Latest / Equine Assisted World with Rupert Isaacson / Healing in the Herd – Military Recovery, Youth Empowerment, and Equine Wisdom with HorseBack UK | Ep 29 Equine Assisted World

Transcript

Healing in the Herd – Military Recovery, Youth Empowerment, and Equine Wisdom with HorseBack UK | Ep 29 Equine Assisted World · Equine Assisted World with Rupert Isaacson

• 0:00
  Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Equine Assisted World.
• 0:02
  I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson, New York Times best selling
• 0:05
  author of The Horse Boy, The Long Ride Home, and The Healing Land.
• 0:08
  Before I jump in with today's guest, I just want to say a huge
• 0:12
  thank you to you, our audience, for helping to make this happen.
• 0:15
  I have a request.
• 0:16
  If you like what we do, please like, subscribe, tell a friend.
• 0:22
  It really helps us get this work done.
• 0:24
  As you might know from my books, I'm an autism dad.
• 0:27
  And over the last 20 years, we've developed several
• 0:31
  equine assisted, neuroscience backed certification programs.
• 0:35
  If you'd like to find out more about them, go to newtrailslearning.
• 0:40
  com.
• 0:41
  So without further ado, let's meet today's guest.
• 0:47
  Welcome back to Equine Assisted World.
• 0:49
  I've got Emma Hutchinson and Jay Hare from Horseback UK based
• 0:54
  up in the wilds of Aberdeen.
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  They kind of do everything started with the military, still working with the
• 1:01
  military, but then transitioned also into kids at risk youth all sorts of
• 1:07
  programs and populations over the years.
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  And I would say that in terms of mentorship for people that are looking,
• 1:18
  particularly within the UK to get involved in the equine assisted field,
• 1:22
  horseback UK are really people to look to because unlike many programs who
• 1:28
  target very much one population set or one type of therapeutic outcome,
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  horseback UK are unusually eclectic.
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  And yet they integrate the whole thing in a really interesting way.
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  And of course they do this from a rather wonderful fairytale location up
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  there in Fairytale Land, which is Aber.
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  Extremely beautiful.
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  So, can you guys introduce yourselves?
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  Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
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  Do you wanna kick off Jay?
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  Jay Hare: My name's Jay Ha.
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  Jason calls me Jay.
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  I'm the course director for Horseback uk.
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  Next month I'll have been at the charity for 15 years after being seconded here
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  by the Marine Commandos, back when I went through my rehabilitation and was healing
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  after injuries sustained in combat.
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  Rupert Isaacson: And what do you do now?
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  You say you are the, you are, you are directing, but what does that mean?
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  Jay Hare: So, yeah, it's kind of a pop title, really is it course director.
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  But I think what it entails is actually helping and to design the programs and
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  the qualifications that we deliver here as well as in part delivering them and
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  also working with our mentors so that we give a good product, a good program,
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  a good outcome to whether it be our youngsters, our military, our community
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  courses, or whoever it might be.
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  Some just kind of tweaking that constantly and making sure it's all running well.
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  Like any good business, charity organization, it should look
• 3:00
  like a swan skimming across the top of that lock or lake.
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  But underneath there's always legs kicking, so we're making sure that each
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  one's working the way it should be.
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  Cool.
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  All right, Emma, tell us about you.
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  Emma Hutchison: So I'm Emma Hut.
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  The charity.
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  Charity.
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  So I I run the equine side of it, but I also do the strategic and the, the
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  sort of the fundraising and the, the desk is just piled high with paperwork,
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  with all sorts of stuff that you have to have done to, to run a charity.
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  But fundamentally, as I say, my passion has always been the horses.
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  And I am still fascinated.
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  We just started running the, the programs again this year.
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  We have a couple of months where we kind of try to get on top of
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  all the paperwork and everything.
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  And the last few weeks we've gone back to running the courses.
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  The horses have had a few months off, and they just amazed me about how it took
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  them a couple of days to get back into it, but how they just slot back into it.
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  They know their jobs and they're just funny old things that, you know, some
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  of them, like some people and some of them don't like other people, and they
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  know what they want and they know how to do their jobs, and it's just, just
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  me that they're, they're just amazing.
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  Rupert Isaacson: All right.
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  So Jay I want to start with you.
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  I remember when I was visiting you guys and we were doing various exercises
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  together in the arena, it took me a while to realize that you had a prosthetic
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  leg, you were moving on it so naturally.
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  So, athletically.
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  And then at a certain point I say, oh, hold on a second.
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  He's, he's on a prosthetic leg in a sand arena, kind of jumping over poles and.
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  Blocks and things.
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  Emma Hutchison: Is that when he took it off?
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  Rupert Isaacson: I think he did take it off that.
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  So no, I think he took it off so he could beat me over the head with it.
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  But the injuries that you sustained you, you were a marine commando.
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  Tell us about the, your life prior to that, your life during the process of
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  being injured, if you like, your recovery.
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  How did horses come into this?
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  Why and why did it make you feel that you wanted to do this as a
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  calling, as a, as a vocation really.
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  Jay Hare: So yeah.
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  Okay.
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  Very quickly, I suppose.
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  I was born in, born in Greece.
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  We came over to Wales and I was brought up there.
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  I spent a lot of time in North Wales and there has always been a
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  horsemanship connection in my family.
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  Normally with my grandfathers.
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  So I agree with some people.
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  They say sometimes it can skip a generation.
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  So maybe it hit me.
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  I had an interest, whether I was trying to, you know, pat one in a
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  field or something, or, or asking can I ride one, can I ride one?
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  So I did at an early age, go for very basic riding lessons and going on to, you
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  know, trek centers and things like that.
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  And then I forgot about it, completely went to college, studied engineering.
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  Always wanted to join the senior service, the Royal Navy.
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  And one day I went to a careers fair and met this six foot four
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  big bloke with a Green Beret.
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  And I said, who are you guys?
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  And I said, well, we're part of the Royal Navy, but with a, with the
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  elite soldiers of the Royal Navy, with the Royal Marines commandos.
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  So I dug a little further, you know, asked some questions and I
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  thought, yeah, that's, that's me.
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  I'm out playing rugby.
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  I'm getting dragged down by the gamekeeper.
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  I'm probably in a bit too much trouble at that early tentative age.
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  And I thought, yeah, as soon as I finish and I'm, I'm gonna go
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  off and join the Royal Marines.
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  And I did, at 19 years of age, I joined at the 11th of September, 2000, passed
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  out an original, there's a high attrition rate in what's called the highest and
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  hardest basically basic infant in the.
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  So about 40 of us started 11 of us, seven to 11 of us trying to
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  remember the numbers passed out.
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  Original.
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  That's without injury, that's without being back to or sent back at class.
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  And I headed up to Scotland to four five Commander conducting
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  some, you know, guard duties.
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  And basically went back from guard, gee, one evening to see
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  planes flying into buildings.
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  I said to the guys in the room, I said, what, what film we watching?
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  They said, no, Jay, this happening real time.
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  This is a terrorist attack.
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  And from there, that changed the whole landscape of, of combat for us.
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  We were the original troops asked to go out to head into the hills.
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  That's our specialization in four, five Commander to go into
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  the mountains and arctic regions.
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  So we requested and off we headed.
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  Subsequently I did three tours.
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  I was injured twice.
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  Once by a suicide bomber on my second tour.
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  And I got fit, healed, recovered, led a team again on my third tour,
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  and unfortunately stepped on an improvised explosive device that
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  blew my last leg off below knee.
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  So it was an amputee in the armed forces that's called a scratch.
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  'Cause it's not through knee or above knee.
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  So that's maybe why I can maneuver a little better than the average
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  person's, you know, higher amputation.
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  I lost digits to my right, lost right arm, right leg.
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  But I.
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  Onto the radio to call some things in.
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  And I, I lost my facial identity.
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  My face was blown off and a degloved.
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  So over the next few years, that was the 5th of November of all dates to
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  play around with fireworks and bombs.
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  It had absolute to be the 5th of November.
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  It took me about six years to get my you know, the surgery.
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  I had about 11, at least 11 surgeries to rebuild my face from using bits
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  of my forehead, rib cartilage from my ears and all sorts of stuff.
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  So, yeah that took some time.
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  And in that time I needed something to occupy myself.
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  I was a young guy, you know, you're 27, 28 years of age, you've
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  got a family, young family, but you've still got that adrenaline.
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  You've still got those ghosts from being on previous tours and
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  you're worried about your future.
