Rodeo and Equestrian Editing and Proofreading Services

A horse colics at half past two in the morning. The owner is on a flight, the yard manager has a phone number that goes to voicemail, and a vet is standing in a stable asking whether to operate — a decision costing several thousand pounds, with a real chance the horse does not survive either way. Whoever wrote the livery agreement decided how this goes.

We edit what riding schools, livery yards, equestrian centres and rodeo operations produce — livery and full-care agreements, lesson and hire terms, emergency veterinary authority documents, horse loan and share agreements, competition entry and stabling documentation, event and clinic terms, staff and working pupil documentation, and the correspondence that follows an injury to a horse or a rider. Our editors work on documents that decide what happens when nobody can be reached.

The emergency veterinary authority is the clause that matters most and is written least, and its failure is an agreement that assumes an owner will always answer the phone. A decision about a horse at three in the morning has to be somebody's before it is needed. We work through these so the authority is stated with a financial ceiling above which the yard will keep trying to reach the owner and below which it will simply act, since a vet waiting for authority is a vet not treating; so the escalation is a named list of people in order with the times they can be reached, given that a single contact is a single point of failure; so the owner's standing instruction on major surgery and on euthanasia is recorded explicitly, because these are the two decisions nobody wants to make on somebody else's behalf and both are made better in advance than at 3am; so insurance details, policy number and the insurer's own notification requirement are held at the yard, as many policies require a call before treatment and the yard is the only party awake; so the horse's own information travels with the clause — age, known conditions, medication, the vet who knows it; so the cost recovery position is stated with when the owner is billed and what happens if they cannot pay; so the yard's own limits are stated honestly, including that it will not withhold treatment for cost; and so the document is reviewed each year and signed. Agreements written this way let a vet start work.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including agreements, owner information and veterinary correspondence. We are editors rather than veterinarians, yard managers or lawyers, and we offer no veterinary or legal advice and no view on treatment or any decision about an animal. What we can do is make sure somebody has authority at three in the morning.