Confidence does not mediate a relationship between owner experience and likelihood of using weight management approaches for native ponies.
Authors: Ward Ashley B, Harris Patricia A, Argo Caroline McG, Watson Christine A, Burns Neil M, Neacsu Madalina, Russell Wendy R, Grove-White Dai, Morrison Philippa K
Journal: PloS one
Summary
Native ponies face a significant metabolic disease burden, with obesity and insulin dysregulation being major risk factors for laminitis; preventative weight management approaches—including body condition monitoring, appropriate forage provision, and strategic exercise—can substantially reduce this risk, yet little was known about the psychological and experiential factors driving owner adoption of these practices. Ward and colleagues analysed 571 responses to an online questionnaire exploring whether owner experience and confidence influenced the likelihood of implementing weight management strategies, employing mediation analysis to examine the relationships between these variables. Surprisingly, whilst owners with ≥20 years' experience with native ponies reported significantly greater confidence in identifying disease and managing their animals, this confidence did not translate into higher uptake of preventative weight management approaches—a critical finding that undermines the assumption that experience and self-assurance automatically drive protective behaviours. By contrast, owners whose ponies already displayed clinical signs of obesity, laminitis, or equine metabolic syndrome were substantially more likely to implement feeding-related, seasonal weight loss, and exercise interventions, suggesting that reactive management following disease manifestation remains the primary driver of action rather than proactive prevention. These results indicate that confidence-building educational interventions alone are insufficient; practitioners should instead focus on identifying novel intervention pathways that motivate preventative weight management before ponies develop overt metabolic disease, whilst also encouraging established managers to critically appraise and update their practices despite long-standing experience.
Read the full abstract on PubMed
Practical Takeaways
- •Experience alone does not drive preventative weight management—target intervention messaging toward owners of metabolically-affected ponies, as they demonstrate higher adoption of feeding and exercise protocols
- •Simply building owner confidence through education may not be sufficient to change behaviour; focus instead on demonstrating practical benefits and disease-risk pathways specific to individual operations
- •Consider developing preventative care packages or protocols for native pony owners that address the gap between knowing best practice and acting on it before clinical disease develops
Key Findings
- •Long-term experience (≥20 years) with native ponies increased owner confidence in disease identification and management, but did not translate to increased weight management approach adoption
- •Owners managing ponies with obesity-related, laminitis-related, or metabolic syndrome diagnoses were significantly more likely to implement feeding, seasonal weight management, and exercise-based interventions
- •Owner confidence was not a significant mediator between experience and likelihood of implementing weight management approaches
- •Experienced owners lack motivation to adopt preventative weight management practices without overt disease presentation in their ponies