A tremendous thank you to all the client families, volunteers, and friends who voted for The Shea Center in The Capistrano Dispatch's People's Choice Horseshoe Awards! In all we won five awards! Gold - Best Local Nonprofit Organization Gold - Best Camp for Kids Silver...
You need me to work in the barn? Great, I’m here! You need me to sidewalk for someone? Great, I’m here! You need me to help with a mount or a dismount? Great, I’m here! You need me to lead for a session? Great, I’m here! Those were the words of our Shea Center...
by Matt Mitchell, PT, DPT Come to The Shea Center for 30 minutes and you are bound to see someone sitting on a horse backwards, sideways, or even standing on horseback! Have you ever wondered why our clients are not always sitting facing forward in a saddle during...
Max’s mother, Desiree, says “Max loves being outside and has so much fun at The Shea Center! He is learning how to connect with animals.” Seven-year-old Max loves riding “Bliss". The first day, he was apprehensive and clung to his mother. Now, he loves to feed and...
At The Shea Center, some of our clients ride in group lessons on the Therapeutic/Adaptive Riding side of our program. These Shea Center group lessons are taught by specially trained adaptive riding instructors and can have up to a maximum of four riders in the lesson....
by Matt Mitchell, PT, DPT Recent research suggests that a robotic horse simulator may be able to produce similar physical benefits to riding a real horse.1 However; there are aspects of live horses that simply cannot be replicated by a machine. We believe these...
Additional training to become a horse leader is available for our volunteers. No horse experience is required, but we do encourage new volunteers to first “get their feet wet” by volunteering at the barn before taking the class. Pre-requisites for this class include...
If you look in the horse stalls at The Shea Center, you may notice that each horse has its own unique bedding. This bedding provides more than just a comfortable place for our therapeutic horses to relax in between lessons. Two distinct types of bedding are used for...
Long before the first client rider of the day arrives at The Shea Center, our horses have been groomed, tacked, exercised, and prepped for their lessons. It takes a lot of man (and woman) hours to get our herd of 25 horses ready for the day. The staff at The Shea...
by Matt Mitchell, PT, DPT Therapy at The Shea Center is always goal driven. Our physical, occupational, and speech therapy professionals carefully select appropriate functional goals. We also regularly measure progress over time using a variety of methods. We take a...