World Horse Welfare’s Help for Horse Owners support scheme tackles pony problems

2024 has been a busy year for the World Horse Welfare team.

There have been more cases of big groups of ponies needing help, so the team has come up with new ways to solve the problem.

By November 2024, World Horse Welfare helped in 157 cases where owners had more than 10 ponies at risk, which is a big jump from 109 cases in 2023.

The number of cases involving more than 50 ponies at risk has nearly doubled from 2023 to 2024.

This is important because when lots of ponies need care, it fills up the charity’s rescue centres, and it makes work harder for the team.

The charity has 16 Field Officers across England, Scotland, and Wales, who often work together to safely round up large groups of ponies.

To help with this, World Horse Welfare has bought more trailers and big, safe panels to gather the ponies.

These tools help build enclosures to move the ponies and get them to safety.

Claire Gordon, the Chief Field Officer, said: “I believe we are seeing more horse owners unable to cope through not being able to adapt quickly enough to the climatic challenges such as warmer, wetter winters. These are having a huge impact on their land which puts strain on their own management practices and on top of this everything has become so much more expensive.

“High stocking density can lead to quagmires with no dry resting areas to escape the mud which leads to foot and skin problems.

“It becomes harder to safely navigate moving around your horses to provide routine care or even spot the issues in the first place. So, we see unchecked breeding and youngstock going unhandled. On top of this, paid help is hard to keep as the working conditions are too unpleasant and so situations spiral further until we are called.” 

World Horse Welfare has started a new service called Help for Horse Owners to tackle these problems.

This special programme is meant to help people before they get overwhelmed and can’t take care of their ponies properly.

Claire added: “We also have an ageing population in the UK, alongside a greater awareness of how our mental health can affect our ability to provide care for our animals. It is often on these large-scale rescues that we find not only the horses living in poor environments but also too, their struggling owners.  

“We have lost count of the number of people we have helped when they have nowhere else to turn and are often at their lowest ebb. They usually are so grateful and report back that they wished they had known sooner that we existed and that they would have asked for help earlier if only they had known.    

“We hope that by highlighting this rising trend, we can reach more of the people who are struggling now, so they know a channel exists to seek help from, without judgement.  

“I hope the people around those individuals – be that veterinary professional, farriers or the individual’s family, friends and neighbours – know that we have a confidential channel they can reach us too, where supportive, skilled assistance can be found to help the owner tackle whatever equine problems they have.” 

 For more information, visit worldhorsewelfare.org