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  But mostly you're trying to sort your head out whilst you're trying to sort
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  your body out and necess, you can't necessarily do that at the same time.
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  So there is a time for each of those.
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  I found out about Horseback uk.
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  I found there was a, a former Royal Marines officer and his wife, who was
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  a police officer working with horses up in the Highlands of Scotland.
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  They approached the commando unit and said, well, maybe the
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  guys wanna try some horsemanship.
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  At end of the, the horses got four legs and I've got one.
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  I thought, well, that, that makes sense.
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  There's a bit of, you know, mobility with dignity and it's Western, so
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  it's that kind of iconic cowboy imagery that it conjures up.
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  And I thought, yeah, let's go, let's go take a look.
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  And as soon as I got here, it was under my skin.
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  I loved being around the horses.
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  I loved especially riding the horses, but I found that there
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  was more of a relationship working with the horses on the ground, that
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  they were kind of flight animals.
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  They wanted to run away very much like I did.
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  I needed to find my herd, horses needed to be in a herd.
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  So eventually I came back to mine and that's me.
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  Yeah.
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  15 years now.
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  So I've never left.
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  They can't get rid of me.
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  Rupert Isaacson: It, well, one of the things which I was really struck
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  by when I was up with you all was it really did feel like a family.
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  And obviously, you know, Emma, it is a family.
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  I mean, it's you, your husband, your daughters are involved.
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  They're great horse women as well.
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  So like anything that's led from a family from the inside this sort of
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  brings a lot of love and functionality and multi role, you know, cross
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  fertilization into the thing, but.
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  Sometimes things that are very family run like that, it can feel that
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  one's a little bit on the outside, you know, from that core group.
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  And it was very, very noticeable.
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  I think Jay, from what you're saying now, yeah.
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  It makes a lot of sense that there's this, it was, it was like sort of yeah.
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  Clan headquarters and you're sort of part of the clan and part of the family.
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  And I, I could see how your horses as well responded in this way.
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  That the whole, the, the, the, the horse herd and the human herd
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  were unusually well integrated.
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  And I was thinking, you know, why is this, is this partly because
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  they're not less like a riding school where they all go off, you
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  know, back to their suburban lives.
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  Oh, this is sort of up in Scotland.
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  Everyone's living there, sort of to some degree in this slightly wilder place.
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  Is it, is it that, is it, you know, whatever it is,
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  there's a special magic here.
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  So Jay, talk to us about this healing process of trying to find
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  your identity to lose your face.
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  That's huge.
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  And I think that's something which very, we, we can try to imagine
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  it, but we can't imagine it.
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  Talk to us about that process of that loss of identity and how that's
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  informed the work that you do.
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  Jay Hare: So the, yeah.
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  There.
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  So you, you kind of, you're a marine commando.
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  One minute.
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  You think you're the steely eye dealer of death that, you know, heads out and
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  does the nitty gritty stuff that used to seeing war films and reading comic books.
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  You look like your father.
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  You think yourself rather handsome in your uniform.
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  And the next thing you have gotta stick on those a false eye.
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  And you can't quite smile properly because you know the
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  scarring and things like that.
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  You don't wanna look at yourself in the mirror 'cause it reminds you every day.
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  You kind of look into your partner and your wife and stuff and going,
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  oh my God, this is not the person that you walk down the aisle with.
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  You are walking down the street and you're worried that your nose is gonna fall off
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  at any moment, different times of year.
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  I was born in Greece, so I can really easily, so I'd have to change from
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  my winter nose to my summer nose, and then from my summer nose to
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  my winter nose, you had to super glue it on when it was hot weather.
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  I used to make a joke that I'd go for lunch with some pals and you know, if I
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  sneezed my eye would go into your salad.
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  My nose would go into your pint.
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  My leg had fall off.
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  So the lad and the lads nicknamed me Mr.
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  Potato at one point, which so with that, you know, working with
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  horses, they don't judge you.
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  They judge how you are with them in that moment.
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  They don't care about looks, they don't care about degrees, they
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  don't care about the car that you drove up in, on the motorbike.
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  You just hopped off, whatever it might be.
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  They want to be with you in the moment.
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  And that gave me that time to, to assess what I was gonna do and think about my
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  own behaviors and who I was becoming and who I wanted to become and who I had been.
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  So yeah, it could be a little bit forward, a little bit ambitious,
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  a little bit strong, a little bit too full on that doesn't work with
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  the horse, but I can't be passive.
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  I can't let them walk all over me because then they'll try and take charge.
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  So again, it's trying to find that balance and that for me is what I found.
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  Yeah.
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  Riding, looking like a cowboy, heading out to the states and all the stuff that
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  I did after all spec, archery, fantastic.
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  But it was actually finding out who I was and where I kind
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  of fit in into this third.
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  And I.
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  That fascinated me.
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  So the more I read, the more books I looked at, and Emma was constantly feeding
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  me, read this, read that Jo, same word.
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  Have you seen this YouTube documentary?
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  Have you seen this?
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  Have you seen that?
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  And I started to think, yeah, there is.
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  I believe in what Winston Church said.
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  There is something about the outside of a horse that's good, the inside
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  of a man or a woman, obviously.
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  But you know, Winston Churchill, right or wrong or whatever politics, I felt of
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  him as a very strong leader, a powerful man that suffered with the black dog.
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  When that darkness comes, when you suffer some of the kind of traumas
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  that have been through your life and you try and comprehend what's
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  happening, working with a horse enabled me to do that and not clock watch.
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  It wasn't being with a counselor that say, right, you've got an hour with us
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  off you go, tell me how you're feeling.
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  Can you watch a war film?
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  Can you listen to music, watch your love life?
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  Like, no, I don't.
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  I wasn't interested
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  in
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  Jay Hare: that, any of that.
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  I just wanted to work with the horse on the ground and
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  find out what made them tick.
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  How you could train with them, how you could communicate with them.
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  And people used to say, you know, do you go and see a a, do you go and
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  see a, a therapist or a counselor?
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  And I said, yeah, I do.
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  And I'll tell you how meant to pay them.
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  And they, oh, it
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  thousands.
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  And that me started that, that beautiful journey, that on
• 16:25
  which is helping.
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  Rupert Isaacson: When you are, when you're dealing with that loss of identity it's
• 16:30
  obviously gonna give you a lot of empathy.
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  And I presume that a lot of the people that come to you as clients must
• 16:36
  be wrestling with similar dilemmas.
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  Are you working with populations that have also been physically maimed in that way?
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  And then also when you're dealing with say, youth at risk youth or troubled
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  youth who are going through identity crises in a different way, but of
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  course have not yet seen the face of suffering in the way that you have.
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  How do you walk that line between
• 17:07
  thinking, you know, you, you don't know what suffering is, you don't
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  know what loss of identity is?
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  I do.
• 17:15
  And also, yeah, but at the same time, everyone experiences it in their way and
• 17:20
  just because they haven't experienced it in the way that you have, which is so raw
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  and so extreme, doesn't mean of course, that the way in which they're experiencing
• 17:30
  is not driving them towards maybe some negative outcomes in their life.
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  Talk to me about how you walk that dance and with helping others
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  there, because what you've gone through, you, you, you, you could.
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  Be forgiven for almost going down a bit of a bitter path and saying, well, you
• 17:47
  guys, no one can understand, you know, the extent of what I've gone through.
• 17:50
  And, and you'd be absolutely right.
• 17:52
  People couldn't, and at the same time, you can use this as an empathetic tool.
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  Talk to me about that and talk to me about how the horses have helped you to make
• 18:04
  it a tool rather than a, a hindrance.
• 18:09
  Jay Hare: I think working with our military veterans, if we go into those
• 18:12
  first and I'll talk about the youngsters, is it's a lot easier for me because if
• 18:17
  I wear shorts or you take a look at me, you sort of go, right, he's either been
• 18:22
  in a bad accident and then you find out it's military and you go, oh, right.
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  That must been time and service.
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  So it's like, okay, that's fine.
• 18:28
  Yeah.
• 18:29
  We get it.
• 18:29
  Right.
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  There's a respect that comes with it.
• 18:30
  Respect that comes to that, because you can see Yeah.
• 18:33
  This guy as a battle, et cetera.
• 18:35
  Yes.
• 18:36
  I totally empathize with guys and girls that don't have the
• 18:40
  scars because they're internal.
• 18:42
  Mm-hmm.
• 18:43
  So as much as you have to deal with your physical trauma, along comes the
• 18:50
  mental trauma to try and adjust to life.
• 18:53
  Try not to be bitter.
