October 23, 2020 – Dr. Wendy Koch thinks she was born loving horses and feels that they just click with her soul. Now, she wants to try to better understand their souls.
Dr. Koch has spent 30 years working in animal welfare. In that time, she realized that equine research in general was a neglected field in terms of funding, and that most studies focused only on physical health. “While it’s critically important to continue to advance treatments for devastating health conditions such as colic and founder,” said Dr. Koch, “there aren’t enough resources being spent looking into horses’ psychological health.”
“I have always wanted to help remedy that lack of funding,” she said. “And when I had the funds to be able to do so, I wanted to partner with Morris Animal Foundation because I knew they would do a good job.”
Now Dr. Koch is funding a Donor-Inspired Study grant for pilot studies focused on equine behavior, relating to health and welfare. Grants like these allow individual donors to directly support a research topic they have a passion for, and for which there is a pressing need.
Equine behavior/welfare pilot study budgets are limited to $10,000 and should generate preliminary data to prove the viability of a new approach or idea. Projects can be for domesticated or wild horses.
“Animal behavior is a true passion of mine and I hope this call will result in some valuable findings,” Dr. Koch said. “I will forever be grateful to the Foundation for working with me on this project.”
Along with funding a Donor-Inspired Study grant, Dr. Koch has set up a fundraiser on Morris Animal Foundation’s peer-to-peer fundraising platform, where she hopes to raise additional funding for her equine behavior/welfare studies. If you’d like to add your voice and gift to this fundraiser, visit morrisanimalfoundation.rallybound.org, click on “Find a Fundraiser” and search for Equine Behavior/Welfare.
