Horses: A woman's best friend?

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Getting back in the saddle may be potent tool for trauma recovery. An article by Katie Meyer.

The bond between female horseback riders and their animals may be strong enough to help the women recover from extreme fear and anxiety, say University of Guelph researchers. Prof. Cindy Adams, Department of Popula-tion Medicine, is working with graduate stu-dent Janet Yorke to examine the “therapeutic alliance” of the human-equine bond.

They think this attachment may help women who have endured traumatic physiological or psy-chological stress. “We know that fear and anxiety can be transferred to other aspects of a person’s life,” says Yorke. “I think people could really be helped through the use of horses in therapy.” The researchers decided to focus on women after the Canadian Equestrian Foundation found that women make up the fastest-growing segment of the companion horse owner population. In fact, 75 per cent of new horse owners are women, most of them baby boomers, says Yorke.

She and Adams are interviewing 50 female riders who say horseback riding influenced their recovery from traumatic situations such as car accidents, illness or physical and sexual abuse. The researchers will look at what experiences interviewees identify as traumatic and how their relationship with a horse helped or didn’t help them cope. They’re testing whether getting back in the saddle improves the emotional and psycho-logical recovery of riders experiencing post-traumatic stress.

Questions for the survey were developed in collaboration with a multidisciplinary team of professionals from the fields of soci-ology, psychology, veterinary medicine and epidemiology. The researchers will identify themes and patterns through standardized data analysis, which they hope will lead to more quantitative investigation such as videotaping riders through their recovery period and researching the demographics of respondents.

Yorke says the research will measure the effects of the therapeutic alliance according to the amount of time a rider spends with that horse and the nature of their riding. “The intensity and proximity of the rela-tionship before and after a traumatic situation are very important factors,” she says. “There’s a difference between endurance riders and those who ride more casually for pleasure.”

Yorke has more than 30 years of social work experience and has volunteered for a therapeutic riding program for children with physical disabilities. She observed physiologi-cal and emotional benefits such as improved fine and gross motor skills and reduced tension in the program’s participants.