YMG Report | EQUINE
Shumbashaba Outreach & Community Engagement
Shannon Thompson ( Treasurer & Out-reach Portfolios)
On the 12th of October, the SAEVA YMG hosted an outreach to Shumbashaba, a foundation in Diepsloot that helps
the community by providing them with resources and opportunities to interact with horses. They do hippotheraphy
and therapeutic riding for disabled children, and provide an opportunity for children from the community to join their
development team and learn how to ride horses. They also use the horses for counselling and education. In the time
at Shumbashaba, we assisted with their “horse appreciation” programme. This is where children of all ages are invited
to interact with horses, and educated about horses and their care. We were provided with equine film radiographs
by the Radiology department of the Onderstepoort Veterinary Academic Hospital. We used them to demonstrate the
basic anatomy of horses. We taught the children to do a basic clinical examination, and used stethoscopes to listen
to the horse’s heart and gut sounds. The children really enjoyed being able to do the hands on work, and were very
excited whenever they heard something. We stayed at the outreach to assist with the children interacting with the
horses, which included leading them around and giving the horses a bath. They were very short of volunteers for
the day and were grateful for the extra hands. Overall, it was a very successful outreach and was thoroughly enjoyed.
The Worm Talk by Dr Karl van Laeren (In collaboration with Worm-ex Lab)
Written by Zarah Vermeulen (Sport Horse Portfolio)
I absolutely loved the talk that Dr van Laeren presented at SAEVA congress earlier this year, so decided to ask him if he
would be willing to do a talk for the students of Onderstepoort. Fortunately he was planning a trip down to Gauteng
(from his residence in Zimbabwe) in early October this year and we made a date that would suit him and the students
(3 October 2019).
I gave him free space to talk about worms found in horses; He showed us a lot of statistics regarding current worm
burdens in the country. He also discussed new diagnostic techniques being used in Europe, which was very interesting.
• Volume 22 Issue 01 | March 2020 •
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