Happy Horses: encouraging public engagement with horse welfare at UK shows
A series of workshops and events were held to raise awareness of critical issues affecting horse health and wellbeing at equestrian competitions.
Dr Tamzin Furtado, at the time, a Post Doctoral Research Assistant, now a Lecturer in the Institute of Infection, Veterinary and Ecological Sciences worked in partnerships with multiple stakeholders and led a series of impactful workshops and events to raise awareness about critical issues affecting horse welfare at horse shows across the UK...
Empowering the equestrian community
Horse shows are run across the UK, yet traditionally there have been recurrent issues with horse wellbeing, such as overweight horses being rewarded, riders being too heavy for horses, horses feeling stressed, and trimming of whiskers (which horses need for sensory reasons).
Building on existing partnerships, a University of Liverpool team have worked alongside the Horse Trust, independent nutritionist Nikki Meggison, showing organisations, and show organisers to run a series of events aimed at improving awareness of important issues in horse health.
During April, a free event was held at the Horse Trust, bringing together 25 key stakeholders in horse show organisation and judging; this event saw a range of talks and debates around issues such as horse weight, and included live demonstrations of equine condition assessment.
Attendance at the Great Yorkshire Agricultural Show saw partnership with the Horse Trust, equine nutritionist, Nikki Meggison, and local equine vets to run a free information stand for competitors, with healthy horses being awarded rosettes.
A talk and 2 workshops were conducted at a popular equestrian community conference, Understand Horses Live, in Essex during July. The run of events culminated at the Royal International Horse Show at Hickstead, Sussex. Here, a forum for 25 showing community stakeholders provided a platform for discussing ongoing improvements in policy around horse shows with 300 horses across 15 show classes being condition scored and rosettes being awarded to the healthiest competitors.
As a result of these initiatives, ongoing collaborations are planned; for example partnerships with new show organisers who wish to improve welfare at equestrian shows, and addressing requests for training for judges from new horse show organisations.
Collectively, these events have engaged hundreds of members of the equestrian community, from horse owners and show competitors to show organisers and judges, and important ongoing changes in equine welfare as a result.
TOP TIPS!
Partnerships are key. The partnerships we’ve created beyond academia have been absolutely key to the success (and enjoyment!) of these projects; we have loved working with PR agencies, funders, the equestrian community, and many others in a collaborative way. If we hadn’t done so I don’t think we’d have been half as successful, and we’ve learnt a lot from doing it too!
It was a bit intimidating reaching out to people at first, but they were all very keen to help us because they agreed with the aims of improving horse wellbeing at shows, so it was very worthwhile.