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RE: [RC] Percentage body weight (was: Dainty horses) - heidi
I don't disagree with you--conformation (including appropriate substance
for the horse's size) is paramount to staying sound, and by conformation, I mean the whole horse, not just the legs. But conformation was not a part of this particular study (and I'm not sure how to quantitatively analyze it, although experience tells me it is hugely important).
FWIW, it is far easier to find well-conformed Arabians in the
900-1000 lb range than it is in larger sizes--that is within the norm for the breed. While there are a few larger well-conformed Arabs out there, one is more apt to find the conformation in larger horses of other breeds that are just larger by their very nature.
That does not negate the combined weight factor, though--and by your own
observations, lameness is a limiting factor for both heavy riders and heavy horses (ergo, if you put a heavy rider on a heavy horse, you are simply compounding the problem). Again, I suspect that both the soft tissues and the boney tissues are not "designed" to take that much repetitive concussion, over a certain amount of weight.
Intuitively, it makes sense that the rider weight to horse weight ratio
will come into play at some point to impact completion rates--all that one can conclude on that front from Susan's study is that it doesn't come into play on a tough technical course at the ratios that were available for study, the most extreme of which had the rider weighing a bit over 31% of the horse's weight. In other words, we just don't know at what point it DOES come into play--although one might not expect a 600 lb. horse with a rider tacking in at 300 lbs to have a good day of it...
Heidi
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