Helping People Build
Skills for Life
Organizations like yours work hard to help their clients, students or patients to work towards reintegrating back into their lives outside the organizations. What does this take? Life skills! We work with you and your organizations to hit objectives that are parallel to yours.
Our horses are the MASTER teachers of life skills. They demand personal leadership and can teach your clients how to apply these skills to their lives.
Watch this short video to discover what our
Equine Assisted Learning programs are all about.
*This educational video is provided by our certifying body,
Equine Connection – The Academy of Equine Assisted Learning.
We are sharing this to help you better understand the structure and concepts of our programs and workshops.
Horses + Objective-Based Exercises
+ Effective Facilitation + Experiential Learning
= POSITIVE CHANGE
This Isn't a Loose Cannon.
Through the Fundamental Principles and Form of Delivery, we can guarantee an outcome.
The learned skills don’t just stay in the arena. All objectives are paralleled back to everyday life and help clients to gain the skills and the self-esteem necessary to reintegrate back into the lives they were truly meant for.
Family First
Reconnection Series
Want a stronger bond with your family? Horses help parents and kids reconnect, communicate better, and build lasting relationships in a fun, safe environment.
Women Navigating New Chapters
Feeling lost or stuck after a life transition? Our horse-partnered programs guide women to rediscover their strength, build resilience, and create a new path forward.
For Community Organizations
Looking for equine therapy alternatives? Our skill building programs help community groups, recovery centers, and nonprofits strengthen skills, confidence, and connection.
“A horse knows what it is in your head, responds to what is in your heart and connects with your soul.” ~Angie Wells
So, What Is Equine Assisted Learning?
Equine Assisted Learning or EAL is a learner-based educational experience with horses.
It's effective approach to human development encourages individual and team growth. Participants engage in objectively driven exercises and find themselves learning valuable life skills in a fun and exciting atmosphere while working with horses. EAL has proven to be effective, powerful, positive, educational and creative!
Hare's Meadow Skills Development's programs emphasize their BuildingBlock™ curriculum of facilitating life skills through positively reinforced interaction with horses. Exercises are developed to build self confidence through validated, hands-on experiences. Current research has found this experiential learning to be the most effective form of learning.
Why Do We Work With a Prey Animal?
This program takes participants on powerful journey of learning and understanding. Horses in this program are effective teaching partners; immediately responding to what participants do, trained facilitators look for "teachable moments" that horses identify.
The single most asked question is, "why do we work with horses?"
In a horse’s world, the rules are clear, easy to understand and dealt with swiftly when challenged. Nature provides them with instincts and senses that are very astute. For their mere survival, a wild horse must be aware of their surroundings and quick to react. They watch for the slightest movement, especially threatening body posture. Horses know how to discern the difference between a calm non-threatening approach and anxious, nervous energy; immediately identifying individuals struggling internally. By understanding the true nature of the horse, we can alter our techniques to become efficient facilitators.
This is NOT a HORSE THERAPY COURSE! Participants are guided by the horses and facilitators to come to their own decisions and work on building life skills for where they are at right now! To move forward with their lives, to build skills and to truly tap into their potential!
By including horses in specially designed educational experiences, equine-assisted specialists have greatly multiplied the participant’s rate of success to self-discovery. Horses can’t overthink a participant’s motive and horses can’t manipulate behaviour. But by their intuitive nature and innate sensitivity, horses can provide facilitators with a window into the participant’s personality. As facilitators listen to a horse’s non-verbal communication, together, they have the ability to walk participants through to finding life-altering change.
As a prey animal, they are sensitive to the stimulus of each participant. They react to the stimulus through body language and participants must adjust their feelings and behaviours to work successfully with the horses.