Re: RC: Starved horses

[Tivers@aol.com]

In a message dated 3/29/99 11:57:01 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
ralston@AESOP.RUTGERS.EDU writes:

<< I have been trying to stay out of the fray but his
 recommendations, taken at face value, are really potentially dangerous to
 endurance horses!! I have received private E-mails from several other
 respected researchers/endurance riders complimenting me for being brave
 enough to speak up! Tom, your nasty, sarcastic, name-calling responses to
 anyone that does not agree with you have stifled a lot of good discussions.
 Sarah L. Ralston, VMD, PhD, dACVN
 Associate Professor >>


Ah, and this post is a well-reasoned, objective thrust because you've added
all your credentials after your name? Sarcasm has its place in argument. If
"ivory tower" is name calling, then I'd suggest that you are a member of an
easily offended minority (EOM). When you say that my advice is dangerous for
endurance horses, you are both incorrect and name-calling (in my opinion).
It's the same as my saying that your professional medical advice is dangerous
to your patients. 

Your near-religious aversion to carbohydrates in endurance horses, in my mind,
sets up your advisees for unnecessary fatigue during an endurance ride. As you
know, this can lead to missteps and injury. Thus, it is your advice that is
dangerous, not mine. Now, if you find this statement insulting, requiring a
"brave", unreasoned response, so be it.  

As far as "sandy loam" is concerned, I was talking about actually taking
recent science, which you either don't read, or prefer to ignore, to the
trails and applying it. This to ease your fears that carbohydrate feeding
during and prior to an endurance event will cause a horse to die of
spontaneous combustion. My point was that you have not tried it, due to
unreasonable and irrational fears, and that if you had, you'd see the error of
your ways. 

Your arguments against this approach have consisted of exotic extrapolations
of first year vetmed coupled with obfuscating jargon and near-complete logical
disarray. I call it posturing. That, too, may offend you. What's real about
all this is what actually happens, in fact, on the trail--and you've chosen to
ignore dozens of reports that are contrary to your BELIEFS. This is why I've
suggested that you not knock what you haven't tried. 

It seems to me that your best argument would be a couple of well documented
case histories where you actually took my advice and applied it and had a
horse or two actually catch fire and explode. Then you could truthfully and
honestly say that my advice is dangerous--and I'd have to abjectly apologise
to everyone in the group.

Instead, you want to fling invective and are insulted that you get it back in
your face--probably because you think all those initials after your name make
you immune from having anyone question your forceful and patronizing
authoritative posture.

It all boils down to what you trust. I trust what I see with my own eyes and
what my friends tell me they see with their own eyes. I read science for ideas
and for solutions to certain puzzles, but not, certainly, as Truth. Science is
always in flux, it's faddish, it's bandwagon-driven. This year's fat-fad will
be next year's Omega 3 fad.  My job is to find out what actually works. The
fact that you can line up a half dozen ivory tower poobahs to say I'm wrong
means nothing to me when I'm getting dozens and dozens of reports from the
field that say just the opposite. 

On the other hand, I do have respect for your knowledge and have learned a
great deal from you and Susan during our discussions. I've been wrong about
hundreds of things over the past 25 years, most often by taking theory and
translating it to application without knowing, or taking into consideration,
other factors that play upon the problem. Over time, it's gets easier to see
that's being done--takes one to know one. And that's the error with the "fat
miracle". It leaves out the "carbohydrate reality". There's a similar problem
with protein in equine nutrition--but that's a whole nother fight.

Now, if you and Joe find this post insulting, sarcastic, lacking respect and
name calling, then all I can suggest is that you defend yourselves in kind. 

ti     


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