WELFARE CHECK
Some questions about equine welfare are easy to answer: Nearly everyone agrees on the need to help an emaciated horse confined to a barren dirt pen piled high with manure, for example. But far more common are the gray areas of the welfare discussion: Does stabling a horse by himself place him under severe psychological stress? It is cruel to put an adult rider on a naughty pony? Is it a subtle form of abuse to require a calm and compliant horse to spend hours in the lesson ring endlessly circling with beginner riders aboard? In many cases, the answers aren’t so clear-cut.
When such debates crop up in tack rooms and barn aisles, experienced horsekeepers may never reach agreement. But when these questions are part of an effort to establish welfare guidelines and legislation, the search for answers takes on something close to urgency, requiring a methodical, and when possible, empirical approach. That’s what a group of researchers at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, is attempting to do.
Led by Cordelie DuBois as part of her doctoral research, the Guelph team is sorting through the strong and varied opinions of equine professionals to collect quantifiable data to
