Changing Rein

Dr Jo Hockenhull is Head of Research at The Donkey Sanctuary. Jo has had a wide-ranging and varied career in animal welfare science – her particular interests include horse behaviour and welfare, human-animal interactions and the possibilities inherent in the science of Human Behaviour Change to improve the welfare of animals.   Jo’s research output can be found at this link: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jo-Hockenhull/research Dr Jo Hockenhull is Head of Research at The Donkey Sanctuary. Jo has had a wide-ranging and varied career in animal welfare science – her particular interests include horse behaviour and welfare, human-animal interactions and the possibilities inherent in the science of Human Behaviour Change to improve the welfare of animals.   Jo’s research output can be found at this link: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jo-Hockenhull/research

Background - about Meredith Meredith Chapman was appointed as Equestrian Australia's (EA) first National Health and Safety Manager. This role was actioned following the tragic deaths of two young eventing horse riders in 2016. Meredith’s primary role was to lead the implementation of all 31 coronial recommendations following a coronial inquest. Meredith worked extensively with all Australian State, Territory, and disciplines specific committee representatives, including the Olympic High-Performance executive team reviewing, developing, and implementing improved Health, Safety, and Welfare (HSW) management systems, whilst maintaining sport operations. Her role required extensive consultation, evidence-based research for best-practice standards, cultural and industry change management, widespread member and stakeholder engagement and training. Meredith developed EAs first National HSW policies, a Minimal Medical Response Framework, post incident response and crisis management plans, concussion in sport protocols and she navigated EA through the COVID pandemic. Meredith represented EA at 3 annual international FEI conferences,l and various stakeholder meetings. Meredith also developed and hosted EA first on-line National HSW conferences (2021 & 2023). Meredith’s business management experience and academic achievements have enabled her to maintain regulatory (Australian Sports Commission), EA Board and HSW committee communications on all matters pertaining to equestrianism HSW as required. Following Voluntary Administration, she was influential in re-establishing EAs stakeholder funding and resuming sport operations. Meredith participated EA recruitment, management and training of new team members, was accountable for HSW reports, budgets, identification of training needs, insurance and legal liaison, the development and delivery of safety compliance management processes and more. Meredith has provided expert HSW leadership to assist EA in achieving a nationally aligned strategy during structural reform. You'll find Meredith's academic publications on Researchgate

Upskilling instead of conditioning - coaching expert Marianne Davies shares her dynamic approach to coaching and training that has coaches, riders AND horses wanting more Marianne Davies is an expert in coaching riders and developing equestrian coaches. She is a senior coaching developer for UK Coaching and runs her own coaching business, Dynamics Coaching and in her spare time she is completing a PhD and leading ground breaking research in coaching science. This week she shares her dynamic approach to coaching that sees both the horse and rider as active participants in the learning process, which is quite different from behaviourist approaches, such as those used in equitation science. Marianne explains the science behind her approach, and in the second half of the episode she gives some really practical advice for riders and explains how to set up training situations to help your horse learn. It’s a great conversation, we hope you enjoy it! Terminology Affordance - opportunity to do something that a horse or person perceives - when coaching and training our horses, we can change the environment to make it easier for the horse (or the rider) to recognise an opportunity so they can attempt a desirable movement or posture. Constraints-led approach to learning - introductory article https://adaptivemovement.net/blog/brief-introduction-to-the-constraints-led-approach/ Blog posts by Marianne Behaviourism and Ecological Psychology Do humans and animals need different theories of learning? Recommended reading de Waal (2016) Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are? Papers mentioned in the podcast Wulf & Lethwaite (2016) Optimizing performance through intrinsic motivation and attention for learning: The OPTIMAL theory of motor learning https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26833314/ Scott Kelso (1995) Dynamical system theory and human movement and learning. https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=-VlkX4YAAAAJ

To say Vicky Leonard is brave is probably an understatement. Back in 2017 she published a series of blogs where she outlined the threat poor horse welfare poses to the racing industry. It caused quite a stir. Since then she has been advocating for change in the industry because as she sees it, horse welfare is the one issue that could bring racing down. In the seven years since that post, she has led hard conversations all over the world to help the industry grasp the risk to their reputation, their bottom line...their future. Like most horse people, Vicky is an optimist and a doer. She not only sees the dangers, but also the opportunities to make things better, and the many positive changes that are already happening. Vicky gives us a glimpse into the world of racing and her insights are valuable for everyone interested in the future of horses in sport.