🤓🐴 Ooh la la! I’m standing for the British Equine Veterinary Association council and voting opens TODAY! Only BEVA members can vote but please spread the word if you feel so inclined!
Here’s a short video on a couple small changes I think we can make to help with recruitment and retention in the equine vet industry. There’s loads of stuff I want to talk about, in front of the camera is not my comfort zone (self soothing going on 😂) so to clarify a couple of points:
Behaviour training increases safe and ethical handling practices but also helps increase confidence and widens inclusivity for students who haven’t had a ‘horsey’ background.
Resources for leadership and identifying core values can go hand in hand - exceptional leadership has been identified as key for sustainability for the veterinary industry. While alignment of your core values with the business you work in leads to pride and purpose, a key factor in work satisfaction. All members of a team lead and follow, so it makes sense for this training to be aimed at empowering everyone to reflect on what fulfilling work looks like to them.
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‘Remember the horses are worth the effort’ - an inspirational note from one of the delegates at Understand Horses Live last weekend. #understandhorseslive #equinevet #britishequineveterinaryassociation
Check out Charm! This gorgeous chap is stressed by narrow spaces and often becomes very fearful when loading, his way of coping is to rush through or freeze. His wonderful owners have worked really hard at developing his confidence through narrow spaces and creating positive associations with loading (counter-conditioning). He is very responsive to in hand cues, but he is triggered over his threshold by loading. Not every time is the same, some days his threshold is higher than others. He has been checked by his vet and has had a medication trial to rule out pain, which is essential in these cases. We decided to try something completely different for Charm and do some target training, offering him some control and choice in the training. He took to it incredibly quickly and was able to self regulate- you might be able to notice some pauses, distracted attention, turning away of the head and neck, for example. These are very subtle signs of increases in stress. By not applying pressure we were able to keep Charm under his behavioural threshold and complete some calm training. 🥳🥰😊🥕🐴
This is Rosie! Rosie is a super well rounded, beautifully cared for horse who was getting a little bit of training on oral medication in this video. As you can see, she and her owner, Victoria, did an amazing job with this and made it look easy.
You might also notice that Rosie has had her nose in a lick! We had already done some counter-conditioning for feet handling. Rosie is very good with her feet normally but has displayed some stress signals when being hot shod for the first time recently. It seems like it might be the noise of the hot shoe being placed, or possibly the sight of smell of the smoke. Hard to say and hard to replicate so we had to use our imaginations for this one. She certainly seemed relaxed and calm for general foot handling, holding limbs as for trimming/shoeing, banging and sham rasping. Some horses display very subtle stress signals so we’re paid very close attention to Rosie’s behaviour throughout. We’ll aim to build positive associations with all foot handling and have introduced the noise of a hot shoe being placed from a video which did reduce Rosie’s responsiveness to having her feet picked up initially. Next up - simulating smoke 💨
I was setting up for Bella’s loading practice session today and she decided she couldn’t wait to get involved! Her confidence has grown so much over the last several weeks and today she did incredible work. We put lots of aspects of our training into action - target training, positive and negative reinforcement, counter conditioning and desensitisation! A massive win was that she actively participated in some mutual grooming with us humans too, probably the first time she’s really enjoyed physical touch for some time 🥰🥰🥰 she had loads of distractions with a busy day on the yard too but managed herself beautifully. Well done Bella and her amazing dedicated team and fan club! 🌟🥳❤️
Isn’t it amazing how little things in your environment can make you feel so good! 😊 This is what we want for our horses too. We can’t manipulate the weather but we can do our best to make their environment as pleasant as possible - access to friends, access to forage, access to freedom, not forgetting that variety is the spice of life. The hawthorn hedges are getting green so even if there isn’t a blade of grass left, we can arrange some foraging opportunities to bring some joy 🤩
Weekend spent producing professional course material and playing ponies. What could be better? #professional #equinehydrotherapy #horselover
Emotions in horses
This is gorgeous Bourbon. He had to have colic surgery when he was younger, which involved a prolonged period of box rest and a change of yards to allow his recovery. He coped admirably but his owners noticed a definite change in personality. He became ‘bolshy’ and had developed behaviours such as bolting in hand and pinning people in his stable. He is now at a yard where he can live out with his friends but his in hand behaviour has not improved and is worse when he is bought on to the yard. We worked on in hand responses, backed up with clear body language as Bourbon responds well to this in the field. On the yard however, it became clear that he was much less relaxed. He became much less responsive to the cues we were giving him, started head tossing and barging. These behaviours could be interpreted by some as ‘naughty’, but horses don’t have the brain capacity to think like this. He had become highly aroused and was experiencing negative valence - this category of behaviours are linked to emotions such as fear, anxiety and frustration. I tried adding in some target training but the food increased Bourbon’s arousal levels. We stuck with the in hand responses and asked much less of him, which allowed him to reduce his arousal and get scratches to increase his positive valence (we encouraged him to feel calm and relaxed). It can be really difficult to appreciate a horses emotional state but it’s easier to try and look at it as either a positive or negative state with high or low levels of arousal. Bourbon’s owners worked so hard today and their patience and consistency were just incredible, which meant Bourbon could learn - A LOT! We’re all a bit exhausted now, but these small steps are so rewarding! ❤️❤️🥕🐴❤️❤️
It’s not uncommon for horses who have had a period of box rest or medical intervention (or both) to have a change in behaviour. This can be seen sometimes in becoming more bolshy and not responding to pressure cues as they once did. Fabulous Lulu is giving us another life lesson here. I’m demonstrating an approach to reinforcing moving away from pressure and moving feet only when asked by pressure on the headcollar. The schooling whip allows me to increase the ‘pressure’ without having to apply more and more load on the headcollar.
As soon as Lulu moves away from pressure (rather than moving into it) she gets rewarded by the removal of the pressure.
You might be able to see some times when I was inconsistent or a bit too greedy in this video and Lulu responded accordingly. It’s great to remember that ‘ pobody is nerfect ‘ and your horse is always your best teacher! So stay calm and try again. Or stop and give yourself and them a break. 🥕
In hand work
It’s not uncommon for horses who have had a period of box rest or medical intervention (or both) to have a change in behaviour. This can be seen sometimes in becoming more bolshy and not responding to pressure cues as they once did. Fabulous Lulu is giving us another life lesson here. I’m demonstrating an approach to reinforcing moving away from pressure and moving feet only when asked by pressure on the headcollar. The schooling whip allows me to increase the ‘pressure’ without having to apply more and more load on the headcollar.
As soon as Lulu moves away from pressure (rather than moving into it) she gets rewarded by the removal of the pressure.
You might be able to see some times when I was inconsistent or a bit too greedy in this video and Lulu responded accordingly. It’s great to remember that ‘ pobody is nerfect ‘ and your horse is always your best teacher! So stay calm and try again. Or stop and give yourself and them a break. 🥕
