Colorado, he opened a day treatment center that served over 3,000 adolescents and their families in northern Colorado. He also developed a private/public partnership, one of the first of its kind, contracting with local school districts to serve emotionally disturbed adolescents.
Embracing Trakehners Richard introduced Judy to one of his co-workers who was involved in the world of dressage. Judy was captivated by the Trakehner cross this woman rode in competition. This led Judy to months of researching this amazing breed while taking dressage lessons. During this learning process, Judy reached out to Jean Brinkman in Florida, whose Valhalla Farm is a large breeding and training facility. Judy credits Jean with educating her and helping to get their herd started. At the time, the American Trakehner Association had a
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pilot program which allowed Thoroughbred and Arabian horses to be inspected and registered into the ATA registry. A friend had given Judy a rescue horse, an Arabian mare, and she contacted the association about an inspection. In the end, Judy hosted the first ATA inspection in Colorado— where her two mares, the Arabian she had been given and a Thoroughbred, were approved. Soon she began breeding. She searched for quality mares
from champion lines, even those that were champions themselves, who had suffered injuries or were at the end of their careers. She was determined to save these fine horses from a sad end. At her second Colorado inspection four mares were approved, and she also purchased three mares already Trakehner approved. With this ATA pilot program, she bred 14 offspring. Because of the financial downturns so many struggled
with, the McMahans were forced to limit breeding and down- size their herd. Then Richard had the idea to keep the horses and give them a worthwhile job as therapists, putting them to work helping him to heal broken human spirits.
"The horses heal the human by teaching humans how to get their personal power back. Personal power is lost or taken away when a human is wounded by life events or circumstances."
First Steps Initially Richard started out with people suffering from drug and alcohol addictions and those on parole or probation. The emerging field of equine facilitated psychotherapy was help- ful as he learned how to integrate horses into his practice. At that time, the focus in this new field was primarily work with handicapped and developmentally disabled clients, where the movement of the horse was soothing. In 2000, Richard was working with several hundred cli-
ents in typical one-on-one therapy sessions. He began to feel this model was not cost or time effective, so he worked to develop a method of using the horses in a group therapy setting. He developed his Natural Humanship Training, using techniques that would teach the human about fear, power and control and integrate it with relationship building meth- ods of touching, caressing and grooming, all while working on the ground with horses.
A Typical Session Each training session takes about three hours. It can vary depending on the number of participants; three to fifteen per session is ideal. Because safety is paramount, volunteers are needed to ensure that each participant has a good ex- perience with his or her horse. Participants all sign a release of liability state- ment when they arrive, and dur- ing this informal time the trainees get to know the horses over the fences and ‘shake hands’ with the stallions. While every-
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one is seated in a semi-circle during their first meeting, people are asked to share their name and a little something about themselves.
Warmbloods Today 15
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