equine-assisted therapy

Last week, the 40th Asian Racing Conference took place in Sapporo, Japan. You may ask what relevance that has for anyone with horses in Continental America or Europe? The answer is many owners and trainers today play on the global stage. As an extremely small owner and breeder, even I have horses in the U.S., Ireland, England, France, and fractional ownership in Australia. And what do we all do first thing every morning? Read the Thoroughbred Daily News, and many listen to the Nick Luck Daily Podcast. In doing so,...

Therapeutic Horses of Saratoga (THS), a 501c3 nonprofit which utilizes retired racehorses in therapeutic programs promoting the mental health and well-being of New York residents, will be unveiling a new state-of-the-art indoor arena and group therapy space Sept. 4 at its Saratoga Springs facility. Local officials and members of Congress will attend the ribbon cutting. "We are thrilled to unveil our new indoor arena, which represents a significant step forward in our mission to support mental health in our community," said Dr. Erin C. Sisk, founder of THS. "With this...

Edited Press Release Vive La France! BraveHearts--the largest equine-assisted services program for veterans in the United States--announced that Trail to Zero, Ride to End Veteran Suicide, is going international. The acclaimed organization will host two rides on Friday, June 2, in Deauville and Saturday, June 3, on Utah Beach, Normandy, right before the 79th anniversary of D-Day. BraveHearts has hosted 20-mile rides in major cities across the U.S. over the last seven years in an effort to reduce the number of veterans who died by suicide each day and shine...

Earle Mack, a former U.S. Ambassador, owner, breeder and founder of the Man O' War Project will be awarded the Eclipse Award of Merit in recognition for a lifetime of outstanding achievement at the 51st Eclipse Awards at Santa Anita Park on February 10. The announcement was made by the National Thoroughbred Racing Association (NTRA), Daily Racing Form and the National Turf Writers And Broadcasters (NTWAB). Over the course of his life, the press release reads, "the honorable Earle I. Mack, who has burnished a remarkable career serving his country...

Columbia University Irving Medical Center has published the third and final paper detailing the clinical findings and results of the Man O' War Project, the ground-breaking research on equine-assisted therapy (EAT) as an effective treatment for veterans suffering with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This critical paper, published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, focuses on the important clinical results of the open trial undertaken by Dr. Prudence Fisher and Dr. Yuval Neria, principal investigators for this first-of-its-kind university study. "Our findings that both PTSD and depressive symptoms significantly improved are...

They'll run the Belmont Stakes next Saturday, and as we lead up to the event, there will be more conversation about all of the unpleasant things we've been talking about lately: syringes in barns, drugs and bans, guilt or innocence, crime and punishment. We'll be asked to justify our existence, the necessity of our sport and our livelihood. What purpose do we really serve, anyway, they'll ask? Like everyone else in the sport, I think we serve a purpose. But I also think we have the potential to serve a...

by T.D. Thornton and Sue Finley Although using equine-assisted therapies (EAT) to help people overcome post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been long believed to be effective via anecdotal results, a recent exploratory scientific study declares that it "is the first to demonstrate that EAT can affect functional and structural changes in the brains of patients with PTSD." The findings are groundbreaking not only from a scientific standpoint, but also from the perspective that the peer-reviewed work by Columbia University Irving Medical Center and New York State Psychiatric Institute researchers published...