BSA Staff Broaden Their Horizons

In March, BSA staff members, Hallie and Jackie had the opportunity to attend a PATH International Region 3 Conference at Great Oak Equine-Assisted Programs in Aiken SC on March 18th-20th. Here are some of the highlights from our weekend.

1. Our big dreams are achievable! The center that hosted the conference was only four years old and several of their staff at different points shared their story of growing rapidly from less than ten riders to now serving nearly 70 riders per week in just a few short years. Their story so paralleled where we are at right now and where we want to go that it knowing that another center has already made this journey. This center carried out everything they did with excellence and now have a beautiful facility including a barn and indoor arena and manages this with only four full time staff members.
2. The sky is the limit for Equine-Assisted Programs! We heard about several new ideas for programs that people have put into place. One of them was a veterans program called Stars and Stripes that was started by an instructor at the Shea center in California, Alex Johnson, she has developed a program that takes veterans and turns them into horsemen in a mere twelve weeks! One of the fascinating parts about this program is that in order to develop it, she studied the old cavalry manuals from the US and other countries in order to create a system and use terms that these military men and women could relate to. Another woman presented on grief and they have a program people can attend after losing a loved one. There is so much creativity in this industry!
3. Blindness is exhausting! (from Jackie) One of the seminars I had the chance to go to was called Eyesight vs Insight given by speaker Kimberly Taylor, about how to best serve a blind participant in your Therapeutic Riding Program. Riders develop stamina just to get ready for the lesson, get out of the car, get to the barn, get their horse ready, etc, etc. The Center and Instructor need to keep things in mind like physical barriers on the property and within the arena during a lesson. Can a client navigate safely through your facility independently? Has anything changed or been moved since the last lesson? An instructor needs to think constantly about how to verbally explain things and don't always assume help is needed, ask!  There are also many things to consider while teaching a lesson with a blind client. Lighting, depending on the level of vision, colors and landmarks within the lesson area, distracting sounds, communication from the instructor such as specific degrees or using cardinal directions when asking a rider to turn or move their horse. These are all things that would need careful attention when taking on a blind student.
4. Research can be fun! I (Hallie) remember saying to myself at a past conference I attended that I was thankful I got to go to all of the interesting sessions about programs instead of the "boring" ones about marketing, research, etc. So here I was this time attending all of those sessions that I used to think were boring and now have become extremely fascinating to me! I will not go into detail about the courses on branding and marketing, but they gave me many good ideas on ways to improve on what we are doing. One of the highlights of this conference was getting to reunite with my former professor, Pebbles Turbeville who is now the executive director of the Horses and Humans Research Foundation, which promotes research in the field of Equine-Assisted Activities. Although our center is not in a position to do research just yet, it was encouraging to hear that there are other centers doing research to prove what we all know is true, that horses and people are a recipe for healing.
5. We are all in this together! One of the best things about conference is the instant connection that is possible between those in attendance. It is easy to strike up a conversation in no time with a stranger and in the next few minutes, it seems that you are sharing ideas and exchanging phone numbers. We had the opportunity to network with and meet some really great people who are doing what we do, which brought so much encouragement.

We could go on for a while about all of the things we learned at conference but we will save that as we begin to implement the ideas bit by bit into our own program. About the conference as a whole, Jackie says, "It was all very fascinating to me. The conference overall was mentally overwhelming but so exciting at the same time to learn about new things within the therapeutic riding industry." Sometimes it is easy to become caught up in the day to day but experiences like this help us to broaden our horizons as we learn from one another.