Inclusion is Good for Everyone, An Interview with Veronica Rosenthal with Dark Horse Therapeutics

Enjoy this wonderful conversation with Veronica Rosenthal!

Veronica (“Roni”) Rosenthal is a lifelong horsewoman from central Texas. 

Roni is a licensed speech language pathologist and a certified therapeutic riding instructor. Roni’s speech therapy career has focused on serving Deaf and Hard of Hearing individuals. She took an off-the-beaten path in her field by becoming fierce advocate for signed languages. She is fluent in American Sign Language and provides horsemanship and riding instruction in ASL.

Roni obtained her CTRI qualification from PATH international in 2019 and launched her equine business, Dark Horse Therapeutics, in 2020. She currently runs a ‘micro’ equine-assisted therapy program in West Chester, Pennsylvania. 

In addition to teaching, Roni studies equine bodywork modalities and carries a small caseload of equine clients. Roni has a particular interest in equine dysphagia (chewing and swallowing disorders) from her training as a speech pathologist. 

To learn more, kindly visit:

Website: https://darkhorseslp.com/

IG: https://www.instagram.com/darkhorse_slp/

FB: https://www.facebook.com/p/Dark-Horse-Therapeutics-61551235773464/

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-Beth Lauren Parrish, Certified Hypnotherapist, Riding Instructor, & Creator of 𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐑𝐢𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠®

PS Have you heard the calming meditations for equestrians? Check them out here:  https://www.inspiredriding.com/guided-meditations

