118  COVID-19 pandemic affects care access and financial stability for equine owners/leasers and facility operators

The COVID-19 pandemic has influenced travel, social interaction, and supply and demand shifts of goods and services. Pandemic restrictions caused difficulties across the equine industry, including ability to provide care and access to riding or training opportunities at boarding and show facilities. To determine how the pandemic affected essential and non-essential care access and financial stability for equine owners/leasers (OL) and equine boarding facility operators (FO), a survey was administered for 4 weeks (July–August 2020) to adult United States residents (n = 767, 39 states represented). The majority of respondents were Tennessee residents (n = 368). Data were analyzed using Chi-squared analyses in the frequency procedure (SAS v 9.4), where a = 0.05. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, moderate (FO: 28%, n = 31, OL: 21%, n = 114, easily manageable changes to daily activity) and major (FO: 25%, n = 28, OL: 14%, n = 80, daily activity completely disrupted) impacts on ability to provide non-essential care were reported, whereas OL (58%, n = 321) and FO (46%, n = 51) were more likely to report that their ability to provide essential care was unchanged (X(2) = 13.8, P = 0.0079). Current financial ability to pay for essential care differed between OL compared with FO, where 44% (n = 50) of FO reported less financial stability compared with 31% (n = 177) of OL (X(2) = 19.47, P = 0.0001). Future financial ability to pay for essential care was viewed similarly by FO and OL (X(2) = 0.78, P = 0.68) and along with the ability to afford basic needs, including preventative health (X(2) = 1.44, P = 0.23). More OL who maintained horses on their own property were concerned for their ability to pay for basic care over the next 6 mo (36%, n = 103) compared with OL who kept horses on someone else's property (28%, n = 80, X(2) = 3.8, P = 0.05). The majority of horse owners indicated they had no plans to sell their animals before COVID-19 and currently do not plan to sell due to COVID-19 effects (78%, n = 499, P = 0.0001). A similar trend was identified for owners who lease horses, with 80% (n = 64) having no previous or current plans to end their lease, and 4% (n = 3) that now plan to end to their lease but did not before COVID-19 restrictions (P = 0.02). The COVID-19 pandemic has affected boarding facility owners and equine owners/leasers differently despite their similar optimism regarding future financial stability. Outlook on future financial stability, and ownership or lease status may have been affected by the improving COVID-19 climate during data collection, and warrants consideration when determining overall industry impact.