Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Hi Carol -- I know my viewpoint doesn't always agree with others. The way I 
feel about it personally is very simple. When I take my horse to an 
endurance ride, he gets there in good shape, sound and has no injuries and 
is metabolically stable. Then, when I come home from that ride and my horse 
is not in a similar condition -- I am responsible. I know that there are 
certainly times when things do happen that are beyond our control. However, 
learning how to manage those things so that you aren't always running up 
against "things out of our control" is part of the game. I have had all of 
the things happen to me that you mention above and then some. If my horse 
gets a rock in his frog, then I did put it there because I took him to the 
ride.   In some cases it may not be because of what happened at the ride, 
but something that happened well before the ride and if we were paying 
attention like we should have been, we wouldn't even have gone to that 
particular ride in the first place. If a horse trips late in a ride on a 
branch or a rock or a dip, was it really because of that particular 
obstacle, and if so, how can you explain the horse going thru a hundred of 
those same kinds or even more technical obstacles all day long before that 
point? It's most likely because the rider and/or horse are tired and not 
quite paying as much attention and are not moving with as much agility and 
grace as they may have been earlier in the ride.

The way I look at it is this---- As I've gotten more experienced I've 
learned to avoid a lot of the ___ happens type situations. If ____ happens 
on a regular enough basis to be a justifiable cause for failure to complete 
an endurance ride, then my failure rate should have gone up, rather than 
down.  I watch riders like Dave Rabe who consistently is successful on 
multiple horses year after year, or Julie Suhr to seems to complete the 
Tevis an extraordinarily high % of the time.  This is why I don't really 
believe that luck has a whole lot to do with it (tho it does play a part). 
Rather, they just have learned what to do and what not to do.

Karen
in NV

P.S. for you guys worried about stone bruises, think about using Easyboots 
:-)  They really do work!



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REAL endurance is eating egg salad sandwiches for 3 days straight! Heidi
Sowards... but then again... REAL endurance is riding behind someone who
ate egg salad sandwiches for 3 days straight!
~ author unkown

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