13 Sept 2021
Vets With Horsepower held a day-long CPD session for 26 hours, attracting delegates from 74 countries to 34 talks by 26 different speakers.
Joshua Silverwood
Job Title
Image © Andrew Bruce / Adobe Stock
A vet charity has raised more than £100,000 after it broke a world record for longest-ever CPD session, clocking in at a marathon 26 hours.
Vets with Horsepower has racked up £116,000 through the event, which started on 29 April and saw delegates from 74 countries attend 34 talks from 26 different speakers.
Vets with Horsepower was originally conceived by vet and former University of Liverpool equine internal medicine professor Derek Knottenbelt as part of a farewell motorcycle tour across the country in honour of his retirement from the industry in 2010.
Prof Knottenbelt said: “I had won this Harley-Davidson in a raffle some years ago and decided that when I retire, I would ride around to all of the veterinary universities in the country to say goodbye. I figured it would take me a few weeks; I wasn’t a very experienced biker, so I spoke to one or two people and they offered to ride with me. Then another one joined me. Then another one joined me.
“Every year thereafter we have done something similar. We went to St Petersburg one year; we did Casablanca another year; from Johannesburg to Cape Town another year.
“Horsepower 2020 was supposed to be Horsepower 10, but we were forced to cancel it, but we figured we couldn’t do nothing for 2021. We have raised maybe £900,000 so far across all of our events and some of the charities we support rely on it.”
Vets with Horsepower selects three charities to benefit from each of its events. This year one of beneficiary was Saving the Survivors, a charity dedicated to providing care to animals that survive attacks from poachers.
The event also raised money for well-being charity Vetlife and Ethelburts Children’s Home, a South African children’s charity.
Prof Knottenbelt added: “We realised that because we already had this panel of amazing vets that we would run a virtual evening instead, but we thought people were getting a bit fed up with virtual CPD.
“So, it occurred to me that we would try to break the world record for live continuous CPD. We did it live and continuously for 26 hours.
“We know that someone somewhere is going to try to break our record, but if they do we’ll go for 36 hours and make sure no one ever breaks it again.”
