See our Facebook site for regular hints and tips for safe behaviour around horses : Click on our Facebook page to look at our Facebook site.
Standard Operating Procedures
To see our Standard Operating Procedures for the following subjects click on the links below:
Instructing beginners to ride (in an enclosed area) : Standard Operating Procedures for Instructing Beginner Riders
Running beginner trail rides: Beginner Trail Rides – short rides
Handling a horse safety tips
If you want to look at some safety tips covering leading a horse, what to wear when working around horses or riding, general safety around horses, putting on and taking off a rug, and more. Click on the link below.
Safety-tips (340kB PDF)
Air Jackets….are they reliable?
We are often asked about safety and vests, and think it is important to flag the following information taken from a recent FEI 2016 eventing risk management report:
” Air Jackets: The data available only related to the number of fallers – wearing or not an air jacket. (Since 2013, the number of athletes wearing an air jacket was stable.)
The injuries [of ‘fallers’] were studied…
Falls with no injury represented 47 % without air jacket and 53 % with air jacket,
Falls with slight injury represented 45 % without air jacket versus 55 % with air jacket
Falls with serious injury represented 39 % without air jacket and 61 % with air jacket.”
These statistics may make it worth thinking about the effectiveness of wearing air jackets (remembering these particular figures relate specifically to the sport of eventing).
Hopefully there will be serious research done on falls wearing an air jacket in a variety of horse activities, to make sure the air jackets are not making the falls more dangerous!
It is possible that the torso is protected but due to the effects of the air jacket on the torso, the rider’s head and neck are actually more exposed.