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  The outward looking,
• 19:00
  I the.
• 19:09
  Think is such thing as can't, don't tell me I can't jump over
• 19:13
  those horse hurdles with you.
• 19:16
  I will do it.
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  I might have to take a break, take leg off, readjust to run back again,
• 19:20
  but I'm still gonna do it with you.
• 19:22
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 19:23
  Jay Hare: That's maybe the way I was brought up with a military
• 19:27
  kind of family and grounding.
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  Definitely for the training I received, but also the way I like to lead my life.
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  I like to remind our military community of who they are through the horses
• 19:41
  because they're resilient creatures.
• 19:43
  They don't
• 19:44
  Jay Hare: sit and feel sorry for themselves.
• 19:46
  And then with the youngsters is, is adding those layers and saying,
• 19:52
  yeah, this might have happened to me.
• 19:54
  I'll tell you why.
• 19:55
  It's okay to ask a question point and gossip in the corner.
• 19:59
  If you wanna know, I will be open and honest with you as I possibly can.
• 20:04
  Don't ask me about the question of how many times I've I pulled the trigger
• 20:08
  and how many, all that sort of stuff.
• 20:10
  Those are questions you don't ask a serviceman, but if you wanna know what
• 20:14
  pain I went through, how I dealt with it, what I felt about myself, I'll explain
• 20:18
  it because we can talk about this.
• 20:21
  I hope it never happens to you in your life, but life is life.
• 20:26
  So things might have happened to you in the past, the way you've been
• 20:29
  brought up, the way you've been.
• 20:34
  Let's try and build more layers to that onion to build a little bit of
• 20:39
  arm, a little bit of strength to you, some inner strength whilst keeping
• 20:45
  that empathy and being able to still love life and love other people.
• 20:50
  And through the horses you can do that with the youngster.
• 20:52
  They can start to show empathy towards another creature, another being.
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  Then you are winning and that assists the school and that assists the
• 21:02
  counselors and that assists their growth.
• 21:06
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, I should imagine too that because you do carry the scars
• 21:10
  of battle, it is got to help people who are much younger than that looking out at
• 21:18
  their lives with some perspective to say, okay, wow, I see that this can happen.
• 21:25
  Okay, this has happened to this guy and yet he seems he's
• 21:28
  here in a position to help me.
• 21:31
  This must give quite a gift, I would think, to some of those
• 21:36
  kids who are already facing a certain amount of hopelessness.
• 21:39
  Even if it's only perceived hopelessness to them, it feels real.
• 21:43
  Do they ever say that to you?
• 21:44
  Do they say Yeah.
• 21:45
  You know, being with you, looking at you sit hearing about your experiences?
• 21:52
  This puts my world into perspective.
• 21:56
  What sort of feedback do you get?
• 21:59
  Jay Hare: I start off with, with getting a lot more girls through
• 22:02
  than we do boys at the moment, but it's always, I've got this problem.
• 22:06
  I've been pigeonholed with this, but they wouldn't say that.
• 22:09
  So they'll say things like, I've got a adhd, medicated, and I'm told
• 22:13
  I'm useless and I can't do anything and I'll never become anything.
• 22:16
  And I go, really?
• 22:18
  You've got a super power.
• 22:20
  You have got this ability to think a hundred miles an hour of a hundred
• 22:25
  different problems and solutions and come up with them whilst people are still
• 22:29
  just getting out the seats to put the jacket on and go deal with one of them.
• 22:32
  Now we can sit here all day and talk about the issues and the problems,
• 22:37
  or we can go and find that light bulb moment for you because I've got
• 22:41
  a DHD, so is this team member, so that team member, in fact they've
• 22:45
  got a bit of this and a bit of that.
• 22:46
  So let's go and be those adventures.
• 22:50
  Let's go and find what it is that really makes us tick.
• 22:55
  And we can do that through the, through working with the horses on the ground and
• 22:59
  then up to the level of where they'll be able to sit on them, if that's depending
• 23:03
  on the course and what we're doing.
• 23:07
  Does my experiences make a difference?
• 23:08
  Yeah, possibly because it's visual.
• 23:11
  Mm-hmm.
• 23:12
  Jay Hare: It's that ability to say to a youngster, yeah, this happens,
• 23:16
  but it, it doesn't define you.
• 23:19
  It can just make you stronger.
• 23:22
  And I.
• 23:29
  Probably isn't, might be midweek, it might be into the
• 23:32
  second phase of the second week.
• 23:33
  It might be into the 12th of development program takes go, you know what
• 23:40
  I've wanted ask you this question.
• 23:42
  Or it could be 3, 4, 5 years later, whether had this where I youngster, he
• 23:50
  served coffee at all places, take up range with my, and this tall came up to me.
• 23:59
  He wasn't tall when I first him, he of the group and he said said, how you doing?
• 24:05
  See you?
• 24:05
  And it was on the tip of my tongue.
• 24:06
  I was yeah, I knew I'd worked with him.
• 24:09
  I remembered which group, but I couldn't remember his name.
• 24:11
  And I was, yeah mate, I'm doing well.
• 24:13
  I'm doing well.
• 24:13
  Whatcha up to, oh well I'm working here.
• 24:15
  And he got called away after dropping off the coffees and
• 24:19
  you know,
• 24:19
  Jay Hare: cakes and stuff.
• 24:20
  And I went back and I said, Liam, how you doing?
• 24:24
  Good to see you.
• 24:25
  How you doing buddy?
• 24:26
  And he says, I'm doing well.
• 24:27
  I've got this job.
• 24:28
  I've got another job and I'm working jobs at the weekend.
• 24:31
  I'm gonna study psychology in Edinburgh, but I'm gonna take a year out and I'm
• 24:35
  gonna go and travel around South America.
• 24:37
  I went, oh my goodness.
• 24:39
  You were what was described to me as a youngster who was disengaged from.
• 24:48
  I was called something, it was a lot rude.
• 24:50
  When I was in school, I was called, but I shook it down.
• 24:54
  I gave a, I said, I'm so proud of you.
• 24:56
  Absolutely brilliant.
• 24:57
  That's, that's, that's a success story.
• 25:00
  That's amazing.
• 25:00
  And he said, I want to study psychology.
• 25:03
  'cause I wanna be able to help people like uj.
• 25:05
  I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a counselor.
• 25:07
  I'm just someone trying to do something good and have found horses
• 25:10
  is the great way of doing that.
• 25:12
  But I inspired a youngster to go into that world and yeah, I'll
• 25:16
  tell you what, I'll be honest.
• 25:17
  Yeah.
• 25:17
  Someone peeling onions there and it got a bit as I left.
• 25:20
  And I,
• 25:23
  and I hear a lot of success stories.
• 25:26
  You're not gonna hit on point every time.
• 25:29
  Some you just can't help.
• 25:31
  And some go along a different track.
• 25:33
  They take a different route.
• 25:36
  But when I hear stories like that, I know I'm doing something right.
• 25:38
  I know that we are doing something right and I know that horses are
• 25:41
  working because it just gives people that ability to think outside the box.
• 25:46
  When you're doing equine assisted services,
• 25:48
  Rupert Isaacson: when you say to them let's go on an adventure.
• 25:51
  Talk us through what some of those adventures look like.
• 25:53
  And you also said that some of the work can be mounted, which I love because as
• 25:58
  you know, with Horse Boy Method, we do a lot of mounted work, but within the equine
• 26:01
  assisted world, it's often not mounted.
• 26:04
  So I'm intrigued by that.
• 26:05
  Talk us through what these adventures might be and what
• 26:09
  Yeah, just talk us through it.
• 26:12
  Jay Hare: So some of the basic ones are actually being out in the fresh air.
• 26:16
  Realizing your outdoors, looking at nature, starting to look at the world
• 26:23
  around you and being aware of it, being able to touch it, feel it, get amongst it.
• 26:31
  Be within it alongside the horse.
• 26:33
  And noticing subtle little things like behaviors, like, eye contact, that
• 26:38
  pressure that can come from eye contact.
• 26:41
  That that ability to communicate without speaking.
• 26:44
  You know, how do we do that?
• 26:46
  How do we pick up on the energy of each other?
• 26:49
  I had a we're running a course at the moment.
• 26:51
  As a young girl, she gets quite angry about things that
• 26:54
  she gets confused with stuff.
• 26:56
  And today I said to her, look, I can feel the anger coming off you.
• 27:00
  I can feel your frustration.
• 27:03
  What's going on?
• 27:04
  And she told me, and I said, do you feel that with a horse when you get frustrated
• 27:07
  because a horse can pick that up from you?
