Re: spongeing at camp/IAHA Rides

["Stephanie Wind" <wind@visionsofthewind.com>]

I have to say that I disagree with this. My stallion has outstanding
recoveries and is fully conditioned - yet his heartrate is consistantly
higher than 36 bpm! This is not an indication (IMHO) necessarily of an
unconditioned horse, but in our case, just active hormones! I'd hate to
lose to a lesser component just because the breeze shifted...   ;-) 

Stephanie Wind McCray

----------
> From: (Joyce DeVries) <jdevr@mail.dave-world.net>
> To: CMKSAGEHIL@aol.com; jlong@mti.net; RIDECAMP@endurance.net
> Subject: Re: spongeing at camp/IAHA Rides
> Date: Wednesday, June 24, 1998 8:39 AM
> 
> 
>  > 
> > 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...........
>