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A CLOSER LOOK AT:Horse & Family Institute A North Carolina charity shows how interacting with horses helps people communicate better with each other.By HALEY WEISSPhotos by HFI

On their first day at a Horse & Family Institute communication program in Jacksonville, N.C., one couple

walked into class completely silent. The husband sat up high on one set of bleachers, while the wife took a lower seat on another set. The pair appeared so disconnected that Kristen DelVecchio Fraessdorf, HFI’s co-founder and chief operations officer, had to assure the staff that the two individuals were in fact married. But after four weeks of working with HFI’s instructors and horses, the couple showed up to class holding hands.

“What the couple realized is that they just didn’t know how to talk to each other anymore,” Fraessdorf recalled.

Once they learned how to effectively communicate, Fraessdorf said the couple told her, “It’s like we’ve just gotten married again.”

From veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder to families, from straight-A students to children with learning disabilities, HFI helps clients improve their communication skills in order to form meaningful connections with others.

CHARITY SPOTLIGHT

The 501(c)(3) uses horses to teach people “effective/reflective” communication: how to communicate what they see instead of what they feel something looks like.

“For example, if you do something in the round pen with a horse, someone might say, ‘You looked frustrated,’ ” said Fraessdorf. “Well, no, what I saw happen was you clenched your fists, and your elbows straightened out, and the horse got faster. Effective/reflective communication is stating what we observe somebody doing as opposed to what we think they’re doing.”

HFI also teaches people how to question others effectively in order to get thoughtful responses. Fraessdorf said clients often complain that people don’t listen to them. “What is actually happening is they’re not asking the right questions,” she explained. “If you ask someone, ‘How was your day?’ usually the answer is ‘fine,’ or sometimes you don’t get a chance to respond because people just walk away. So the question is really––especially with people we care about and the people we work with and our family members––‘Tell me something about your day that was different than anything else that you’ve experienced.’ ”

The non-profit offers youth, adult and

family programs in an outdoor classroom environment, and classes range in length depending upon clients’ needs. HFI is also in the process of expanding its three-day veterans’ program into a longer curriculum that will focus on one’s overall demeanor and how to give an effective presentation to others.

The institute also has a new HorseSense Club, a faith-based program for youth aged 5 to 18 that teaches life skills, character building and horsemanship on the ground as well as in English and western tack, and there’s a three-day facilitation program for those wanting to learn the organization’s specific teaching methods.

HFI’s seven horses are key to the positive changes in clients’ lives. “Since horses are super-sensitive to pressure, they make great teaching tools,” said Fraessdorf, “and because they’re so large, they can be intimidating, so people pay attention. Horses work because people pay attention, and the feedback that the horses give is instantaneous.”

HFI participants agree that the horses make influential teachers. “I think horses have the ability to identify what type of person they’re dealing with right off the bat,” said Aldo Cox, an active-duty Marine

HFI offers programs for a variety of ages. Working directly with horses, participants also learn about themselves, a key to developing better human-to-human communication skills.

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>> WHAT IT IS: Horse & Family Institute is a non-profit learning organization that uses horses to teach meaningful communication skills to all ages. HFI helps participants understand body language and teaches listening skills, questioning techniques and horsemanship.

>> LEARN MORE: Visit HFI’s website at horseandfamilyinst.org.

>> GET IN TOUCH: Call (910) 467-9740.

>> GET INVOLVED: Make a donation online at horseandfamilyinst.org/donate-to-HFI or send one to Horse & Family Institute, 138 Catino Farms Lane, Jacksonville, N.C. 28546. Volunteers of all ages and professions are welcome.

participating in HFI’s Equine-Assisted Communication program, which receives funds from the Semper Fi Foundation.

“I have a traumatic brain injury, some anxiety, depression, PTSD issues, a lot of anger, a lot of aggression, and I kind of just closed off from people and isolated myself,” said Cox, of Jacksonville, Fla. “I can say that therapy with the horses has helped, because I became aware of the way I was acting. To see [the horses] respond and react to the way I presented myself shed a lot of light on some of the issues I was having with people. There’s a noticeable difference between when I’m being aggressive or passive-aggressive with the horse versus when I’m being assertive. It painted a picture of how I’m acting throughout my life at home and with my kids.”

Such self-awareness leads to better interpersonal skills, says HFI’s chief executive officer, Chris Robbins, himself a Marine Corps veteran.

“We’re always learning something about each other,” Robbins said. “We can learn from the 5-year-old, and we can learn from someone who’s been doing it forever. We’re always open-minded in that we can learn something new and fresh about our activity and interactivity with other people.”

Although every exercise affects people

differently, Fraessdorf has seen the most “a-ha” moments triggered by two in particular. In one exercise, participants are divided in two groups in the round pen with a horse. Using traffic cones and jumps, one group builds a physical representation of a problem, often a communication problem that they experience in life. Once the obstacle is complete, the observing group

gives feedback to the builders on how they worked together as a team. The instructors then surprise the observers by asking them to get the horse to go through the obstacle, while the builders watch.

“Very few people will actually break the obstacle down into pieces,” said Fraessdorf. “If people don’t break it down, we will ask the builders for their input, and then we will ask, ‘What would have happened if you had taken the obstacle apart one piece at a time, instead of having it be one big mess?’ Most of the time people are like, ‘You know, I didn’t think about it,’ and I say, ‘Well, think about the problems you have with communication. What if you just focused on one thing?’ The point of the exercise is to have people identify that we all have obstacles, and they may look different to everybody. The horse represents the participants in that exercise: ‘Did you stay away from the obstacle while it was being built?’ How did you get yourself through it?’ ”

For the other exercise, participants assemble a round pen, put a horse in it and then disassemble the pen. “Some people are blindfolded, some can talk and others can’t,” Fraessdorf said. “So it’s dealing with limitations that we have, how we accomplish tasks when we have limitations that we may or may not be

Aldo Cox, a Marine on active duty, says his interactions with his family have improved “due to patience, assertiveness, body language, facial expressions and not being sarcastic, because the horses responded to those things.”

aware of and what that looks like.”Through her work with HFI, Fraessdorf

has combined her previous career in corporate education with her longstanding equestrian passion. She started riding at age 5 and had her own horses in a dressage and hunter/jumper barn. College and career kept her out of the saddle, but she’s made up for lost time. She founded HFI—originally called Coastal Carolina HorseSense—12 years ago with the late horse trainer Aleck Barnard, who died last year. Fraessdorf also is an equine sports massage therapist. “I made it my mission to really get back into horses, because I was missing it,” she said. “I thought, ‘I really want to take what I’ve learned and develop it and share it with other people.’”

“The instructors are amazing,” said Cox, who was in his seventh week of classes at the time of this interview. “They are patient and understand that they may be dealing with people who can’t communicate as effectively as one would want. They’ve taken the time to teach us about the horses and about ourselves. The experience has been great and almost overwhelming. I’m super-grateful for the program. I’ve put into practice some of the things that I’ve learned, and I could see how the conversation went differently [with my wife and kids] due to patience, assertiveness, body language, facial expressions and not being sarcastic, because the horses responded to those things. My communication efforts and abilities have definitely improved because of the tactics that I’ve learned.”