SpiritHorse Programs Overview

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SpiritHorse Therapeutic provides free therapeutic horseback riding services to over 450 children and adults from ten counties in the Greater Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex each week at our facilities in Corinth, just north of Dallas, Texas. We currently serve more children than any center in the world. We are unique in that SpiritHorse is the only large center in America that provides all private therapeutic horseback riding services free of charge in our six programs: Disabilities, Children who are Victims of Abuse/Violence, At-Risk-Youth, Battered Women, and Youth After-Drug Rehab. Our mission is, "To Assist Each Child with Special Needs in Reaching Their Full Potential through Interaction with Horses".

We also have as a mission: "A kind, rewarding home for older show horses and ponies, loving care, and proper burial on our ranch when they pass on."

More than 700 centers in the United States provide recreational therapy, typically in group lessons. A much smaller number provide hippotherapy which is provided by occupational or physical therapists using the horse as a modality. A small number provide equine facilitated mental health, using the horse to foster relationship building and problem solving.

SpiritHorse provides what it terms equine-assisted healthcare, which is has a different goal than that of recreational therapy. It includes, for example, eleven specific methods provided in a one-on-one setting for intervening with its 165 children who have been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. We have developed an instructor as our autism specialist, following the lead of the mainstream medical community who substantially advanced the state-of-the-art in medicine when they developed pediatricians, oncologists, orthopedists, neurologists, and other specialists.

We receive referrals from Scottish Rites Hospital of Dallas, Children's Medical Center of Dallas, Cook's Children's Hospital Ft. Worth, other North Texas hospitals, pediatricians, neurologists, physical, occupational, behavioral and speech therapists, Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation, educators, Early Childhood Intervention administrators, and children's advocates groups. We also receive referrals from parents who have seen the benefits of our programs and are eager to share this resource with other parents.

SpiritHorse provides the only child development services some of our children will ever receive. We teach many things taught in the school systems to typical kids. For example, we teach those diagnosed with autism how to focus and stay on a specific task through having leading, grooming, and tacking up as part of the lesson. We have seen miraculous breakthroughs with our children when they start performing these tasks.

We have also reached an agreement with the University of North Texas and The Autism Treatment Center to study the results of biofeedback therapy coupled with our equine assisted healthcare for children with autism. Through brain imaging, the university will be able to provide more insight into the effectiveness of our methods and will allow us to refine them and develop new ones. A major SpiritHorse goal is to advance knowledge and develop more effective equine-assisted therapy methods for all types of disabilities, and share these methods worldwide.

Championing the use of retired show horses and ponies is also a major goal at SpiritHorse. These horses are ideal for this type of work because they have had years of professional training and show experience. These schoolmasters are the safest mounts for children with disabilities. Since most of the work is walking and our children cannot ride for very long, it's not really much more work than walking around the pastures where they live 24/7. Our horses and ponies love their work. Snowflake is thirty years old and waits by the pasture gate each morning to go to work.

We believe horses and ponies have the most accessible spirit of almost any creature and the vast majority have very beautiful spirits. They have one advantage over humans in that they do not have an ego to get in the way of their relationships. We also believe that children with disabilities have very accessible and beautiful spirits. We believe that this spiritual connection is what makes this intervention work. Our horses and ponies always greet the children who lead them from wheelchairs, walkers, and canes. They are so happy to see their riders.

The average age of our horses and ponies is twenty years. They work here until our veterinarian advises that they are uncomfortable with the work, or unsafe (tripping, etc.). At this time they retire here on our ranch to live out their lives in peace and tranquility. When these wonderful old equines pass on they are buried under the Mulberry tree in the back pasture. Snowflake, Nadia's mount, is thirty years old and leads a very fulfilling life. She has her wings waiting for her in heaven, indeed.