Feasibility of horseback riding as a therapeutic and integrative program for handicapped children.

The passage of Public Law 94-142, to alleviate the educational isolation of handicapped children, has resulted in some integration of handicapped children into community activities. Unfortunately, this integration is usually characterized by groups of handicapped people enjoying an activity together rather than with nonhandicapped persons. Developing activities that can realistically effect integration is a challenge both to lay and professional people concerned with the quality of life for handicapped persons. Horseback riding is one activity that has been identified as possibly serving this purpose, and which has the additional benefit of being therapeutic. Reports from England, Australia, and the United States have demonstrated that in a well-planned and carefully controlled program, horseback riding for the handicapped can provide a safe means of facilitating physical improvement in both minimally and extensively handicapped individuals." Riding has been shown to improve posture; facilitate equilibrium reactions, thereby improving sitting balance and, in some cases, standing balance and walking; decrease lower extremity adductor spasticity; and improve body image and self concept. This report is of a pilot project that attempted to demonstrate the feasibility of developing an integrative and therapeutic program of horseback riding for handicapped persons. A program that could demonstrate the effectiveness of horseback riding in promoting both socially integrative and physically therapeutic benefits requires 1) objective evaluation of the participants' physical function both before and after the program's implementation and 2) a measure of the participant's eventual activity in a riding program with nonhandicapped children. This project did not have the breadth to provide the physical evaluation component, but rather was an attempt to test the feasibility of implementing a horseback riding program for handicapped children that would be accept-