Team Building
Eye of a Horse currently offers team building experiences focused on leadership, non-verbal communication, cooperation, and other critical interpersonal skills. The educational activities involve on-the-ground experiences with horses and/or cows. The activities are goal-oriented team efforts focusing on the importance of communication, planning, strategy, role-assignment and flexibility in problem-solving. Each experience includes an educational “on-the-job” tutorial, explaining the purpose and learning objectives of the exercise, as well as debriefings after each experience to maximize learning. All sessions are facilitated by a licensed psychologist and an equine specialist.
Can a team of eight young adults maneuver a herd of nine free-roaming horses around a cloverleaf pattern? This was the challenge in this experiential hands-on team-building exercise at "Eye of a Horse", the Nature-Exposure Animal-Assisted Therapy Program located on the grounds of Forever Florida, a 4700-acre wildlife preserve in Osceola County, Florida.
In this equine-assisted therapy session participants work on non-verbal communication skills, teamwork, problem-solving, frustration tolerance, and healthy competition. In this "anything-can-happen" horse race, the miniature horse attempts to sabotage his rival's progress, but in the end loses the race despite (or perhaps because of) his unethical tactics. Eye of a Horse Nature Exposure Animal-Assisted Psychotherapy Programs are held on the grounds of Forever Florida, a 4700-acre wildlife preserve in Osceola County, and are directed by a licensed clinical psychologist.
A 2-hour session of equine-assisted therapy for a small group of adolescents is condensed in this 6-minute video. The youth are tasked with corralling a herd of untrained, free-roaming colts from a large open pasture into a small round pen. This challenging therapeutic intervention focuses on goal-setting, patience, persistence, teamwork, communication, mindfulness, and situational awareness. The therapeutic approach follows David Kolb's experiential learning cycle and utilizes Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) skills.