• 27:09
  I didn't realize I gave that off.
• 27:10
  And I said to some people, you do, you give that off.
• 27:13
  It's not forging her arms and sulking.
• 27:16
  It's just this energy you give off and the horse pick up on that.
• 27:21
  So that starts with that kind of a little adventure, but talking about ourselves,
• 27:26
  which, which one of the horses are we, Ann is really good at pairing you up with.
• 27:32
  Personality to, I don't know, what would you call it?
• 27:35
  Your ality?
• 27:36
  Mm.
• 27:37
  It needs to be opposite or are they the same?
• 27:39
  Sometimes they can be opposite in their characters.
• 27:43
  And on the spectrum of, of who they are.
• 27:45
  But then also we've seen horses that just join with someone who's maybe
• 27:51
  on the autistic spectrum and it, the horse just goes to them and all
• 27:55
  of a sudden they're partnered up.
• 27:56
  And we've seen that twice this week of horses we didn't think would wanna
• 28:00
  work anywhere near some of these kids.
• 28:02
  And they were like, no, we love them.
• 28:04
  This is who we want.
• 28:05
  We love them.
• 28:06
  So that's an adventure.
• 28:07
  Yes.
• 28:08
  They can take them out with the horses.
• 28:10
  We can go and do bushcraft.
• 28:12
  We can ride out, we can do camp outs and things.
• 28:15
  Just something, it's almost like you said to us, Rupert, that you follow
• 28:20
  the kid and go with them and take the horse because that's the kind of conduit
• 28:25
  that's the bridge a lot of times.
• 28:27
  So we have lesson plans, we have learning outcomes, objectives,
• 28:33
  qualifications, all that sort of stuff.
• 28:35
  But sometimes, and we've had it this week and we had it today, do you know what
• 28:39
  change to what we were gonna do Today is gonna happen tomorrow or it's gonna
• 28:43
  happen Friday today we are doing this.
• 28:45
  We're changing it.
• 28:49
  We tell them, we explain that to them, you see a sigh of relief and they go, yeah,
• 28:54
  that's exactly what we wanna do today.
• 28:56
  Again, you're picking up on that energy from the youngster and you're picking
• 28:59
  up that energy from the horse and you're mixing it together and going,
• 29:02
  right, let's get the best outcome.
• 29:03
  So whatever adventure it is, use your imagination.
• 29:07
  Go out there, have fun, try different things.
• 29:11
  And that's exactly the conversation we had when you came up to visitors
• 29:13
  and I went, yeah, I get this guy.
• 29:15
  I totally understand it.
• 29:16
  That's the way I'm,
• 29:18
  Rupert Isaacson: you know, when people think of Bitcoin assisted world, I
• 29:20
  think they often think about people working in arenas in a very, kind
• 29:23
  of fairly controlled sort of a way.
• 29:25
  You're out there, you've also, you've got a lovely indoor arena.
• 29:29
  You've got lovely round pen and outside arenas too, but you also have the forest
• 29:34
  and the open hill and you know, not every, not every equine assisted place
• 29:40
  of course, has that kind of access.
• 29:43
  But there are some I've seen that do that don't quite use it.
• 29:46
  And I'm always like, oh man.
• 29:47
  But that's kind of where the magic is.
• 29:49
  It's, it's out there in nature.
• 29:51
  You, you mentioned going out and even camping out with horses.
• 29:54
  Paint a picture for us about how that can look.
• 29:57
  What, how, how might you organize that?
• 30:00
  What kind of people might you take on that and, and how might that play out?
• 30:04
  Jay Hare: So we've changed various different programs and.
• 30:12
  We have one that is a personal development three phase program.
• 30:15
  So each phase being a week long, it's residential.
• 30:18
  And that culminates in a final exercise where we take the horses out into,
• 30:24
  you know, the Highlands of Scotland.
• 30:26
  We used to ride them out and then we camp out.
• 30:29
  We had the horses out.
• 30:31
  Depending on the time of year, you can have problems with kind of,
• 30:34
  you know,
• 30:34
  You know,
• 30:35
  Jay Hare: Mid high and, and all sorts of stuff.
• 30:38
  So we've gotta be careful with that.
• 30:40
  Or we can bring the horses back in Yeah.
• 30:42
  From that and leave our guys out on the ground.
• 30:44
  So now I think looking at the kind of wellbeing courses that we're doing
• 30:49
  is actually walking out to get the horse, spending time out in the field
• 30:53
  looking at herd behavior, which talk to you about, she takes that part.
• 30:56
  Yeah.
• 30:57
  And understanding who we are, where we sit in the herd, what type of horse
• 31:02
  do we, what type of personality have we got at all times being outdoors.
• 31:08
  And the more outdoors we can be, the better.
• 31:10
  So sometimes it might be as simple as just standing outside and just,
• 31:14
  you know, doing some breath work, maybe alongside the horses, trying
• 31:18
  to mirror the horses, inhale and exhale with ourselves, trying to work
• 31:24
  out our heartbeat the same as them.
• 31:26
  Those are the kind of.
• 31:33
  Out a little bit more on other programs, we can make them more complex.
• 31:37
  And we, as I say, we are lucky here.
• 31:39
  We we're in the Highlands of Scotland.
• 31:41
  We suffer some heavy winters.
• 31:43
  We're just coming out kind of one now.
• 31:44
  I'd say that was too heavy.
• 31:46
  But the springs here, we're starting to get that energy.
• 31:50
  The horses are getting lively again.
• 31:52
  Yes.
• 31:52
  Let's, let's start having some adventures again.
• 31:54
  What that looks like depends on the group,
• 31:56
  Rupert Isaacson: right?
• 31:57
  You mentioned Bush bushcraft.
• 31:59
  Of course.
• 31:59
  That's dear to my heart.
• 32:00
  You know, having lived with hunters and gatherers, and I, I know very much the
• 32:04
  healing power of touching, sleeping, being, working with nature in that
• 32:14
  intimate way that our DNA wants, because that's who we are, we're organisms.
• 32:20
  Again, this isn't something that's often integrated into equine assisted
• 32:24
  stuff, so I'm intrigued about talk, talk to me about the bushcraft that
• 32:27
  you do and, and some of the changes that you see with people with that.
• 32:33
  Jay Hare: The bushcraft is,
• 32:37
  again, getting us outdoors.
• 32:38
  It's something that we brought into the course you know, many,
• 32:41
  many moons ago, various experts, professionals coming into help with,
• 32:45
  with training and things like that.
• 32:48
  It, it keeps you, if you, if you've got a deficit.
• 32:55
  For instance, it is a fantastic way of doing so many different lessons and moving
• 33:02
  around in that, that classroom because it is a classroom and if it's underneath
• 33:06
  an old drops parachute with a fire going and you dunno, you're talking about
• 33:11
  how to build shelters or you're talking about plan N in your survival situation.
• 33:16
  Or if you're simply ma making string the bows and arrows out of nettles to
• 33:23
  you know, different forms of making a fight, you can switch and you can
• 33:26
  pick up on the energy of that group.
• 33:27
  Go, okay, we're losing a bit here, let's put that to the side and
• 33:30
  let's move on to something else.
• 33:32
  Or maybe that particular group is into that particular lesson.
• 33:36
  Okay, I can take the group and I can split the group and mix it up a little bit.
• 33:40
  So there's so many dynamics to do in bushcraft, but it's, it's earthy,
• 33:44
  it's salty, it's getting your hands dirty, it's being in nature.
• 33:48
  It's noticing things.
• 33:49
  It's learning things.
• 33:51
  It's not a classroom environment yet.
• 33:53
  It's the best classroom to be in.
• 33:57
  Rupert Isaacson: What, what sort of changes have you seen?
• 33:59
  Everyone's got, you know, their stories.
• 34:01
  What stories spring to mind for you of transformations
• 34:04
  you've seen using bushcraft?
• 34:08
  Jay Hare: I think kind of attention to detail.
• 34:14
  When they start to notice things and they start to learn a little
• 34:18
  bit how they then, how they then become the teacher to the others.
• 34:24
  And that is fascinating because, you know, they're learning when they're
• 34:26
  starting to teach what they've learned to other people, right.
• 34:29
  Which ingrained in that, in that that kind of psyche with them.
• 34:33
  So, yeah.
• 34:34
  I, I love it when a teacher or staff member comes up and they've
• 34:41
  been trying for ages to talk about biology and photosynthesis and, you
• 34:46
  know, whatever it might be, how a tree grows and things and how roots
• 34:50
  work and how fungi works, et cetera.
