Hippotherapy Experience Paper

The community service that I had done was, I worked with the High School Wilderness Club during the events that they do for Hamburg and surrounding areas. For most of the events I helped out by setting and cleaning up the trash cans, barricades and signs that had to be put out before and after the events, and during the events I would work by making sure the trash cans were not getting too full or just to make sure that everything was running smoothly. I chose this work because I am a member of the Wilderness Club and had originally only joined the club because of all the fun things they do throughout the year. After being told that I had to do community service to go on the fun trips, I said why not, if I want to do the fun things, then I guess I’ll have to do the work involved. I hoped to learn the different values of the community and also to get to know more people in the school and community. All of the work that I had done was with groups of people, so that gave me the opportunity to make new friends and get to know them better. I also hoped to learn that just because you are doing work does not mean that it will be boring. Every time I was working I always had fun, and it was a quite enjoyable time. I went into the project thinking I just have to do this to get it over with so I can graduate, but I ended up to really enjoy what I had to do.

During the summer of 2016, I volunteered as a summer intern at a therapeutic horseback riding organization, We Can Ride Inc. They offer therapeutic horse back riding, therapeutic ground lesson working on personal care with the horses, equine- assisted psychotherapy but, most interestingly they offer hippotherapy, equine assisted occupational therapy. My time with We Can Ride Inc. confirmed my desire to work in a helping profession, in a hands on way with clients to make their lives better. During my eight weeks with We Can Ride Inc., I was so impressed and excited by the progress I was able to see in the clients that I worked with. There was not only physical progress, but

Encouraging students to engage in meaningful, sustained community service and get involved in causes that speak to

Helen Thompson once wrote, “In riding a horse we borrow freedom.”[3] People have always been astounded by the magnificence of horses. They were always seen as majestic, free, strong, and loyal. It was at the Helsinki Olympics in 1952 that Liz Hartel admitted that riding a horse helped her recover from polio. Soon after her speech, in the 1960s, therapeutic riding centers were created in Europe, Canada, and the United States. It was also during the 1960s, that the horse was used as an adjunct to physical therapy in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria; and the practice was named hippotherapy. This concept quickly made its way to the United States, and the North American Riding for the Handicapped Association (NARHA) was created in 1969. Thereafter,

Before high school, community service never crossed my mind at any point during my life. Going to public school, I knew that nobody cared about service and since I didn’t have to, I never did anything for my town. Thirteen year-old me had only 3 things on my mind:

When we went to the community clean up we had to clean a dog park. One school cleared and painted on the parking lot. While our group conformed to yard work by the dog park. The work may have not seemed important but it was. I believe the way we take care of our community is another way we show how we treat our neighbors and friends. We were working together, laughing, listening to music, and play at the park when we were done. In fact it wasn't that hard with a barren area but near the end we were deprived of water. I'm not sure if its plausible we made much of a difference but it did make difference between the freshmen and sophomores

According to Hannah Yterdal, an equine specialist, interacting with horses can produce favorable physical, psychological, and emotional impacts on humans (Equine Connection web site). Thus, horses have an important role in the therapies, because of their ability of making excellent connections with humans, and producing favorable benefits by interacting. Horses can help disorders such as mental, physical, physiological, emotional and speech. Another condition that makes them a favorable therapy option is the similarities of behaviour that we have. For example, humans and horses enroll better surrounded by others. We work better with others than isolated, we are made for social interaction. Society and people nearby us have impact on our personality

In addition to current therapeutic intervention, there are some modern therapies which are used in the rehabilitation program.

Hip replacement surgery (Total hip arthroplasty (THA) or total hip replacement (THR)), has become one of the most successful and cost-effective medical interventions since its introduction and development in the 1960s by the British, Sir John Charnley, an orthopaedic surgeon.1 Sir John Charnley established the fundamental principles of hip arthroplasty and his design concept of prosthesis is still used in nowadays.

Kids and teens in school these days are told to work hard to benefit their future. There’s so many options for colleges and careers. Sometimes it’s hard for students to get recognized by colleges even if there academics are amazing or you're a stellar athlete. These students are missing a piece, community service.

coordination and balance, these effects were observed in less time compared to the conventional physical therapy (PT). Specifically, McGibon et al (2009) observed reduction of increased muscle tone.(McGibbon, 2009). For this reason, we understand that hippotherapy is more cost efficient and offers a better long term profit. Finally we come to the last point is the large number of therapists needed for making a single session. But on the other hand, we have the creation of new jobs and thus cost efficiency.

"The term hippotherapy means treatment with the help and use of a horse." (Meregillano) Hippotherapy uses the movement of the horse to challenge the client. With that being said within this following paper is it going to go into more depth about hippotherapy. Not only is it going to go into depth about hippotherapy, but also how the study of hippotherapy works, how it helps people, how it is used, the benefits, and the type of individuals that are needed to perform hippotherapy.

Moraes and others (2016) found in their study that the children who had been participating in a hippotherapy program had better functional ability compared to their own pre-treatment ability. This was measured by the completion of a standard questionnaire by the parents of the children. While this essentially makes the parents the data collectors for this portion of the study, considerable bias is removed by using a questionnaire with specific self-help tasks and daily routine tasks which the parents then rank based on their child’s ability to perform said tasks with or without assistance. This makes the data more dependable and more acceptable to the scientific community in general.

Many high schools across America have inserted community service hours as a graduation requirement. This adjustment teaches leadership, positive work ethics, and community involvement habits. It truly is a good appendage to the many requirements of graduation. This adjustment creates gateways for various categories of services towards the community. From volunteering at the humane society, picking up trash or even helping a family move to a new home. There are countless jobs that are considered community service, and deciding what to volunteer time towards would be a debate. If community service hours were a requirement to graduate at my school, I would donate my time to these three services.

While for some students it is a challenge, and even a dread, to fulfill my schools’s 25-hour community service requirement, the number 25 was never of much significance to me. In fact, I had already surpassed this quota in the summer before entering my freshman year.