UNDERSTAND HORSES LIVE

13 – 14 July 2024

ARU WRITTLE

Chelmsford, Essex, UK

Following the success of our Understand Horses Live weekend events in 2022 and 2023 we will be returning with our unique equine event in July 2024 – two days of lectures plus practical demos & training workshops on horse behaviour, physiology and training.

An international panel of experts - equine behaviour consultants, academics, vets, physios and trainers - will lecture on a variety of fascinating subjects on Saturday, then put the scientific theory in to practice with the horses based at ARU Writtle (formerly Writtle University College) on Sunday.

Understand Horses Live is aimed at horse owners, students and equestrian professionals interested in improving their knowledge and understanding of horse behaviour, training, riding and physiology.

Tickets are available for the whole weekend (Saturday & Sunday) or the Lecture Day (Saturday) only.

  • Saturday 13 JULY

    Lecture Day

    Lordship Campus

    8.45am – 5.30pm

    A full day of lectures packed with information on a wide range of subjects, including:

    what’s new in behavioural management science; do horses love being ridden; the impact of artificial weaning; agonistic behaviours in wild horses; the challenges of managing equine obesity; how best to load and transport horses; improving horse training; interpreting horse behaviour.

    Aline Bouquet
    Samantha Couper (online)
    Trudi Dempsey
    Emma Lethbridge
    Lauren Fraser
    Tamzin Furtado
    Justine Harrison
    Roxane Kirton
    Rosa Verwijs

  • Sunday 14 JULY

    Practical Day

    Cow Watering Campus

    8.45am – 5pm

    A full day of demos and training workshops on a wide range of practical subjects, including:

    effective loading techniques, the science of measuring behaviour; the challenges of managing equine obesity; equine massage techniques; horse agility; equine scent work; surviving in the equine world

    Aline Bouquet
    Trudi Dempsey
    Barbara Dreyer-Rowlands
    Emma Lethbridge
    Justine Harrison
    Tamzin Furtado
    Lauren Fraser
    Holly Gallacher
    Roxane Kirton
    Rosa Verwijs

Understand Horses Live is a special event - view feedback from attendees and photos of previous Understand Horses Live weekends.

UNDERSTAND HORSES LIVE 2024 PRESENTERS

  • Trudi Dempsey

    Trudi Dempsey

    Trudi is a Certified Equine Behaviour Consultant with the IAABC and a member of their Application Review Committee. She is also an Accredited Animal Behaviourist with the ABTC offering in-person and online consultations. Trudi has been offering her own unique blend of classical dressage and positive reinforcement since the ’90s. She specialises in developing behaviour change by creating low stress learning environments. Trudi presents clinics, talks, and workshops in person throughout the UK and webinars and courses online around the world. She contributes to Your Horse magazine and the peer reviewed IAABC Journal. She hosts the behaviour and training podcast ‘Lead a Horse to Water’.

    On-Demand Courses

    AN INTRODUCTION TO TRAINING HORSES WITH FOOD

    HOW TO CREATE A SUCCESSFUL TRAINING PLAN

    TRAIN YOUR HORSE TO: WAIT

    UNDERSTAND HORSES LIVE 2022

    WHEN POSITIVE BECOMES TOXIC

    Instructor-Led Course

    UNDERSTAND CLICKER TRAINING FOR HORSES

  • Justine Harrison

    Justine Harrison

    Justine is the founder of Understand Horses and has been practicing as a horse behaviour consultant since 2007. She is a Certified Equine Behaviour Consultant with the IAABC, the organisation’s UK Co-Chair and a member of the Application Review Committee. She is also a registered Accredited Animal Behaviourist and Trustee of the Animal Behaviour & Training Council. Justine is a visiting lecturer on the BSc (Hons) Equine Behavioural Science degree at ARU Writtle (formerly Writtle University College) and also acts as an expert consultant in court cases involving equine behaviour.  She holds lectures and workshops around the UK and regularly contributes to a wide variety of international publications – either writing articles, commenting or answering specific questions about horse behaviour and training.

    On-Demand Courses

    UNDERSTAND EQUINE BODY LANGUAGE

    UNDERSTAND HORSE BEHAVIOUR

    UNDERSTAND HORSES LIVE 2022

    Instructor-Led Course

    HORSE BEHAVIOUR CONSULTING MENTORSHIP

  • Emma Lethbridge

    Emma Lethbridge

    Part neuroscientist, part horse fanatic, Emma is fascinated by the equine brain and how horses perceive and respond to their world. Emma has 32 years’ experience with horses, having been lucky enough to have been riding since she was four and to have had four wonderful family horses since the age of 12. Emma has studied horses to master’s level, read a degree in neuroscience and obtained a PhD in neuropsychology; she has also ridden in affiliated competitions, worked on professional yards, directed an equine learning centre, taught riding, helped many people with their horse’s behaviour and, more importantly than all of that combined, she has come to love equines not for what they can do for us, but for the wonderful creatures they are in their own right.