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Beth, welcome to the inspired riding podcast. I'm your host. Beth. Lauren Parrish as a certified riding instructor, remote coach and rapid transformational therapy practitioner, a powerful form of hypnotherapy. I'm here to remind you to slow down, trust your intuition and really deeply listen to your horse, and this will make for the best co creative dances possible, whether you're on the ground or connecting on their backs. Thank you so much for being here, and here we go. Hello there. Inspired riders. We're continuing along with the riding instructor interview series, and in this podcast, I'll be interviewing Veronica Ronnie Rosenthal. Ronnie is a lifelong horse woman from Central Texas. She's a licensed speech language pathologist and a certified therapeutic riding instructor. Ronnie's speech therapy career has focused on serving deaf and hard of hearing individuals. She took an off the beaten path in her field by becoming a fierce advocate for signed languages, she is fluent in American Sign Language and provides horsemanship and riding instruction in ASL. Ronnie obtained her ctri qualification from path International in 2019 and launched her equine business, Dark Horse therapeutics in 2020 she currently runs a micro Equine Assisted Therapy program in Westchester, Pennsylvania. In addition to teaching, Ronnie studies equine body work modalities and carries a small caseload of Equine clients, Ronnie has a particular interest in equine dysphagia, chewing and swallowing disorders from her training as a speech pathologist. I'm really looking forward to this interview, and here we go, Ronnie. Thank you so much for being here with me today. My pleasure. So as you know, I'm doing this interview series for riding instructor support. I'd love to know first question for you, what do you love most about riding and teaching? Regards to teaching, I love sharing horses with other people. That's a great joy for me, and I love riding and training. This is a very simple answer, but it just feels so good. It feels so fun to be able to communicate with an animal like a horse and be able to develop understanding and language with them. And I'm a total riding addict. I mean, I love, you know, but inside all time is happy time for me, I am not riding very much right now. I have a senior horse and greener horses and my string, but it's, it's all fun and and so fulfilling to be working towards goals with these fun animals. Yeah, I love that so much. And I'm, I'm very much the addict, too. I had a, I think I had a trainer tell me, she said, Beth, you were not bitten by the bug. You were attacked by it. So it sounds like you're in the same boat there. Yeah, I found out I had, you know, total, like, horse gene or something. I found out years after I had been riding, begging for lessons, begging for a pony for Christmas. You know, totally consumed as a kid that actually, I had a great grandfather who rode in the cavalry, and I saw photos of him, and my mom explained this memory of seeing his riding boots lined up against the wall and his trophies. And I was like, maybe it did skip a couple generations or something. I mean, I don't know so many more of us in the world used to ride and be around horses and care for horses on a daily basis, you know, 150 200 years ago. And so maybe all US Crazy Horse girls are just, you know, living through ancestral memory or something, and feeling the need to go back to the horses, even though we don't need them for war and transportation anymore. Yes, thank goodness. We're very blessed. They've they've gotten us through so much, and I totally agree. I had a great uncle who used to ride, and he was the only one in our family who rode. That's actually how I started riding. Is he passed away when I was eight, and I just turned to my parents and said, can I. Glasses to keep it in the family. And they were like, Okay, we'll try to figure this out. They had no idea. And of course, it turned into this huge passion. But I love that concept of like tapping into the ancestral energy of bringing forth that passion and that connection, and I think it's so important to keep it going. I was actually able to show that photo to Charles, to kunfi. I wrote for him once. Oh, yeah. I just got chills from Hi narrow i Yes. And at that point in Charles his life, I think that he didn't really want to talk very much to other people. He absolutely came alive and was very active and engaged when he was teaching, but he said, this is very nice picture. And then sort of, you know, dismissed me. But I, for me, it was so important to show him my connection, because he's been such a, you know, Ambassador for the art. And yeah, Charles has been on my heart and on my mind this last month since he passed. And so, yeah, that was special to get to share that with him. That's absolutely gorgeous. I got to audit one of his clinics, and I remember vividly him looking over and saying, You should listen to me. I'm very, very smart. And I said, Yes, sir. But yeah, what a blessing. And I still have some of his books I need to review again. My favorite one is a writer's survival from tyranny. I mean, it's just absolutely heart wrenching, gut wrenching, to hear what he lived through and what his life was like at that time. And, yeah, it's, it's an incredible story. And I love the descriptions of the horses. You know, it's sort of like pudskis. My horse is my teachers. He goes through all of these different horses that kind of made him as a rider. So that's a very special that's my favorite Charles's book, although he told me that his favorite is ethics and passions, because I think that that's been his opportunity to explain to everyone what the deal is, but I like a writer's survival from tyranny. He told me he doesn't like it, because it's hard to think about those things that happened to him. So yeah, oh, sure. I mean just reading people's transformation stories is absolutely inspiring and really important to understand that no matter where you are, you can overcome, yeah, yeah. So beautiful. So Ronnie, how have you shifted your teaching over the years? You know, what's interesting is, when I reviewed this question, the first thing I thought of, well, I am a teacher now, and I think that I had this chip on my shoulder for a long time like, Oh, I'm just an amateur. I'm just doing therapeutic stuff because I'm not good enough for being a real writing instructor. But I don't feel that way anymore at all. I think that an equine professional is someone who gets paid to do stuff with horses, and I've been doing that for a long time now, so I think I have a lot to offer in that sphere. And so I think that that biggest shift has happened for me in just like taking up the self confidence and the mantle of being like, yeah, I have things to say. I have things that I can help you with. So that's been the biggest shift. I love that. So