On November 24, 2021, Stacie joined Dr. Ernie Ward and Beckie Mossor, RVT, on the Veterinary Viewfinder podcast (episode 260), a show for veterinary professionals. The conversation covered “horses in transition,” the roughly 150,000 horses that become unwanted in the United States each year, and the emotional load this work places on equine practitioners.
Veterinary Viewfinder: Horses in Need of a Home
Podcast conversation with Dr. Ernie Ward and Beckie Mossor, RVT, November 24, 2021
The excerpts below are transcribed from the episode and lightly edited for clarity. The full episode is linked at the foot of this page.
On how the problem got this big
There are some mental health things on the human side that lead to horses being neglected, but there is also just a plethora of horses. There were more horses than there were homes, and at the same time we shut down some of the exit strategies: slaughter was banned in the U.S., and that doesn’t mean horses aren’t getting slaughtered; they’re going to Mexico or Canada, but that route is more difficult. So all of a sudden we had a whole bunch of horses. Watching those horses have similar sets of problems, over and over, led me to compile everything in a way that is very readable.
On the shape of the book, and why euthanasia gets its own chapter
The first two-thirds of the book is all of the medical care, and it takes you step by step through everything. Chapter one is how people get into an economic trap, and how these horses end up losing their homes. I have a chapter on euthanasia because I think that’s a really important topic to talk about before we’re in the moment of stress.
The second part of the book is training, because you can get a horse that’s a body condition score two and not halter trained. But you certainly can’t round-pen that horse, because that horse doesn’t have the muscular ability for those types of training. We have to approach these horses a little bit differently.
Listen to the whole conversation at Veterinary Viewfinder: Horses in Need of a Home. The Ultimate Guide for Horses in Need is available directly from Stacie or from Trafalgar Square Books.