Therapy in the saddle

Straddling a chestnut horse, Tucker Backhus, 4, was ready to ride. Two adults flanked him, holding on to his safety belt, while a third stood ready to lead the horse. “Walk on,” Tucker instructed the animal. Slowly, it began lumbering in circles around the barn.

On one wall, a giant sensory board offered different textures at the rider’s height. Large rubber balls hung from the roof. Tucker’s therapist urged him to try to hit one as the horse walked beneath it.

Watching from the side, Tucker’s mom, Alisha, recounted when her son first began these lessons a couple of years ago. “We didn’t think he was going to talk until we started this,” she said.

Tucker was born with agenesis of the corpus callosum, a rare disorder that affects how the two sides of his brain cooperate. In Tucker’s case, it affects his gait, speech, ability to eat by mouth, and regulation of his nervous system. Tucker attends multiple forms of therapy, but his favorite exercises occur in this barn in Goddard, Kan.

Multiple therapy associations recognize that, for children and adults with disabilities, therapy in a horse barn can provide significant benefits. The approach used with Tucker, known as hippotherapy, uses horse riding to meet occupational, physical, and speech therapy goals. Other programs don’t meet all of the hippotherapy requirements but still offer therapeutic riding services for individuals with disabilities or social and emotional needs. All have found surprising benefits from interacting with horses, intelligent creatures that researchers say can recognize and respond to human emotions.

According to the American Hippotherapy Association (AHA), people first labeled therapeutic horseback riding as “hippotherapy” in the 1960s. The movement of a horse simulates the movement of walking, which benefits individuals who don’t walk on their own or who experience difficulties doing so. Horse riding can improve muscle tone, useful for people with conditions like cerebral palsy or Down syndrome. The horse’s rhythmic motion also helps riders better regulate their nervous systems.

“We’re just using this horse as a tool,” explained Kori Turney, executive director of Prairie Meadows Therapeutic Riding Center, the Christian organization where Tucker rides. Turney’s parents started the center in the late 1980s. Now a nonprofit, it provides hippotherapy services during six-week sessions each spring and fall.

A girl interacts with a horse at New Heights Therapeutic Riding. Courtesy of New Heights Therapeutic Riding Inc.

As Tucker rode around the barn, Turney initiated activities like reaching for toys, throwing and catching balls, and riding backward or on his hands and knees. Riding a horse calms Tucker, she explained, and that calmness helps him with more difficult skills—such as eating by mouth and talking—even when he’s not on the horse.

Tucker’s mom sees him making progress. During last fall’s six-week session, Tucker began kicking a ball, showing improved balance and coordination, Alisha said. “Every time we come to ride, something changes, and he improves in something.”

Some other programs aren’t licensed for hippotherapy but still offer the benefits of horse riding. In Salina, Kan., Kelley Hulteen operates New Heights Therapeutic Riding. Hulteen, a licensed occupational therapy assistant who has received some training from the AHA, said she tried running a hippotherapy program for a while. But it was difficult finding an available occupational therapist to oversee sessions, and billing insurance became cumbersome.

Soon she realized that many families didn’t count on that licensing piece. “Parents were saying, ‘We don’t care if it’s therapy, we’re happy with the experience that they’re having with the horse,’” Hulteen said. “And so I just decided, OK, I think I’ve got a nice little nonprofit here—we’ll do it that way.”

When families come to visit, Hulteen shares a devotional with them acknowledging the source of the horse’s abilities. “Looking at how the horse [was created] helps us see God’s hand as if He were an artist,” it reads.

On a warm June afternoon, 10-year-old Katie Kavouras arrived for a session, accompanied by her parents. Katie has Cornelia de Lange syndrome, a genetic disorder that causes intellectual and physical disabilities. At New Heights, parents take turns walking beside their children as they ride.

“I always promised myself we’d treat her like a typical kiddo,” said Katie’s mom, Keri. “I feel like it’s something we can both enjoy together, right? We take her to therapy, we take her to school, I take her to my stuff. None of it’s really ‘we’ stuff. And this is just something we can do together.”

Hulteen is expanding her horse riding services in other creative ways. This year, she’s kicking off a first responders’ program that brings military members, firefighters, paramedics, and police officers to the stable. She said she learned about similar programs after her son left his paramedic job due to post-traumatic stress disorder. Hulteen plans to allow six participants to practice basic horsemanship skills, learn to ride, and then pursue “more adventurous” goals like obstacle courses or trail riding.

Devon Young, a 32-year-old member of the National Guard, is working with her to start the program. Young went to Iraq in 2018 for a one-year deployment and more recently returned from Syria and Jordan. He owns a horse of his own and said God used the animal to help him heal emotionally from his combat tours.

“That’s when I like to talk to God,” he said. “You don’t talk to Him all day, and then you get on top of that horse, and you’re walking, you’re riding—[it’s] like, ‘OK, now I can talk to You.’”