Horse therapy for autistic children

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Throughout each week, about 90 of The Gersh Academy’s 115 students will take a mini-van ride over to the New York Equestrian Center, which sits barely a half mile down the road from the school on Eagle Avenue.

But this is no school pleasure trip. The Gersh Academy is trying something new with the kids — something founder Kevin Gersh is calling “equine therapy.” It’s an effort to help his students on the autism spectrum progress towards becoming independent people by caring for horses at the Equestrian Center.

Saying something magical happens when most of his students come in contact with these majestic animals, Gersh said noticed in past trips to the Equestrian Center that the children responded well to the horses, and decided to create a new therapeutic program for the students, incorporating the equines. Through a joint partnership with the Equestrian Center, Gersh students are now learning to feed and care for Equestrian Center horses as part of the horses’ daily maintenance. Tending to the horses, Gersh says, helps to further enhance the children’s social skills, brings them out of a shell and teaches them a vocation.

New York Equestrian Center founder Alex Jacobson agrees. “Not only does the program keep the kids focused, but it is teaching them a skill and potentially giving them the opportunity of entering the real world of caring for animals,” said Jacobson. “It opens opportunities for them.”

During a trip last week to the Equestrian Center, students prepped horse feed, fed the horses, groomed and brushed them, cleaned their stalls and other chores. It was an experience that brought out something special in the children. “I don’t know if it is the stimulation of the smell or taking care of a 1,200 pound animal that’s capturing their focus and attention, but it’s certainly different from what they experience on a daily basis,” said Jacobson.

After doing the chores, the students are rewarded with an opportunity to ride the horses, if they feel comfortable enough to get on the horse’s back. Gersh would like to eventually expand other areas of therapy for the children, ultimately doing some of it while the children are on horseback. “We’ll see what we get,” he said of the potential results. “The important thing is we have to capitalize on it even though we don’t understand it. “It doesn’t matter that we understand if they do better on a horse, it’s just that they do, and we just want those results.”

What are some examples of those results? “Parents say to me ‘they weren’t talking, but six months after being in this school, they are,’ or ‘my child is able to tell me how loves me now, Mr. Gersh,’ or ‘my child is having play dates after school, Mr. Gersh.’ These are monumental life changes — and that’s what we want to do for them every day,” Gersh said.