Ridecamp: Re: [RC] Thoughts

I can't imagine offering anything but sympathy to any dedicated rider
whose horse drops out from underneath him. If we're to have any kind of
success in this sport, our horses have to be our very best buddies.
While I agree that we need to review our rules and policy to ensure that
everything possible is being done to ensure the horse's safety, we will
always have to deal with the possibility of sudden death.
I have seen a stallion drop dead after breeding a mare. Should his owner
stop breeding horses because of the stress on her boys? I also know of a
young dressage rider whose Olympic-class stallion snapped a cannon bone
doing a turn on the forehand. Damn, maybe the dressage people had better
outlaw the turn on the forehand. Then there was the steer roper whose
horse broke a hind leg on a sudden turn. OK. We'll outlaw steer roping,
too, except back in the hills where nobody can see real cowboys hard at
work.
Overall, I believe the measures endurance riders take and the care we
show for our animals has created for us a track record that would be the
envy of other horse sports, including rodeo, flat racing, chuckwagon
racing, three-day eventing, competitive driving, show jumping ....
Endurance horses, in my opinion, are the healthiest of the bunch thanks
to the constant monitoring of their life signs and the efforts to keep
them in peak condition without reliance on large quantities of drugs and
steroids.
All that lives will some day die. As my neighbour stated when one of my
youngsters broke his leg, everyone who owns livestock must learn to deal
with dead stock.
Let's show some support and care for the people who have lost their best
friends. Leave the criticism for the face in the mirror.

Brenda Kossowan

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