Talk:Therapeutic horseback riding

comment with no heading from 2007
I wonder if the author of this beautifully written article would like to include a section on the teaching aspect of theraputic riding? One might include special training of the horse, special saddles and tack, backriding, two-person leading, etc. I taught theraputic riding for a while, and would be glad to include a little section on teaching, unless that would be better submitted to the Wikihow? Soltera 19:26, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Removed links to center per WP:NOT and WP:EL
I've removed the links from the page that are to centers. The main thing is from WP:EL under links to be avoided: '''Links mainly intended to promote a website. Links to sites that primarily exist to sell products or services. Any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a Featured article.''' I think this clearly shows that the links are inappropriate. --notJackhorkheimer (talk / contribs) 16:06, 3 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Okay. But I do not think these links are here to promote web sites.  I think they are here to give people who need such services a head start on how to find such services.  As to primarily existing to promote services, shame shame they are promoting helping handicapped and many other people as well, right?  Further, one link even shows a movie that would be perfect for a featured article.  I say the links should be returned.  --LegitimateAndEvenCompelling 11:19, 4 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, I think that the one link with the informative movie should maybe be returned, provided it isn't too promotional of the site where it's hosted. Selling services doesn't have anything to do with the net effect of the services.  However, I didn't notice that some of the sites seem to support themselves through donations instead of charging people who use their services, so you might be right that this doesn't apply to all links.  But still, Wikipedia is not a directory, even if that directory has the best intentions.  I wouldn't think a link to a directory, such as dmoz, would be objectionable, but I don't think long lists like that make for a good article.  --notJackhorkheimer (talk / contribs) 18:06, 4 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Okay. I'm with you.  I'm no wiki expert.  How do we go about providing useful links to people who may be in distress and needing guidance while at the same time adhering to Wiki policies? I'm no dmoz expert either.  Perhaps you could set such a thing up? Just a suggestion--I am not volunteering you. I think people may be coming to Wikipedia for information/help and it should be provided somehow, particularly in such a situation as that raised in the wiki page itself.  --LegitimateAndEvenCompelling 01:42, 5 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I've just put a link to the relevant directory at dmoz up. It looks to have a far better directory than we could ever have already, anyways.  Sorry to be hard-line, I just think it's better to keep links like this at a minimum to keep the possibility of people using Wikipedia for promotional purposes to a minimum, which is why the policy is the way it is right now.  Not sure how you can go about editing links there, but I think you have to apply to edit there.  --notJackhorkheimer (talk / contribs) 03:20, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

CAM designation
Therapeutic riding is not a CAM- it is a recreational or sport activity. Hippotherapy would be the appropriate topic to list under CAMs as it is a medical treatment using the movement of the horse. In an effort to clear up the confusion NARHA, AHA and EFMHA have been making terminology changes to make this more clear to participants, supporters and the general public. Can the CAM designation be changed to the correct topic? 65.41.92.189 (talk) 17:48, 27 November 2007 (UTC)KarmaAnais
 * While horseback riding is recreational, Therapeutic horseback riding positively is not. The word therapeutic certainly does not indicate a sport activity.  While more than one WikiProject could claim this article, as a non-drug and a non-surgical treatment option, therapeutic horseback riding certainly would fall under the CAM umbrella. -- John Gohde (talk) 16:41, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

The term therapeutic riding has historical roots in the use of the horse a part of a rehabilitative model. However, current terminology of therapeutic horseback riding means horseback riding for persons with disabilities. It does not mean "therapeutic" in the dictionary sense. I would be happy to send you the Powerpoint that was presented at the 2007 NARHA National Conference for therapeutic riding that discusses this exact problem. Again, the correct designation would be hippotherapy- the medical treatment with the help of the horse. Therapeutic horseback riding is not medical treatment, it is a recreational, leisure, sport or educational activity provided by a NARHA registerd riding instrucor. Wikipedia please help NARHA, EFMHA and AHA clear up the confusion. 69.34.62.89 (talk) 17:31, 10 December 2007 (UTC)KarmaAnais


 * Folks, rather than a food fight, may I recommend that people use footnotes and citations to explain relevant facts on each side? You can "teach the controversy' easily.  Just write in a neutral tone, explain both viewpoints, ("on one hand,...but on the other hand,...") and when possible use citations to the most respected source on each side.  See WP:CITE.  Good luck.   Montanabw (talk) 19:45, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

merge proposal comment
In response to the suggestion to merge therapeutic riding and hippotherapy- this would be a terrible disservice to those searching for information and the professionals working in both fields. Therapeutic riding is a recreational and sport activity in which people with disabilities learn riding and horsemanship skills. Whereas, hippotherapy is a medical treatment provided by a licensed occupational, physical or speech therapist based on the movement of the horse. It is very important to provide clear information about both activities without combining or confusing the two! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.6.58.100 (talk) 17:00, 1 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I didn't see your comment until after the merge was done, because your note was posted in the wrong place. I moved your comment here as part of the merge process.


 * Now that the merge is done though, we can address the concerns of the differences between the various ways in which horses and horseback riding are used as therapy, both recreationally and professionally, without needing separate articles. Clarifying the distinctions will be a matter of organizing and using the reliable sources that explain those details.


