For Whom Horse Therapy Is Intended

Imagine being a little child who is paralyzed or who has a mental disability. Someone who will always have to have a person to help them. Horse therapy helps them gain confidence in themselves and trust in others. This form of therapy helps the patient or clint gain strength in their legs, arms, and upper body. It helps people with PTSD, depression, anxiety, and many more mental disability. Even though people think horse riding is only used for recreational purposes, it has many uses and benefits for therapy.

Horse therapy uses different activities for people with mental and physical disabilities on and off a horse. It helps challenge children and adults with all different kinds of disabilities. They challenge them with different activities of movements to strengthen different parts of there legs and upper body (“Sarris, Marina). The volunteers the rider and the horses gain a bond and trust in each other. The first part of therapy before the rider ever gets on the horse is ground wok (“is therapy using”). They will get the children to brush the horse’s body or comb there hair. Another activity they will do to have the children give the horses a bath or pain on the horses.

Horse therapy is for people with mental and physical disabilities and for people with anxiety and depression. There are a lot of people involved in horse therapy that people don’t realize. 66,179 children and adults with disabilities are involved with horse therapy (“is therapy using..”). More than 6,200 veterans who have PTSD use horse therapy to help them gain confidence and to help them deal with it (“is therapy using..”). Some people you wouldn’t think would be in horse therapy. people who have a spinal cord injury are in there the help gain strength in there back, people with learning disabilities, and people with autism (“is therapy using..”).

Horse therapy helps people gain strength in their upper body it also helps them gain confidence where they lack some. This form of therapy helps hem gain strength in their upper body from the movement of the horse. The movement of the horse is just like a person walking at a slow pace(“ the science behind”). It also helps kids or adults help them speak more works than in the beginning when they got there. They are telling the horse to walk on, woah, they also make kissing noises (“the science behind”). They also can gain strength in their legs. They use their legs to bump on the horse’s side and tells the horse to walk on to get them to move forward (“the science behind”). It also helps kids with ADHD. It helps them by keeping a calm atmosphere around the horses. They also have to stay focus on there hands and feet positions.

Horse therapist’s work environment is very organized and scheduled. They have a plan before the people in the class ever get there. They might have 116 people there in that group and half of them will be in the area riding first or they will be in the barn having a lesson (Sarris). The volunteers help make the process run smoothly and make sure all the work is getting done. Some will be in the arena helping with the lesson or they will be helping with the barn lesson (“is therapy using”). Some will be cleaning the barn, giving horses hay, or filling up or cleaning water buckets or troughs in the field. People who volunteer help gain patients with the people around them when they get overwhelmed (“is therapy using”). The volunteers who help out watch the children who can’t walk without help or children who have down syndrome. They watch these children interact with the horses smiling, laughing, and having the time of there life that they won’t get to have on a day to day bases (“The science behind”).

If you want to become a horse therapist then you have to get a bachelor’s degree in veterinary technology. That will take four years and you have to graduate to work with veterinarians dealing with large animals (“equine rehabilitation”). After having your bachelor’s degree in veterinary technology then you have to get your doctors of physical therapy degree. The undergraduate level lasts usually six years. Finally, after having your bachelor’s degree in veterinary technology and your doctor of physical therapy degree now you have to get an equine rehabilitation therapy certification and then you can open a horse therapy program (“equine rehabilitation”). Recreational therapy is a treatment program for people with disabilities, injuries, and illnesses. Some therapists travel to the patient. They will take them to the recreation center or they will go to the park (“recreational therapist”). This form of therapy spends a lot of time on their feet working on their patients. They make treatment plains and program to help them with social skills or help them with mobility-related injuries (“recreational therapist”). Recreational therapy grew by seven percent from 2018.