Inside an indoor ring here, eight adolescents huddled around several horses at the Rein Dancer Therapeutic Riding Center. One by one, they tried to get a halter on a horse as a social worker and the horse™s owner stood by to help. Each of the youths, all students at the Garfield Park Academy, struggled mightily as the animal tried to shake them off. In the end, not one student managed to get a halter on a horse.
Kathy Krupa, who owns the horses and founded Horsetime Inc., a program to help troubled adolescents by teaching them to work and ride horses, was not disappointed. œYou can™t prejudge what success is, Ms. Krupa said. To you, it might mean getting the halter on. To them, just getting close to the horse might be a success.
Ms. Krupa and her staff are trained in equine assisted psychotherapy, a relatively new branch of psychotherapy in which individuals interact with horses to help them learn skills in communication, trust and discipline.
After he failed to get the halter on any of three horses in the ring, one of the Garfield students, Taquon, 15, was asked if he thought the process would help him. œNo, he said. œI don™t like horses. They™re crazy. I don™t trust nobody. I just don™t. I don™t trust the horses, either.
Most of the clients at Horsetime are referred by the Garfield Park Academy in Willingboro, a school for students with learning and emotional issues, and the East Mountain Youth Lodge, a residential treatment program in Belle Mead for 13- to 18-year-olds with psychiatric or emotional problems.
The adolescents in equine therapy enroll in a once-a-week program that can last from 10 to 30 weeks, a period determined by the schools involved, in which they interact with Ms. Krupa™s horses in various situations where the person is asked to bond with the horse. œA horse couldn™t care less if someone has been in jail or has a learning disability, said Ms. Krupa. œThey only judge you by how you are at the moment. You™re even allowed to be afraid around a horse as long as you admit that you™re afraid. I™ve seen a horse walk right up to a terrified kid and put their heads in their chests.
During the exercises, the horse specialist and his or her partner – either a licensed clinical social worker or a psychiatrist – counsel the young person interacting with the horses. œIt™s not about behavior modification, said Jenny Ribeiro-de Sa, a social worker with Garfield. œThey get enough of that in our school. It™s more about self-confidence and communication skills. There is a confidence that comes from succeeding in a new experience and doing something they wouldn™t ordinarily do.
Equine psychotherapy was started in the late 1990s when Lynn Thomas, a social worker, and Greg Kersten, a self-described cowboy, used horses when working with troubled teenagers at Turn-About Ranch, a residential treatment center in Utah. Impressed with the results, Ms. Thomas founded the Equine Assisted Growth and Learning Association, which trains individuals interested in working in the field using horses to help troubled children. œWe incorporated horses in what we were doing and said, ‘Wow, this is really effective,™ Ms. Thomas said in a telephone interview. œThe next step was to develop certain tools and certain structures of how we use these horses. It worked so well that we felt we had to spread the word.
Ms. Krupa, 42, who had ridden horses for years and owned her own horses, was trained through Ms. Thomas™s association.
At the East Mountain Youth Lodge, Dr. JoAnn Jarolmen, a social worker, conducted a pilot study on the horse therapy. She studied 13 teenagers who took part in Ms. Krupa™s program and found that, after working with the horses, the teenagers were less angry and aggressive, improved their relationships with their parents and peers and had fewer suicidal tendencies. œAs a researcher, I can™t say I™ve seen enough, said Dr. Jarolmen, who said more research is needed in the field. œAs a practitioner I can. In practice, you see significant changes in people as they work with the horses.
Ms. Ribeiro-de Sa, the social worker, said the horse therapy is another way to try to connect with the youths. œA lot of our kids are born addicted to drugs and living with the consequences of poverty or living with parents addicted to crack and alcohol, she said. œThey don™t know a world outside of that. Even just coming to the farm is a new, positive experience for them.
Bill Finley
9 March 200u