 * There's plenty of work to do in improving the article, but there does not seem to be a reason to have separate pages for the overlapping information. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 00:54, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, this information is not overlapping, there are seperate pages for physical therapy and occupational therapy, are these overlapping professions? The information must not be contained together as it gives the public the understanding that the services fall under the same heading (therapeutic riding) which they do not. Therapeutic riding is a recrational service, hippotherapy is a medical service, equitherapy does not exist in the US, but may in other countries. There is much confusion in the equine assisted activities and therapy field these day and each place the provide corrent information that clearly delinates the differences in servcies services many people. gtaylor (AKA KarmaAnais) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.1.171.188 (talk) 16:46, 17 September 2008 (UTC) Can we also remove the redirect from Hippotherapy to Therapeutic riding? gtaylor —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.1.171.188 (talk) 16:55, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Article reassessment
Since the equine project is currently encouraging the development of articles related to paraequestrianism, I'm changing this article's position to "high" on the importance scale. Wi2g 21:32, 29 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I dropped it back. "High" is only for the horse topics of utmost importance (colic, laminitis, horse racing, etc), this is a minor side topic.  Might be higher-ranked on a "child" project related to disability therapies or something, but under WPEQ, it's pretty low on the scale, not that it isn't an important thing for the people who do it.  (smile)  Montanabw (talk) 20:01, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Update/Edit
I am currently working on adding more information to this article such as benefits, exercises, types of disabilities it can help, improving the history and adding citations. Any advice is welcome! — Preceding unsigned comment added by EHD51791 (talk • contribs) 17:59, 19 April 2013 (UTC)


 * That's terrific, but be aware that we have some folks around here who are big on the WP:MEDRS policy for sourcing these animal-assisted therapy articles, so try to find articles from scientific, peer-reviewed journals for anything you add, we have had challenges to material from anywhere else. Good luck and let me know if you need help!   Montanabw (talk) 18:56, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

New Update!
I just updated the information on this page and added some other information I thought was beneficial. I took all my information from credited articles and sources and referenced them appropriately. Feel free to ask me any questions! — Preceding unsigned comment added by EHD51791 (talk • contribs) 15:25, 23 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I commented on a couple things at your talk page. It's a big improvement, but has some formatting issues.  Also, if you can provide URL links to any of the articles you cited, even if just to the abstract, that helps too.   Montanabw (talk) 21:07, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Article improvement
Instead of going from one POV to another, let's all work together to add better sources to these articles. Montanabw (talk) 17:58, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
 * There is only one POV that counts, and that is the POV of high-quality sources. We reflect those faithfully. This article was basically an advert for a discredited treatment, which is shameful. I have added a secondary source of the highest quality (A MEDLINE-indexed recent systematic review), and it is utterly damning of this so-called "therapy". Alexbrn (talk) 18:16, 28 December 2015 (UTC)


 * I agree that high-quality sources are needed, but the existing sourced material needs to be discussed, not reverted and called "bogus." Sadly, I am leaving town in a bit and can't get back to you for a couple days, but I am going to suggest that you take a very honest look at the legitimacy of this therapeutic modality and don't cherry-pick just the negative stuff. It is not "discredited," but the mental health side is new and there is not a lot of empirical studies done on it yet.  But PATH has existed for decades and the physical therapy side has a lot of material backing it at this point, though I'm going to have to do some digging.    Montanabw (talk)  18:48, 28 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Indeed. The current scientific point of view (i.e. NPOV) is demonstrated in the source Alexbrn mentions. In the context of that source, other points of view would be considered WP:FRINGE in most cases or an minority view at best depending on source quality. This edit also was problematic as it restored many primary sources that just aren't going to remain here under WP:MEDRS as well as other unsourced paragraphs and lists. At this point, the best thing to do would be to pull from our most reliable sources (i.e., current literature reviews) and build content from there. Kingofaces43 (talk) 18:49, 28 December 2015 (UTC)


 * If material is shown to be problematic by sources that are clearly more reliable than the sources (or total lack of sources) in the article, then per WP:GEVAL we are more or less required to pay more attention to the more reliable source. jps (talk) 18:51, 28 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Actually, the meta-analysis that Alexbrn notes only looked at 14 studies. There are legitimate concern about the writing style of this article and that some of the source material needing better-quality sources, but you are sadly mistaken that this therapy has been disproven.  Actually, if you truly want to improve this article, I think this description of it as "experimental and investigational"  (from Aetna insurance) provides a good overview of some of the areas covered in that article (which doesn't cover all areas where therapeutic riding is used.  They did the research for us, at least for the conditions they list.   Montanabw (talk)  00:02, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

