Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

I agree with you sooooooo totally.  I have lost 2 young promising endurance prospects  at our place in the last 10 years from "accidents".  One likely broke his neck getting cast in a stall at night and the other blew out his hock playing in a flat, hole free pasture, (just pivoted wrong on one back leg, witnessed event).   I have re-lived both these events over and over, and I really don't think either one was preventable.  Should I have kept the horse that got cast in a pasture with lots of room?  Should I have kept the horse that blew out his hock,  stalled?  

Am I a irresponsible horse owner? NO.  Should I be banned from endurance because they were bred and raised to be endurance horses? NO

I think differently about losing a horse due to endurance than I used to.  I will always put my horse's welfare first,  but will not obsess about them dying at a ride.  This statement does not mean I think
 horse deaths are OK.  Just puts it into prospective for me.

Patty

k s swigart <katswig@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> .
>
>
> It was that statement from him that helps me to understand that horses
> die all the time from all kinds of things (my horse died "because" I
> turned him out to play with his son????).
>
> This obsession that so many people here have with fatality rates and
> horses dying at endurance rides is the WRONG thing to be focusing on
> with respect to welfare of endurance horses.  The question to ask is not
> "does doing endurance kill horses?" because the answer to that is
> "probably not any more than just being horses does."  But rather the
> question to ask is, "Does being an endurance horse reduce the quality of
> life of the horse?"

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