Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

heidi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> In other words, Joe, he is not "fit to continue."  The very name of our 
> post-ride check implies that the horse is NOT in risk of getting into 
> trouble if he goes on.  So maybe we should rename our post-ride check 
> and call it "completed the ride but might not be fit to continue..."
>  
> Heidi

Did you even read what I wrote?

At an AERC endurance ride, after you cross the finish line you have one 
hour in which to present your horse to the vet for a post-finish exam. 
If that exam finds that your horse is fit to continue, you have 
completed the ride.  If that exam finds that your horse is not fit to 
continue, you are disqualified.  Period.

> PS:  If "research has shown..." then why do you keep telling us that 
> there is no substantive evidence that horses that are deemed "fit to 
> continue" should recover within 30 minutes?  Seems like a pretty 
> circular argument. 

There is research (like the oft-cited French study) and experience that 
shows that a horse that takes longer than 30 minutes to recover is at 
significantly greater risk of GETTING INTO trouble if stressed further, 
such as by going on down the trail.  For this reason we don't allow 
horses that don't recover in 30 minutes at a vet check to go on, whether 
their vet examination shows them to be fit to continue (at that point) 
or not.

There is no need for that ADDITIONAL requirement at the finish, where 
the horse is not going on whether he is disqualified or not.  The vet 
exam is sufficient. There is no research that shows that such an 
additional requirement would be beneficial, just a "gut feeling" among 
some people.

One final time:  you do not complete a ride if your horse is found to be 
not fit to continue.  No one who's posted here wants to change that.

Oh, a little anecdotal story.  I pulled from my two 100-mile starts last 
year, the first due to an honest misjudgment, the second due to my 
rampant stupidity.  In both cases, Sanshra recovered to 64 within a few 
minutes.  In both cases, I believe he would have passed the vet exams as 
fit to continue (although marginally).  In both cases, I knew that if I 
went on he would soon be NOT fit to continue, and needing treatment. So, 
in both cases I pulled him myself.  The moral of this is that pulse 
recovery does not tell the whole story.

>     I said I wanted to wind this down, but after going to bed I kept
>     thinking about it and realized that there is a point that no one has
>     addressed, to my knowledge.  It has to do with the reason that a horse
>     that doesn't recover within 30 minutes at a vet check is not allowed to
>     continue.
>
>     Research has shown that a horse who's pulse does not recover within 30
>     minutes is at risk of getting into trouble if subjected to additional
>     stress, by going on down the trail.  That does not mean that a horse
>     who
>     takes longer than 30 minutes is already in trouble -- he may or may not
>     be, a full vet exam is necessary to determine that.  But he is at
>     increased RISK of GETTING into trouble if he goes on. 

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

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!!

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