Equine assisted therapy?

[atr]

Does anyone have a mini they use for therapy work? If so, how did you train? Are you registered/certified through any organization?

My mini really needs a job, and I think he’d be a reasonable candidate for this with some additional training–he’s personable and well-mannered and learns fast. He’s 37" tall, if that makes a difference.

He was a pretty fancy driving pony in his youth, but it’s too dangerous to do that around here nowadays, so he’s been sitting around being cute for a living for a while, but that seems like a bit of a waste.

We are having a basic ground work brush-up at the moment, which is going quite well, I’m just not sure what the next step should be.

[chai]

I am a PATH Intl. certified instructor. I worked for a farm for quite a few years and we would take a pony to a local hospital to work with ambulatory and non-ambulatory patients. It was always amazing to see the effect that pony had on people. I would think a well-mannered mini would be able to help so many people. The size is not intimidating and if he has solid basics in groundwork and manners with a basically non-spooky nature, he would be a good candidate for that job.
Perhaps you can find a farm where you can become PATH certified. The handler must have good horse, people and safety sense to keep everyone safe, so PATH training would be a real benefit if you wish to pursue this. I wish you all the best with it - if you wind up giving your little guy this career, I will guarantee you will have fun and smile all day even when you’re exhausted because it’s incredibly rewarding.

[clanter]

It was not our goal or even something that we wanted to do but it was an opportunity since we have our son’s miniatures.

none of or horses are registered as therapy animals like our dogs are through Pet Partners (who also do test and approve horses)
https://petpartners.org/

specific info on Pet Partners
https://petpartners.org/volunteer/volunteer-with-pet-partners/

As a note… if you need boots for the horse to walk on slippery polished floors try the combat boots that Build A Bear sells…those are about $9 a set rather than the $200 for special made boots… We were made aware of the these boots from another person, but they do fit, they do wear well and surprise really work well

https://www.buildabear.com/black-com…ts/020666.html

But our little gelding (he is 25 inch) goes to schools to be a model and just a friend to the students (and also has been know to “play the role of a unicorn”…that is paying gig)

They (we have three) are also used to teach YOUNG kids about how to handle horses as they are about the same sizes [ATTACH=JSON]{“alt”:“Click image for larger version Name: IMG_0396.jpg Views: 1 Size: 64.0 KB ID: 10523371”,“data-align”:“none”,“data-attachmentid”:“10523371”,“data-size”:“full”}[/ATTACH]
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