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My research question is asking if there is a significant interaction between equine veterinary conditions and individual horse variables across equine participants of therapeutic horse-riding programs in Victoria? My hypothesis is that there is a significant interaction between equine veterinary conditions and individual horse variables across equine participants of therapeutic horse-riding programs in Victoria. Therefore, my null hypothesis is that there is no significant interaction between equine veterinary conditions and individual horse variables across equine participants of therapeutic horse-riding programs in Victoria. For background research, only full-text, peer reviewed journal articles published within the last 20 years were used, in order to maintain reliable informative sources. Databases used were Google Scholar, Melbourne Polytechnic Library and La Trobe University Library. Search terms included Hippotherapy, Therapeutic Riding, Equine, Veterinary Conditions, Riding Injuries, and Preventative Healthcare. For the clinical research, data is to be collected from six therapeutic riding centres across Victoria with a total of 52 horses. Data gathered will consist of veterinary, dentistry and chiropractor records, general health records, and diary entries between January 2020 to January 2022. Recorded veterinary conditions will then be systematically grouped and statistically compared against individual horse variables to determine any correlations. The proposed timeline for semester 1 can be seen in this Gantt Chart. The task description can be seen on the left, and weekly timestamps on the top. The highlighted blue boxes indicate the time planned to spend working on each assessment, while the boxes marked with an X show the assessment due date. Each of the smaller tutorial assessments are given two weeks to complete, while the larger assessments are to be worked on over 4 weeks. Gathering project data and speaking with industry contacts is ongoing throughout the semester. The first main project limitation is gaining access to equine health records of horses used in therapeutic riding programs. This was managed by requesting a voluntary release of specified records with informed consent of what they would be used for. As the request was voluntary there is no guarantee how many records would be available to use in the research project. The second and third project limitations lie in the voluntarily provided equine health records. As there is no state-wide protocol for recording equine health issues within therapeutic riding centres, each centre has a different way of keeping horse veterinary records. This results in some centres hand reporting all small incidents according to the writers observations of the issue, while others only recorded significant issues as diagnosed by a veterinarian. Overall, this leads to the possibility of statistically inaccurate results due to the potential for missing data. This was managed by gaining as much voluntary information on the veterinary conditions of equine participants as possible, and only collecting records from within the last 2 years to ensure updated and recent records. The final project limitation is the interruption to standard therapeutic riding programs due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This forced many centres to offer limited programs or frequently shut down over lockdowns. These changes to the standard program routines mean the occurrence of rider-contributed conditions may be decreased, while paddock-contributed incidents may be increased. With any research involving animals, particularly relating to injury and illness of said animals, the animal’s welfare must be considered. Since this research project is looking at retrospective records of equine veterinary conditions and not dealing with any horses directly there should be no negative impacts to current equine welfare. Human welfare must also be considered due to their participation of volunteering equine health records of their owned horses. There is the possibility that looking at records of serious injury, illness or euthanasia of their horses may cause emotional distress, in which case supportive and counselling resources should be made available. As the equine veterinary records are collected from public therapeutic horse riding centres, it is vital to protect confidentiality and anonymity. This is important in order to ensure the privacy of existing horses and their records, to protect public company reputations, and maintain a trusting relationship between the researcher and the research subjects. The final ethical consideration is the potential for conflict of interest as the researcher is involved with one of the participating therapeutic riding centres. This is managed as the researcher has no direct input in the veterinary records at their centre, only collecting previously written records by other designated centre members. The researcher also declares no bias will occur as individual centres or horses are not of interest to the research question. Approval for use of requested data has been gained by appropriate program coordinators. There are five intended project outcomes. The first outcome is to identify commonly seen veterinary conditions within horses participating in therapeutic riding programs. These results will then be compared to horse sex, age, height, and breed to check for any correlation between individual horse variables and specific veterinary conditions. This should allow for the identification of at-risk horses and the development of a preventative care strategy to prevent their predisposed common conditions. Overall, this will increase our understanding of the impact of individual horse factors towards veterinary suitability to be used in therapeutic riding programs. The final outcome is to develop a standardized horse welfare and veterinary condition reporting form, which will allow for consistent recording of veterinary incidents across the state and ensure all participants are aware of horse welfare standards. I would like to thank the following people for providing their time, knowledge and support towards my research project: Supervisor Dr Courtnay Baskerville, Industry Contacts Ms Lyndsay Davis & Dr Fiona Kates, and all participating therapeutic riding centres who have provided equine health records. Text references. Image references. Thank you for listening.