LD Miles

["guest@endurance.net" <guest@endurance.net>]

Suzanne Solis gaendurance@mindspring.com
I must voice my opinion about this very sensitive issue concerning LD and Endurance.
I really do believe that any healthy sound horse can be taken out of a pasture and ridden a slow 6-7 hour 25 miles.
After all how many pleasure riders do you see take a horse to the country for the weekend and ride all day long with heavy western saddles and huge saddle bags full of drinks and food for the rider. I realize that some of these horse do get into trouble, but many of them do not.
Therefore, LD is and always should be a separate division.

I also do not think that LD should recieve the top ten awards because I think that this tends to turn LD into a race when it is meant as a training tool, or to introduce a young horse to the sport.
After all, speed kills and why should we encourage a 4 yr old horse to run over that distance for a top ten award.

All LD mileage is recorded, it is only counted as a separate division.

Maybe the problem is in the naming, and this may tend to offend people.
We could call 25's novice and 50's open, or LD division and Open division.