Time to tackle tricky topics in a different way to save lives

Fresh advice is available to help vets broach the challenging issue of equine obesity with owners

-  ELEANOR JONES

NEW resources for vets are aimed at helping practitioners have potentially difficult conversations about obesity with owners – which may help save horses’ lives.

This latest weapon in the fight against the UK’s equine obesity epidemic, one of a number of resources available for vets on the British Equine Veterinary Association (BEVA) website, is a collection of ways to bring up the issue of weight in a manner that will have the best effect.

It sets out phrases a vet may say and what is meant by them, but also what an owner might understand. For example, if the vet says: “He looks like he’s been on the grass,” meaning “he is fat”, the owner may not realise this is a problem.

The table was created by research associate Tamzin Furtado, who completed a PhD on management of equine obesity, focusing on horse-human relationships and human behaviour change.

Dr Furtado told H&H she put it together after conversations with professionals including vets and farriers, who said obesity was a hard topic to introduce.

“We did some focus groups with vets, who said it was easier not to bring it up as they knew it would be a nightmare, or owners wouldn’t listen, but owners had told me something different,” she said.