By Karen Reed (Head of Animal Welfare)
23 Nov 2011

The whole congress covered many areas of equine medicine and surgery including: ophthalmology, dermatology, dentistry, emergency medicine, infectious diseases, orthopaedics, foal medicine, reproduction, respiratory medicine as well as a stream on welfare and working horses. 

140 papers were presented by over 60 internationally recognised speakers and 70 scientific presentations and abstracts were presented.  Key note, big name speakers included Denis Brooks from the US on Ophthalmology, Paddy Dixon on dentistry and Sue Dyson on lameness issues.

The welfare and working horse sessions were the focus of our interest – as a chance to influence others in the wider equine vet world who may not have ever have thought about the 90% of the worlds equids that work and are not leisure or sports horses! 

I gave a presentation on the challenges of working in international equine welfare for an organisation. Other Brooke personnel also gave presentations which were well received and provoked lots of questions from the audience. 
Dr Mohammed Madany from Brooke Egypt, spoke on the role of parasites in the health of working equids and the challenges around developing effective and appropriate de-worming strategies. Dr Saurabh Singh from Brooke India spoke on Brooke India’s approach to tetanus treatment and Dr Syed Zaman, also from Brooke India, gave a presentation about the Brooke’s work with the nomadic Qalander community.

The congress was a great opportunity to link with like minded colleagues in welfare and working animal session but also for discussing our work with those not previously exposed to it - in particular many of the American practitioners attending. There is an increasing awareness, if still limited, of working animal issues within performance horse practitioner field.

Now that working animal welfare streams are becoming commonplace in national and international vet meetings, the next challenge is to persuade organisers to hold working animal sessions as main hall plenary sessions rather than as parallel streams alongside other clinical sessions. This will mean we are not just “preaching to the converted” but reaching out to those who don’t yet understand the importance of good welfare to working equine animals.