Equine Assisted Personal Development (EAPD) Coach Course

PREREQUISITE

To register for this course you must be 18 years of age or older.  Your experience should include basic care of horses including grooming, tacking up and down, safety and well-being.  You need to be comfortable working with a client both on the ground and in a mounted exercise.

PRE-COURSE PREPARATION PACKAGE

A month prior to the in-person course, you will receive a Pre-Course Preparation package that will help you prepare for the full course.  The information in the package ensures students have a similar knowledge base as they enter the course.

Students will write an exam on the Pre-Course Preparation material the first day and must pass it in order to continue with the rest of the course.

Included in the Pre-Course Study material is:

• Understanding Equine Assisted Learning and the role of the Equine Assisted Personal Development (EAPD) Coach
• Professional Standards and Code of Ethics
• What is Coaching
• Coaching Environments
• Instincts, motivations and characteristics of individual horses and a deeper understanding of herd dynamics as applied to human interactions.
• Safety for horse and human
• And so much more.

IN-PERSON COURSE

These five days will change your life. It is intense, exciting and sometimes emotional. The course is hands-on, experiential in nature, and incredibly satisfying. The course will be both classroom and hands-on with the horses. You will gain experience as both a "client" and Coach.

Classroom time is usually mornings, with topics such as:

• Come to know the science behind how the horse communicates, and how to use this knowledge when working with clients.
• Develop ways to initiate dialogue with your clients, helping them identify conflict and coaching them as they discover their own answers.
• Understand the “Five Conflicts”© and how to apply proven methods to help clients identify and overcome conflicts.
• Learn to develop equine exercises to work effectively with clients.
• Discover the seven ways of working with horses, including ground-based, mounted, positioning and viewing.
• Be provided access to the EAL Wrangler© 1/2 day course.  
• Be provided access to the pre-packaged multi-session programs, including Trail of the Heart©, In Front of the Herd© 
• Fundamentals of marketing and the business of EAL.
• Be taught by trainers who have worked with EAL clients for many years. Clients include individuals, families, First Nations, and corporations.

Time with the horse is usually in the afternoons and include:

• Reviewing safety around the horse.
• Examining the horse prior to use.
• Exercises to demonstrate how the horse communicates.
• Demonstration of exercises to see the horse in an EAPD role.
• Each student will have several opportunities to be a Coach and a client. As a Coach you will experience firsthand the interaction between the client and the horse. You will also experience situations as a “client” to better understand how the emotion of the client-horse contact.
• Feedback from your  instructors and peers will ensure you get the most out of the session, walk away with the new insights and material, feeling reassured that you can make a difference in the lives of those you touch.

Each day ends with a debriefing, reviewing both the classroom material and the experiences working with the horses. This provides an additional opportunity to ask questions and request clarification.

The final day of the course will include an exam on the material taught during the 5 days.  

UPON COMPLETION

Certification

Equine Assisted Learning (EAL) Canada provides the certification for its students based on; 

successfully completed the initial exam based on the Pre-Course Study material, a final exam based on the material learned during the Course, as well as their performance throughout the hands-on portion of the Course. Each student signs an agreement with EAL Canada that includes our Code of Ethics and receives their certificate.  

Benefits

Become one of almost 300 participants from Canada, USA, Mexico and Australia who have taken this training. Upon completion you become an Active Alumni and will be given access to a closed Facebook Page where Coaches share ideas, ask for suggestions or feedback, read about new and exciting EAL research. You also have access to already-developed courses that you can apply to your business, newly developed material and availability to EAL Staff for questions and feedback.

To maintain your Active Alumni status each year, there is an annual alumni fee currently set at $52.50 (2023), that is invoiced the beginning of each year.