My name is Audrey, I am an Occupational Therapist in Ireland.  I have been working as an Equine Assisted OT for about 17 years.  I  have recently set up a private Equine Assisted Service along with a Therapeutic Horsemanship Coach and we are based about 20 minutes outside Dublin, in a rural area. 

I have been an OT for the past 30 years – I attended a reunion of my OT class of 1994 only a few weeks ago! I started my career working in hospitals, and worked in General Medicine, Rheumatology, Neurology, Orthopaedics, Vascualr medicine and Amputees, and then specialised in Hand Therapy.  After about 10 years of this I decided I needed a complete change. One of the fabulous aspects of OT is that our skills transfer to multiple client groups and work environments.  I started working in Paediatrics in a preschool and school for children with visual impairment and additional complex needs. 

I worked there for 20 years in total.  After about 3 years working in the preschool and clinic environment, I had the opportunity to incorporate horses into my therapy practice.  And what a joy this journey has been!

Children with Visual Impairment miss out on up to 70% of learning opportunities, as a lot of child development is driven by observation, watching and copying those around them.  This has a massive impact on development, and subsequently a lot of developmental skills need to be broken down and sequentially taught to them.  This is really good training in activity analysis for OT’s! So I started to work out the next level skills that these children needed, and to provide the opportunity for them to learn it in the hugely sensory experience of being on and around horses. Children with visual impairment are wary of the world around them as they cannot see it.  Interacting with the world is much less spontaneous and can be very scary as they cannot anticipate what is coming next! So basically they move less, interact less, and gain much less sensory input through interaction with their world than children without a visual impairment.  The multisensory experience of being on a horse facilitated them to increase their understanding of the world, to become less scared of sensory interactions, and to start to engage better within their different environments in school and home.  By engaging, they were learning.  The results were palpable.  And so we set up and Equine Assisted Service within the organisation….

As OT’s we work across the range of functions that are carried out in daily life.  We include all aspects of daily living, and in the equine environment we use not only the powerful movement of the horse, but also every aspect of the equine environment to support our clients to meet goals. So we use mounted activities, but also work on the ground with the horses and on behalf of the horses.  These additional aspects of utilising the equine environment to its fullest potential are uniquely potent in their potential to support client goals and ultimately greater participation in daily activities. 

This course is an overview of the benefits of

• Our core values as OT’s and how they translate to the equine environment
• Skill development in humans so we can work out what to address first in sessions
• A reminder of sensory processing and how our neurology works to support functioning, as this is one of the most frequently addressed areas in Equine OT
• Groundwork with and on behalf of horses
• Looking at the magic of utilising the equine environment as an intervention strategy
• And finally we will look at some case studies, how a session looks in practice. 

The examples are from my practice and I tend to like to work 1:1 with clients.  However, we can work in groups on higher level skill development like turn taking, collaboration etc. The possibilities are endless! If you would like more ideas on expanding into group work do let me know!

I hope you enjoy this OT module in the EAT course for OT / SLT./ physical therapists.  If you are not an OT I hope it also gives you an appreciation of how our roles as therapists from different disciplines intertwine, and when referring on is appropriate.  This way we ensure that we are working within our scope of practice at all times. 

Finally, I am available for queries, help with individual cases, or any other support you might need.  Feel free to use me as a resource! I do love sharing knowledge, and when the questions flow, it makes me question and think, and therefore learn more!