[RC] What constitutes a successful ride - Dawn Carrie - Susie Jones
I'm having a real problem
trying to figure out how to post this, since I
generally just peruse the digest... but I have a REAL problem
with the following statement by Dawn Carrie:
"The no horses treated - while I would definitely consider that important,
one cannot predict the level of stupidity riders will bring to the ride, and I
would not judge my ride a failure simply because a rider rode the hair off their
horse on a hot day."
This implies that if a horse needs to be treated
at a ride, it is the rider's fault. On some occasions, this may be
correct. But more often, it's a "shit happens" kind of thing. I
know. I've watched friends go through this and I've been there
myself. I rode my mare at a very conservative pace on a 50 miler in August
2005. We finished back of the pack and she vetted through the
finish check "just fine". 5 minutes later, she was pawing the ground
and acting REALLY uncomfortable. I wouldn't wish what we ended up going
through over the next couple of weeks on any horse/rider team. I almost
lost her. After reviewing everything that I'd done before/during/after the
ride, my vet felt that I had done nothing "wrong" (although when you add up all
the details "after-the-fact", I've come up with a LOT of stuff I'll do
differently in the future...).
I'd like to see people move away from the
tendency to "always blame the rider" when a horse has a problem. I know
that when it looked like I was about to loose my mare, a big concern was that
this "story" would end up on the internet and I'd end up being burned in
effigy. I guess that's what we get for being "totally connected" via
the internet. Personally, I think the internet often causes more harm
than good.... and contributes more mis-information than good-information to
those seeking knowledge.
