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Hoof Beats to Healing: A 3 month look.
Dennis Davis
Dyslexia TLC
Aug 31, 2006
Hoof Beats to Healing: A 3 month look.
The following are my perceptions over a 3 month time period with the above mentioned program. It includes Tammy Tanner, a 14 year old male who is dyslexic and I.
I was first contacted by Tami Tanner of Hoof Beats to Healing in the spring of 2004. She introduced herself me and told me about her program which uses a Missouri Fox Trot horse breed. She asked if I was interested in including any of my students in her program to see if it would benefit their reading. I agreed to give it a try.
I selected a 14 year old male who is moderately dyslexic and was showing minimal progress in his current program. I have decided to change his name to David.
David has Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) a type of dyslexia and was in the 3rd year of a phonemic awareness program. This program was designed to bring a persons reading grade level up to par in 2 ½ years or less. He had completed the phonogram cards within the program twice and was still struggling. David continued to sound out and misread common words, skip basic sight words, skip or reread lines, guess incorrect words and insert incorrect phonograms. He also seemed to insist on reading faster than he was able.
Over the next three months David and I visited Hoof Beats to Healing each Friday at the end of our school week. I would first start by reviewing and reading with David for 20 minutes and noting the number of errors. David would then work with Tami. Tami would do various therapies with David for 45 minutes. We would all take a 20 minute break. After the break I would then read with David again for 20 minutes. The results were staggering. Each time we read after the hippo therapy David’s error rates were cut in half and his fluency increased. David also retained more, was less stressed and more comfortable.
My only regret was that we could not coincide David’s reading program with the hippo therapy each day.
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