Our 6th MEETING ERASMUS+ was this May in FINLAND
This year of 2023 we continued our presential ERASMUS+ 2020-2023 meetings with amazing 3-days work, full of discussions and share of experiences among our group of 24 specialists on Equine Assisted services, from 6 different countries in Europe. This exclusive meeting was organized by the Finnish Association of Equine Facilitated Therapies.
Tuesday May 9th we started with each team’s presentations of their works/proposals on different evaluations while selecting horses for Equine assisted Therapy or Activities. Czech Republic’s team showed us a proposal on how to evaluate the equine conformation, in horses to work in EAS; the Finnish team a proposal on how to evaluate harmonious and balanced gaits, this has huge importance in physical therapy; the Spanish team showed us videos of different reactions of horses facing humans in approach and how do they evaluate the positive association and bonding to humans; Lithuanian partners showed us also several videos on how do they train horses on Habituation to various (environmental) elements and other beings; the Turkish team presented how to evaluate the horse reaction to different sound stimuli in domains of adaptive riding and EFL; and finally the Portuguese team, from our Research Group in Anthrozoology, presented also a short presentation on how to evaluate the tactile reactivity in horses (the differences in responsiveness to a tactile stimulus). In the end, and the second day of work we discussed and tested, in practice, with Finhorses (the national horse breed of Finland) each grid of evaluations, scores, etc., trying to achieve unanimous and objective evaluations.
The accomodation place was in Kylämäki, Marttila, in Southwest of Finland region.
We visited the Equine College Hevosopisto, where the Managing director Heli Kivimäki presented us the amazing work of this School on Equine Education in Finland.; and where we also learned about the program of the “Finnish Equine Facilitated therapy education” and the Hippolis purposes (http://www.hippolis.fi/hippolis-briefly-in-english/).
We can see a short version of Sanna Jarvela and its Poney during the Meeting on https://youtu.be/WyHfUlWMk98.
We not only worked , but we had moments of fun too, we watched an amazing demonstration of driving of Sanna Jarvela and its Poney, some of us could try it, we visited Wiurila manor https://www.wiurila.fi, and after dinner we could have a relaxing Finish sauna + hot tub, in the middle of the forest!
