Looking after the welfare of all involved
Meet some of the horses in our Equine Assisted Learning program – called Equihands.
In this video clip, you can see our horses interacting with a film crew, which was a new experience for all of us. The horses in our herd have been selected for their temperament and their willingness to provide gentle human interactive experiences.
This clip highlights the importance of how much is happening in an equine assisted learning session. Which is why we look at the safety and welfare of all three actors involved – that being the participant, the horse and the facilitator.
Why horses?
Our charity is built on research
As a result of a Scoping Review conducted as part of Linda's PhD thesis, key themes emerged that related to the benefits the participants received from interactions with horses. The four themes are:
- regulating emotion,
- sense of connection,
- mindfulness, and
- physical well-being.
Many of the journal articles examined identified improvements in the participants’ emotional state, whether it be anxiety, depression or feelings of loneliness.
The use of Equine Assisted Learning combined with other academic or learning programs seemed to strengthen the learning outcomes for the participants. Journal articles described how the horse-related activities were used, but more importantly, facilitated reflections with the participants that assisted in drawing out the learnings.
Other journal articles demonstrated a strong linkage to mindfulness outcomes for the participants. For example, two articles by Legal et al. (2002) and Moss et al. (2009) state how mindfulness is a way of being rather than a doing mode. Horses as prey animals “live in the moment” so participants who spend time with them in their natural environment trigger similar characteristics. The application of mindfulness for many participants, post their sessions, was the ability to recall what they experienced or how they felt in specific moments with the horse.
Other uses of EAL include facilitation of corporate teams in becoming more aware of leadership qualities and team building skills. Leadership training using animals is not new and in today’s environment, where a different style of leadership and management is required, there are various lessons that humans can learn from horses about leadership. These lessons, as per the opinion of Linkletter (2022), include dealing with change, understanding group dynamics, using different leadership styles and developing a mindset of life-long learning. Other reasons that horses are effective in the use of leadership training, as indicated by Staunæs & Raffnsøe (2018) are:
- They assist individuals in learning how to use their objectivity in making decisions about people or the ever-changing environment in which they work.
- By using a horse in a natural outdoor environment or an enclosed space that is outdoors, it allows the individual to learn how to better use their senses to modify how they perceive what is happening around them and be more empathetic with the other party – the horse in this instance.
- Horses are respected prey animals with highly sensitive perceptions, able to recognise predator behaviour very quickly. Therefore, in the case of a human trying to interact with a horse, the ability of the human to “be in the moment” instead of “thinking of other things” is accelerated such that the human adopts a mirroring technique to be able to engage with the horse.
Why US?
Through Linda's PhD research, she developed a conceptual framework which incorporates theoretical practices into a standard for the delivery of Equine Assisted Learning (EAL).
The EAL service delivery conceptual framework acts as a guide to manage risks and provides flexibility in the types of activities a facilitator can use in the sessions to cater for the broad range of participants that are typically seen in EAL programs.
Below is the framework that we follow in our Equihands program to raise the standard in outcomes achieved.
An example of how the framework is adopted in an EAL context is as follows:
A participant is immersed in a “concrete experience” or hands-on activity that creates a sense of “being away”, which encourages the participant to be in the moment and distance themselves from any worries or demands in life. The facilitator can assist with the creation of “fascination” or curiosity for the participant through “reflective observations” or introducing highly stimulating activities for the participant. An example of a reflective observation might be making a comment out loud to the participant relating to the activity they did and describing what they saw the participant do. Interactions with a horse(s) can act as an “abstract conceptualisation” for the participant to extend any learning opportunities that may have arisen in the previous stages. This part of the process may require a few cycles before the participant is able to be fully immersed, as it relies on a sense of familiarity. The participant, through an iterative and familiar process, will align their learnings in their own life through “active experimentation” and recognising its applicability or relevance.
Linda Wong, PhD
- Awarded her PhD from Deakin University for her thesis entitled "Improving indivudals' health and well-being using horses and virtual reality" (2026). Find out more about why Linda embarked on her PhD journey in this Deakin media release.
- Completed a Certificate IV in Equine Assisted Learning Facilitator Training from the UK, which is regulated by Ofqual (2018)
- A professional services career across multiple sectors for over 30 years
- Mental Health First Aid training
Chris Ardrey, Facilitator
- Completed a Certificate III for Support in Equine Assisted Learning
- A professional career spanning multiple sectors for over 40 years
- HLTAID004 First Aid Certification for Education and Care Setting
- Mental Health First Aid training
WHY OUR PROPERTY?
The Equine Assisted Services (EAS) sector offers guidelines for best practices for centres; however, regulations for horse welfare are sparse, as indicated by Fry (2021), and Grandgeorge et al. (2024). A systematic review on the “welfare and stress of horses used for EAS” by Baxley et al. (2024), discovered inconsistent findings and practices in EAS research and industry. Examples of inconsistency includes: (a) variation of the methods used to measure the stress and welfare of the horses, and (b) incomplete reporting.
The horse as an important and professional being within the EAS sector should be recognised amongst the horse industry. As such, ethics requirements that encompasses the five freedoms of animal welfare, which are freedom from: (a) hunger/thirst, (b) discomfort, (c) pain/injury/disease, (d) fear/distress, and (e) the ability to express normal behaviour. These freedoms should be addressed by all service providers in the EAS sector.
Hands of Change adopted Kaplans’ (1989) attention restoration theory to support the inclusion of freedom into how we setup our property to deliver Equine Assisted Learning, that is the horse living and working in the natural outdoor environment rather than enclosed area. By doing so, we are likely to promote less stress for the horse.
There are three key elements to horse welfare, as described by Phelipon et al. (2024): (a) continuous access to feed, (b) freedom to move outside freely, and (c) freedom to interact with other horses. Furthermore, recent studies have indicated a convergence that permanent group outdoor or partial housing for horses, as well as continuous access to roughage, correlated with better welfare states of the horses working in EAS (Grandgeorge et al., 2024).
We have strived to create an environment that looks after the welfare of our horses, the participants and the facilitators. A collection of images from our property is shared with you below.
