If you think your dogs know cool tricks, then these miniature therapy horses will blow your mind. They can play the keyboard, and it's totally rad!
Speaking with People, Victoria Nodiff-Netanel opened up about being the president and executive director of Mini Therapy Horses. She founded the charity in 2008 after buying her first horse named Pearl.
"I started training Pearl to do different things. And that's when I got my light-bulb moment of how wonderful it would be to share my passion and connection with horses to help people," she says. "I didn't know anything about animal services, animal therapy, or animal-assisted therapy at the time. I started taking one step at a time with my one horse."
Minature Therapy Horses
She decided to take the animal to a local veterans hospital in California.
"Now, at the VA, we've been in the intensive care unit. We run a program in the lockdown psychiatric ward with the horses, which is rewarding for these veterans. A lot of them are homeless, they're addicts. They're going through a lot," she shares. "The horses have an extremely calming effect. With the horse, we work together on social, emotional and spiritual behaviors."
It's only grown since then. More recently, one of her miniature therapy horses woke up a child from surgery by playing an electric keyboard. Now, that is some party trick.
"When someone's hugging a horse, everybody becomes very quiet. It allows people to make that emotional and spiritual connection. It really helps," she adds. "Sometimes kids or adults will talk to the horses or cry with the horses, hug the horses, things that'll happen that won't happen in other situations."
"Every visit, we come away with special moments. The horses are magical, and the connections they make are magical," she also adds. "They react to things so gently, so calmly and with such sensitivity that people feel so comfortable around them. Here's this tiny little horse they can touch and interact with and hug and feel her heartbeat."
It sounds like the miniature therapy horses are real hoot with patients and workers alike.
