Nurirdiyana Idros

 Nurirdiyana Idros

Founder of Happy Farms Hippotherapy Malaysia 

 Senior Consultant Pediatrics Occupational Therapist with Specialization in Hippotherapy

Meet Nurirdiyana Idros

Malaysia's First Hippotherapy Practitioner

Nurirdiyana Idros did not set out to make history. She set out to help children. History just followed.

A senior paediatric occupational therapist from Penang, Nurirdiyana began her career in conventional therapy settings. She was good at it. But she kept running into the same wall. Some children needed something more than what a clinic room could offer. She knew it. She just had not found it yet.

Then she discovered hippotherapy.

Trained Across Three Continents

Once Nurirdiyana saw what the movement of a horse could do for a child's brain and body, there was no going back. She pursued postgraduate certifications and fellowships in hippotherapy across South Africa, Greece, and the Czech Republic, and trained under the American Hippotherapy Association. Thousands of hours of specialised study with some of the world's leading practitioners.

She came home to Malaysia with skills nobody else in the country had.

But clinical skills, no matter how rare, need somewhere to land.

The Other Half of Happy Farms

Behind every therapy session at Happy Farms is a structure that most families never see. The horses did not arrive on their own. The facility did not build itself. The team of over fourteen therapists did not just appear.

That is the quiet work of Dr. Kamadev Sonamuthu.

Dr. Dev co-founded Happy Farms with Nurirdiyana in 2017. He is the one who purchased and financed every therapy horse. He set up the business under Dhanin Sdn. Bhd., handled the regulatory and legal groundwork, and built the operational backbone that allows the clinical team to focus entirely on what they do best: treating children.

It has not always been straightforward. Finding stable space in Malaysia for a disability therapy centre came with its own challenges. Some venues were not keen on having children with special needs on their premises. Dr. Dev kept looking, kept negotiating, and kept finding a way forward. He built relationships with Perbadanan Putrajaya, with government ministries, with funding bodies. He handled the parts of running a social enterprise that never make it into a news feature but without which the news feature would never happen.

He still does. The daily operations, the scheduling, the partnerships, the compliance, the advocacy. He works in the background so that the foreground, the arena where Nurirdiyana and the team change children's lives, never misses a beat.

What Nurirdiyana Has Achieved

With a stable foundation beneath her, Nurirdiyana has been free to focus on the work that matters most.

She is recognised by the Malaysian Book of Records as Malaysia's first hippotherapy practitioner. Her work has been featured across The Star, Astro Awani, BFM Radio, and TV Alhijrah. She has conducted workshops for the Malaysian Association for the Blind, the National Autism Society of Malaysia, and the Malaysian Physiotherapy Association, and currently serves as head of the promotional and development arm of the Malaysian Occupational Therapy Association.

In 2025, Happy Farms partnered with Universiti Malaysia Sabah Hospital to introduce clinical hippotherapy in Borneo for the first time. Milestones like that do not come from clinical work alone. They come from years of relationship building, institutional credibility, and two people pulling in the same direction.

Why It Matters

The three year old with cerebral palsy who sits independently for the first time. The child on the autism spectrum who makes eye contact from the back of a horse. The parent in the car park who finally lets themselves believe things might get better.

Those moments happen because a therapist knows exactly what she is doing, and because someone made sure she has everything she needs to do it.

Happy Farms has always been the work of two people. One you see in the arena. One you see in the results.