{"id":2450094,"date":"2019-10-19T11:56:01","date_gmt":"2019-10-19T17:56:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/the-equitarian-glenwood-springs-veterinarians-pioneering-work-for-horses-of-the-third-world\/"},"modified":"2019-10-19T11:56:01","modified_gmt":"2019-10-19T17:56:01","slug":"the-equitarian-glenwood-springs-veterinarians-pioneering-work-for-horses-of-the-third-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/the-equitarian-glenwood-springs-veterinarians-pioneering-work-for-horses-of-the-third-world\/","title":{"rendered":"The Equitarian: Glenwood Springs veterinarian\u2019s pioneering work for horses of the third-world"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Jay Merriam is a retired veterinarian who has started traveling to developing countries around the world to give veterinary care to working horses, donkeys and mules.<\/strong>
Chelsea Self \/ Post Independent<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

One hundred yards from the mass grave in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, that CNN\u2019s Anderson Cooper famously reported on, Jay Merriam met a woman and her donkey shortly after the 2010 earthquake that devastated the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis woman had her entire life on the back of a donkey, because everything else had been crushed,\u201d Merriam said. \u201cThis animal was everything she had, and that\u2019s the story the world over. The animals survive, and can help us survive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Merriam, a retired equine veterinarian now living in Glenwood Springs, has dedicated his life to a singular mission: To care for the working animals in the most impoverished countries of the world.<\/p>\n

\u2018We really didn\u2019t know what we were getting into\u2019<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhat we\u2019re trying to do is get horse people, and everybody, to lift their vision up a little bit and look at the world. When you do, you\u2019ll find that horses are still a hugely important part of transportation and movement everywhere except here\u201d \u2014 Jay Merriam\u201cWe can help their animals, and that\u2019s huge for (developing communities). They rely on those animals economically, whether they\u2019re hauling coconuts or bananas, or getting the kids back and forth to school.\u201d \u2014 Shelly Merriam<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

Merriam began his volunteer work caring for the working animals of the world in 1992, after connecting with a local veterinarian in the Samana province of the Dominican Republic.<\/p>\n

For more than 25 years, he and other equine veterinarians have traveled twice a year to Samana to train others to better care for their working animals.<\/p>\n

His journey began with a vacation. A friend of Merriam\u2019s visited the Dominican Republic, and stayed in a resort owned by the husband of a local veterinarian.<\/p>\n

That started a conversation, and Merriam joined two other veterinarians on an inaugural voyage to the Dominican Republic in 1992.<\/p>\n

At the time, Merriam had a private equine surgery practice in Massachusetts, and was president of the Massachusetts Veterinary Medical Association.<\/p>\n

Jay\u2019s wife, Shelly Merriam, wasn\u2019t on that first trip, but later joined the group herself.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really didn\u2019t know what we were getting into,\u201d Shelly said.<\/p>\n

Now, the Merriams have become part of the community and visit twice a year to provide horse medicine and training to locals.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really get to know generations of people. The elderly have passed on, and babies have been born and grown up and now have babies of their own,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

It is charitable work, but mostly limited to veterinary medicine and education.<\/p>\n

As more and more veterinarians joined in the work, Merriam\u2019s Samana outreach became a model for a spin on doctors without borders for working horses of the world.<\/p>\n

A new word for a new movement<\/p>\n

There was no word for what Merriam was doing, so he created one \u2014 a talent which seemingly runs in his blood.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou may have heard of my family. They published a little book years ago, a dictionary,\u201d Merriam said, referring to his distant relatives Charles and George Merriam who in the 19th century published a dictionary that later became Merriam-Webster.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy immediate family didn\u2019t get any money from it, but we did get the ability to make up a word every now and then,\u201d Merriam joked.<\/p>\n

\u201cEquitarian\u201d could simply mean promoting the welfare of equids \u2014 horses, donkeys and mules \u2014 around the world.<\/p>\n

But helping a working horse also means helping their human owners.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the animal doesn\u2019t work, the family doesn\u2019t eat,\u201d Merriam said.<\/p>\n

In many impoverished places, the only alternative to equine power is human power.<\/p>\n

