A lot of people ask what the qualifications are for coming to HorseBack. All you need is to be serving or have served in the British Armed Forces. We do assess whether attendees are at a safe stage in their recovery, but aside from that there is no physical barrier. It does not matter whether you are missing body parts, as many of our veterans are. The horses know nothing of prosthetic limbs or ro…adside bombs and respond with kindness and authenticity to the spirit of the human in front of them. We have had a double amputee riding Western with as much aplomb as John Wayne.
The founding idea of HorseBack was to give those who had been gravely injured mobility with dignity. It has expanded over the years into much more than that, but that initial idea still dies hard.
We do not use the word disability; we see the person, not the wound. Horses do this naturally, without thinking about it, and that is part of their great healing power.
