RE: RC: Stallions

["Maryanne Stroud Gabbani" <gabbani@starnet.com.eg>]

Hi Leah,
While everyone in Egypt is new to endurance and vet checks, about 75% of our
horses at our rides were stallions. This is just a local variation as
Egyptians don't like neutering animals and with the dust and all any
unnecessary surgery is a risk. Most of our boys are socialised quite young
and learn to work next to mares of every hormonal persuasion. Has Pagan been
around a lot of mares? We found that mares were the least of our stallions
worries. Sometimes if they were fairly fit, it was better to vet them in
earlier. People with more ride experience can tell you more. But among our
fit stallions, very few were vetted out for heart rate.

Maryanne Stroud Gabbani
Cairo, Egypt
gabbani@starnet.com.eg

-Intro to the problem:
	Here's my problem: (I mean, outside of the general you must be
crazy to ride a stallion at a first time event for the both of you):
He IS a stallion - gentle, submissive to humans, respectful - but when he
sees a mare he WILL react.  Oh, he's positively a gentleman about it,
polite and everything, but he loves to sing to his ladies.  I can handle
that, no problems there.

THE PROBLEM:
	But HOW in the world can I possibly get his heartrate down to
recoverable levels in the vet check if there are other horses parading
around??



Leah K. Peasley ------------------------------------ lkpeasley@ucdavis.edu