Getting Pulled

[Roberta Jo Lieberman <woik@home.com>]

>It might also be of value to record the distance at which the pull happened.<

This would be extremely useful. When I first got into the sport in the
late 70s/early 80s, I used to pore over the Old Dominion 100 stats for
*hours* searching for patterns of success in both my own horse and
others...one could learn the average time it took each horse to reach
parameters at each vet check...the recovery pulse...how positions
shifted during the course of a ride...when horses and riders made their
moves...or fell back...and in the event of a pull, exactly how many
miles had been covered. These sorts of detailed printouts are invaluable
(and heck, they're just plain *fun* to read -- sort of like a race chart
or box score). I believe that similarly detailed stats were available
for rides like the Pan Ams and Cosequin Challenge last year and
published on the net.

And speaking of stats and records...I was surprised, as a newcomer to
the PS region, to discover that riders here seem to have little interest
in saving their ride cards (although they do contain much less detailed
data). Usually the lot of them is just pitched out at ride's end. My
collection of cards from the NE form a "log book" of sorts, a valued
reference to chart progress and pinpoint problems. (They also form a
sort of written history of one's involvement in the sport.) For example,
when Fine Print came up lame on a ride in Wisconsin and pulled at 38
miles, I went home and studied the "charts" and found that she was often
grade one on the right fore at vet-in, although not at the finish. This
helped us narrow the diagnosis. 

Keep the data coming!

Bobbie