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RE: [RC] A Much Better Proposal - David LeBlancI'll give you a counter-point that's down the middle. My
horse had a fairly scary colic at a ride early in 2004, and ended up on an IV.
Turned out to be a gas colic. As you know, I'm pretty risk-adverse, especially
with Laser. I'm fortunate to have one of the better endurance vets as our vet,
and I consulted with him to follow up after the ride. I was prepared to give him
a lot of time off, and the vet gave me the advice that it would be OK to go to a
ride that was 3 weeks after the initial problem. I took his advice, and for good
measure rode with Mary - I always finish riding with Mary - and everything was
just fine. If I had been dumb about it and not ridden cautiously, who knows? We
may have gotten different advice if it had been a muscle cramp or
thumps.
While a rule like that might help some
horse somewhere, I'd prefer to leave it up to the rider and their vet to do
the right thing depending on the individual circumstance. Another point to
consider is that if a horse is marginal, a 30 day timeout might be enough to
cause some riders to not pull when they should.
I don't know about a rule change, but my advice is to
consult a vet (unless you are a vet), and assuming they're a good vet, take
their advice, and if in doubt, back off.
Another word of warning - when he colicked, he'd just
passed a vet check with great scores conducted by a really good vet who vets a
lot of rides, but I knew something was wrong and took him back.
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