[RC] re: rule change proposal and other topics - Cindy Stafford
Sorry for the late chiming in on this topic, but am just playing catchup after getting home from work. I imagine most of this will be redundant, but it will make me feel better for throwing in my 2 cents on LD's.
First, thanks to the people who acknowledged the need for LD's and the promise that they won't go away. As one 'in between' endurance horses, I expect LD's will occupy my future once I find my next endurance horse.
I applaude the person(s) who are trying to do something constructive and think of a rule that might address the "problem" of novice riders over-riding their horses. Since I wouldn't have the expertise or experience to know if this is an isolated issue or common occurence, I don't want to imply that I think something needs to be done. But I would like to throw out a couple of issues to consider on the proposed rule change, if it goes for further consideration...
A novice ride meeting - great idea. But can we make sure the person providing information is worthy of doing so? Would this be the vet? I only bring this up, because I know some experienced endurance riders (with 100's or 1000's of miles on their resume), including one who was an RM, who I would not want mentoring or educating a novice rider. Not trying to single out individuals, but examples of their 'horsemanship' are riding intoxicated, physically colliding with other riders (rather than calling ahead that they were passing on the trail), bringing along a child riding with them, so young that the child couldn't steer the horse and the horse nearly walked off into a ravine, etc. So who would qualify to educate the novice riders? Or would there be a 'certification' procedure?
And this might be starting a tangent topic, but considering the examples above, performed by veteran 50 mile riders, perhaps we can agree that it isn't just the newbies that need educating? Please educate me, if I see some of these circumstances occuring, is there anything that can be done? Does the RM have the ability to do anything? Is riding drunk against AERC rules? I haven't found it if it is. What about minimum skills to ride? And how would you measure that?
And one more caution - if we are going to try and encourage newbie riders to do LD's slow and steady, then please caution ride staff about comments they make. The last couple LD's I've done, i wanted to do slow and steady for various reasons (riding borrowed horse with metabolic history; riding with buddy who had green horse; riding a rehabbed horse, etc.). A P&R volunteer scoffed at me when I came in with low pulse, "Why aren't you riding faster? Your horse can take it". When I rider opted out of a very muddy ride, out of concern of keeping my horse sound, the vet said I should keep riding, my horse pulsed in low and no one else was quitting. Because I'm not competitive, I didn't change my mind and follow their 'advice'. But i wonder what result their comments would have had with a competitive newbie rider? Not saying these people were saying something wrong, I"m positive the comments were good natured, but if we are going to try and encourage slow and steady, let's be careful with comments?
sorry for the long post and for muddying the waters with other topics. Please forgive my ignorance if these topics have been hashed before. I will go back to lurking and continuing my education. Hope to share the trails with you sometime soon (and I promise to yield the trail to the 50 milers, jsut warn me when you're coming up on my tail :)).
