Re: spongeing at camp/IAHA Rides

["(Joyce DeVries)" <jdevr@mail.dave-world.net>]

 > 
> BTW--I had no difficulty whatsoever separating out the horses at the
Region
> III Championship, even with sponging and proper care.  I was aided by the
fact
> that ride manager Rita Schlimm had designed a course of appropriate
difficulty
> and assigned the correct speed to it to challenge the horses without
overdoing
> them, making my job easier.  When courses are properly designed for the
course
> and judges are willing to really examine the horses, artificial things
like no
> sponging are not needed.
> 

Heidi,

Found your note on 'having no difficulty separating our the horses at the
Region III Championship'  interesting.  We try and attend all of the IAHA
CTR rides that we can (within a 8-10 hrs drive).  Our complaint has always
been the '44 bpm = 0 points criteria.  Most of the IAHA CTR's (at least in
the Midwest) are not properly designed so as to stress the horses enough to
show who is actually the best horse.  There are quite often ties and then
discrepency as to who actually one the ride.  Now the IAHA Championship
event in GA was GREAT!!!!  Very tough course, definately split the 'men
from the boys' so to speak.  

Wondering if anyone else has encountered this problem/thought.  We would
like to have the criteria changed to at least 40 bpm = 0 points.  Or better
yet 36 bpm = 0 points.  That would at least give a little more advantage to
the best conditioned horses.  We have noticed too many under-conditioned
horses competing and doing fairly well because of the high heart rate
criteria, making it slightly unfair to those who have done their
conditioning and/or have superior horses.  

If it is too easy to compete, and some people do well with
under-conditioned horses, they eventually end up with lame horses or worse
yet, horses in trouble.  And isn't this what we DON"T want??  Sure it is
great to see newbies come to a ride (expecially a champship) and do well,
but they should get there and do well by learning to do their homework and
conditioning their horses properly.  Not by pulling their horses out of the
pasture, taking them to a ride, placing in the top 5 and thinking that they
really have a great horse and continuing to use this 'non-conditioning'
"let's to win" attitude.

Just wondering what others think about this...........