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Re: [RC] [Guest] criteria and pulses at checks - Heidi SmithWith all the talk on Ridecamp about horses getting into trouble. I would be curious to know why horses have 30 minutes at each vet check to reach criteria. In my opinion, if a horse takes 30 minutes to recover how can it be fit to continue? I am open minded and would be interested to hear any opinions why I may be wrong. Instead of lowering the criteria which seems like it may punish non arabs why not shorten the time to reach criteria. Please do not e mail me privately but post on ridecamp. I am having problems retrieving e mails at this time. I tend to agree that horses that take 30 minutes to reach pulse criteria are apt to be marginal at best. That said--shortening the interval could be more of a "breed punishment" than setting the lower pulses. In some cases it does take "other breeds" a few more minutes to reach a given criterion than it does those Arabs that are bred for the sport. The important thing here is to observe a "progressive recovery" no matter WHAT the breed. A horse with a slower recovery curve WILL reach the lower numbers. It may just take a bit longer. But a horse in trouble DOES tend to hang. Many of us DO look at the fact that a horse took a longer time to recover than he should have--and many times we have these horses spend extra time at a hold as a result, just to see what will happen. And in many cases, these are also the horses that end up being "out" due to parameters other than pulse--lameness, no gut sounds, etc. I can't begin to count the number of times I've gone ahead and examined those very horses, and the reason why the pulse was hanging becomes crystal-clear as soon as the exam is done. Pulse DOES tend to correlate to a wide range of other problems. Heidi =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 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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