Horses as Helpers

This summer, six Mount Prospect Academy students from the Ashuelot Valley Academy School (AVA) in Keene, NH participated in an equine program at Cooper’s Crossroad Elm Farm. The program, G.L.O.W.E. (Growing, Learning, and Overcoming With Equines) was designed to assist students to gain a better understanding of horses, general horse care, and offered them the opportunity to interact collaboratively with their peers while immersed in a real farm setting. The program, designed by Erin Ballard, teaches and empowers all participants on equine welfare and management as a way to provide them the tools for a future career working with horses.

The eight sessions were entitled: Teamwork and the 5 Freedoms; Horse Communication: How We and Horses Communicate; Horse Anatomy and Conformation; Compassionate Horse Care; Parts of Tack and Riding; Problem Solving and Adapting to Challenges; and Chores.

At the end of each hour-long session, time was put aside for the students to reflect in their journals on the day. Internship Coordinator Annie DiSilva explained that she had the opportunity to hear how the program was influencing the students individually.  Reflecting on those moments, Coordinator DiSilva stated “it was a pleasure for me to observe the teamwork, the joy shared, and the positive self-esteem developed” by the experience.

Students shared their hopes, fears, and feelings in the journals. The overwhelmingly positive results of the student’s G.L.O.W.E. program experience shows the therapeutic value of interacting and caring for animals. One student wrote how, “although they were having a horrible week in which absolutely nothing was going right, because they attended the program and were around the horses, they were leaving the stables happy and with a smile”.  Another student took the time after the graduation ceremony to thank each of the horses, as well as the volunteers for helping him face his fears [of the horses] and could not wait to get “back in the saddle”! A third student shared that “although she is not a “people person”, she realized that she is a horse person and asked for an internship at one of the horse farms and would ask her father to let her take horse lessons.

A Graduation Ceremony marked the end of the program during which each of the MPA (AVA) students received personal awards acknowledging their compassion, commitment, and participation. By the last day, AVA students Chloe and Shade were all smiles as they mounted and rode their new equine best friends “Findlay” and “Faith” one final time.