Recently there's been a lively discussion on the endurance lists about pull codes and whether they matter. Here's why I think historical pull codes were less important in the past and why the accuracy of pull codes matters more today. In the past few years AERC committees have devoted much of their efforts to improving the safety and welfare of our horses. The Education Committee has done a lot to make more information available to riders concerning how to care for our horses before, during, and after rides, to condition them better, and to be alert for problems among others.

The Welfare of the Horse Committee has spent a lot of time reporting on fatalities and trying to find a pattern in those fatalities that will decrease the number that do happen.

The members of Veterinary Committee have authored numerous articles in Endurance News on how to observe your horse and provide or request veterinary care when needed in competition. The committee has improved reporting on our rides and standardized the knowledge needed in our vet judges with the veterinary certification program. The committee members are dedicated to improving the welfare of the horses in our sport.

Other committees have contributed as well to the overall goal of making our sport safer for our equine partners. Efforts like this have been done in the past as well but without an important component that we can now make available: that is, data in a format that can be computer-analyzed. AERC has a good database on almost 200,000 rider/horse entries since 1995. The problem is that, until recently, it's not been used much at all.

The data didn't get analyzed for a number of reasons:

1. Members with the skills to analyze it didn't have access to the data.

2. There were very few members with the skills to analyze it who were also interested in doing the work.

3. People were not sure how accurate the data was and whether it was the "right" data.

4. Some of it was in paper form and not usable for computer analysis.

Members now have access to the data, with board of directors oversight. Members with the skills involved have volunteered their time to do the analysis. Forms that were previously in paper form -- the Post-Ride Statistical Report (PRSR), for example -- have been migrated into data that goes into a database.

The usefulness of our vet card information is being scoped out by the Research Committee working with the Veterinary Committee. The data from the cards is being entered into a database for analysis combined with the data from the PRSR. I'm going to guess that we will find some of it useful and some not. This work will likely lead to changes in the information we collect from vet cards.

Given these changes, the accuracy of the information that's collected at rides has become more important. If, as in the past, the data wasn't being used, then accuracy isn't much of a factor.

If we are committed to improving the safety and welfare of our horses before, during, and after rides by analyzing the data, having accurate data now to analyze is key to improving the results of our analysis.

One very important part of that data is the pull code. Lame and Metabolic are clear. SF for surface factors was added to expand those options; it's seldom used but covers situations where Lame and Metabolic don't apply.

Toward the end of the 2003 season, rider option (RO) pulls were broken out into RO, RO-M, and RO-L at member request. RO indicates there's something wrong with the rider or the rider simply doesn't want to continue and the horse is completely fine in both the view of the vet judge and the rider. It isn't a factor in the analysis of the horse data.

RO-L and RO-M enable us to indicate that there's something involving the horse that the most knowledgeable person -- the rider -- knows or believes that the vet judge may not see in the very brief time spent with the horse. This provides data on the horse to use in analysis by the Research, Veterinary, and WOTH committees.

If a RO pull is given to a horse that either is not fit to continue or not fit to continue in the rider's view, it removes important information that these committees depend on to improve the safety and welfare of our horses in our sport. All rider option pulls require that the horse be examined by the vet judge and be evaluated as "fit to continue."

My bottom line here is that if we want to improve the care of our horses and decrease fatalities, we should make every effort to ensure the pull codes for our horses are accurate. We should avoid letting our egos get in the way of providing information that may really help. If your horse is pulled or you request a RO-M or RO-L, you should take an extra few seconds with the vet judge to agree on the pull code that is to be reported. It should not be something you have to discuss later with the ride manager.

Accurate information in our pull codes really matters today and I believe we should do our best to support our committees in their work of making our sport safer for our horses.