    On-Demand Courses

    GREY MATTERS! UNDERSTANDING THE EQUINE BRAIN

    WORKING WITH FEAR AND TRAUMA IN HORSES

    Instructor-Led Course

    TRAUMA-INFORMED HORSE TRAINING CERTIFICATE

  • Rosa Verwijs

    Rosa Verwijs

    Rosa is an International Association of Animal Behaviour Consultants (IAABC) Certified Equine Behaviour Consultant and registered with the Animal Behaviour and Training Council (ABTC) as an Accredited Animal Behaviourist. She sits on the equine committee of the ABTC and is the ABTC behaviourist representative on the British Horse Society’s Equine Health and Welfare Advisory Committee, and is a contributor on the Understand Horses online education platform. She is a Senior Lecturer in Equine Behaviour and Nutrition at ARU Writtle (formerly Writtle University College) in Essex, where she leads the BSc (Hons) Equine Behavioural Science degree, educating future generations of equine behaviourists and conducting research in equine behaviour and welfare.

    On-Demand Courses

    AN INTRODUCTION TO HORSE NUTRITION

    UNDERSTAND HORSES LIVE 2022

  • Lauren Fraser

    Lauren Fraser

    Lauren Fraser MSc is an experienced horsewoman based in British Columbia, Canada, who has worked professionally with horses since 2006. Prior to her current specialization, Lauren taught riding and horsemanship, and trained horses. Lauren holds an Equine Science Certificate (with Distinction) from the University of Guelph, and obtained her MSc in Clinical Animal Behaviour (with Merit) through the University of Edinburgh's Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies. Lauren's dissertation research examined the behaviour of horses subjected to ‘laying down’ during training. Lauren provides horse behaviour consultations, both in-person and remotely worldwide, and offers educational events on horse behaviour and training.

    On-Demand Courses

    WHY DO HORSES BEHAVE BADLY? AN INTRODUCTION TO BEHAVIOURAL DEVELOPMENT IN HORSES

    UNDERSTAND HORSES LIVE 2022

  • Roxane Kirton

    Roxane Kirton

    Roxane Kirton BVMS MSc MRCVS is an equine vet who graduated from the University of Glasgow in 2005. She has spent most of her career working in the equine charity sector and it was the challenges of working with horses and ponies with histories of cruelty and neglect that started Roxane’s interest in equine behaviour. This led to her obtaining a MSc in Clinical Animal Behaviour with Distinction from the University of Lincoln in 2020. Her MSc research project was investigating the welfare impact of different grazing systems on outdoor living ponies. Roxane has a particular professional interest in the relationship between unwanted behaviours and physical health. In addition to continuing to work in the charity sector to improve the welfare of horses, Roxane also offers private behaviour and acupuncture consultations.

    On-Demand Course

    HOW CHRONIC PAIN AFFECTS BEHAVIOUR

  • Samantha Couper

    Samantha Couper

    Sam has been cataloguing and recording observations of feral horses since 2018. She is board chair of the Onaqui Catalogue Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to compiling observations on the Onaqui wild horses using citizen science. In particular, she is passionate about breaking down barriers surrounding scientific observation and interpretation for both professionals and laymen. To bring wild horses to the public, she teaches a course on wild horse behaviour at the University of Utah (USA). In particular, she is interested in how management, climate, and predation histories interact to affect horse heterarchies and band formation strategies. Sam is a member of IAABC and is working towards becoming a full time equine behaviour consultant, where she plans to integrate feral horse research and personal observations to aid owners with removed feral horses adapting to domestic settings.

    On-Demand Course

    BEST FRIENDS? AFFILIATIVE BEHAVIOURS IN WILD HORSES

  • Aline Bouquet

    Aline Bouquet

    Aline Bouquet PhD is an equine welfare scientist at the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) in London investigating the Quality-of-Life of older horses particularly when diagnosed with PPID (Cushing’s disease). Previously to studying older horses and during her PhD, Aline investigated the role of maternal behaviour and early life experiences in the development of abnormal oral repetitive behaviour and social behaviour in young horses. Aline has always been a horse fanatic, sat on horses before she could walk, and made it her life’s mission to improve equine welfare at the forefront of research, which led to her to move around the world to gain valuable practical and research experience.

