CRI questions

Wolgram's (bkwranch@cmn.net)
Sat, 22 Nov 1997 14:04:27 -0700

Well, either nobody knew or my "saddle surface area contact" quesiton was
not of much significance (and I'm not being sarcastic, it may not be of any
relative importance at all), so I'll try another question...This regards
the CRI. I was so excited to see the posts about it because the first time
I had one done was this summer (I've been doing competitive trail for two
years now and just did my first two endurance rides this fall). Anyway,
one of the CTR's I did had a vet judge from California who does a lot of
endurance ride vetting (he was terrific, by the way) and toward the end of
the second day he stopped the horses out on the trail and did the CRI. My
new Arabian mare who had not had as much overall conditioning on her yet as
my QH mare that my husband was riding got a 15/10 and my QH mare scored a
16/12, which the vet told us was fine. We stuck around the area for about
15 minutes to let our horses graze since we were ahead on our ride time,
and I was treated to a real eye-opener by watching a number of other horses
getting the CRI, horses that I knew that scored really well on soundness
and trail manners and ability coming up with 14/18's, 22/10's, 13/18's,
etc. So if I'm understanding this correctly, does this mean that they were
more stressed and/or tired at that point? On my 2nd endurance ride this
year I rode my Arab a lot faster than I had asked her to do in the past...I
was really worried when she had A's on everything else but a C on gut
sounds at the final vet check, so I need to learn how to improve that. She
got a 10/12 on her CRI within 30 min. after finishing, but still quiet in
her gut sounds. Within an hour she was eating fine and she never had any
trouble.
Would some of you please write some things on ridecamp (I hope publicly to
help all us newbies out here) about what the CRI does, what the different
numbers indicate, what is ideal vs. indicative of a possible problem, and
also what I can do to improve gut sounds. I would really appreciate it.
These last posts on the CRI have really got me turned on because I want to
learn everything I can about taking care of my horse especially on the
longer and faster paced rides in endurance. But next year I am going to
try to go Open in CTR and I know all this will really help me there too.
Thanks. Betty from Colorado