• 34:52
  And the biology teacher comes up that they've not maybe jelled with
• 34:58
  and they've had a bit of abrasion, they've rubbed up against each other.
• 35:01
  All of a sudden the youngsters sitting there going, and this is how this works.
• 35:04
  This is how that is.
• 35:05
  And this is called a so and so, and this is a tree and
• 35:09
  this oak tree and this is this.
• 35:11
  And the teacher's just kind of, okay, that's amazing because few weeks
• 35:14
  ago I was trying to get this to you.
• 35:16
  Now I've got somewhere to go.
• 35:17
  Now I can pass on that little bit of knowledge because we've got a commonality,
• 35:22
  we've got an interest together.
• 35:24
  And that has repaired so many relationships with working with
• 35:28
  these schools and organizations.
• 35:30
  I think that's, that's just golden.
• 35:31
  That's ace.
• 35:34
  Rupert Isaacson: Brilliant.
• 35:35
  I mean, it's, it's, I know this is what you do every day, but it's
• 35:39
  cutting edge work and it's so much more rich and layered than simply
• 35:50
  going into an arena with a horse.
• 35:53
  Not that that's not a wonderful thing to do, but you guys take it to
• 36:00
  a level that I am unused to seeing.
• 36:04
  And it's, it's, it's extremely impressive.
• 36:05
  Jay.
• 36:06
  Alright, I want to ask Emma some questions now, Emma.
• 36:11
  How, why did you start this whole thing in the first place?
• 36:13
  Like, you must be mad.
• 36:14
  Why, why would you, why, why would anybody start an equine thing, let
• 36:18
  alone in Northern Scotland where the weather is brutal and, sorry mate.
• 36:27
  Are you alright, ed?
• 36:28
  Yeah.
• 36:29
  So Jay has to leave right now, listeners, so if you've got any other questions for
• 36:33
  him, just email us and we'll we'll pass them on and we'll get answers from you.
• 36:38
  Jay, thank you so much.
• 36:39
  It was an honor.
• 36:40
  All right.
• 36:41
  Cheers, ma'am.
• 36:42
  Okay,
• 36:44
  Emma Hutchison: so the whole thing started.
• 36:45
  We moved to the property that we're at now 16 years ago.
• 36:50
  And the idea was, is that we would be here and we were going to breed port
• 36:56
  horses and we were gonna take people out in Western to the beautiful side hills.
• 37:03
  And that was the idea.
• 37:04
  And then we'd been here for, so.
• 37:09
  And moved here in the November, in the December we had some friends come
• 37:14
  around and quite a few of them had come back from Afghanistan at the time,
• 37:18
  and they were, they were not in a good place either physically or mentally.
• 37:23
  And we sat around a big bonfire.
• 37:24
  And then during the days, we, at the time we had I had a horse, jock had a horse,
• 37:29
  and the, the girls had a couple of ponies.
• 37:31
  And these guys, we just interacted with the horses.
• 37:33
  We were just outside and one of the guys said, this is what we need to do.
• 37:37
  This is how guys need to decompress after they've been to war.
• 37:41
  This has been a real kind of breath of fresh air for me, and this is
• 37:44
  what I, fresh, I absolutely needed.
• 37:47
  So that was really the start of it.
• 37:49
  And of course we thought, you know, I'm quite enthusiastic about things,
• 37:52
  stocks extremely enthusiastic about most things, and we just said, right,
• 37:55
  well, we're gonna do something.
• 37:56
  And it was 2008 it was the height of Afghanistan and it was when we were, we
• 38:04
  were all watching the news and seeing the coffins come back and it, you know,
• 38:09
  it was, it was a pretty horrific time.
• 38:10
  So Jock approached four five Commando, which is in our growth, just over the
• 38:15
  hill, about an hour and a half away, and went to the CO there and said, look, you
• 38:19
  know, we've got this property, we've got some horses, we've got a bit of a rundown.
• 38:24
  The who have been injured.
• 38:29
  The co sent their injured troop.
• 38:32
  So there was a
• 38:33
  Rupert Isaacson: co being commanding officer for those
• 38:35
  who are not British, right?
• 38:36
  Yeah.
• 38:37
  Or,
• 38:38
  Emma Hutchison: Sent their injured troop, which was called Harden Troop.
• 38:41
  And there must have been probably about 20 guys came up for the day
• 38:45
  of, which Jay was one of them.
• 38:47
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 38:47
  Emma Hutchison: And these guys all had, they were all young.
• 38:51
  They all had life-changing injuries.
• 38:53
  So you're talking, so Jay had one leg, we had a triple amputee.
• 38:57
  We had, you know, an 18-year-old.
• 38:59
  It, it was, it was life-changing for us to see it, to actually
• 39:04
  to to be there and hands-on with these guys and hear the stories.
• 39:08
  It was we both felt that we had to do something.
• 39:12
  We didn't know what it was that we wanted to do or what we could do.
• 39:15
  But we, we knew that we wanted to do something.
• 39:18
  So we are in Aberdeenship.
• 39:21
  We have Aberdeen City about 30 miles away.
• 39:25
  Obviously Aberdeen is the oil place of the, the uk.
• 39:30
  And so we went and approached some of the oil companies and said,
• 39:33
  look, you know, would you like to be involved in this project?
• 39:37
  And they, of course, they said, well, what project?
• 39:39
  You don't have a project.
• 39:41
  So, we had to then go through the process of saying, well, what is it?
• 39:51
  And it just evolved from that really.
• 39:53
  And as I say, then Jay came up with several of the other
• 39:56
  guys and it has just evolved.
• 40:01
  And we got more horses and we got more people, and then more people got involved.
• 40:05
  And once you get onto that rollercoaster, there was no getting off really.
• 40:09
  And the, the, I mean, my children at the time were three,
• 40:12
  five and seven or something.
• 40:15
  So they were involved right from the start.
• 40:17
  We had no facilities outside.
• 40:19
  So the kitchen was our kitchen.
• 40:21
  The toilet was our toilet.
• 40:24
  The fridge was our fridge.
• 40:25
  The, the kids' lunch and dinner frequently went missing because it
• 40:28
  was eaten by the course attendees.
• 40:30
  And so it was, it was quite challenging to start with, but we eventually
• 40:35
  managed to get some traction.
• 40:37
  Some people heard about what we were doing.
• 40:39
  The British military at the time crawled all over us because we were looking
• 40:44
  after their injured, still serving guys.
• 40:47
  So we had to every risk assessment, everything was just,
• 40:51
  you know, how are you doing this?
• 40:52
  How are you looking after them?
• 40:54
  You better make sure that you are not damaging them further.
• 40:57
  And there had been some incidents in other places where people had
• 41:00
  been on horses and fallen off and, you know, been more damaged.
• 41:06
  So, yeah, everything was.
• 41:12
  Massively sort of overkill to, to make sure that we protected these guys.
• 41:15
  And so we were one of the only places where serving guys, serving
• 41:19
  injured guys were being sent
• 41:21
  Rupert Isaacson: forward.
• 41:21
  Well, that, that was gonna be my question when you said that Jay and the others who
• 41:25
  came up, you know, had these life-changing injuries, and I assumed clearly wrongly
• 41:30
  that when you had injuries like that, you would be automatically discharged.
• 41:34
  Yet you said they were still serving.
• 41:37
  So what capacities were they serving in and was the idea that they would then stay
• 41:43
  in the military or transition out of it?
• 41:48
  What, talk us through, because I'm, I'm not familiar with that.
• 41:51
  With that sort of infrastructure at all, I, I, I've worked, we work with
• 41:55
  a lot of veterans, obviously, in our organization, but by the time we meet
• 41:59
  them, they're veterans or we meet with people who are still serving,
• 42:02
  like we work with the German army but they're not necessarily injured.
• 42:06
  And so they're sort of in between deployments.
• 42:08
  So that seems to me a really interesting gray area.
• 42:11
  If someone has a life-changing industry in injury, but is still
• 42:15
  serving, how, how does that look?
• 42:20
  Where, where would you guys fit in with that, with your service?
• 42:25
  If you're in the equine assisted field, or if you're considering
• 42:28
  a career in the equine assisted field, you might want to consider
• 42:32
  taking one of our three neuroscience backed equine assisted programs.
• 42:36
  Horseboy method, now established for 20 years, is the original
• 42:42
  Equine assisted program specifically designed for autism, mentored by and
• 42:49
  developed in conjunction with Dr.
