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Horses Helping Humans
Ensuring a quality life for the equine population in the U.S. depends on finding a reliable lifelong match between the equine and a human activity. EAAT programs represents a significant section of the equine industry. In the same time therapeutic riding programs struggle to find, train and retain suitable candidates that will in turn improve the quality of life of people with disabilities or special needs. Horse attrition can be high, training a new horse expensive and staff (often volunteers) have little time to train or educate incoming horses. Our preliminary research indicated that sympathetic / natural training techniques might be especially beneficial for developing EAAT program horses due to the low-stress approach of these methods. In the therapeutic riding industry conventional pressure based training is still widely used with mixed success. We propose developing a sympathetic / natural based guide to help therapy programs identify, train, and successfully retain equine candidates for their programs.
Chris Cook has 15 years of experience running horse training programs; specifically colt starting, wild horse starting, problem horse and human development. Chris studied under master horseman Peter Fuller at Willow Brook Natural Horsemanship Center in Pennsylvania and Pat Parelli at the Parelli Campus in Colorado. As President & CEO, Chris plays an integral part of the Wild Horsemanship Center (WHC) executive team, and continues to use his skills to develop his dream of growing an empowering horsemanship center where horses and humans can build a strong foundation at any level (recreational, professional, business and therapy) based on psychology and empathetic leadership.
Disclaimer: The information in this video represents the views and opinions of the presenter and does not necessarily represent or reflect the opinions of PATH Intl.