Has anyone linked the form yet? ATTACHMENT G (usef.org)
It sounds like when the USET no longer had horses donated where they owned them, they moved to a sort of lease structure where if they are financing the competition, they are leasing the horse and take on the ability and responsibility of management. I don’t see that it says they are allowed to administer meds without disclosing them, just that they can.
I am sure the cost of sending a team to a competition is significant enough that it makes sense that you need to have the management and care of the horses decided by the professionals chosen for the team, rather than risking that they get halfway across the world and, say, the vet at home vetoes icing feet because he doesn’t believe in it or whatever. I think theres a very reasonable interpretation here that just wasn’t what went down in this instance.
I know when I talked to a former team vet, he said the hardest part of the job was that every horse in his care had a fleet of people who had spent their whole lives trying to produce a horse to that level and were deeply passionate and invested in the outcome, but may or may not be operating under the same set of facts and depth of experience that he had. I think that was in the context of a shoeing change that he mentioned it, but at least it hasn’t historically been the practice that this agreement was used in an effort to keep everyone in the dark.
