Why Horses? Equine-Assisted Learning, Regulation and SEND

We have woodland, open fields and plenty of ways to work with somebody outdoors without involving a pony, so why do we use horses? There are plenty of claims made about horses and mental health and I think we have to be careful with some of them. Horses aren't magical. We don't need to pretend they are to recognise that working alongside them can give us something very different to work with.

Equine-Assisted Learning and SEND

Horses are constantly paying attention to what is happening around them. They notice movement, position, pressure and the behaviour of the animals and people around them. That means when we work with them, what we do matters. If I want Teddy to walk with me, I have to communicate that. This is Equine-Assisted Learning. If he comes too far into my space, I have to decide whether I'm comfortable with that and what I'm going to do about it. If he doesn't understand what I'm asking, repeating the same thing over and over isn't necessarily going to change anything. I might need to change what I'm doing.

There is feedback in that interaction without somebody sitting there telling a participant whether they got something right or wrong. That can give us opportunities to work with communication, boundaries, relationships, problem-solving and awareness of ourselves and others in a very natural way.

The horses also give us something to focus on other than ourselves. This is particularly important with some of the children and adults we work with. Sitting opposite somebody and being asked how you feel, why you are anxious or what happened can be incredibly difficult. Put a grooming brush in somebody's hand and let that conversation happen alongside something else and it can feel completely different. We can walk while we talk. We can stop talking and watch what the ponies are doing. The interaction doesn't depend entirely on words.

When we talk about regulation at Wild Mane, we aren't talking about getting somebody to sit still and look calm. Somebody might need to move, have more space, do something repetitive with their hands, reduce demands or simply have some time before they are ready to engage. Working outdoors gives us room to do that, and working with the ponies can add purposeful movement, touch, observation and interaction.

We work with SEND participants, but that doesn't mean there is one particular way that horses work for a person with SEND. One participant might love grooming and find the repetitive movement useful. Somebody else might hate the sensory feeling of it. One person might want to know absolutely everything about the pony while another isn't particularly interested in horses but really enjoys leading and working with them. A diagnosis doesn't tell us what somebody needs. We still have to get to know the participant.

The ponies are individuals too, and that matters to the way we work. They aren't pieces of equipment that we bring out for an activity. They can move away, they communicate with us, they have preferences and they don't always do exactly what we expected them to do. Participants learn to notice that and respond to it. There is mutual respect involved because the pony gets a say in the interaction as well.

That is why horses work so well within what we do. They give us another way of communicating, another relationship to work with and something real happening in front of us that we can respond to, rather than having to create an artificial exercise and hope somebody engages with it.