Attitudes of the Equestrian Public towards Equine End-of-Life Decisions

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Delayed death has been identified as a key welfare concern for the U.K. horse population, leading to prolonged suffering. Previous studies have identified common reasons for delaying euthanasia, including financial cost, emotional attachment, peer pressure, negative attitudes towards killing and poor recognition of behavioural indicators of equine pain and stress. The Five Freedoms is a welfare framework that can be used to assess quality of life. We used this framework to create a survey, compiling a list of hypothetical—yet common—scenarios that would have an impact on the overall quality of life of a horse. Participants were asked to indicate to what extent each scenario would have a bearing on an overall decision whether or not to euthanise a horse, or whether it would have had no bearing at all. Participants were also asked if they had had a horse euthanised and to give the reason for such a decision. We received responses from 160 participants and found that the predominant attitude was that most scenarios had no bearing on a decision to euthanise. Principal Component Analysis collected the scenarios into a series of factors that could be labeled according to their themes, the most prominent of which were “Ethology-informed Management”, “Traditional Management”, “Emotional issues” and “Physical Issues”. Participants were most likely to consider euthanasia for physical issues and this was supported by the experiences of participants who had had their horses euthanised. Only a small number of responses also included consideration of affective and/or ethological factors, suggesting that welfare issues concerning affective state and/or behaviour are at risk of being omitted from an end-of-life decision. ABSTRACT: A key welfare concern for the equine population in the U.K. has been identified as delayed death, leading to prolonged suffering of horses. Reasons why some horse owners fail to have their horses euthanised include financial cost, emotional attachment, peer pressure, negative attitudes towards killing and poor recognition of behavioural indicators of equine pain and stress. The Five Freedoms framework of welfare was used to build a Likert-style survey to investigate the factors underlying attitudes of horse owners towards welfare measures in an end-of-life decision. Participants were asked to respond to hypothetical welfare scenarios and to give details of any horses they had had euthanised. The survey was conducted predominantly via equestrian Facebook groups and obtained 160 participant responses. Reliability of the scale was acceptable, with Cronbach’s [Formula: see text]. Principal Component Analysis was used to load the hypothetical scenarios onto seven factors containing 62.2% of the variance. The first four factors could be categorized according to “Ethology-informed Management”, “Traditional Horse Management”, “Emotional Issues” and “Physical Issues”. Participants were more likely to consider euthanasia for physical issues, compared with issues relating to affective state and/or ethology, although it was not clear whether this was due to disregard for welfare issues relating to mental health or failure to recognise them as such. A large number of responses stated that the scenario had no bearing on whether a horse should be euthanised, again suggesting a lack of recognition of welfare issues and their implications. When asked to state their reasons for euthanising their horses, participants cited almost exclusively physical reasons, with the exception of those citing dangerous behaviour. Only a small number of responses also included consideration of affective and/or ethological factors, suggesting that welfare issues concerning affective state and/or behaviour are at risk of omission from end-of-life decisions.