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RE: [RC] rules and protecting the horse - David LeBlancBob Morris said: You stated <<<I also think that horse death is too rare to be a useful measure. You could study endurance-related horse death for 5 years before you got a big enough sample to be significant. Metabolic pulls are more common, and measures taken to reduce metabolic pulls, and especially metabolic pulls that require treatment will help reduce preventable horse deaths.>>> With metabolic pulls amounting to about 2% of the riders entered in endurance competition, the number is still not every large for analysis. I'm coming at it from the aspect of statistics - about 30 is what is considered enough to come to a valid conclusion, assuming that conditions are otherwise good. I think 2% of the starts comes to a number that from the statistics standpoint is huge. The greater problem is that we seldom, if ever, have knowledge of the extent of that metabolic problem. It could be ranging from the simply did not want to eat or drink to the total collapse of the horse. The details for classification are missing. That's the second part, and gets back to what Truman was saying a couple of months ago. You can have plenty of samples and no data, or bad data, and you can't draw any conclusions. We're in 100% agreement on this one. We have to have more information, and there has to be some way to get it without seriously inconveniencing the vets and RMs. I have proposed a mandatory 30 day rest for any horse that experiences a metabolic pull. But riders protest that as to strict. "what about my horse that just would not come down to pulse criteria?" "It was OK the next day, why would I need to rest it for 30 days?" Could be - I've seen cases where it was too strict. There needs to be some discretion, I think by the vet. I don't think it is a bad proposal overall, but it needs some discussion. Automatic measures are tough to do right. Well, we have to draw the line some place. The competitive venue, the ride site is not the time or place to perform a full work up on the horse. OK, let's look at a couple of scenarios - horse runs away with you for 15 miles, pulses down (barely), CRI is terrible, vet is on the fence, and the rider decides that he's had enough that day. Horse drinks home water back at the trailer and is fine. Second case - rider is running way up front, horse is clearly in trouble, rider insists nothing is wrong, horse is pulled and needs treatment. You've got that, and everything in-between. I think the ride vet is best qualified to sort it out, but giving the ride vet the tool of requiring time off is a good step. Right now, all they can do is pull you from one ride. So, what do we do? We cannot intelligently asses the status of the sport with out knowledge of the problems. We cannot get this knowledge with out detail. We cannot get this detain unless the riders, the Ride Managers and the Vets co-operate in supplying it. A breakdown in any one of these entities and the entire set is not valid. Your Suggestions? We need data - in order to get data, we need to find some RMs and vets who will agree to take extra notes in a controlled format. We don't need data from every ride for a year - if the problem is 2% of the starts overall, we only need about 4-5 big rides to get enough to make a decent sample. Then you run into a problem with sample skew - what was the weather that day, terrain, etc. So now you need some more - and you probably don't want results only valid for big rides. I think we could get enough data to find out something interesting and scientifically valid from a couple of dozen rides. Also be good to do 3-4 rides in each region to avoid regional skew. You'd also like to get a control sample - you need some base data from random riders. For example, there may be a correlation between metabolic problems and distance to ride, but you won't know that until you compare a sample that did have problems and a sample that didn't. Next step is to decide what data to collect - I don't know what this should be, though I can guess the obvious ones, like temp. Vets need to define this. We also need to know whether gathering the data will incur any extra expense and budget for it - this also depends on how you do it - if you send a vet to a ride especially to evaluate this, we have to pay for that. If people just fill out forms, that can be done at very little expense. Then we need people to examine the data and try and see what it means. I can do at least some of this - all that grad school ought to be useful for something. I'm sure there's others out there with experimental design and statistics experience - a collaborative effort would be best. It would also be good if we found a professor who was interested and would see it through to publication. Then we try and see what the numbers all mean, which is the fun part. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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