Encouraging horse owners and vets to adopt preventative healthcare measures

2018 ◽  
Vol 182 (8) ◽  
pp. 214-214
Keyword(s):  
Preventative Healthcare ◽  
Horse Owners

scholarly journals Attitudes of the Equestrian Public towards Equine End-of-Life Decisions

Animals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 1776
Author(s):  
Catherine Bell ◽  
Suzanne Rogers
Keyword(s):  
End Of Life ◽  
Affective State ◽  
Principal Component ◽  
Peer Pressure ◽  
Negative Attitudes ◽  
End Of Life Decisions ◽  
Life Decisions ◽  
End Of Life Decision ◽  
Physical Reasons ◽  
Horse Owners

A key welfare concern for the equine population in the U.K. has been identified as delayed death, leading to prolonged suffering of horses. Reasons why some horse owners fail to have their horses euthanised include financial cost, emotional attachment, peer pressure, negative attitudes towards killing and poor recognition of behavioural indicators of equine pain and stress. The Five Freedoms framework of welfare was used to build a Likert-style survey to investigate the factors underlying attitudes of horse owners towards welfare measures in an end-of-life decision. Participants were asked to respond to hypothetical welfare scenarios and to give details of any horses they had had euthanised. The survey was conducted predominantly via equestrian Facebook groups and obtained 160 participant responses. Reliability of the scale was acceptable, with Cronbach’s α=0.89. Principal Component Analysis was used to load the hypothetical scenarios onto seven factors containing 62.2% of the variance. The first four factors could be categorized according to “Ethology-informed Management”, “Traditional Horse Management”, “Emotional Issues” and “Physical Issues”. Participants were more likely to consider euthanasia for physical issues, compared with issues relating to affective state and/or ethology, although it was not clear whether this was due to disregard for welfare issues relating to mental health or failure to recognise them as such. A large number of responses stated that the scenario had no bearing on whether a horse should be euthanised, again suggesting a lack of recognition of welfare issues and their implications. When asked to state their reasons for euthanising their horses, participants cited almost exclusively physical reasons, with the exception of those citing dangerous behaviour. Only a small number of responses also included consideration of affective and/or ethological factors, suggesting that welfare issues concerning affective state and/or behaviour are at risk of omission from end-of-life decisions.

Feeding and management practices amongst Australian horse owners

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 155
Author(s):  
C. Macleay ◽  
P. Buckley ◽  
M. Barnett
Keyword(s):  
Management Practices ◽  
Horse Owners

Opening forces or failure of commercially available equine headcollars and other safety devices

2021 ◽  
pp. 175433712110396
Author(s):  
David J Marlin ◽  
Kirstie Pickles ◽  
Roberta Ferro de Godoy ◽  
Jane M Williams
Keyword(s):  
Safety Devices ◽  
Risk Of Injury ◽  
Sense Of Security ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
Custom Made ◽  
False Sense ◽  
Breaking Points ◽  
Horse Owners ◽  
Very High ◽  
Increasing Load

A recent survey by the authors of the present study indicated that headcollar (halter, USA) related incidents resulting in horse injuries may be common. From the survey, 134 incidents involving horse fractures and 167 fatalities were reported. Headcollar design and materials vary markedly from traditional leather to “safety” headcollars and safety devices. Despite their almost universal use, there has been minimal study as to how these items function or specifications for performance. The aim of the present study was to select a range of commercially available standard headcollars and a number of safety devices, to test the force required to break or release them. Safety devices selected included baler twine, which is widely used by equestrians to attach a horse by a headcollar to a lead rope and in turn to a fixture. This system practice is perceived to increase safety. Devices were subjected to increasing load in the poll to lead-rope attachment axis (i.e. to simulate a horse pulling backward) using a custom-made steel rig incorporating an electric 1000 kg winch. The force was increased incrementally until either the headcollar or device opened or failed. The lowest mean opening force of 357 ± 50 N was for a safety headcollar, which is equivalent to a load of approximately 36 kg. The highest breaking force was 5798 ± 265 N for one of the eight different webbing headcollars tested. Breaking for safety devices ranged from 354 ± 121 N for “fine” baler twine to 1348 ± 307 N for a “heavy duty” baler twine. Variability in opening force was lowest in two of the webbing headcollars (CV < 5%) despite these having very high breaking points (>3500 N). The greatest variability was found for fine baler twine (CV = 34%) and one of the commercial safety devices (CV = 38%). The range of opening forces and variability in opening forces for standard headcollars, safety headcollars and safety devices is a cause for concern and may give horse owners/handlers a false sense of security with regards to safety, and actually predispose horses and handlers to an increased risk of injury.

Exploring horse owners' and caretakers' perceptions of emotions and associated behaviors in horses

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 18-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria J. Hötzel ◽  
Michele C. Vieira ◽  
Denise P. Leme
Keyword(s):  
Horse Owners

scholarly journals In the Camp and on the March: Military Manuals as Sources for Studying Premodern Public Health

2018 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-60
Author(s):  
G. Geltner
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Medieval Latin ◽  
Vulnerable Communities ◽  
Medical Tradition ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
Preventative Healthcare

Historians tend to view public health as a quintessentially modern phenomenon, enabled by the emergence of representative democracies, centralised bureaucracies and advanced biomedicine. While social, urban and religious historians have begun chipping away at the entrenched dichotomy between pre/modernity that this view implies, evidence for community prophylactics in earlier eras also emerges from a group of somewhat unexpected sources, namely military manuals. Texts composed for (and often by) army leaders in medieval Latin Europe, East Rome (Byzantium) and other premodern civilisations reflect the topicality of population-level preventative healthcare well before the nineteenth century, thereby broadening the path for historicising public health from a transregional and even global perspective. Moreover, at least throughout the Mediterranean world, military manuals also attest the enduring appeal of Hippocratic and Galenic prophylactics and how that medical tradition continued for centuries to shape the routines and material culture of vulnerable communities such as armies.

scholarly journals Preventative Healthcare in Post-Soviet Armenia: Providing Education and Screenings to Expand Awareness of Noncommunicable Diseases

2017 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 76
Author(s):  
H.Z. Wright ◽  
E. Gavin ◽  
N. Channell ◽  
B. Craner ◽  
K. Amirkhanashvili ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Noncommunicable Diseases ◽  
Preventative Healthcare

Talking about Horses: Control and Freedom in the World of "Natural Horsemanship"

2008 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynda Birke
Keyword(s):  
Human Learning ◽  
The Other ◽  
Traditional Methods ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World ◽  
Control Versus ◽  
Instinctive Behavior ◽  
Horse Owners

AbstractThis paper explores how horses are represented in the discourses of "natural horsemanship" (NH), an approach to training and handling horses that advocates see as better (kinder, more gentle) than traditional methods. In speaking about their horses, NH enthusiasts move between two registers: On one hand, they use a quasi-scientific narrative, relying on terms and ideas drawn from ethology, to explain the instinctive behavior of horses. Within this mode of narrative, the horse is "other" and must be understood through the human learning to communicate and through appropriate training. On the other hand, NH enthusiasts—like many horse owners—seek to emphasize partnership. In this type of discourse, people portray their horses as almost human. The tensions between these two ways of talking about horses reflect contradictory ideas about control versus freedom in relating to horses, especially as related to emotions expressed by caregivers (owners) about their relationships with horses.

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