EQUINE SELF DISCOVERY
Embark on an unforgettable journey at the Across the River Horse Ranch and Sanctuary, where young adults can explore their passion for horses while gaining valuable life skills in a stunning, peaceful setting.
In her many years of working with children and young adults as an Equine Motivational Guide, Amita Smith has developed an overarching purpose: To teach young people what it means to be Communicatively Competent. Her method begins with the communicative relationship between a client and a horse and develops into a specific set of skills that provides a foundation for the client to go forward in life, work, and relationships. The nature of relationships drive her work, beginning with a horse--a large, sometimes unpredictable animal with a mind of its own--and a human. The idea is simple: When a human can effectively communicate with a horse, he or she can adapt those skills for communicating with people from all walks of life, in any situation.
At the Across the River Horse Ranch and Sanctuary, Amita Smith has spent years acquiring, cultivating, training, and caring for a very special herd of horses that are the mainstay of her Equine Motivational Guide practice. In that herd, at any given time, there is a core group of individual horses that play a critical role in her work with clients.
In this model, the Equine Motivational Guide serves as a mediator between the horse and the client for the purpose of imparting communicative competence skills to the client.
What is Communicative Competence? See the essay by Peter Sacks below.
