One of our success stories involves a couple of brothers – fourteen-year-old twins, in fact, who didn’t seem to have much interest in, well, most anything. They’d get home from school, go to their room, and usually not reappear till dinner.

Then they came to SERT and started learning about how to take care of horses.

Because some of our students ride, some students learn about the proper grooming and care of horses, and some do both.

You know the old saying you have to learn the rules before you can break them?

Well at SERT, we’ll never break any rules that have to do with safety. Safety for us is first, last, and everything.

It’s that constant awareness of safety, in fact, and the special safety training that all our instructors and volunteers are indoctrinated in, that allows us to come up with some creative ways to help students get the most from their SERT experience.

Like our ground lessons.

Ground lessons are the proper grooming and care of horses.

So getting back to the brothers: the twins’ SERT teams, in addition to themselves, consist of their horses, instructors, and their horse handlers.

Always wearing their helmets, under the supervision of their teams, these fellows have learnt how to identify and use, in proper order, the correct grooming tools. After working with the horses in stalls, the guys pack them up with proper equipment for riding sessions: saddles, saddle pads, girths and so on.

In other words, the horses are prepared just as if they’re going to be ridden.

Next, the entire teams head into the arena. It is there that the brothers have been learning how to lead the horses. Instead of riding, however, each learns to guide his horse through an obstacle course as his team’s ground leader (under the supervision of the two other human members of each team) without ever mounting.

One day the boys’ mom told us that after their lessons one of them said, “Mom, if I can learn to lead my horse, I can learn lots of things, like what I need to get a job someday.”

To us, that’s the magic of real life. Because the way it makes us feel is just a bit beyond special.

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In The Arena we may sometimes discuss issues surrounding therapeutic riding that various people have widely divergent views about.

We’d like to hear your opinions whenever you feel like weighing in.

All we request is a respectful attitude towards other peoples’ opinions, whatever they may be.

After all, we’re one big arena with room enough for everyone!

- By David Tandet