Re: RC: Re: volunteering

[Onefarmgirl@aol.com]

I fear that behind these enjoyable stories is a real issue for our growing 
sport, so hang with me as I ramble along here.   As someone who has spent 
years teaching nursing students how to palpate and/or ausculate a heartbeat 
or pulse, I'm here to tell ya, it's not intuitive, and for some folks it can 
be quite difficult to learn.  In addition, until one has a fair bit of 
experience, it's a skill that deteriorates under stress.    In the endurance 
world,  when attempting to listen to the heartbeat, you have to add in the 
variables of a working horses' respiratory noise, high ambient noise in the 
vet check, and almost always poor quality stethoscopes.    When attempting to 
palpate, you have to consider the horse may be restless, stamping, pouring 
sweat, etc. 

Of course many volunteers at rides are highly experienced, but hey, many are 
also draftees from the previous day  :-).     I'm sure ride management does 
their best to assign tasks to those best suited to the job.   But get real - 
we know volunteers get pressed into service with very little prep!

This is not a big deal in situations where there is not a keen competition.   
But increasingly, riders are counting seconds at that pulse check.   Many 
times they have invested hours and hours and hours into training that they 
want to have pay off in rapid pulse drops.   For the rider, then,  it's an 
incredible frustration to stand helplessly while someone fumbles and fiddles 
and stares at their watch, while the competition gets cleared through the 
check.   Meanwhile, some hapless volunteer, good-heartedly lending a hand, is 
feeling the eyes burning into the back of their neck and noting the tapping 
toes, and feels the pressure to say something...... just say a number.....   
anything to get out of the squeeze.

Given the realities of assigning volunteers and all, I don't know a perfect 
solution, but I do have two suggestions.    First, whenever possible, anyone 
who is going to be doing pulse checks during the ride should do them as 
horses vet in.   Doing twenty or thirty checks should help lock-in/refresh 
the skill.   Secondly (and I think more importantly) someone has to stress to 
the volunteers that it is COMMON to have problems with some horses.   They 
really need to have it reinforced that the thing to do when they can't get a 
pulse is to ask for help!    Not to get too deeply into the psycho-babble 
here, but people have to get permission to admit it when they need a hand.   
Otherwise, as two of our most illustrious members have demonstrated, they 
just fib  :-)

Just my 2 cents - anybody else have ideas about how to minimize this problem?

pat farmer