• 42:51
  Temple Grandin and many other neuroscientists.
• 42:54
  We work in the saddle with younger children.
• 42:58
  Helping them create oxytocin in their bodies and neuroplasticity in the brain.
• 43:04
  It works incredibly well.
• 43:05
  It's now in about 40 countries.
• 43:08
  Check it out.
• 43:09
  If you're working without horses, you might want to look at movement
• 43:13
  method, which gets a very, very similar effect, but can also be
• 43:17
  applied in schools, in homes.
• 43:19
  If you're working with families, you can give them really tangible exercises to do
• 43:24
  at home that will create neuroplasticity.
• 43:26
  when they're not with you.
• 43:28
  Finally, we have taquine equine integration.
• 43:32
  If you know anything about our programs, you know that we need a
• 43:35
  really high standard of horsemanship in order to create the oxytocin
• 43:39
  in the body of the person that we're working with, child or adult.
• 43:43
  So, this means we need to train a horse in collection, but this
• 43:47
  also has a really beneficial effect on the horse's well being.
• 43:51
  And it also ends your time conflict, where you're wondering, oh my gosh, how
• 43:56
  am I going to condition my horses and maintain them and give them what they
• 43:59
  need, as well as Serving my clients.
• 44:02
  Takine equine integration aimed at a more adult client base
• 44:07
  absolutely gives you this.
• 44:09
  Emma Hutchison: So, at the time, so again.
• 44:14
  These guys, it was unknown.
• 44:16
  Nobody really knew what was happening.
• 44:18
  All they knew that they were sending more guys out and more guys were coming
• 44:22
  back with these horrific injuries.
• 44:24
  So at the time, Jay was told, don't worry, we'll look after you.
• 44:28
  You'll always have a job.
• 44:30
  Don't worry about it.
• 44:31
  Because of course they didn't wanna pile any further stress.
• 44:33
  They've all had these, they all, a lot of these guys thought
• 44:36
  they were Korea military guys.
• 44:38
  They were going to be in the military for their career.
• 44:39
  And suddenly this career has been cut short.
• 44:43
  They didn't know what, what they were gonna do.
• 44:44
  How are they going to finance their, their families and all this sort of stuff.
• 44:49
  So, the, the military said, don't worry.
• 44:51
  We will, we will keep you in.
• 44:54
  The reality of that was two or two or three leaders down the
• 44:57
  line, that's not gonna happen.
• 44:59
  So they were told, well, you, you do have to transition out.
• 45:02
  There were various sort of funds available, transition funds to help
• 45:06
  guys, but ultimately the ones that who were, were no longer physically able to
• 45:10
  do their job, had to leave the military.
• 45:13
  So it was a big change because I say I, I think a lot of these
• 45:16
  guys were left very angry.
• 45:19
  It wasn't a decision that they had made.
• 45:21
  They didn't want to leave the military.
• 45:23
  And they were forced to.
• 45:25
  And as it stands now, we still work with serving military guys.
• 45:31
  And they have there are kind of recovery offices within regimens and stuff.
• 45:36
  So if somebody is either has a.
• 45:39
  Or more often now is, is suffering from sort of mental health issues.
• 45:45
  Then they have recovery officers within their, those departments
• 45:51
  and they will work with them.
• 45:53
  And those recovery officers are quite good now at looking out with
• 45:58
  and pointing serving personnel to programs like ourselves.
• 46:03
  Or there's, there's some sailing programs or there's yoga retreats or, so they
• 46:09
  have got, over the last 15 years got so much better about using these more
• 46:13
  holistic wellbeing programs for them.
• 46:19
  Rupert Isaacson: But you are dealing with people who are, as you say, in this
• 46:23
  transition obviously you are dealing with serving military as well, but when,
• 46:28
  when people are in this situation where a change is being forced upon them and
• 46:34
  they're wondering like, Jay was what's going to be my place in the world?
• 46:38
  Mm-hmm.
• 46:38
  Now Jay was lucky of course that he knew that when he met you all, that
• 46:45
  was gonna be a vocational step for him.
• 46:48
  Do you get other military who then want to come and work with you?
• 46:52
  Have you then added them to your team and what do you, you obviously you
• 46:56
  can't do that with everyone, so what.
• 47:00
  Do you guys do in terms of helping people to look to the next stages?
• 47:07
  Emma Hutchison: I think so.
• 47:08
  So when the guys who are serving come to us, they're either transitioning
• 47:13
  out or they are trying to get themselves well enough to stay in.
• 47:19
  Now a lot of them will come here thinking that they want to stay in because that's
• 47:27
  all they know and they're terrified of going out into the civilian world.
• 47:31
  And then when they come here and they meet some of the staff, hear some of the
• 47:36
  stories meet our mentors because we have mentors on our military programs, have
• 47:41
  been through the whole process themselves.
• 47:44
  And we just kind of talk about these guys.
• 47:47
  They've all got amazing transferable skills that they don't understand.
• 47:50
  They don't realize what they're capable, what they've learned to, you know, some of
• 47:55
  these, the submariners, for example, are crazy what they, engineering wise, they
• 47:59
  know, and yet they think, oh, but how am I gonna get a job in the outside world?
• 48:03
  Well, of course you are your highly intelligent, super talented,
• 48:07
  got all these qualifications.
• 48:09
  Of course you're gonna get a job.
• 48:10
  You just have to have that confidence to go out there and sell yourself.
• 48:14
  And that's what these guys are not good at.
• 48:16
  They don't the ones coming to us generally, it's
• 48:20
  confidence, it's self-esteem.
• 48:22
  It's, it's, it's those kind of issues that they just need to be, we kind of
• 48:26
  say that coming here is a reset button.
• 48:29
  And if by coming to us for a week just allows them to, to put their
• 48:32
  life on hold and stop all, everything that is spiraling outta control.
• 48:37
  The fact that they are in a recovery program that they have been flagged
• 48:42
  up by a recovery officer, that people do know that they've got mental health
• 48:45
  issues and they're still serving, that in itself is a whole kind of issue.
• 48:50
  So come here, press that stop button and don't think about that.
• 48:56
  Just be with these, these other people who are going through the same thing.
• 49:02
  Everybody, again, you kind of sit around the table and as Jay sort of
• 49:05
  touched on with a physical injury, it's very easy for people to say, oh,
• 49:09
  I understand why you are here because you know, you're, you're missing an arm
• 49:13
  or you're missing a leg, or whatever.
• 49:14
  It's, but when they sit around the table and say, I dunno, I, I don't, I'm, I
• 49:19
  dunno if I'm allowed to be here because I've just got PTD or I've only got this.
• 49:26
  And within 24 hours they stay at a house because our military
• 49:30
  program is a residential program.
• 49:31
  They stay at the house and they, they, part of the whole thing is that
• 49:34
  they have to cook meals together.
• 49:36
  And they have to say, right, who's gonna cook?
• 49:38
  Who's gonna do the dishes, who's gonna clean up?
• 49:40
  And these conversations are led by our mentors and they just
• 49:45
  start to find out, well actually.
• 49:47
  I'm, this happened to me.
• 49:49
  Oh, enough, same thing.
• 49:51
  Something similar happened to that person over there.
• 49:55
  So they are able to then, because it's, for some reason they can't talk
• 50:01
  to families and friends about it.
• 50:02
  Military, they're a funny bunch.
• 50:04
  They, they just, you know, they keep together, they keep closed up, but they
• 50:10
  can talk to each other about stuff that they can't, us civilians and outsiders.
• 50:15
  So the, so the military programs is residential because they
• 50:19
  come from the whole of the uk.
• 50:21
  So it had to be residential.
• 50:23
  It includes the horses, which they do in the morning.
• 50:26
  It includes the other things.
• 50:28
  So the bushcraft, the photography, the breath work, the archery, the Pilates.
• 50:33
  It includes all of those other activities that we do in the afternoon because we
• 50:38
  have to do something in the afternoon because they can't work with the horses
• 50:40
  all day and they can't go home because they've come from Devon or whatever.
• 50:45
  So that's why we, we started off doing these other activities.
• 50:49
  And then what we found is that in actual fact, somebody does Pilates for the
• 50:53
  first time and then says, my goodness, I'm gonna do this when I go home.
• 50:57
  So you've given them something that they can then take home because
• 51:00
  we can't give them a horse to take home, but they can take breath work
• 51:04
  or the archery or whatever it is, and go, actually I'm try do that.
• 51:09
  So.
• 51:14
  Evening, sitting around the campfire, talking to each other, cooking
• 51:19
  food together, opening up, having the conversations and laughing.
