really not going to give the desired results. Unless the horse ends up being pulled for non recovery, a rider with a race brain is just going to go out on the next leg and try to make up time or catch up at the expense of the horse.
Kim Fuess
AERC #6648
Lower HR criteria -- I understand the objection. The two pulls I've had on my horse is simply because he was too excited to come down, so I'm actually taking the chance of shooting myself in the foot here. I'd be happy to hear from some vets. I'm perfectly willing to drop this one if the concern is that it would penalize horses that are new, but are not being overtaxed.
