Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Bruce Weary wrote:

>   Dear Peggy--
> Thank you, thank you, for mentioning "horses being over ridden and 
> crashing" in LD rides and that remedial measures have been taken to 
> help prevent such from happening. All I'm really saying is that it can 
> still happen to a novice in an LD, and that the temptation to go too 
> fast can be inadvertantly encouraged by the fact that BC, a coveted, 
> sought after award, uses ride time/placing in  its calculation. 

Any horse can crash. A horse ridden at the end of the pack by an 
experienced rider can crash. In the past 16 years I've been to a lot of 
rides and seen a lot of horses hooked up. I've seen plenty of 100 mile 
horses and plenty of 50 mile horses. I've been at two rides where horses 
died at the ride and one where the horse died at the clinic afterwards - 
all 50 mile horses. In the 16 years I've seen two LD horses treated. One 
was at a ride where it was 95 degrees and muggy in FL sand. The rider 
had ridden in the first endurane ride ever held in FL and was quite 
experienced. He just under estimated the conditions. A few liters of 
fluid and he was fine. The other LD horse treated was an experienced 
horse and experienced rider who too almost the whole time to do the LD. 
The horse recovered fine with some fluids.

Granted I don't get to every ride and may have missed a few. I missed 
the 100 mile ride where 7 of 56 or one out eight of the startes were on 
IV's. However, I get to a representative number and I have seen enough 
to fell confident that the percentage of treatments in both LD and 
longer distances are representative of what I have seen. From what I 
have seen the percentage of metabolic problems and treatments in LD's is 
much lower than in the longer distances.

I the SE we have probably more LD riders than any other region and I 
sure don't see the over abudance of treatments in LD compared to the 
longer distances. 

Truman

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

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!!

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=