• 51:24
  And the difference between when these people arrive on the Monday
• 51:27
  with their kind of shoulders down and their no eye contact.
• 51:30
  And,
• 51:32
  and then by Wednesday the shoulders have started to lift the, you start to get
• 51:36
  the eye contact and then the whole yard turns into this before and swearing and
• 51:41
  banter and, you know, the, the competition between the Army guys and the Marines
• 51:47
  and the Navy and difference between the tri services and things like that.
• 51:51
  It, it's just phenomenal.
• 51:53
  But as I say, it's a combination of, of all of the stuff that
• 51:57
  goes into this course that works.
• 51:59
  Rupert Isaacson: I'm, I'm intrigued that you use photography.
• 52:02
  Mm.
• 52:02
  How did that evolve and what, what do you observe that giving?
• 52:06
  Emma Hutchison: If I'm honest, we were just looking for another activity.
• 52:09
  Mm.
• 52:10
  And we happened to have somebody that was very good at photography
• 52:13
  and we've all got these phones.
• 52:16
  Yeah.
• 52:16
  Nobody knows.
• 52:17
  And they've all got these amazing cameras in them and nobody knows
• 52:20
  you take a photograph, nobody edits them or does anything.
• 52:24
  I was completely unaware of all the things that I've got on my phone that
• 52:28
  I can do to improve the photographs.
• 52:30
  And so we literally had somebody come and teach us our staff and run
• 52:34
  some sessions with the courses and it was an absolute game changer.
• 52:37
  And some of the photographs
• 52:40
  phenomenal.
• 52:41
  So something.
• 52:44
  But has actually become quite a popular other activity.
• 52:49
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, the reason why that really intrigues me and as
• 52:52
  you know, like with movement method, we have that, you know, as well as
• 52:55
  horse by method and ta So we're always saying, don't just do horse stuff.
• 53:00
  It's not enough.
• 53:01
  You know, you've gotta, as you say, send people home with other things.
• 53:05
  The photography that you're talking about intrigues me because
• 53:08
  I can see how that's hunting.
• 53:11
  Its stealth and capture, it's also perspective taking.
• 53:17
  You know, you have to look from outside the situation into the situation.
• 53:22
  It's also changing the situation because you can take an image and that image
• 53:28
  can also be emotional, internal, right?
• 53:30
  And then you can rewrite it.
• 53:31
  You can say, well actually no, I, I think I'd like to edit that outcome.
• 53:36
  And I think there's a subliminal message that can come with that, which is to
• 53:39
  say you can actually reedit your past.
• 53:41
  You, you, you don't have to say, this is my story.
• 53:46
  If it's no longer serving you or if it's too painful, you, you can work
• 53:51
  with that story and you can rewrite that story and you can affect that story.
• 53:55
  And you, you can turn out 25 versions of that story with, you
• 53:59
  know, through different filters, all of which serve different purposes.
• 54:02
  And I can, I could see how even if you didn't make it.
• 54:05
  Explicit in the language when you were talking through the photography
• 54:09
  skills, how that could come across.
• 54:13
  So when you said photography, my ears pricked up.
• 54:14
  I was like, Ooh, I think I've gotta nick that for our program.
• 54:17
  Thanks Emma.
• 54:18
  Because it's
• 54:19
  Emma Hutchison: really simple because you just go to wherever and we do, we
• 54:22
  take them into the woods or we take them down to the, the stream or something
• 54:25
  and just say, well, what do you see?
• 54:27
  And they, everybody sees different things and you'll get, some of them
• 54:31
  will be lying on the ground, taking a photograph of a stone or a leaf.
• 54:35
  Somebody else is talk, reaching up as tall as they can to take things in the trees.
• 54:39
  Or somebody's seen a rabbit or a stone or whatever it is.
• 54:43
  Everybody sees the same thing differently.
• 54:48
  And so you come back with all these amazing photographs from literally
• 54:50
  just standing in a small area.
• 54:53
  Rupert Isaacson: Have you, have you collected some of
• 54:55
  these photographs together?
• 54:56
  Do you publish any of them or exhibit any of them?
• 54:58
  Emma Hutchison: Our to-do thing, we keep saying we must do it.
• 55:01
  We have got some great photos.
• 55:03
  I
• 55:03
  Rupert Isaacson: wanna go to that exhibition.
• 55:04
  Yeah,
• 55:05
  Emma Hutchison: yeah.
• 55:06
  No, we must do that actually.
• 55:08
  Rupert Isaacson: You know, I was thinking you could even make that in your arena,
• 55:10
  like, constantly changing art exhibition.
• 55:13
  Yeah.
• 55:13
  Rupert Isaacson: You know, of like every few months you perhaps change, change it,
• 55:18
  and then you could publish and sell those, those those images images of transition.
• 55:23
  I love it.
• 55:24
  Note to self, have this conversation further with Emma and let's
• 55:28
  see what we can come up with.
• 55:30
  It's so inventive what you're doing.
• 55:32
  I love it.
• 55:32
  Okay, so you don't, of course just work with military.
• 55:37
  You've pivoted to schools, you've pivoted to adult mental
• 55:41
  health and that sort of thing.
• 55:43
  What precipitated that change?
• 55:45
  Because I, again, I know quite a lot of programs that are veterans
• 55:48
  programs or first responders programs that really stick very much with that
• 55:52
  population because it is a fairly specific set of experiences that
• 55:57
  have brought those people there.
• 55:58
  Again, I was really intrigued when I ran across your program saying, but hold on,
• 56:02
  they're doing all these other things too.
• 56:05
  How did that evolve?
• 56:07
  Emma Hutchison: So we started with the military for the
• 56:09
  reasons that I've spoken about.
• 56:11
  We are a charity, we have to bring in funds.
• 56:16
  And around about those times when we started, there was funding
• 56:19
  for military programs because everybody felt this affinity with
• 56:22
  what the guys were going through.
• 56:24
  About five years into it, we were talking to one of the guys from the,
• 56:28
  the lead military charities and he said, you have to get all of your eggs
• 56:34
  outta this basket because this, this pot of funding that there is at the
• 56:39
  moment is not gonna be there forever.
• 56:42
  And it is, it disappear quickly.
• 56:45
  So you need to.
• 56:49
  And coincidentally at the same time as this happened, we were approached by
• 56:53
  the headmaster of one of the secondary schools up here who said, I have
• 56:57
  got a group of 15-year-old boys and we don't know what to do with them.
• 57:03
  They are just absolutely outta control.
• 57:05
  We dunno what to do with them.
• 57:07
  Can we send them up to you?
• 57:09
  So I kind of did that and whatever, and of course the boys
• 57:12
  said, absolutely send them here.
• 57:14
  So we had this group of, of boys and they were fundamentally lacking some sort of
• 57:20
  alpha male input into their lives, really.
• 57:23
  And one thing we do have here is quite a lot of alpha male energy.
• 57:28
  Yes, you
• 57:28
  Rupert Isaacson: do.
• 57:28
  I've been up that.
• 57:30
  Emma Hutchison: Yeah.
• 57:31
  So, which is
• 57:32
  Rupert Isaacson: unusual in a therapeutic riding at equine assisted, you know, unit.
• 57:35
  'cause normally it's, you know, 90, 95% female.
• 57:40
  Emma Hutchison: Yeah.
• 57:41
  So they sent these guys up here, and again, it was absolutely transformational.
• 57:44
  The, the boys were given some boundaries, given some rules.
• 57:50
  They were given some consequences if they reacted or didn't do what
• 57:54
  they were asked to do in a very, you know, polite way or whatever.
• 57:58
  They were told to run around the arena three times.
• 58:01
  And they soon, it sounds like terrible bootcamp, doesn't it?
• 58:04
  But it, it was just, they hadn't experienced anything like that before.
• 58:10
  And, after a few hours.
• 58:11
  They loved it.
• 58:12
  They loved that kind of release of energy.
• 58:14
  When we work with the schools groups, the first hour that we do with the
• 58:18
  schools groups is not in a classroom.
• 58:20
  It's not with the horses.
• 58:21
  It's basically dependent on the weather.
• 58:24
  If it's raining, it's in the indoor arena.
• 58:26
  If it's not, it's in the outdoor arena and we build obstacle
• 58:28
  courses and we play around it.
• 58:30
  So for the first hour that they're hear the phones go into
• 58:34
  a box that they're taken away.
• 58:35
  And these kids literally, they have to move because again,
• 58:39
  children are not active enough
• 58:41
  these days.
