Hippotherapy: Occupational and Speech Therapy
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Sagehill Stables is excited to offer Occupational Therapy and Speech & Lanugage pathology services utilizing equine movement (Hippotherapy) to our clients in collaboration with Sarah-Michelle Senécal (occupational therapist) and Corinne Daymond (speech and language pathologist). Sarah is an AHCB credentialed therapist and we are honoured to have her and Corrine working together with our Sagehill team of horses to offer these services to Manitoba and the Winnipeg area.
Hippotherapy is a treatment tool that uses the purposeful manipulation of the horse's movement to address functional goals. Specially trained therapists apply the movement, rhythm, and repetition of the horse's movement as a treatment tool to help clients work on therapeutic goals, as a means of improving skills such as coordination, balance, visual perception, sensory regulation, weight-bearing, timing, strength and many more essential skills for daily life. The word ‘hippotherapy’ comes from the greek word ‘hippos’ meaning horse and ‘therapy’ meaning care. Thus, hippotherapy is the utilization of the horse for habilitative/rehabilitative purposes rather than equestrian goals. Even in our technological age, there isn't any equipment available to simulate the proper 3-dimensional pelvic motion of a human pelvis at a walk. The horse's pelvis at a walk is remarkably similar to a human's and provides the opportunity for a client to learn how all parts of his/her body work together to sit, stand, walk, throw a ball, or make speech sounds. An average horse takes 120 steps per minute, creating 120 opportunities each minute for a client to improve neurological function and sensory processing. The movement produced by the horse's walk creates the following movement in the client: up/down, forward/back, left/right, and movement through space (visual flow) providing input to the sensory, neuromuscular and physiological systems simultaneously. This highly organized movement is not possible to replicate in a clinic or by any other apparatus or equipment. In our Occupational Therapy or Speech & Language Pathology programs, each client works towards specific goals agreed upon by both client/parent and therapist. Therapy activities are selected to establish foundational skills that can be generalized to other daily activities in the client's life. All our therapists are licensed by regulatory bodies for their professions and have completed additional training to work within the guidelines and best practices of the American Hippotherapy Association to safely and effectively incorporate the horse's movement in a clinical setting. For more information and to see if this is right for you, please contact: Occupational Therapy (Bilingual services. French or English): Sarah-Michelle Senécal stableconnections.ot@gmail.com (204)-806-1618 Speech & Language Pathology Corrine Daymond (431)-373-1770 
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