Minor changes made to PPE documents
Following last year's update of the PPE Certificate and Guidance Notes for the UK and Irish Republic, minor alterations have been made to the documents in order to clarify whether the horse is ridden, lunged, or both.
The changes, already agreed by BEVA, Veterinary Ireland, and the Veterinary Council of Ireland, were ratified by RCVS Council on 7th June.
The PPE Certificate has now been amended to include a small section in which the examining veterinary surgeon can state how the horse was observed: when ridden, when lunged or both. The Guidance Notes have also been adjusted accordingly and read as follows:
"If ridden exercise is not undertaken then this stage may be conducted by exercising the horse on a lunge. It should be made clear on the certificate what form of exercise was undertaken."
The changes were considered necessary after it became clear that veterinary surgeons in Britain almost always see the horse ridden but many in Ireland prefer to observe the horse lunged, and the Guidance Notes did not accurately reflect this difference.
The updated Guidance Notes can be accessed here. New versions of both the Notes and PPE Certificates can be obtained from the Veterinary Defence Society.
With Strangles Awareness Week just around the corner (5-11 May), vets are being encouraged to share a survey about the disease with their horse-owning clients.