Merriam has seen children carrying loads of water for miles simply because the family\u2019s donkey died.<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of our vision is these animals become better cared for, so they in turn can care for their families,\u201d Merriam said.<\/p>\n

The animals need care, and in the poorest places of the world likely don\u2019t have access to veterinary services.<\/p>\n

Merriam said he has shocked potential donors with pictures of animals who are skin and bones, have split hooves, and still are put to work each day.<\/p>\n

In 2008, Merriam and another veterinarian Julie Wilson started the Equitarian Workshop in Texcala, Mexico, to equine doctors wanting start their own overseas missions.<\/p>\n

The pair worked within American Association of Equine Practitioners (AAEP) for several years, but formed an independent organization in 2010, calling it the Equitarian Initiative.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been mind-boggling, life changing,\u201d Wilson said in an interview. She succeeded Merriam as president of the Equitarians, which now serves as a global hub for equine charitable work.<\/p>\n

The movement continued to grow, with Merriam being involved in training equine doctors to travel to India, Morocco, and Native American Indian reservations.<\/p>\n

Merriam received the AAEP President\u2019s Award in 2012 for his work in advancing which had \u201cenhanced the image of veterinarians around the world,\u201d according to then-president John Mitchell.<\/p>\n

redefining cruelty<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re trying to do is get horse people, and everybody, to lift their vision up a little bit and look at the world. When you do, you\u2019ll find that horses are still a hugely important part of transportation and movement everywhere except here,\u201d Merriam said.<\/p>\n

Equine aid is not a vibrant part of the global charity network.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are among the last to be consulted in disaster situations and are overlooked in the charitable world as unimportant to the recovery of rural populations, yet we can appreciate the importance of working equids to the rural poor throughout the world,\u201d Merriam wrote in a 2012 paper for the AAEP.<\/p>\n

While there are many veterinary charities serving developing countries, it\u2019s not a focus of the UN, USAID or other governmental grant-making institutions.<\/p>\n

To raise funds, Merriam finds he has to change how people think about animal treatment in third world countries.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, cruelty is beating an animal for no reason,\u201d Merriam said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think, \u2018oh, how cruel, this animal is skin and bones.\u2019 But there really isn\u2019t much for him to eat, and the owners care for him as best they can. It\u2019s cruel, but it\u2019s not cruelty,\u201d Merriam said.<\/p>\n

With so many problems facing impoverished communities Shelly is glad to help however they can.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know we can\u2019t solve all their problems,\u201d Shelly said. \u201cWe can help their animals, and that\u2019s huge for them. They rely on those animals economically, whether they\u2019re hauling coconuts or bananas, or getting the kids back and forth to school.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donkeys, horses and mules are the pickup trucks of the developing world, and sometimes they\u2019re treated as such, Shelly said.<\/p>\n

But after so many years working in Samana, Shelly sees the local animal owners developing more caring relationships with their beasts.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really changed, partly due to the education. Once they understand their part in the health of the animal, it becomes more of a personal relationship,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

After retiring from his Massachusetts practice, Jay and Shelly moved to the Teller Springs neighborhood between Glenwood Springs and Carbondale to be closer to one of their two children.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a good place for anyone who loves horses, and Merriam rides mules with friends. He doesn\u2019t keep any horses himself because he\u2019s allergic to hay.<\/p>\n

Each year, Merriam spends weeks traveling to other countries, getting his veterinary \u201cfix\u201d caring for the working animals overseas.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see horses here in this valley that are so well taken care of. Something happens to the horse medically, and they have four veterinarians on scene before they get off the phone. And yet, these animals (in less developed nations) are working every day with no care,\u201d Merriam said.<\/p>\n

tphippen@postindependent.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jay Merriam is a retired veterinarian who has started traveling to developing countries around the world to give veterinary care to working horses, donkeys and mules.Chelsea Self \/ Post Independent One hundred yards from the mass grave in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, that CNN\u2019s Anderson Cooper famously reported on, Jay Merriam met a woman and her donkey […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2450094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-19 13:02:49","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2450094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450094\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2450094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2450094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2450094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}