Emerging research highlights how, due to demographic changes in horse owner populations in Western societies, complex owner-horse relationships are leading to inappropriate horse care, including over-nutrition, which in turn can lead to laminitis. Farriers, due to their regular visits, may be in a position to support owners in dealing with this problem.
This study explored whether UK farriers have a role in working with horse owners to support horse welfare and prevent laminitis.
Grounded theory analysis, a qualitative methodology.
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 farriers and 11 horse owners. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and systematically analysed using an inductive coding approach.
The analysis of the farrier and horse owner interview data revealed farriers and horse owners undertake a contracting process leading to either a task-focussed or holistic-care-focussed approach. Either approach can be satisfactory, but the evidence from this study suggests that when horses are at risk of laminitis, a task-focussed approach misses important opportunities to prevent it.
This analysis, based on a small sample of participants, was not able to identify the frequency of farriers or horse owners orientating towards different approaches in a way that can be generalised to a wider population. However, the power of grounded theory lies in its inductive design to develop new theory, which can be subsequently tested.
Farriers are in a perfect position to support horse owners to prevent laminitis through providing feedback, guidance and advice. However, not all farriers adopt this role and it is not necessary in all contexts. The evidence presented in this study has implications for equine veterinarians and welfare officers in educating horse owners about the value of holistic-care-focussed farriery. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 2. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 15 February 2019.
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#13,594,543
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#1,030
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#18
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