I shall now keep my mouth shut. It was a bit of a knee jerk
reaction. Thanks for enlightening me. Beccy, who needs to go climb under a rock
now.
In a message dated 5/24/2005 6:10:33 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time,
kathleenmarie@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
I really hesitated before I
replied to the Suicide race posting but I felt I had to for several
reasons. I don’t believe Ridecamp is the appropriate place to start a
campaign against another horse sport. Before passing judgment you might
want to learn some more balanced information about the Suicide race. I
live in Okanogan just south of Omak and have seen many Suicide races over the
years. There are definitely dangers involved; however, it is a
controlled race with qualifications for the riders, horses, limits on number
of horses running the course and veterinary controls. It is a
traditional Native American right of passage. It was not invented for
the rodeo; years ago the rodeo organizers invited the tribal members to bring
a race to the Stampede. The horses that compete are bred, trained and
conditioned for the races. They are as eager at the start of the race as
any endurance horse is at the start of their race. If you look at the
results from year to year you will see many horses in the top four places over
the course of several years along with many jockeys with long career
records. Last year there was a terrible accident and horses were
lost. It was very sad and their owners and riders were devastated.
It is NOT an every year occurrence. It is actually more common for
jockeys to be injured than horses.
I am not necessarily a huge
fan of the Suicide race or of rodeo but I think it is unwise to start
attacking other people’s horse sports. Over the years (I have enduranced
since 1983) I have met people who think it is cruel to ride a horse 50-100
miles in one day. I recently had a conversation with someone who thought
multi-day rides on one horse were extremely cruel. Endurance horses have
been known to have career ending injuries; they have been known to die.
If someone wanted to take statistics on treated horses/deaths etc I am sure
they could make endurance look bad. We know our sport has strived to
become safer over the years (CRI and fit to continue etc) but to an outsider
it could still look like we are callous to our horses’ welfare by “pushing
them to run 100 miles in a day”. The Suicide race organizers have also
worked to make the race safer over the last several years and I am sure will
continue to do so. Be careful of throwing stones when you live in a
glass house people.
