Blog 18: Third Answer

EQ: How can Hippotherapy best help a child with a developmental disorder reach a normal walking pattern?

Answer 3: Hippotherapy can best help a child reach normal walking pattern if it is used in conjunction with standard physical therapy.

Details:
    Firstly, Hippotherapy sessions are irregular, and short. Two thirty-minute sessions per week, is all.

    Hippotherapy's benefits tend to be lost if effort at habilitation ends at the same time the Hippotherapy ends. Continuing therapy is essential for the child to thrive.

    Treating a child with standard physical therapy in conjunction with Hippotherapy has been proven to be effective, shown by multiple cases from Leaps and Bounds.

Source: Mentorship, http://www.archives-pmr.org/article/S0003-9993%2807%2901284-1/fulltext#sec2.2.2

Overall, Hippotherapy does work wonders, but cannot carry a child's development on its own.

Blog 17: Fourth Interview

Interview 4:

1. How important is gait alignment, in helping a child to walk?
2. How does the therapist go about the rehabilitation? Is it one therapist that sticks with a patient, or multiple?
3. What effect does it have on the child if they see a different therapist every time?
4. How do the children generally respond to the horse?
5. How important is it for the kids to have the same horse? How many care?
6. What is the habilitation process usually like, for the kids?
7. How many patients require multiple therapies, like Speech and Physical therapies together?
8. How do the volunteers help, aside from the assigned sidewalking duties?
9. Is it important to have the same volunteers for the kids? Do certain children make friends with the sidewalkers?
10. How do the toys help the different children?
11. How else do the horses themselves help the children, emotionally speaking?
12. How do you keep the children engaged? (Aside from things previously mentioned)
13. What happens when a child cannot keep on-task?
14. What happens when a child reacts badly to the horse?
15. What happens when a horse reacts badly to the child?
16. How do the parents react when their child has to be removed from a session, early?
17. Do some children only attend the riding sessions? How do they fare, compared to children who work in the clinic as well?
18. What is the parent’s general opinion of the ranch, and the work done there?
19. I’ve seen a patient who had an ABA come in place of a sidewalker. How much does Hippotherapy help him, in relation to his outside therapy?
20. What happens when kids don’t continue their therapy at home? Have you seen a case like that?