Keeping Children Safe While Handling Horses - the research may surprise you

Ph.D. candidate Lara Genik and Dr. C. Meghan McMurtry from the University of Guelph’s Department of Psychology conducted a survey at the 2015 Royal Agricultural Winter Fair (RAWF) in Toronto, looking into the prevalence and impact of less studied painful incidents among children while handling and riding horses. Genik’s research survey set out to understand common painful incidents associated with riding and to gain insight that could potentially lead to intervention through safety and educational programming.

“There hasn’t been much work conducted about less serious incidents,” says Genik. “When I looked at the literature that did exist, I found that it has primarily focused on serious injuries that led to hospitalization. For example, we don’t know much about how often less serious incidents are occurring, when or where they are occurring, and what the impact is on youth and their parents.”

With the help of Equine Guelph and their EquiMania! youth display, data was collected at the RAWF. Brief questionnaires about their riding habits, including helmet use, supervision, painful incidents that have occurred and their impact, were completed by 120 children aged 8 to 18 years, who participated in riding at least once/week, and a parent.

A startling result indicated that 75 percent of the children surveyed had experienced at least one type of painful incident more than once, yet only 7.3 percent said they had modified their behaviour (e.g., keeping fingers away from the horse’s mouth after having been bitten). “We were quite surprised that these incidents had little impact on children’s behaviour around horses,” says Genik. “This