Re: philosophy

[Abigail Aiyagari <abby1@itsa.ucsf.edu>]

Actually, Kerry, if you want to take it that far, we wouldn't ride the
horse at all, or keep him fenced in, or geld him, or anything else.
Anything we do with or for our horses has its pros and cons.  Horses in
nature don't use any other part of their body as much or fast as we ask,
either.  We can put shoes on to keep their feet from wearing, give them
joint supplements to help with the excess wear and tear on their joints,
ice their legs to take down the swelling from overexertion, etc...But at
some point don't you have to ask what is too much?  Because something
always gives in the end.  Most horses don't get retired because they are
old and they deserve it, they get retired because they get injured and
can't be used any more.  Do you draw your line between using a liniment
and using DMSO for counterirritation, do you draw it between oral joint
supplements and getting the horse's joints injected every month?  How
about between giving an injured or sore horse time off to heal, and buting
him up so you can keep riding?  I personally draw it between giving my
horse's feet the best trim and conditioning I can and seeing where that
takes me, and shoeing him so I can meet my goals.  I know that his feet
are probably the limiting factor, but that's just my choice. You're right
that there are plenty of good things we do for domesticated horses,
like immunizing them to keep them healthy and making sure that they always
have enough to eat.  We have to somehow balance that out with how much we
think the horse "owes" us for this.  Everyone is going to come to a
different conclusion about that, and our horses have to live with it
because they don't really have a choice.  Would they rather live with us
and have to work, or live out in the wild and risk an early death?  Who
knows.  I think horses tend to be pretty happy no matter what, as long as
they're not in pain, are well-fed, and have some buddies around.

For Tiffany:  I wasn't comparing shoes to steroids, I was saying that
increasing the strength of one part of the body unevenly relative to its
other parts may result in failure of another part.  The muscles are an
indicator that the body is doing too much; if the guy didn't use any
steroids, his muscles would get tired WAY before they could pull away from
the bone.  He may be able to use conditioning to get the same size muscles
he got from steroids, but it would take lots of time, and waiting is
something a lot of people don't want to do.  Yep, the horse's feet
probably start wearing too much well before the rest of the horse would
start giving out, but it's up to us to decide how much past the indicator
we want to go.  I don't want to go past it at all.  Maybe my horse's body
could go a lot farther than his feet, but I really don't want to find out.
If I feel the need to ride that much, I'll get a second horse--I have a
feeling his feet will take me pretty far, judging by how much I have to
trim!  :)  I'm not trying to tell anyone how they should manage their
horses, this was just meant to be a bit of brain fodder.


Happy trails,
Abby



Kerry kerrydykes@yahoo.com
Sorry, Abby, but that logic just doesn't fly.  Sure, we could all take the
shoes off and run our horses barefoot -- and very few would ever finish a
ride.  Because the horse was inherently flawed and the "artifical" help of
the shoe masked it?  Nah, because horses in nature don't use their feet as
much (or fast) as we are asking them to.

Take your reasoning to it's logical conclusion and we'll need to do the
following:

Stop using any feed other than grass hay
Stop electolyting
Stop supplementing
Don't use injectible glucosomine
Don't blanket after we ride them
Don't ice/wrap/poultice legs after riding them
oh yeah, stop immunizing them cause after all in nature only the fittest
(and luckiest) survive.

We condition our horses over time to withstand the rigors of the 50 mile
rides (and for those so inclined, the 100's).  Some horses are suited for
it, some aren't.  Getting a stone-bruise is not "the gods" way of telling
us to stop or we're gonna over-use the horse.  It's one of those little
"gotcha's" in life.  Putting on shoes/pad/boots simply improves your odds
of maintaining a sound horse.

Kerry