HRH The Princess Royal Visit

The Horse Trust was honoured to have a special visit from our Patron, HRH The Princess Royal who formally opened The Horse Trust Training Centre. The Horse Trust in partnership with The British Animal Rescue and Trauma Care Association (BARTA) welcomed HRH in a small, Covid-secure manner.

The key role of BARTA is to provide advice, direction, training and accreditation for those involved in the rescue and trauma care of animals, in order to maintain professional standards and competencies. In 2019, The Horse Trust, who had been running courses in partnership with BARTA, took on the entity as a wholly owned subsidiary.

BARTA train emergency responders and vets in all aspects of animal rescue of all species, however over 80% of large animal rescues involving the Fire and Rescue Services involve horses. To this end The Horse Trust invested in building a new bespoke indoor training centre for which this event marked the official opening.

This recent event highlighted all elements of The Horse Trust’s partnership including the joint training, involving The Horse Trust Knowledge and Skills team, BARTA instructors and a number of specialist vets from within and outside of the Trust. It was intended to demonstrate an incident on a motorway involving animals, based on real life cases, showing all the roles and responsibilities of the emergency responders and other agencies involved.

After the demonstration and talk from BARTA and The Horse Trust, HRH was reunited with her former Charger, Elizabeth, who has been retired to The Horse Trust since 2019 after a successful career with The Household Cavalry. HRH rode Elizabeth on many ceremonial occasions such as birthday parades and it was wonderful to see the two together once again.

Finally, before HRH ended her visit, she met The Horse Trust Estates Manager, David Andrews to say a few words in honour of Angela Andrews, The Horse Trust’s Head Groom who worked for the Trust for 22 magnificent years before tragically passing away from cancer last year. HRH had met Angie many times over the years and it was a touching end to the visit.

The Horse Trust is incredibly grateful to have received support from HRH over the many years she has been our Patron. The event, although significantly scaled down due to recent Covid-19 regulations, was a wonderful way to round off the year and we were delighted to have our Training Centre officially opened.

You can view more photos from the visit on our Facebook page here.

Photo credit: Amanda Jane Smith Photography