What is therapeutic horseback riding?
Therapeutic horseback riding uses horses and horse-related activities to give people with various disabilities the opportunity to learn new skills and to achieve cognitive, behavioral, psychological, and physical goals. Each rider has individual goals and strengths so each rider’s learning program is tailored to meet his or her needs. At MVTH, we incorporate goals from school-based Individualized Education Plans (IEPs), Individualized Family Service Plans (IFSPs), and the rider’s personal goals. For example, if a rider needed to learn colors, we could place signs of different colors around the arena and instruct the rider to find the desired color. By using the horse as a teaching tool, student motivation is heightened . We have also found that therapeutic riding can improve the rider’s motivation outside the arena. The occupational therapist of one of our riders reported that the rider was much more motivated to work on arm movement during her OT treatment because she wanted to have b