you're taking it on as your full identity now. So good, so good. So how do you stay inspired my own horses, I have to have my own ability to make decisions, management, training decisions. That was a huge shift for me. Just in the last two years. I have actually never owned a horse. I have not been in a position to have personal horse ownership. I have leased, had multi year leases. I have been a working student. I have worked for many, many farms over the years, but I'm a millennial with massive student loans, and I also live in the city. My husband is night blind, and so living on a farm is not a great fit for our family structure. So I've been very lucky to kind of figure out how, how I fit into this industry, and figure out how I can get, my fix, get my horse fix. And so in this past two years, I've been lucky enough to be in a position where I do get to make decisions, and I do get to make choices about training, and that's been kind of a dream come true for me, because I'm sure there's a lot of people listening who are in position. With riding lease horses or riding lesson horses, and maybe they don't feel 100% aligned with their coaches decisions or the owners decisions. And I just, I, my heart goes out to them, because it's, it's so hard, it's so so hard to feel like you have a a feeling, a sense your horse is telling you something, but you're you don't have the power the control to help them. Yeah, yes, and that's something that I've been working towards, is to shine the light on being okay with sharing your intuitive hits in a tactful way, whether it's with your instructor or with another boarder. I did a recent podcast on on barn diplomacy. You know, I'm trying to help keeping keeping these copacetic and when to know when it's time to leave things like that. So now I'm curious, what sort of decisions are you making now with your own horses that are different? The way I'm riding has changed a lot. When I'm choosing to ride, maybe I'm choosing not to ride. I'm managing a school master in his 20s right now, and he's very well educated, very good boy. He will do anything for me, and I have to be careful, because he'll hurt himself for me if I am not, you know, really conscious of how we go. He's very powerful, and so I'm just trying to listen to him, yeah, that's the key, and they'll tell us. And that's the other thing I teach, is feeling safe and confident enough to really tune in to hear what they're saying. Absolutely. Yeah. So awesome. Thank you for sharing that. Okay, so do you have any teaching tips that you'd like to share? Yes, so my area of expertise is in communication disorders, right? And I feel like we all develop a communication disorder when we're under pressure on our horse and trying to do our best, and our language centers shut off and we can't hear what our instructor is yelling at us. And so I think it's just good for all of us to think about cognition is different than language understanding not understanding language, does not mean that you're not smart. Those are two separate parts of the brain, and also our language centers have less capacity when we're stressed, when there's a lot going on, when we're distracted, and everyone that might be interested in riding and horsemanship might have different capacity for different styles of communication, and so my biggest encouragement for people is to think visually. And if anyone wants to contact me, I have pre made visuals that are for children and adults who have difficulty understanding through the air language, but seeing the picture of something bypasses that language center, so they immediately understand. And so I can get through a seven step sequence with somebody looking at my grid that has the helmet and the groom bucket and the hoof pick and the saddle, and you need to put your stirrups down, and all of this stuff can be right here, and I might have to do that, presenting that direction, one thing at a time, maybe even like physically assisting or hand over hand with someone. If I didn't have my visual, if I have my visual, they're able to immediately understand and follow that. For writers who are not, you know, needing that level of support, I've had to teach lessons in American Sign Language, and I feel like my understanding of dressage movements has gotten way better since I physically had to, like, sign them out in ASL and make it happen with my body. So, like, No, really. How are you supposed to sit for shoulder in and, like, do research and figure out how to how to physically show someone with a body moving through space what it is that we want the horse to do. And I think a lot of language around riding can be very murky and obtuse and hard to figure out. And so I think my biggest tip would be more visuals for everyone. I love that so much. That's so cool that you created those. And when you're describing what you do with the dressage riders, I'm wondering, have you ever seen Sylvia Locke's videos where she has her riders going around without horses doing the movements? No, I haven't. That sounds wonderful. I think that would be so cool to have your students do that too, like with you, yeah, yeah, you can do like a conga line, even with doing the different movements. That would be so cool. I love that you do all this. This is so important. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Do you have a story about a favorite lesson? Course, yes, I will talk about Loki. Loki is in my program here in Pennsylvania, I have to say a huge thank you to his owner, Kathy, for allowing Loki to participate in our program. Loki took care of a kiddo of mine who is deaf and on the spectrum, and he really enjoyed trail riding with Loki, but he decided that it was interesting to kamikaze dive off of Loki. And Loki is not a small horse. He's a quarter horse, mid size. He's maybe like 15 something, but it's a good ways from the ground for a little guy. He's a six year old kid. And what I realized was this was a little bit of an attention seeking behavior. And it was funny, and so I had to play chicken a little bit with like, we don't want to attend to the behavior and reward the behavior. But I also have to balance the fact that this child is hanging off the side of the horse like a Mongolian Archer or something. And sweet Loki. I mean, I was watching very carefully. I was like, are you okay? Like, I will take this child off this horse. And he was like, I'm good, you know. And so eventually we had to figure out the Kamikaze situation, because that was just, you know, not fair to Loki, and was giving me a heart attack, but huge. Thank you to Loki for putting putting up with that experimentation that we were doing. What a kind soul. I'm sure he understood that something wasn't quite right, and he just had to, like, keep it together right. Exactly, exactly. Amazing. Oh my gosh. So I'm guessing that you got it all sorted now, right? Yeah, no, unfortunately, that student