Re: judging a book (or a horse) by its cover

["Susan Evans Garlinghouse" <suendavid@worldnet.att.net>]

>Now I'm really confused.  Susan is telling us that weight DOES matter!
>Just goes to show, given enough time, almost any researcher will change
>their minds....

Jerry, I never changed my mind, you just never listened very well in the
first place before you drew your own conclusions. :-)  If you'd ever read
any of the research articles (they're on my website at
http://shady-acres.com/susan/ ), you'd know that all along, I've been saying
that weight does make a difference, just not in the way that it's been
traditionally thought.  Rider weight under Tevis-type conditions (I'm not
going to say that Tevis conditions apply to every other race) makes FAR less
difference than other factors do.  Horses that are skinny do much worse and
are usually going to pull for metabolic failure.  Horses that are heavier
(not fat, just big animals), either by themselves or as a combined weight
with rider, are more prone to a lameness pull.  And that old saw about a
horse not being able to carry more than 25% of his weight over a 100 mile
course is nonsense.

>Susan, are you going to go to the National Championship to
>do some real research?

As far as this being "real" research, Jerry---since the studies resulted in
two published articles in the scientific journals, one of them international
in the most respected physiology journal going, well, I'm not quite sure
what else I need to do to have this be "real" research.  Provide the funding
and I'd be happy to come collect more data. :-)

Best,

Susan G
-----Original Message-----
From: Jerry Fruth <hikryrdg@evansville.net>
To: suendavid@worldnet.att.net <suendavid@worldnet.att.net>;
Knaptyme@aol.com <Knaptyme@aol.com>; ridecamp@endurance.net
<ridecamp@endurance.net>
Date: Tuesday, August 03, 1999 7:28 PM
Subject: RC: judging a book (or a horse) by its cover


Best.... Jerry
>Hickory Ridge Arabians web page:
>http://www.evansville.net/~hikryrdg
>
>Standing JABASK KNIGHT
>On Fri, 30 Jul 1999, Susan Evans Garlinghouse wrote...
>>
>>>It is not up to the individual to decide if a horse is overweight or not.
>>It
>>>is up to the rider and the ride vet to make sure that the horse can
>>>start/continue the ride successfully.
>>
>>
>>I agree.  There's one other point that I failed to mention.  After
>>collecting data for two years, I had a pretty good idea of how well a
horse
>>would do based on how thin he was---very simply, excessively thin horses
>>have a much higher incidence of pulling, regardless of any other factor.
>>So, just for fun at the '98 Tevis, I wrote down a "Susan Predicts" list of
>>forty horses that *I* thought shouldn't have started---not because they
were
>>lame or out of shape by the usual standards...I just thought that they
were
>>thin enough that, based on the statistics, they had close to a zero chance
>>of finishing.  (And no, I didn't say that to the rider---anybody that says
>>anything other than Good Luck, Have Fun or How Can I Help You So You Can
>>Sleep the night before a 100 mile ride deserves to be beaten to death).
>>
>>Well, of those horses, I was right 36 out of 40 times, or about 90% of the
>>time.  Pretty good.  BUT, there were FOUR horses that the statistics said
>>didn't have a chance, yet those riders got just the same shiny Tevis
buckle.
>>Apparently I neglected to explain to the horses that they had no chance of
>>finishing. :-)  One of those horses even had the audacity to finish in the
>>top twenty or so, and science be damned. :-)
>>
>>So the point here is that you can predict and crunch numbers and tell a
>>rider that statistically he should save his money and go home---but how do
>>you pick the 36 that really should go home and how do you pick the four
that
>>will beat the odds?  This certainly isn't an argument for deluding
yourself
>>into thinking that you're the exception and will always be the Chosen One
>>even though your horse looks like a hairy hatrack.  But it does just point
>>out that this is a fickle sport involving a live creature that doesn't
>>always listen to what the books say.  And that being the case, IMO the
ride
>>management and ride vets definitely should continue to weed out the horses
>>that are so obviously infirm or ill that even starting would be a
disservice
>>to the horse.  Beyond that, until human beings become a lot more
omnipotent
>>about predicting the future, then we should trust the ride vets to spot
>>trouble during the ride and pull the problem horses before it becomes a
>>disaster.
>>
>>Just my opinions, of course. :-)
>>
>>Susan G
>>
>>
>>
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