World Horse Welfare have launched a series of conversational, welfare-related free-to-watch webinars which are proving extremely popular. Topics in the pipeline include worming, weight (overweight and underweight), dentistry, transport, euthanasia, and grazing systems and each will feature an external expert in addition to a speaker from World Horse Welfare.
Welfare Wednesday webinars will be fortnightly and will run for the foreseeable future. If you attend the webinar live you will get the chance, towards the end of each session, to ask the experts some questions live.
The first webinar on maintaining a horse’s fitness over the summer featured three-time Olympic medallist Pippa Funnell MBE joining the host, World Horse Welfare’s Chief Executive Roly Owers, and Adam Cummins, Centre Manager at the charity’s Lancashire-based Penny Farm Rescue and Rehoming Centre. Regardless of whether your horse or pony is ridden, driven or a companion, there was useful and fascinating information on everything from bringing a horse back in to work, assessing their fitness levels, dealing with riding on hard ground and creating a fitness plan to tapering a horse’s workload should you need to reduce it.
The second webinar saw world equine disease prevention and control expert Dr Richard Newton from the Animal Health Trust team up with World Horse Welfare’s Deputy Chief Executive and Director of UK Welfare Tony Tyler to tackle ‘Protecting your horse from the (ever) growing threat of disease’. The most recent one, on 15 July, brought together clinical equine nutritionist Dr Teresa Hollands and World Horse Welfare’s Head of UK Support, Sam Chubbock, to discuss the difficult challenges that owners and carers face when trying to keep their much-loved horse or pony within a healthy weight range.
You can catch up with the webinars on the World Horse Welfare YouTube channel (www.worldhorsewelfare.org/advice/general-advice/welfare-wednesdays). Webinars are live on alternate Wednesdays from 7pm until around 8pm (BST), and you can follow our Facebook page to join the next Welfare Wednesday webinar and find out which topic is being covered next.