The week of March 10 - 16, 2024 is Canadian Agricultural Safety Week, an annual campaign held the third week of March of each year. EquiMania! supports the campaign for #FarmSafetyEveryday with many free games and resources to keep youth safe on horse farms and TheHorsePortal.ca is offering a free online course for youth until the end of March.

EquiMania! Online makes learning fun with a series of online interactive activities. Adopting Stop Think Act initiatives (developed in partnership between Workplace Safety & Prevention Services and ESSO), serious accidents can be prevented by taking the time to think about the possible dangers and to prepare for them. Youth learn safety practices from drawings illustrating smart protective gear choices to use while riding, how to be safe around farm equipment and when handling horses. Handling horses and understanding a bit about their behaviour go a long way in preventing injuries. For example, by learning more about how horses see and hear, youth develop an understanding of how the prey animal is likely to react differently than humans to the stimuli around them.

Kids can become danger detectives with an online scavenger hunt to identify hazards on the horse farm by visiting EquiMania.ca. These are just a few of the interactive games young horse enthusiasts can complete while going for a Safety Pledge Certificate.

For those ready to learn even more about how horses communicate, TheHorsePortal.ca offers an on-demand online course, Horse Behaviour & Safety, recommended for teens. This course is free for a limited time until March 31, 2024 thanks to EquiMania’s sponsors.

(Equine Guelph)