  • Barbara Dreyer-Rowlands

    Barbara Dreyer-Rowlands

    Barbara has over 16 years experience working with hoofstock and wild equines such as zebras, Persian onager, giraffes, eastern black rhinos and bongo in zoo settings, including Chester Zoo. Barbara is fascinated by the environmental impact on animal behaviour and has included environmental enrichment such as R+ training and more naturalistic ways of feeding into her care of animals. Barbara is an equine behaviour consultant and positive reinforcement trainer and has trained eastern bongo to weigh train, conscious blood draw on eastern black rhinos and worming treatment in Grevy zebras as well as competing very successfully in international online agility liberty with her own Highland mare.

  • Tamzin Furtado

    Tamzin Furtado

    Tamzin is a social scientist with a background in global health, and has a specific interest in the interconnections between human and animal health and wellbeing. She completed a PhD at the University of Liverpool studying how we can improve the management of obesity in horses, particularly focusing on horse-human relationships and human behaviour change. She now works on projects covering a wide range of aspects of understanding human behaviour in order to improve companion animal welfare, and in using social sciences to find out more about how we can help people to change.

  • Holly Gallacher

    Holly Gallacher

    Holly Gallacher is an Equine Veterinary Physiotherapist, registered with the National Association of Veterinary Physiotherapists (NAVP). Holly received a BSc (Hons) in Equine Science, followed by a PgDip in Veterinary Physiotherapy from Harper Adams University in 2016. She has been around horses since the age of four and has owned her lovely mare Roxy (above) for 15 years. Professionally she enjoys working both in the field with her own private clients as well as being a university lecturer and teaching the next generation. Holly is passionate about improving horse welfare and has a particular interest in the link between pain and behaviour in equines.

BUY Tickets

Tickets are available to purchase for the whole weekend (Saturday & Sunday) or the Lecture Day (Saturday) only.

Saturday Lecture Day tickets are not transferable to the Sunday Practical Day. (Sunday-only tickets will not be available.)

Please note: there are only a limited number of weekend tickets available. We recommend that you book early to avoid disappointment.

Please read the terms and conditions (below) before purchasing tickets.


Understand Horses Live 2024: Saturday Lecture Day Ticket (Early Bird)
Sale Price:£99.00 Original Price:£129.00
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Understand Horses Live 2024: Weekend Ticket (Early Bird)
Sale Price:£239.00 Original Price:£289.00
Quantity:
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 A 10% discount is available for current ARU Writtle students. Email info@understandhorses.com with your student number and course name to book your ticket directly.

INFORMATION

Location - Saturday
ARU Writtle (formerly Writtle University College)
Lordship Campus
Lordship Road, Chelmsford, Essex, CM1 3RP (map)

Location - Sunday
ARU Writtle (formerly Writtle University College)
Cow Watering Campus
Cow Watering Lane, Chelmsford, Essex, CM1 3SD (map)

Parking
There is plenty of free parking available at both sites.

Accommodation
A limited number of rooms will be available at ARU Writtle for Understand Horses Live attendees at a special rate of £35 per night. Download the accommodation booking form here. Email jo.hasnip@writtle.ac.uk with any enquiries. There is also plenty of hotel, guesthouse and Airbnb accommodation in the Chelmsford (and Stanstead) area, but we recommend that you book early for the best prices.

Food & Drink
A buffet lunch on Saturday, a packed lunch on Sunday, plus morning and afternoon teas & coffees on both days are included in the ticket price.

WiFi
ARU Writtle will provide free WiFi access for Understand Horses Live attendees for both days.

Sponsorship
Advertising, sponsorship and trade stand packages are available for this event - view details.

CPD/CEU
This event has been approved for 6 CPD points for Accredited Professional Coaches by the British Horse Society (BHS). CPD/CEU for Pony Club UK (PCUK), the International Society of Animal Behavior Consultants (IAABC) and the Karen Pryor Academy is pending approval.


Terms & Conditions

All tickets must be purchased online in advance - no tickets will available at the venue.

Saturday Lecture Day tickets are not transferable to the Sunday Practical Day.

Confirmation of your ticket purchase will be sent to your entered email address.

Information about the event will be sent to your entered email address.

No refunds will be available within 7 days of the event start time.

The organisers reserve the right to amend any aspect of this event or to cancel this event at any time.

All monies will be returned in full in the event of cancellation.