Brenda, Very well said. Life has no guarantees for any living thing. Accidents, defects, quirks of nature are all part of life, along with good health and long life. We all hope that we have the later and that our beloved spouses, friends, horses, dogs, etc... all have the same. But life just doesn't go that way. If you know you have done your best by your horse, but they just drop out from under you. That is just how life goes sometimes. It is so easy for someone who has never had something that terrible happen to then to point fingers and assume that proper care was not given. But most of the time that just isn't the case. As the saying goes, S**t happens. So before you assume, speculate, condemn or pass judgment, walk a mile in the shoes of the person you are pointing a finger at. Becky Rohwer ----- Original Message ----- From: Brenda L. Kossowan Sent: Sunday, October 13, 2002 1:30 PM To: ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: 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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