is no longer with me, and it is because the interest of those types of behaviors just became more motivating than riding and being around the horses. And I think that that's an important thing for people to understand in the equine therapy space, is that there are contraindications, and that not all riders are appropriate for Equine Assisted therapies and therapeutic riding programs. One big reason why I have started my own program is so that I can have that discretion and, yeah, just, you know, horses are magical, but they're not magic in terms of being able to like I often find that the clients that are maybe not appropriate candidates, it's not so much the kid or the participant, It's the caregivers or the family members that really desperately want their loved one to have a connection with horses or just to feel better. But our I strongly believe that our first obligation if we're going to use partner with horses in this space is to them first, because they didn't sign up for this. They didn't go to graduate school to get a therapeutic license or whatever. You know, they are our horse. So I have to prioritize my horses well being when it comes to, you know, choosing clients. And, yeah, I'm so glad you said that, and it's so good to have those boundaries and to be able to make those sometimes hard decisions, but it's so important to honor the horse, so thank you for sharing that too. What's something that surprised you? Recently while teaching, I have been doing some internal work around one of the horses in my string. His name is Winnie the Pooh, and he's wonderful. He's really cool guy. But Winnie the Pooh challenges me and my horsemanship, because it's pretty easy for me to get horses to like me and to want to please me, and that is not so with Mr. Winnie the Pooh. He his first and best answer, Best Foot Forward is no. And so learning what's motivating for him, learning what he likes to do, has been a fun journey for me to figure out, and I had a new client to her the other day, a woman in her 60s. She has been wanting to ride horses her entire life, and this has been her first opportunity. And we went out in the pasture just to sort of meet and greet. I was expecting to kind of be like, there's Winnie the Pooh and there's Loki and. You know, these are, these are, you know, maybe horses that you'll spend time with. And Winnie the Pooh came over and gave her the sweetest, kindest greeting. And was very like, interested and engaged. And it was just a really great moment. And gave me kind of a flicker of okay, like, I have this feeling that he is going to be great in my program once he understands that it's fun and easy and no one's going to make him work very hard. But he's worried about that. He has lots of questions. He's like, What are we doing? What's going on? And so we're just slowly, you know, building that relationship. So I guess that was a surprise for me. I was expecting a little bit for him to blow us off, but he didn't. He wanted to participate and endure our presence. That's absolutely beautiful. I wonder if he felt that feeling of it didn't matter if he showed up or not, so it took off the pressure, probably, and big. Thank you to his owner, Kathy as well. I have two Kathy's for owners. That's a little it's easier. It's confusing. Whichever one do they have 1k 1c or are they both? Yeah, okay, that makes it a little bit easier. Yeah, if you could teach a master class to other instructors, what would the topic be, and what would be some of the key points in there? Oh, I probably already discussed this a little bit around visuals, but I can get a little bit more technical. So in speech therapist training, we talked about, we talk about prompting hierarchy. So we talk about, what are the levels of support that an individual needs to understand your message. So it might be verbally, it might be verbally paired with a gesture. It might be verbally paired with a picture, symbol or a visual. It might be signed, it might be with multiple repetitions. It might be gaining attention or orientation of the individual, then provide the additional communication that you need. And so I guess that you know, any riding instructor down the road, some of us horse people are amazing, intuitive communicators, and a lot of us are also not, you know, we're here for the horses and training the horses, and then you have to figure out how to people and teach the people. And so I think, thinking about how you're communicating and also considering how the individual best understands. You know, are you communicating in a feedback loop where you're thinking about how that person is receiving the message? And I think about this all the time with myself. I might have a lot to say and want to get the message out, but am I considering how it is being processed by the other person, and what can I do to check for that understanding? Could I stop and ask a question. Could I pause? Could I give space for the person to give me feedback about what their experience is? And then, yeah, just going back to the visual thing, recognizing that visuals bypass your language, center of your brain, which may or may not be online when you're stressed and trying to perform. And you know, I sometimes I feel like I do my worst riding in lessons. I because I am a teacher's pet and want to please the instructors and my coaches. So yes, I would teach a master class in communication techniques and using visual aids. I love that so much. If you can create a billboard for all instructors to see, what would it say? Probably use visuals and also amateur means, for the love of it. And so I would love for instructors to have deep respect for their students, who are, you know, putting their heart on a platter, showing up and wanting this so much, and, um, there's, there's almost like going back to the vet. So there can be a little bit of a contempt for the amateur or the lay person. And I, I love programs like yours that are really supporting those individuals to find. You know their meaningful path through, through their horse journey. So yeah, I think that's what I would say. Thank you. I love that. Do you have a transformation story that you wanted to share? I do. Okay, cool. So one of my writers back in Texas was deaf, blind, so multiple sensory impairments. This individual communicated through American Sign Language, but she had a very restricted visual field. So if you take your eyes like, Oh, this is about what her visual field looked like. So very minimal peripheral vision, very minimal vision below her midline. And, um, so horse handling and grooming and being around on the ground was really challenging for her, navigating the space uneven surfaces, knowing where her body was in relationship to the horse, you know, proxemics, distance and where your body is in space around the horse is so important to them. She had pretty high anxiety about leading and being around the horse on