Ron White said it best " You can't fix
stupid". All these rule changes , qualifications sanctions etc will not
prevent people getting over excited and over riding their horses. Ask
yourself if you would have gotten involved with this sport if they piled on a
bunch of crap like this when you first started? If people want to push too
hard and over use their horses, no amount of rules can fix that. For example,
Minimum time on this ride is 4 hours for me? Ooops here is the camp
in sight and I have 1/2 hour to go? No problem. I will just get off my
horse and tie him to a tree for 30 minutes, while I go grab a couple of
beers...You can't fix stupid, you can only hope to contain it. We
have great Vets who do a good job off watching for this type of event. They
can't get them all. Sometimes stuff just happens. Sometimes it happens to idiots
who abuse their horses, sometimes it happens to careful riders trying to do the
best for their horses.
Remember how nervous everybody got about the Santa
Fe ride? Remember how concerned people were over a possible trail of dead
horses from New Mexico to Missouri from new riders asking too much of their
horses? Talk to the vets who were there and
others on the ride. The " newbies" did just fine.. The horses that had to be
treated were almost totally those belonging to experienced endurance riders.
The horses that died were not ridden by wild west cowboys on their first
endurance ride spurring them and whipping them. Experienced endurance riders
were responsible for that one.
Patrick had the right idea in expressing his
displeasure to the guy who over rode his horse. He just didn't deliver the
message in an appropriate format. I will be honest and admit that under the same
circumstances, my actions might have been the same. If you saw a guy beating a
child bloody with his belt, wouldn't you demand that he give up his belt? My
understanding is that Patrick demanded the guy give up his spurs, which he
had proven unable to use properly. If others had spoken to that
rider on the trail earlier in a positive manner maybe it wouldn't have
gotten to the stage it did.