As I explained on my user talkpage, an insurance company has motivations that diverge significantly from those of a properly reliable source. The study that Alexbrn uses is just about the best one on the subject. There doesn't appear to be any reliable sources which dispute its conclusions, for example. jps (talk) 18:23, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * In other words, you didn't look at the multiple sources cited, nor the analysis. I am curious your argument that the other source is "just about the best one."  Says who?  I'm asking this sincerely.  Montanabw (talk)  18:37, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Putting words into people's mouths is bad form and an example of assuming bad faith. I definitely looked at the "multiple" sources cited, but the point is that the sources cited are not all of the same quality as the one that Alexbrn is proposing we use. The reason the source is good is twofold: it is secondary and it is peer reviewed without an agenda like those of, say, an insurance company. That puts it head and shoulders above all the others that have been proposed so far. jps (talk) 18:48, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, see e.g. WP:MEDASSESS. Alexbrn (talk) 18:51, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Let's not be confusing therapeutic riding with the mental health aspects of equine therapy. While some riding therapies may have mental health components, the bulk of the research here is on physical health and I think that's where the focus of this article needs to be. Most current mental health programs don't actually involve riding, other than perhaps as an adjunct to wilderness therapy or other animal interaction Montanabw (talk)  06:48, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Two aspects
There are broadly two aspects of therapeutic horseback riding: one is posture/gait/physical therapy/rehabilitation therapy. The other is emotional/mental health/behavioral therapy. I am not sure that these two approaches necessarily deserve to be grouped into one article, though many sources treat both approaches simultaneously (such as the Aetna insurance outline Montanabw gives above). I am still reading some of the sources about whether there is sufficient evidence to conclude that there are physical benefits to horseback riding, but the claims to efficacy in helping with the physical problems associated with cerebral palsy are weak at best. Still, that aspect has been more carefully studied and has been around longer than the "emotional connection with the horse" argument.

jps (talk) 19:17, 30 December 2015 (UTC)


 * I just finished reading the review article for CP here: . The conclusions are that limited positive evidence exists to justify a full trial, but no one has bothered to do this yet. The claims are at least nominally more plausible than some of the other claims by people advocating this therapy. In particular, gross motor function may be improved through this approach, though there is essentially no evidence that this therapy is any better than other interventions.


 * Earlier, I read the article for autism here: . This review is much less conclusive than the CP review and goes well beyond horse therapy. Tellingly, there is both disconfirmatory and confirmatory evidence for the therapeutic benefits of any interaction between autistic people and animals generally. To be clear, horses only form a small part of this overall study.


 * jps (talk) 19:31, 30 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Precisely. This is what I have been trying to say; we can't just categorically go in and say this is all "bogus pseudoscience." I appreciate that you are looking at the literature.  The problem isn't that these therapies have been disproven, the problem is that the people interested in the topic don't know how to design the perfect study.  I suspect funding is part of the problem.     Montanabw (talk)  04:26, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

To help everyone out here, the field breaks down a couple different ways: Riding/Non-Riding and Physical health/Mental health. It's not a perfect division, but most but not all physical health programs involve riding in some way, most but not all mental health programs do not involve riding (but a few do). PATH (formerly NARHA) is the oldest USA program and mostly worked with therapeutic riding for both physical health and some work with people with developmental disabilities and a bit of work with autism. They have only taken on the mental health side in the last few years, (hence the name change) and I'd say their program tend to be the most thought out of the bunch; they are careful about having safety protocols in place and that sort of thing. We are going to find the most info on riding for various biological health stuff (plus some on autism and helping people with developmental disabilities) because it's been around since at least the 1980s. I think that this article can be brought up to snuff with MEDRS sources. Montanabw (talk) 04:26, 31 December 2015 (UTC)


 * One problem with the mental health stuff is that the legitimate programs are pretty new. PATH only came on board recently (since about 2010, I think...) and prior to their involvement, there was a lot of informal stuff going on without a lot of standardization -- a lot of "psychotherapist who has a horse doing animal therapy" sorts of things. (You may find this summary helpful) What probably got PATH to get off the dime was probably the EAGALA folks, (this bunch), who have kind of a gestalt therapy design that teats the horse as a therapeutic modality (as opposed to a living creature) and (IMHO) they have some real safety problems (turn three horses loose with three teenagers who have to herd the horses around with pool noodles...what could possibly go wrong???).   Montanabw (talk)  04:26, 31 December 2015 (UTC)


 * One organizational problem with all of these articles is that terminology is not standardized, partly because some of the factions don't see eye to eye with each other and come up with different words for basically the same thing.  Montanabw (talk)  04:26, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Requested move 8 January 2016

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: not moved. A reasonable proposal at the time of listing, but since then that talk page has been expanded from a redirect to having a lot of discussion, meaning this move is no longer feasible. Jenks24 (talk) 07:32, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Talk:Therapeutic horseback riding → Talk:Equine-assisted therapy – A complicated four-article merge was done to Equine-assisted therapy. Other talk pages for articles that were merged include Talk:Equine therapy, Talk:Hippotherapy, and Talk:Equine-assisted psychotherapy. I think this talkpage is the most natural one to move over the redirect. jps (talk) 00:37, 8 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I'll just point out that overall the merge looks good (something I was intending to get started soon too). Kingofaces43 (talk) 01:29, 9 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Oppose: And I just reverted it until we can have a more thorough discussion.  These are not all the same thing.  That said, I do favor an overview article of that name and we probably should consolidate all discussion at Talk:Equine-assisted therapy  Montanabw (talk)  00:19, 11 January 2016 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.