Ainsley Berringer & Her Healing Horses

When she first went to college, current Master of Occupational Therapy (MOT) student, Ainsley Berringer wasn’t sure how she was going to incorporate a lifelong love of horses into her studies. Initially majoring in engineering and minoring in equine studies at West Virginia University, she found herself taking a therapeutic horsemanship class: “It completely changed my plan for what I wanted to do,” says Ainsley. Here she learned about hippotherapy, a branch of therapeutic horsemanship that allows occupational therapists, as well as physical and speech therapists, to treat their patients with horseback riding. 

She wasted no time recalibrating—she transferred to Chatham to finish undergraduate studies in Biology and start working on her Master’s of Occupational Therapy; she completed the necessary training to become a therapeutic riding instructor and an equine specialist in mental health; and she started her own PATH International therapeutic riding center, Hilltop Horizons, in 2017. She launched Hilltop Horizons with three family horses and three weekly riders. Now, three years later, she has twenty-five weekly riders, forty weekly volunteers, and eight horses on the property, five of which give regular therapeutic rides. So what does therapeutic riding look like, exactly?

Ainsley and a student prepare for a lesson.

“Therapeutic riding is an adaptive sport. We teach a recreational sport to a child or adult with a special need. We work with a vast variety of needs. autism, cerebral palsy, and down syndrome are the top three diagnoses but we have lots of others. Last year, our oldest participant was eighty years old and our youngest was four.”

But riding isn’t the only activity Hilltop Horizons offers: “Some of our participants prefer to spend the day learning how to bathe their horse. A lot of times, they will groom or help unsaddle their horse. This helps build the connection between horse and rider.” Hilltop Horizons also boasts an equine-assisted learning program, which provides unmounted lessons that focus on skills like problem-solving and communication. Ainsley has taught equine-assisted lessons to middle schoolers with behavioral problems and adults with dementia.

And her OT studies are paying off twofold: “Everything I'm learning [at Chatham], I've been putting into practice at Hilltop Horizons. I’ve been able to use different strategies and adaptive equipment that we use in OT. We use built-up utensil foam for people with lower hand strength to help hold things. I put it on reins for a child who had a stroke and can't hold her reins very well.” Chatham also offered Ainsley an opportunity to see what might be possible for the future of Hilltop Horizons, placing her at the Shea Center for Therapeutic Riding in San Juan Capistrano, California for one of her fieldwork rotations.

Ainsley spent three months learning OT riding techniques at the largest therapeutic riding center in the country: “They do a really good job of keeping it small-feeling, even though they are able to serve so many people,” says Ainsley of Shea Center. Ainsley’s number one priority is keeping Hilltop Horizons client-focused, a value that the horses uphold themselves. All of Hilltop Horizons’ horses undergo rigorous training to ensure they can handle a wide variety of scenarios:

Ainsley and a friend at the Shea Center

“Are the horses okay if someone has spasticity and they hold on really tightly? How are the horses going to react if someone has a seizure while riding? We try to put them through as many situations as possible to gauge their reactions.”

But beyond ensuring they can respond well in emergency, Ainsley plays to the horses’ varied strengths: “The horses are all shapes and sizes for a reason. If someone has ADHD and they have trouble attending, you want a horse that is narrow and choppy so that their body is getting the input they need to let them focus on the lesson. If you have someone who has really tight muscles they need a slow rhythmical horse that can help release their muscle tone and relax their body. We use the different characteristics of each individual horse to our advantage.” It’s a puzzle of personalities she loves putting together. And though she tries not to play favorites, there is something special about seeing kids take a liking to Mac, her first horse. Thanks to Mac and the rest of Ainsley’s team, Hilltop Horizons shows no signs of slowing down:

“It was just me at the beginning. I was the instructor, I was the executive director, I was everything. And over the years, I've started to mentor new instructors. We had a horse show last year And I was watching these kids who I've watched from the beginning show off their skills. There was a whole crowd of people just so proud of these kids. It’s amazing to see what this little program started as and what it has become in just a short time. I love watching it grow.”

Ainsley leads an equine-assisted learning session

Ainsley’s Helpful Glossary of Horsemanship
therapeutic horsemanship—umbrella term for any equine-assisted activities or therapies that you can do
therapeutic riding—an adaptive sport taught by a riding instructor who is certified
hippotherapy—occupational, physical, or speech therapy that utilizes the horse for part of their treatment session
equine-assisted learning—taught by a certified equine specialist and an educator, who could be a special education teacher, a family counselor, etc.
equine-facilitated psychotherapy—taught by a certified equine specialist and a psychotherapist and/or mental health specialist.

To learn more about Hilltop Horizons, check out their website. To learn more about Chatham’s occupational therapy programs, visit our website.