Using horses to enhance human health

 Equine therapy gives kids confidence to deal with physical and emotional difficulties

By Sarah Zabel, 14; Pratik Cherian, 16; Celia Ristow, 15; and Cathy Mangan, 17

Strides to Success in Plainfield is one of 25 accredited equine-facilitated riding centers in Indiana. The center offers a wide variety of classes to school groups and private clients. They engage in programs that teach life skills and use equine-assisted psychotherapy to help clients.

While horses and horseback riding play a major role in equine-assisted therapy, so does teaching and mentoring. Students learn to apply all these lessons to everyday life — often without realizing it is therapeutic or educational.
“A lot of the kiddos that we see, they’re in therapy three and four and five times a week, and they go to clinical settings, and this is the one place where they come and have fun,” said Raquel Ravinet, executive director at TherAplay, a nonprofit center in Carmel that is one of the largest of its kind in the country. “We don’t talk about what we’re going to do in therapy, how we’re going to use the movement of the horse. . . . It’s all, let’s play!”

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