Do you really think that horses that have already “raced”
100 miles are truly “fit to continue” to do another 20 or 25 miles?
Should we even expect that of them? After doing that many miles, hasn’t “fit
to continue” in the past meant there are no problems currently? I’ve
read and heard from others at rides, that at some 100 mile rides, there are
very few top 10 horses that look like they’d go even another 2 miles. No,
not every 100 mile ride, but some of them. Should these horses not be given
completions then? Do we need to be conditioning our horses to be able to go 65
miles if we want to do 50s and get a completion? Condition
for 120 if we want to get a completion on a 100. I’d think we
might end up with even more horses suffering from fatigue if we did that. And
maybe people dropping out from AERC rides if they didn’t
have time to bump up their conditioning programs to that degree. There are some
of us who have more to do in life than just ride. If we truly expect “fit
to continue” to mean go on another 20 miles, as opposed to no problems
existing at the time, and don’t give completions to a horse has no
problems, but might develop them further down the trail if he had to go further,
I could see people dropping out of the AERC rides and leaving
it to the pros.
I know this is not what is not the proposal on the
table, but I think we do need to watch where we’re going,
especially when we start talking about not giving completions even though the
horse is okay at the end of the ride, but maybe couldn’t do another 10
miles.
Kathy
Jay wrote:
"Fit to continue" means that the horse has recovered well,
and is handling the ride to this point, and is not lame, and is not
metabolically compromised in any way, and is fit to go back out on trail and
continue... and could do another 20 or 25 miles!!!
