07/07/2025
A perspective and relevance in today’s trauma informed care in horse assisted activities for mental health wellness…
An ongoing need in the field of Equine Assisted work:
Even though a lot has changed in the past 20 years, and because of and despite many, many attempting to point exactly in this direction, to speak of the horse in equine-assisted work continues to require a shift away from metaphor, interpretation, and projection.
I think most in the field will agree: The horse is not a tool, not a reflection, and not a facilitator of human transformation. The horse is a being with agency—agency that is neither theoretical nor symbolic, but observable in behavior, in motion, in spatial decisions, in rhythm, in relational withdrawal and/or approach.
Agency begins where expectation ends.
Please read this again.
Agency begings where expectation ends. It begins in the silence after instruction is withheld. It becomes visible when the horse walks away and is not followed, when a boundary is set and is not overridden, when a signal is offered and not interpreted but seen. The horse’s body in space tells of its present orientation—not of human narrative, but of equine presence.
I feel obliged to know and pursue the above since I work with horses and people.
I believe that in in equine-assisted settings, the concept of teamwork requires recalibration. If the horse is a team member, it is not a subordinate, not a responder, and not a therapeutic medium. His/her choices carry equal weight in the dynamic, and his/her refusals carry equal value as his/her participations. A horse that steps aside does not disengage from the process but expresses a condition—physical, social, emotional—that merits respect without deciphering.
The relational field is not one of guidance or mirroring but of co-presence. The human does not lead. The horse does not follow. Both exist in a space shaped by moment-to-moment decisions—of proximity, alignment, attention. Any attempt to steer this into therapeutic function displaces the horse from his/her being as subject (vs. object, no matter how beloved).
Agency is most often present in absence: the absence of halter, of directed movement, of predefined goals. In that absence, the horse may graze, wander, observe, or simply stand. These are not neutral acts. They are deliberate positions taken within a shared space. To read them as passive is to miss their active structure.
Behavioral cues are not metaphors. A flicked ear is a signal. A retreat is a movement in space. A still body is not an invitation for projection. It is already complete in its own logic. The work lies not in decoding these gestures, but in creating conditions where they may arise unedited.
In equine-assisted frameworks that take agency seriously, there is no role assigned to the horse beyond his/her/their being. No horse is tasked with helping, responding, holding, or carrying. Horse(s) is/are observed—not monitored—not permitted—not deployed. Rhythms are not synchronized with human pacing. They are attended to on their own terms.
Teamwork with horses, in this sense, is not co-regulation. It is co-existence. It requires that the human team members reduce their interpretive impulse, withhold their need to validate meaning, and accept not knowing as a form of ethical respect.
To preserve agency means to allow for discomfort—human discomfort in the face of silence, non-response, or disengagement. It means holding space for a being whose timeline, logic, and needs are not aligned with therapeutic protocol. It means giving up control in favor of relational integrity.
This form of work is not structured around outcomes. It is structured around consent—momentary, behavioral, and embodied consent. The horse consents through choice of position, through sensory orientation, through staying or leaving. These choices are not therapeutic interventions. They are declarations of self.
Agency, then, is not what the horse gives to the session. Nor what the human team gives to the horse.
Agency is about how much each one can retain and use what is his/hers.
Only in this space does equine-assisted work move beyond anthropocentrism.
Only in this space does equine assisted work move into respect and welfare for all.
Only in this framework can the horse - and in effect ultimately each one - remain what he/she is: fully him/herself, fully present, and fully outside the demands of human repair.
