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[RC] Pull codes: What do we really want and/or need? - Sisu West RanchAfter reading the well thought out posts on the inherent problems with lameness grades, and by extension with grading of metabolic problems, I have had some thoughts on the whole thing.My basic question is: What do we really want the recorded pull information in the database to accomplish? I have come up with some possibilities, and welcome more and welcome comments on the possibilities 1. Punishment of riders who have their horses pulled. Indications that some want to punish riders of pulled horses are found in comments about riders using RO to disguise lame or metabolic pulls. In the past comments have also been made to the effect that potential sales of endurance horses are jeopardized if L or M pulls show up, again it is a punishment of the owner of a pulled horse by lowering its value. Much has been made of the percentage of pulls that are RO, and how there could not be this many riders who can not go on. The relevant percentage is the percent of starting riders that RO pull. My math, from remembered numbers, comes out at <1%. This does not seem unreasonable for an extreme sport with aging participants. 2. Protect the horses. I find this to be non-persuasive. An L or M horse is protected when it is pulled, irrespective of what the official record says later. We do not have a system that enforces rest, treatment, less demanding distances, or r slower speed after a pull. . Such a system would require a logbook like Australia or the UK. (I do not favor logbooks, but that is another story). 3. Research to protect horses in the future. Certainly a worthy goal, but I am not sure that enough information is collected to be actually useful. This is the source of my "feel good" comment a few days ago. We already know that some horses get L or M. since no other information is collected, it would take a major change in the incidence of L or M problems to be significant. I doubt that a tweaking of a rule, or procedure will ever produce enough change to be seen. Because simply putting a grade on L's and M's would not truly show what happened this would also likely be futile. I don't even know if an increase or decrease in pulls after a rule or procedure change would show that horses are better protected. If we truly want to learn more about how to prevent or treat L's or M's, we likely will have to spend the money to collect much more information after the fact. I understand that studies are in place this year to look at records of pulled horses and the horses around them.
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