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Here's why I think pull codes were less important in the past and 
why the accuracy of pull codes matters a lot today.

In the past few years - AERC committees have devoted much of their 
efforts to improving the safety and welfare of our horses.  The 
Education committee has done a lot to make more information 
available to riders concerning how to care for our horses before, 
during, and after rides, to condition them better, and to be alert 
for problems among others.

The Welfare of the Horse committee has spent a lot of time 
reporting on fatalities and trying to find a pattern in those 
fatalities that will decrease the number that do happen.

The members of Veterinary committee have authored numerous 
articles in Endurance news on how to observe your horse and 
provide or request veterinary care when needed in competition. 
The committee has improved reporting on our rides and standardized 
the knowledge needed in our vet judges in the certification 
program.  The committee members are dedicated to improving the 
welfare of our horses in our sport.

Other committees have contributed as well to the overall goal of 
making our sport safer for our equine partners.

Efforts like this have been done in the past as well but without 
an important component that we can now make available.

***That is data in a format that can be computer analyzed ****

AERC has had a good database on almost 200,000 rider/horse entries 
since 1995.  The problem is that until recently - it's not been 
used much at all.

The data didn't get analyzed for a number of reasons:

1.  Members with the skills to analyze it didn't have access to 
the data.

2.  There were very few members with the skills to analyze it who 
were also interested in doing the work.

3.  People were not sure how accurate the data was and whether it 
was the "right" data.

4.  Some of it was in paper form and not usable for computer analysis.

Members now do have access to the data with BoD oversight. 
Members with the skills involved have volunteered their time to do 
the analysis.  Forms (the Post Ride Statistical Report PRSR for 
example) that previously were in paper form have been migrated 
into data that goes into a database.

The usefulness of our vet card information is being scoped out by 
the research committee working with the vet committee.  The data 
from the cards is being entered into a database for analysis 
combined with the data from the PRSR.  I'm going to guess that we 
will find some of it useful and some not.  This work will likely 
lead to changes in the information we collect from vet cards.

Given these changes - the accuracy of the information that's 
collected at rides has become a lot more important.  If the data 
isn't being used - then accuracy isn't much of a factor.

But if we are committed to improving the safety and welfare of our 
horses before, during, and after rides by analyzing the data, 
having accurate data *now* to analyze is key to improving the 
results of our analysis.

One important part of that data is the pull code.

Lame and Metabolic are clear.  SF for surface factors was added to 
expand those options.

What does only RO tell us that's useful?  In my view - zero unless 
it's broken out accurately into categories.

If RO means there's something wrong with the rider or the rider 
simply doesn't want to continue and the horse is completely fine 
in both the view of the vet judge and the rider - that's one 
category.  It isn't a factor in the analysis of the horse data.

RO-L and RO-M enable us to indicate that's there's something 
involving the horse that the most knowledgeable person - the rider 
- knows or believes that the vet judge may not see in the very 
brief time spent with the horse.  This provides data on the horse 
to use in analysis by the Research, Veterinary, and WOTH committees.

If a RO pull is given to a horse that either is not fit to 
continue or not fit to continue in the rider's view - it removes 
important information that these committees depend on to improve 
the safety and welfare of our horses in our sport.

My bottom line here is that if we want to improve the care of our 
horses and decrease fatalities, we should make every effort to 
ensure the pull codes for our horses are accurate.  We should 
avoid letting our egos get in the way of providing information 
that may really help.  If your horse is pulled or you request a 
RO-M or RO-L - you should take the extra few seconds with the vet 
to agree on the pull code that is to be reported.  It should not 
be something you have to discuss later with the ride manager.

It really matters today and I believe we should do our best to 
support our committees in their work.

Mike










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