Lynne;
I am sorry if I sounded presumptuous in my previous message. I have nothing
but respect for those of you willing to manage a ride, especially the size of
yours. I have been involved only to a small degree and see the planning and
financial outlay that you endure on our (the riders) behalf. I was just
trying to encourage RM to add a line to their entry form warning of refusal
or DQ for horses deemed dangerous to vets and volunteers at camp or VCs.
My understanding is that if a vet says a horse is pulled (for whatever
reason) the RM ALWAYS backs him/her up. What is wrong with letting the vet
decide if the particular horse is dangerous, as opposed to obnoxious, and a
threat to the volunteers and all the people/animals in camp or VCs? Granted,
many vets don't want to have to decide something so objective but how else do
we make it important to riders/handlers that they become aware of their
horses' dangerous behavior? Understanding that *most* of the
dangerous/obnoxious behavior is from ignorance rather than stupidity only
goes so far when a vet or volunteer is badly injured.
This is only one of the reasons I'd like to see the CTR format for LD. If
unruly or ill-mannered behavior was used to take away points then it would
become IMPORTANT to the entrants. Suddenly you'd have people paying
attention to training and not just to conditioning, as Heidi put it. ( I
LOVED the idea by Sylvia to have complete strangers come and give impromptu
handling so that the horse is comfortable with a variety of
people/procedures! I must incorporate that into my training sessions. If on
a group ride then everyone should go to all the other horses in the group and
perform a pre-ride check including cap refill, checking the legs/back, anal
tone and even have others trot my horse.)
I agree with your later message about having AERC actually DO something
beneficial such as a "guide to starting endurance." I have always been
disappointed in EN because there were few articles about such topics. Rather
than wait for some newbie to screw up and then yell "Gotch ya!" we should be
taking an active role in making available literature on what to expect and
what is expected of these newbies.
So, my apologies if I had you thinking that yet another burden should be put
on your shoulders as RM. I was merely looking for a possible solution to
handling dangerous horses. I should have looked for the positive, active
role that AERC could provide as well as possible punishments.
Melanie in AZ