Thursday, August 23, 2012

Structuring the intervention environment

When we are working with people with attention deficit, we must have always a concern: the environment. Talking about our arena facility, I present you some concerns and strategies:
-Avoid times of day which have a lot of riders/people around (eg, new riders learning with their instructor makes a lot of noise and movement; school lessons; people working on the arena ground)
-Avoid meal times of horses - the horse is likely to be very reactive;
-When you ask the task to client, do it facing a wall or a place where there is nobody;
-Remove all visual distractors from arena such as: poles, wings, spires, buckets, balls
-Try not to present all material you are going to work with - I have a big plastic bag where I place all the material;
-Close the gate so the client and horse knows their boundaries and there is less temptations;
-If necessary, ask people around to make no noise.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Emotional and behavioral challenges


The disordered development probably means a rowdy childhood. Its impact in social interaction usually vary betwen excessive shyness and hiperactivity. From all of the most common carachteristics, the worst are the oppositive behaviors.

Monday, August 20, 2012

"With Autism on Horseback"

This presentation was done by me during November 2011 at University Fernando Pessoa - Oporto, Portugal. The event was a workshop called "Autism Voices" wich included some oral presentations on non traditional therapies with autism. I decided to call "With Autism on Horseback" to mine. I hope you like!

A cool video about hippotherapy benefits

EATHIPPO project

It is a pleasure to introduce you my new project called EATHIPPO.
The "Equine Assisted Therapy and Hippotherapy" comprises some phases.
First I'm developing a database of activities for the following main areas:
Main areas
Communication, Language and Speech
Social
Cognition
Motor
Balance
Sensory integration
Some activities may be for one or more main areas. Each main area has major and minor goals depending on target area and client skills/assessent. This is very important since we are talking about a strategy to therapy intervention - and NOT just equine assisted activities.

Sunday, August 5, 2012

Our Miniature Threapy Pony

This is Caesar v.d. Kloosterhoeve - a 27" miniature pony. Now he is 3 yo and he lives with us since 1 yo. Actually, Caesar came from Holand where he was born.


The trainee we are doing is about desensitization - he can handle with screams, jumps, many children around him and a lot of things more.
The goal to this pony is to be a therapy horse in equine assisted therapy/activities, mainly leading.