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Staff
(both two and four-legged members)
Instructor
Program Director and Head Instructor, Carol
Branscome, has a degree from Radford University in Sociology. Ms.
Branscome has been a horse owner, rider, and competitor since the age of
nine, and brings to Hoofbeats more than 30 years experience in stable
management and riding instruction for both disabled and able-bodied
riders. Some of Ms. Branscome’s specialties are dressage, musical
freestyles, and drill team instruction.
Volunteers
Hoofbeats is primarily a volunteer organization,
starting right at the top. All of the officers and members of the Board
of Directors donate their time to manage and direct the operation.
Hoofbeats depends on the generosity and efforts of volunteers to lead
and sidewalk horses, keep the barn and pastures in tip-top shape, update
the website, help with our filing system, create scrapbooks, publish
newsletters, fundraise, take
photographs, and perform a multitude of other tasks. More importantly,
our volunteers set a wonderful example as they provide a welcoming
environment for all of our clients. Through their attitudes and actions,
Hoofbeats’ volunteers foster an atmosphere that promotes growth,
progress, and enrichment. For more about volunteering, click
here.
Four-Legged
Staffers: The
Horses
The ideal therapy horses should possess a
combination of qualities: excellent ground manners, patience, tolerance,
kindness, sensitivity without spookiness, obedience, a love of people,
and the ability to give and receive affection. In addition to possessing
the appropriate temperament, it is desirable if therapy horses have lost
some the flightiness of youth, and yet are physically fit enough to
maintain steady gaits, and to tolerate the sudden weight shifts from
beginner or unsteady riders. The horses must be able to walk quietly
with leaders and side-walkers; they must also be able to trot, canter,
travel to shows, go on trail rides as part of the lesson program, and do
lower level dressage and/or be part of a drill team.
Therapy horses can be almost any breed, shape, or
size, and in fact, these differences can be very useful in achieving
different therapy goals for the riders. For example, most therapeutic
riding programs prefer to have at least one narrower or smoother-gaited
horse for riders with tight muscles, a wider or bouncier horse for low
muscle-tone riders, and perhaps a pony for smaller riders.
The horses at Hoofbeats are valued members of our
therapy team, and we hope that as you read about them, or become
involved with them as volunteers, you will become members of their fan
clubs as well.
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