Horses have been used as therapeutic animals for a number of years in the fields of medicine, psychology, and education. Several types of therapeutic treatments involving horses have been developed, taking advantage of the horse’s specific movements and psychological effects. Such treatments offer several benefits: they improve one’s sense of balance, help to regulate muscle tone, affect torso control, facilitate the development of gross and fine motor skills, and affect one’s emotions, sensory processing, speech development, cognitive development, and educational capacities. Horseback riding also positively affects the respiratory and cardiovascular systems, promotes brain activity, and improves one’s memory. In this thesis, I have focused on observing three different domains (balance, fine motor skills, and memory) in individuals with special needs. I designed a 14-day programme, which I carried out with six riders. I tracked their progress in the three aforementioned domains, using quantitative methods to examine their performance at the end of the programme, and compared the results with the initial (pre-programme) measurements. I was interested to see whether the riders would have made significant progress after 14 days in all three domains observed. The progress has been tracked both qualitatively and quantitatively. The results have been processed by using a paired-samples t-test and Cohen’s d. With the aid of the 14-day therapeutic horseback riding, the riders exhibited statistically significant progress in all three domains (balance, fine motor skills, and memory), showing the programme to be highly effective.
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