More Patients Are Turning To Hippotherapy
Thursday, May 8, 2014
By: Alicia Mandigo

When children struggling with disabilities go as far as traditional physical therapy can take them, both parents and doctors begin looking for alternatives. And increasing numbers of them are finding that alternative in hippotherapy.

[3-year old Mathew Dunlop was able to move off the waiting list and into hippotherapy when Freedom Ride expanded its schedule]

3-year old Mathew Dunlop has a type of seizure disorder that interferes with walking- so when he’d accomplished all he could with physical therapy, his neurologist suggested hippotherapy. Once a week, he sits on a horse at Freedom Ride and walks around.  The movement forces his body to develop core strength and muscle memory. After just two sessions, his mother Monica says they’re seeing a difference in more than just his strength.

“He actually stays focused where usually he’s all over the place in five, ten minutes,” she says.

Freedom Ride hippotherapist Sandy Wainman says hippotherapy requires a doctor’s prescription- and doctors are starting to use it for a wider variety of diagnoses.

“And in every case there has been a medical involvement, it could have been seizures, it could have been Downs Syndrome, it could be sensory processing disorder,” she says.

Over the past few months Freedom Ride has seen a big enough increase to warrant adding an extra day of hippotherapy to its schedule.