the ground. She was very worried that the horse was going to, you know, be in her space or, you know, and rightly so, riding. She had a lot more confidence. She could kind of get around. I think being up higher and being able to track was really supportive and helpful for her. I used a tool for her. I'm going to have to ask my orientation and mobility specialist friend exactly what this was called, but it was basically a felt board that was black, so it was high contrast, and you had little movable pieces, so that you could create a mock arena, and we could go through do this obstacle first, and this obstacle first. And over here is set up the, you know, pole pattern, or the barrel pattern, or whatever you need. So that was a tool that I used for her so that it was tactile. She could feel it and she could see it with the high contrast. But one day, we decided to have spa day for our one of our lesson courses, and I am not sure what my decision making process was but I thought, Noah, she can do it. She can lead her from the groom area to the wash rack. And I handed her the lead rope, and I always positioned myself in a very specific place so that I can support her step in if needed. Maybe give the horse a little couple prompts to help along, but things were going really well, so I kind of distanced myself a little bit, just to give her this sense of you're doing it, you're being independent. And the horse saw some grass, took a dive for the grass and stepped right on her foot. She had to go to the hospital because her toenail popped off and she really hurt herself. And to her credit, she stuck with the lesson for another good like 1015, minutes after that, and she was like, No, Mom, my foot really, really hurts. So we ended up in the hospital together that night, but she came back, and she kept working on it. We started with having her lead the mini ponies that we had at that facility, and we worked up to her being able to lead the other horses. And now she's still riding and enjoying horses, walk, trot, canter, yeah, just doing a fabulous job, sort of persisting with a scary thing that happened that was my fault, but, yeah, she, she's she's doing great, and I'm so thrilled that, you know, the draw of the horses has been motivating enough for her to sort of work through that significant fear. And you know, something that sucks. That really sucks. Yeah, that's a gorgeous transformation. And to be fair, you really were trying to give her more autonomy and show her she could do it. So I don't think it's completely your fault. I think there was always that factor is we're working with horses. Horses do stuff, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did consider the fact that this could have happened with any student, but the fact that it happened with the student that was a most afraid of this exact thing happening. I mean, maybe there's a lot of attraction thing going on there, but yeah, well, let's just say we're happy she's okay now and get she got back to it, and perhaps it was getting over that fear of it actually happening, and then realizing she survived. That's always good, too. Yeah. Well, I'm really grateful that you shared that story, because I couldn't even imagine working. With a student that had such limited eyesight. I mean, the things you do are incredible, Ronnie, and I'm so grateful that you do this in the horse world. It's amazing. I don't know anyone else who is doing it, and I would love if anyone is out there who signs American Sign Language or Australian Sign Language or Columbian sign language, whatever you're doing, and is in the horses to reach out and let me know. I have a couple of contacts. I actually have a close friend of mine who went through the path international certified therapeutic riding instructor program. Through my license and got her certification. We think that she's the first deaf we know that she's the first deaf person to hold this certification. So I hope that there are more opportunities for deaf people and signers to enjoy horses and get, get to learn and get access in their first language. I think that there's a lot to learn from, you know, watching a Deaf riding lesson, the things that I have to do to make sure that I can give in the moment, feedback from my riders, like I definitely get my steps in. You know, I have to think constantly about where my writer is in relationship to where their eye gaze can find me. And so I do a lot of like, go to the long side. I run to the end of the long side so that I can be signing, and they could be seeing me down that entire long side, and I can be giving feedback. But circles don't really work because you're like, you know, looking over here, I find that I also have to be extremely good at explaining what it is that I want. Then go with God and, you know, try it. And then we go back and we, you know, regroup, and we talk about what it is that happened or what we can do better. And so it's a real challenge to make sure that I know what I'm talking about, and that I can break down the steps and I can, you know, not just stand in the middle of the arena and yell at my rider. I mean, I think that that's how I was coached, and I'm sure it's how a lot of people were coached, and that's not going to work for a deaf writer, but that might not work for a lot of writers. So it's good to think about these different ways. That's so true. I really see how an entire course would be super valuable. So I'm just giving you that gentle pony nudge. Do it? Do it. Well, is there anything else you'd like to add that I didn't ask you, not that I can think of. No, yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's delightful to talk about horses on a beautiful evening with you. It really is. Thank you so much. And how can people get a hold of you? Ronnie, you can reach me at Dark Horse therapeutics@gmail.com, I am on Instagram at Dark Horse underscore. SLP, SLP. Like speech language pathologist. That's my big girl job. I'm on Facebook as Dark Horse therapeutics, and my website is Dark Horse slp.com, and I just redid my website. I'm very pleased with it. And so people can go check out the therapeutic services that I offer, as well as my equine body work practice, and talk very much about that today, but that's another skill set that I have, and I kind of interweave that throughout my teaching now. That's been a big shift for my teaching in the last five years or so. So yeah, those are all my places you can find me fantastic, and I'll be sure to add all of those links to the show notes so people can find you very easily and reach out. Wonderful thank you again for being here. It was a pleasure to chat with you. Yes, thank you. You're welcome. All right, everyone, please do check out the show notes so you can reach out to Ronnie and thank you so much for listening and remember to lead with kindness for yourself and for your horse. May the horse be with you always you.