OK, I know I'm going on and on with this topic (similar to one of my
verbose stories), but, after this, I'll shut up, Promise (for awhile
anyway).
Heidi, finally, something from your heart. I knew it was in
there. Sorry, jk.
But, I do understand. It's got to be awful, because, if you had the
chance, as a ride vet where this happens, I'm sure you wish you had pulled the
horse. And, I know, there are riders out there (as a vet you might think
I'm one of them), who seem to be a little dangerous, and just thinking about all
that could possibly go wrong at an endurance ride would keep me up at
night. Then, comes the ride, where something really bad happens. A
horse dies. It's rare, but it does happen.
It's my belief that the Horse Welfare Committee would relieve the Vet
Committee of making findings here. If a horse dies at a ride the Ride
Manager must do extra work. They all know about this and it kicks
in. Their main job will be to find the riders who rode with the rider who
rode the horse that died. It's not that hard to do. Then, you get
their names, AERC #, and their statement. A statement is required even if
it only says, "I saw nothing that would have affected the subsequent death of
this horse."
If a horse dies at a ride, changes are made, extra work required, and, yes,
it might be a bit unpleasant for some Ride Managers. But, for the sake of
the horses who compete in this sport, is it really too much to ask?
>Come on, seven horse deaths and there are no
recommendations to fix anything with any of those incidents? We're
afraid to offend someone? If you've ever been to an endurance ride where
a horse has died (I've been to two already) you know that the whole experience
is offensive. The fun had just been sucked out of the ride and it
creates a sickening feeling deep inside your stomach when it does happen no
matter what the circumstances.
Howard, if you think the fun is sucked out of the
weekend for everyone else, you ought to be one of the ride vets. The
ones I've had to deal with (damn few, thank heavens) left me sleepless for
weeks and I still have them indelibly imprinted in my brain. But it is
TRUE, Howard, that sometimes there AREN'T any things you can second-guess and
recommend to be done differently. What can I second-guess about the
horse that had been in excellent health and doing just fine until an
encapsulated tumor ruptured? What can I second-guess about the rider who
wandered off the trail a bit (still in sight of it) and tried to cross a bog
by a culvert and had the horse get bogged down under the lip of the culvert
and break a leg? (No reason for management to have marked it as a
hazard--it wasn't on the trail, per se--the trail went down a nice forest road
that went solidly across the culvert.) Or the one where the horse
dropped dead from a cerebral aneurysm, just out from a leisurely
start. Yeah, I CAN make comment about the one I dealt with where a lady
really did ride her horse to death. And I did. Loudly. And
our vetting procedures and protocols changed as a result, and made
it easier for us to stop people like her before they can do their horses
in. Try as we might, we will NEVER make the death rate zero--we can't,
because horses die as a result of hidden things all the time. Should we
do our best to understand WHY horses die? You betcha. Should we do
everything in our power to prevent every single death that we CAN
prevent? You betcha. But we have to also know when to say that no
matter how much we knew in advance, we couldn't have prevented this one or
that one. That's called reality. And no degree of emoting is going
to change that reality.
