12 SIDELINES JUNE 2014
FORHORSEPEOPLE • ABOUTHORSEPEOPLE
It’s exciting to consider where theBrookemay be in five or
ten years’ time, and howmany animalswe could be helping in
different countries around theworld. Our goal is tomeasurably
improve the lives of 2million equines each year by 2016.
I find it inspiring to realize that we can create change that
will benefit animals for the future aswell as thepresent, through
changing owners’ behaviors and practices toward their animals
for thebetter, which can be transferred to new generations of
horse owners. This sustainable change is verymuch at the
heart of theBrooke’swork. Many of thewelfare problems I
see have their roots in poverty and lack of education. Inmany
cases, poverty forces owners towork their animals for long,
hard days as this is their only
means of generating income.
Poverty alsomakes it difficult
toprovide sufficient feed or
veterinary care. In other cases,
owners don’t havean adequate
understandingof their animals’
needs, evenwhen they have
themeans to do so.
It’s not enough just topatch up the samewounds again
andagain. Inorder to achieve real welfare benefit for these
animals, wemust workwith the owners to prevent thewelfare
problems from occurringand recurring, sowe strive to empower
andencourageowners to take responsibility for addressing the
problems in their own animals themselves, without creatinga
dependency on theBrooke. This iswhy theBrooke’swork in
community education is so essential if equinewelfare is tobe
improved.
An essential component of our work is to ensure that project
activities are based onevidence of theequineanimals’ welfare
needs, and that the impact of theseactivities on the animals is
monitored so that we can continually learnand improve our work
on their behalf.An important element of my job is to ensure that
theBrookehasmethods and tools to scientifically assess and
monitor equinewelfare directly from theanimal.
TheBrookedoesn’t rely only on assumptions, information
about available resources or from theanimals’ owners.We
believe that the animals themselves are the best sourceof
information about their welfare state, henceour efforts to collect
reliableanimal-based data. The quest toobtain this information
has ledmeandour local
welfareassessment staff to a
wide variety of contexts.We
have assessed horses, donkeys
andmules inmany situations:
inside people’s homes in India,
grazingon rubbish sites in
Nicaragua, workingat tourist
attractions inEgypt and Jordan,
gatheredat remotewateringpoints inSenegal, in themountains
of Nepal, at market days inEthiopia, by the roadside inPakistan
... the list goes on.Wewill gowherever the animals are.
Thedata resulting from thesewelfareassessments can be
used inmanyways, such as to identify the animals in greatest
need, the keywelfareproblems affectingdifferent groups of
equine animals, the causes of these problems, theways inwhich
the problems can be addressed through theBrooke’s project
activities, and, subsequently, theeffectiveness of these activities
in reducing the problems they seek toaddress.
Our goal is tomeasurably improve the livesof
2millionequineanimalseachyear by2016.
- AshleighBrown
Ashleigh teachingproper hoof care, which is vital forworkinganimals.
