Re: RC: FEI Again

[Howard4567@aol.com]

Well, looks like I've done it again.  Opened up another can of worms and half 
of them fell into my lap and are crawling all over my body.  Yuck!

Yes, I know FEI is involved with other things besides endurance riding.  But 
it was just the endurance aspect of FEI that I was referring to.  I mean, 
does Steph let us talk about anything else besides endurance here on ridecamp?

Here's what bugs me and I'll just come right out and say it, plain as day.  
It's the UAE.  The Sheiks, the Sultans of Swing.  The Mafia Dons who buy up 
our best horses (they make you an offer you can't refuse) take them back 
home, run the crap out of them, treat the horses really well as long as they 
win (guess what happens to them when they don't win?), and the American 
riders continue to train and sell them horses.  And they're our best horses.  

What does all this have to do with FEI?  Maybe nothing except it's my 
understanding that UAE has a big say in how endurance FEI rides are run.  How 
can one little country have so much power here?  Well, duh, even this dumb 
redneck knows the answer to that one.  And this, basically, is what bugs me 
about FEI and why I made the comments I did.

The other reason I said what I did was I was having a really bad day.  One of 
my close relatives had just gotten arrested and I had spent the entire 
morning getting to know the Volusia County Jail system, a place I had never 
visited before either as a member of the "Club" or as a guest.  

The first thing I had to do to get my "cousin" out of jail was to attend a 
bond hearing.  My goal was to beg the judge to release him in my custody (can 
you imagine a judge doing this?) so the family didn't have to pay the Bail 
Bondsman a lot of money.  
Since it seemed like I was the only one in my family who had a valid credit 
card that still had some juice left, I was the one chosen to deal with the 
Bail guy and to get in front of the Judge and beg.  Lucky me.

Getting to see the inmates up close and personal while sitting in the back of 
the courtroom, with the friends and family of these people (who looked a lot 
like the guests on the Jerry Springer show), I got to see a part of American 
life that most of us want to avoid.  The entire experience made me very ill.  
Later that night I sat down and made a list of all the things I was doing 
that could even remotely come close to getting me arrested and put them on my 
refrigerator to remind me NOT TO DO ANY OF THEM.  And then I sat down in 
front of the computer and wrote what I did about FEI.

I digress, it's not horse related, so I'll stop there with my experience 
learning about our judicial system.  Needless to say, as I watched the judge 
predict the fate of these poor fools I just thought to myself, "Man, if only 
they had owned a horse at some point in their lives they might know better.  
They might have learned how to take care of a living creature that needs care 
and that experience might have helped them learn how to take care of 
themselves."

So, anyway, if I crossed the line with my previous FEI post I do apologize.  
I don't know enough about it to say what I did.  And, maybe, I'm wrong about 
the Sheiks and UAE running the endurance aspect of FEI.  And, maybe, I'm 
wrong about selling our horses to them, that it's not really such a bad 
thing.  Heck, we know the money is good.   Someone let me know please, 
obviously, I have no clue.

cya,
Howard