Valentine’s Day is a fun holiday! Because what is more fun than to celebrate the people we love?!
This Valentine’s Day, I made a little list of the 14 things we love, which you can see on our social media accounts: Facebook and instagram. But on the blog this month, I wanted to specifically list a group of special people we love so much: our volunteers!
Aside from our small staff, HorsePlay Therapy Center is largely supported by volunteers. Our volunteers help daily at our center with a variety of tasks!
Grooming: Every hippotherapy day starts with all of our horses being groomed. Grooming is an important and critical step every day as it protects the skin and hooves of our horses so they can stay strong and healthy to do their job. Our early- bird volunteers come to the barn before therapy sessions begin so that our horses are in tip-top shape for the day!
Side Walking: “Side walking” is a term used in hippotherapy that includes having a volunteer on the opposite side of the therapist assisting in holding onto the client for safety. But, that is just the beginning! Our sidewalkers are often engaged in therapy tasks as well; playing games, assisting our riders into positional changes, and having fun! Side walking does not require horse experience
Horse Leading: This volunteer leads the horse for the therapist in the therapy session, along with monitoring the communicative signs of the horse for safety! This position does require more extensive training and horse experience is recommended.
Barn Management: Managing a herd is no easy task! From cleaning stalls, mowing, feeding horses, and managing the property, our volunteers have it covered! And we are so thankful!
Events: We host a variety of fundraising events every year, which are volunteer run! Our volunteers are always up for the next barn party! Our next upcoming event tickets and details can be found here!
We are SO thankful for this group of men and women who work so hard to make HorsePlay Therapy great! Our volunteers and critical participants of therapy sessions and both our therapists and clients do not let that go unnoticed.
Thank you to our HorsePlay Volunteers; we are honored to have you on Team HorsePlay, and I am personally so grateful to have you as teammates, friends, and mentors. We LOVE you!
Katie
Speech Language Pathologist
Director of Development
P.S- Want to be a part of Team HorsePlay? Reach out at [email protected]