What is Equine Assisted Learning?

Equine Assisted Learning is a learner-based educational experience with horses. More specifically, we work with horses with an effective approach to human development that 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 an effective, powerful, positive, educational, and creative horse program. Our programs emphasizes it’s BuildingBlock™ curriculum of facilitating life skills through positively reinforced interaction with horses.

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The focus is not on horsemanship, but rather partnering with the horses developed to encourage self-confidence through validated, hands-on experiences. Our horses are the MASTER teachers of life skills. They demand personal leadership and can teach you how to apply these skills to your own life. How does this work? Here is the formula:

HORSES + OBJECTIVE-BASED EXERCISES + EFFECTIVE FACILITATION + EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING 

= POSITIVE CHANGE

Through the Fundamental Principals 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 helps participants to gain the skills and the self-esteem necessary to reintegrate back into the lives they were truly meant for.

Each of our programs has an objective but all the objectives are built into each program. We work with one solid objective at a time and keep building on these skills each week hence the building block curriculum used in our EAL programs. Building skills for life! 

Why Horses: 

Horses are tough and stead fast prey animals. They consistently react to stimulus provided by participants. Horses don't judge, they cannot lie, and they are constantly assessing and reassessing their situation and surroundings. This natural instinct makes it the feedback from the horse is honest and instant. 

Facilitators learn to listen to what the horses have to say, this is powerful and can sometimes spur the answer to individual change. By including the horses in specially designed educational exercises, equine assisted facilitators have greatly multiplied the participant's rate of success to self discovery. 

The horses can magnify an individual's problem immediately and provide a skilled facilitator with an opportunity to identify an individual's character. Horses don't over think a participant's motive but they do challenge the participants behavior and leadership.