As the dressage world unites against the use of harmful training methods, the international community has begun to search for a better awareness in hope of educating community members on the best way to achieve fair treatment for our equine partners. In Denmark the 2012 DDD General Assembly key players in veterinary medicine and dressage united in the name of animal welfare!
"We hope to increase awareness of the fact that the horse is not a tool, but an organism that needs to be listened to (through many different signs)," says Danish O Judge, Leif Törnblad.
Organized by the Danish Veterinarian Association (DDD: De Danske Dyrlægerforening) and held on Friday 5 October 2012, Leif, the DDD General Assembly brought together a wealth of knowledge by inviting Leif Tornblad, Danish trainer Hasse Hoffmann and a crew of Denmark's most knowledgeable veterinarians.
"The meeting was open to all Danish Vets. However it was a closed meeting and members of the public could not attend," Tornblad explained.
Taking place at Vingsted Center (near Vejle and Billund), the two day event covered a wide range of topics, with the dressage horse heading it up early on.
"The meeting was the general assembly of the Danish Veterinary Association and with a number of different sectors in this association, the equine veterinarians were organized into one group. Altogether there are 250 members in this group and about 1/3 of these were present at Friday's meeting," Leif added.
Hasse Hoffmann joined Leif in giving informational seminars to the 75 horse vets in attendance. The O-judge stressed that a closer alliance between dressage trainers and veterinarians could improve animal welfare.
"The veterinarians meet the horses when they have injuries caused by overtraining, but I feel that many vets have too little knowledge on how horses are trained. If the injury is a result of poor training, the vets shall now be able to give better advice as to how to train the horse correctly after the injury," Tornblad explained.
Leif knows that this is just the beginning, but hopes "that they will take a small step towards not only identifying the correct cause, but also finding the right solution to our horse problems. We want to discover, educate and address all problems, not only those that are obvious and easy to spot."
Incorporated into the subject of 'training a young horse from a 4 year old to Grand Prix', Leif and Hasse discussed how to achieve such training progression in a way that is horse friendly. Hasse discussed the training part and Tornblad elaborated on the judge's responsibility to promote the correct way of riding as well as how to spot signs of stress in a dressage horse.
The topical meeting also included the judging of young horses with the importance of not over riding youngsters as focal point. The goal should be to show their natural gaits, natural self-carriage and natural balance.
"Both of us adopted the methods of classical training as well as the Scale of Training as our basis for providing education and judging analysis. We achieved some very good discussions with the vets. Most of them were very knowledgeable and some a little less so, but the purpose of the meeting was to hopefully improve the advice they now give to riders on how best to manage their horses."
All in all, the conference was a huge success and can open the door for future discussion as well as better treatment of our dressage partners.
"Everyone present is learning from this sort of educational dialog, across all different parties involved in taking care of and the welfare of the horse," Leif concluded. "It was a very interesting meeting with lots of good questions and feedback and I feel that all of us would like to continue with these sorts of discussions to achieve our desired outcomes into the future."
by Sarah Warne
Photo © Astrid Appels
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