Sharing personal challenges with an equine partner that has experienced trauma, loss or abuse offers a trusted confidant for personal disclosure. With the help of a herd of rescue horses, our programs challenge each participant to explore how they are helping the horse as much as the horse is helping them. Participants connect with a nonjudgmental creature that mirrors emotions and both negative and positive pressure often unknown by the human.
For more information on why horses are an excellent partner for learning, healing, connection and de-escalation, visit our blog.
We utilize this for a session activity called 'Can't judge a horse by it's cover'. This encourages observational skills. In addition, the session introduces the concept that when meeting a new person or horse we don't know what they have been through in their lives. To learn the herd identities and their history come on out for a session.
Hi, my name is Big. When I arrived in Prescott, I was hugely pregnant. I had been living on a farm in Canada when I, along with 23 other pregnant mares, was scheduled to be slaughtered. When my human mom caught wind of our impending death, she and her friend worked swiftly to...
Hi, my name is Peter. When I was a baby foal, just three months old, I was taken away from my mother with no warning and was scheduled to be slaughtered. I was very scared. My human mom swooped in just in the nick of time and...
Hi, my name is Bailey. Everyone says I am very pretty, but because I have a couple of really bad habits, I spent a lot of my early life as an orphan. But that all changed seven years ago when...
Hola, me llamo Te Amo. For much of my life, I’ve been desperate for attention. For years, I stood in a pen all alone, day in and day out, with no attention at all. My food was thrown on the ground twice a day and my water was so filthy I couldn’t drink it. Then...
Hi, my name is Journey. Not long after I was born, before I was fully weaned, I was turned out into the herd. Immediately after she gave birth to me, my mother was impregnated again so her urine could be harvested to make a hormone replacement drug. I guess I was one of the lucky ones...
Hi, my name is Hey Girl. Like several of my equine buddies at Big Horse Ranch, my early days were spent on a farm in Canada that specialized in harvesting pregnant mare urine (PMU) for human pharmaceuticals. It was not a good life for me. Before I was weaned, I was taken from my mother and...
Hi, my name is Coors Light, but you can call me Coors. For most of my life, my sister and I were a team. We worked, ate, played and slept together. Of the two of us, she was the serious one and she kept me safe and made me feel protected. Tragically, one fateful day in 2017...
