Equitation science in practice: How collaboration, communication and change can improve equine welfare

Equitation Science is unmistakeably coming of age as an independent scientific discipline. Over the past decade, Equitation Science has contributed substantially to the determination of which training methods and equipment may promote ethical and sustainable practice. Equitation Science research is also increasingly focusing on the identification and use of animal-based indicators of welfare rather than those that are solely resource-based (Randle, 2019). That said however, researchers and practitioners agree that “we still don’t know what we don’t know” and as Waran and Randle (2019) state “more importantly, what we need to know to improve equine welfare”. This special issue contains the abstracts from the 13th international conference of the International Society for Equitation Science (ISES) themed Equitation Science in Practice: Collaboration, Communication and Change, and a broad range of full papers from the conference and after.