Grooms on the frontline of horse welfare

Grooms are on the frontline at horse shows and set the tone for horse welfare, a hot topic of conversation at this time with USEF Chief of Sport David O’Connor bringing up the ‘Central Park Test’ at the recent annual meeting – the reference being that equestrianism should be able to pass public scrutiny at all times.

Dinette Neuteboom has started a community ‘Horse Grooms’ to help facilitate good practices in the equestrian world. “Keeping horsemanship alive is very important to me,” she said.  “I’m from Holland and the public opinion is turning against riding horses and keeping horses. I think we can do better as an industry with the whole welfare issue.”

‘Horse Grooms’ was started a little over a year ago by Dinette, who was a teacher at an equine college for some 10 years in Holland, before traveling extensively while working with horses – to Argentina, the USA, China and New Zealand. She is currently in Wellington working for Bryan Baldwin and Meralex Farm.

“I wanted to do something for the grooms, put them in the spotlight and give them the respect they deserve,” she said. “I wanted to do something to try to keep good grooms in the industry because it’s a dying breed almost. It’s hard to find good grooms.”

Dinette’s campaign began with a website sharing information useful to grooms. Horsemanship is a big part of that but there are also practical tidbits such as how various horse shows are laid out and where grooms can find lunch or times when they might need to bring their bike to navigate the showgrounds.

“I’ve had a great response from grooms, vets and like minded individuals,” she said, “who want to share their stories, ask questions and bring the community together to help each other and improve the standard of horsemanship today.”

This could be interesting:

https://paperhorsemedia.com/2024/01/12/custom-made-bits-are-the-louboutins-of-wef/