IT'S ALL ABOUT OUR CLIENTS

We Can Ride is an amazing program, as you all know. Everyone involved has experienced the wonder first-hand. The horses work their magic, for sure, but the real reason we are all here is the same: serving our Clients.

Our program serves over 250 clients annually! We have NARHA nationally certified instructors, licensed therapists, and trained volunteers. It is a magical orchestration of people and horses. Individuals with physical, cognitive, and emotional disabilities benefit from these equine-assisted activities.

What are the benefits of therapeutic riding and carriage driving?

• Children's listening skills and ability to follow instructions rose 80%.
• Interest in learning rose 41%.
• Self-confidence was 62% higher.
• Physical orientation skills rose 60%.
• Vocalization and verbalization skills were up 93%.
• 76% of the students retained and used their new vocabulary.
• 86% began using whole sentences.

Gentry L. My Therapist Weighs 900 lbs. Children Today. Jan-Feb 1986;15(1):30-3.

You will see the clients' faces when they're with their horse. Either smiling with the joy of it all, or concentrating on their task at hand. This isn't just a "pony ride," but real work involving balance, coordination, strength-building, and communication skills. You'll see the horses calm and intent on doing their work, paying close attention to their client's needs, as well as listening to their leader, all the while tolerating the commotion around them! You'll also see our trained volunteers as they interact and work to make the client's experience safe and rewarding. Friendships are made, smiles given and received, personal triumphs achieved, small and large. All these things happen on a weekly basis, in classes at all our sites.

Clients range in age from 2 to 70 years old. Once you are a client in our program, you remain a client ; we do not operate on a "lottery-type" or hit-or-miss system, but rather, returning riders get the first chance to come back to classes each year. The down-side is that we do have a waiting list of over 100 individuals. We apologize for that and do our best to bring new clients in when we can!

WE CAN RIDE OFFERS THREE TYPES OF PROGRAMS

Group Lessons, including Early Childhood Classes and Equine Assisted Therapeutic Riding: Our clients in group classes ride once a week for 1/2 to 1 hour, with three to six clients in a class. A NARHA registered instructor runs the class, with support from a teaching assistant, barn aid, and trained volunteers. We offer an early childhood class (on Tuesday mornings) for clients from two to five years old.

A physical or occupational therapist evaluates the client and recommends riding exercises and activities to challenge balance, improve posture, strengthen muscles, and reduce spasticity. The three-dimensional swinging motion of a horse relaxes spastic muscles and limbers segments of the spine, producing the same sequence of movement that occurs when a person walks unaided. Balance is continually challenged. Developmental sequence is augmented through the establishment of head control, postural tone, spatial relations, and a sense of equilibrium and balance. A client must also integrate the tactile, auditory, visual, and skeletal stimuli in order to produce the needed body responses for riding. The sights, sounds, and tactile and vestibular stimuli that the clients experience are unique to therapeutic riding and can not be reproduced in a clinical setting.

Classes may also include "sports riding" where clients learn basic riding skills (mounting, dismounting, riding positions, maneuvering the horse, and riding in various gaits), which promote physical, emotional, and psychological developments, all emphasizing independence; or "fundamentals" where clients learn horse care and may participate in grooming, tacking, and barn management.

Carriage Driving: These classes are one-half hour. The client is lifted into a carriage (while seated in their own or a program wheelchair) by a special lift mounted on the carriage, then secured in place. They hold a set of reins, while an able-bodied "whip" sits beside them with a second set of reins, and they are led by a trained driving horse. A NARHA specialty instructor runs the class. Carriage driving is for teens and adults, sometimes for a change of pace from riding, but more often as the only alternative when a client just can't ride.

Driving enhances balance, eye-hand coordination, head control, postural tone, and of course, self-esteem.

Hippotherapy: An occupational therapist or physical therapist works one-on-one with the client on and off the horse. Each class is one hour (or as much as the client can manage on any given day). There is also a team of volunteers, one to lead the horse and two as sidewalkers. The second one available if the therapist wants to take a step back and observe.

HOW TO BECOME A WE CAN RIDE CLIENT

Please read carefully!

TO GET ON OUR WAITING LIST, download the Client Registration (two pages) (Adobe PDF), print and fill it in; then mail it to our office. Do not email the form, as we need original signatures.

Once we have received the completed Client Registration, the prospective Client's name will be entered into our database. We do not fill openings on a first-come-first-served basis, but instead, we place Clients based on appropriate class availability. Unfortunately, you can expect the wait to be at least over one year. There is no cost to be placed on the Waiting List. PLEASE READ the prospective client cover letter outlining program fees (MSWord document, one page), and the Medical History form, for more information.

If you do not have access to a printer, please call our office at (952) 934-0057 and we will send these papers out to you.

Once we contact you with a possible class opening, the client will come in to our main office for an evaluation by a Phyiscal Therapist or an Occupational Therapist. This evaluation takes approximately one-half hour. The therapist will make recommendations as to class placement, type of horse, and even potential goals. The fee for this screening is $40.00.

After that, there's just all the paperwork, paperwork, paperwork! Forms need to be completed and/or updated and authorizations signed, photo consents given (or not), and any specialty forms completed (for example, seizure history, Down Syndrome atlantoaxial instability information, and Spina Bifida information).

Visit our Forms Page for more downloadable forms.