• 58:41
  Yeah, I agree.
• 58:42
  Emma Hutchison: They'll moan and groan and whatever, but again, by day
• 58:44
  two, they're absolutely loving it.
• 58:46
  And you find out all sorts of things about somebody who's actually really
• 58:49
  accurate with a round of bat and somebody else can catch really well
• 58:53
  and somebody else can run really fast.
• 58:54
  And yeah.
• 58:57
  Rupert Isaacson: When you say that they, the lads, your ex-military team, and I'd
• 59:01
  like to talk, I'd like you to talk to us a bit more about who you team are.
• 59:06
  Obviously we've met Jay, but I've met some of your other team too.
• 59:09
  And I, I think it would be helpful for listeners if you could introduce them
• 59:13
  when they said, okay, go run around the arena three times, you know, of course
• 59:16
  some teenage boys might say, what f you?
• 59:19
  And then of course it is not the military, so you can't actually follow
• 59:23
  up with any physical consequences.
• 59:26
  So what did you just find that simply taking that approach.
• 59:35
  Was accepted by those boys because there was actually this sort of need for it.
• 59:39
  And the boys themselves, somewhere from within knew that they needed
• 59:43
  that or because, because that's a risk to take, isn't it, to say,
• 59:47
  okay, here's the consequence, run around the arena three times, or
• 59:50
  give me 20 press up or something.
• 59:52
  And then the person says, well, no, I'm not gonna do that.
• 59:54
  And then you haven't really got much to follow it up with.
• 59:58
  So it's a, it's an interesting risk to take.
• 1:00:01
  Yeah.
• 1:00:01
  So just talk to us a little bit about that.
• 1:00:04
  Emma Hutchison: This is where Jay is an expert.
• 1:00:06
  I have fallen to this a couple of times where I have sort of
• 1:00:09
  said there was one incident when we had, again, a particularly
• 1:00:13
  difficult group of teenagers here.
• 1:00:15
  And we were all sat around the you've got a kind of fire pit kind of
• 1:00:18
  thing with a parachute over the top.
• 1:00:19
  We sat there having a chat in the morning and this kid was just constantly talking
• 1:00:24
  and on his phone and I said, I'd really like you to move because I'd like you to
• 1:00:30
  move over there so that you're not next to, and he looked at me and he looked
• 1:00:34
  at me and he looked at me and I thought, oh no, this is gonna go horribly wrong.
• 1:00:39
  It's not gonna move.
• 1:00:40
  And about 20 sort of 30 seconds, we had this sort of eye contact.
• 1:00:43
  And then my heart was going, and then he suddenly stood up and he moved
• 1:00:48
  and he went and sat down and my heart kind of went down and I relaxed and
• 1:00:51
  thought, I've got away with that.
• 1:00:53
  But I came back to Jay and said, oh.
• 1:00:56
  Said Emma never do that without a playing plan B.
• 1:00:59
  And I said, well, what would plan B have been?
• 1:01:01
  He said, you'd have left him sitting there and you move everybody else.
• 1:01:05
  So Jay has these plans when he's working with the kids because he's
• 1:01:09
  generally the one that works with them in that environment where if somebody
• 1:01:14
  doesn't want to do something, well everybody else will move somewhere else.
• 1:01:17
  And then that person is where they are, but now they're not with their,
• 1:01:21
  all their friends in their little gang because their friends in their
• 1:01:23
  little gang have moved somewhere else.
• 1:01:24
  So then they want to be where you want to be, so they're gonna
• 1:01:27
  do what you ask them to do.
• 1:01:30
  So it's not by force or anything like that.
• 1:01:33
  It's by not mind games even.
• 1:01:36
  It's just clever skills that, I dunno where he got 'em from, but yeah, he's got
• 1:01:41
  these things all in his little toolbox that he can manage to assess any situation
• 1:01:46
  and, and get these kids to do this without realizing that they're doing it
• 1:01:52
  Rupert Isaacson: interest.
• 1:01:53
  So interesting to me.
• 1:01:54
  Okay.
• 1:01:54
  Talk to us a little bit about the other members of the team now.
• 1:01:56
  I met taf for example.
• 1:01:58
  When I came up, I met Jock.
• 1:01:59
  Jock wasn't as around as I would've liked.
• 1:02:02
  So I, I didn't get a lot of time with him when I was with you.
• 1:02:05
  But I could see, you know, extremely, extremely charismatic man with bringing
• 1:02:09
  his own ex-military experience.
• 1:02:11
  Just talk us through a little bit the team you've got.
• 1:02:13
  'cause it really is unusual to find such a male.
• 1:02:18
  Presence in an equine assisted team.
• 1:02:21
  Emma Hutchison: So Jock, my husband so he basically was a Royal Marine
• 1:02:25
  commando and a helicopter pilot in the military for 10 years.
• 1:02:29
  So he also has had a passion for horses since he was a child.
• 1:02:34
  He has a DHD.
• 1:02:38
  He can't sit still for more than 15 minutes.
• 1:02:42
  That's on a good day.
• 1:02:43
  He is absolutely passionate about this type of work, about helping people.
• 1:02:49
  He's been through his own kind of mental health issues and so feels really empathy
• 1:02:53
  for those that are going through it.
• 1:02:55
  And he, his huge skill is being able to connect with people on that.
• 1:03:02
  First, they come up the drive and you've got him in his cowboy hat
• 1:03:06
  and his chaps and his horse kind of saying, hi, come with me and I'll
• 1:03:10
  just talk to you about me and my horse and the relationship that we have.
• 1:03:13
  And he's able to, within that 45 minutes to an hour, be able to get
• 1:03:18
  somebody to say, wow, this is, this is a place that I want to come to.
• 1:03:24
  I understand that I, I too could have a relationship with
• 1:03:28
  a horse and with another person.
• 1:03:30
  And I, I, I do it annoyingly with, with anybody who here.
• 1:03:41
  Whether it's autistic kids, whether it's military guys, whether it's
• 1:03:44
  Wi Ladies, whether the whole, he, they come and they just think that
• 1:03:49
  Jock is the best thing since Slice.
• 1:03:51
  He then hands them over to us and it is almost like his, his bit, his
• 1:03:56
  kind of showmanship, which is his his main kind of role is, is, is done.
• 1:04:02
  And then we, so we kind of wheel him in and wheel him out as and as
• 1:04:04
  and when he's needed because he's amazing for these other things.
• 1:04:07
  But again, the energy with Jock can be quite high because that's what
• 1:04:11
  he's, so as I say, we have to wheel him in and then wheel him back.
• 1:04:14
  But again, he does all the PR stuff and the marketing stuff and things like that.
• 1:04:19
  And he's a very good ideas person.
• 1:04:21
  So he'll come up with these, what about this?
• 1:04:23
  Why don't we speak to these people?
• 1:04:25
  What about this, what about, and, and most of the ideas you say, no, but every now
• 1:04:31
  and then there's, there's one that you go, Hmm, naturally if we put that thought
• 1:04:34
  into that, we could work with that.
• 1:04:38
  So that's, that's him.
• 1:04:40
  We then have ta who runs our, it was the Princess Trust program.
• 1:04:45
  It's now the King's Trust.
• 1:04:47
  So that's our Youth 12 week youth development program where it's
• 1:04:51
  for 16 to 25 year olds and they come here for 12 solid weeks.
• 1:04:56
  And throughout that time, they work with the horses.
• 1:04:59
  They do all the other activities that I've already mentioned.
• 1:05:02
  They have a week where they do, they go out and do adventurous activities.
• 1:05:07
  So they, we hire e-bikes for them and we make them e-bike up
• 1:05:12
  some hills and things like that.
• 1:05:13
  They do river walks, they do camp out.
• 1:05:17
  Which bizarrely bearing in mind that we live in Aberdeen, she, a lot of
• 1:05:23
  these kids have never stayed away from home or let alone camped out.
• 1:05:29
  So it's a huge deal for a lot of these kids to go away on this.
• 1:05:32
  And it, this is a residential week apart.
• 1:05:34
  12 weeks is a residential program.
• 1:05:36
  They do work experience, they do I do that a community project.
• 1:05:41
  So one of the community projects was they went around one of the local estates and
• 1:05:45
  they cleaned all of these old a hundred year old well rest and be thankful things.
• 1:05:50
  So when the old Drovers used to bring the cattle and the sheep
• 1:05:53
  along, they would, they have these rest and be thankful water things.
• 1:05:58
  So they cleaned all those for community project.
• 1:05:59
  They cleaned a load of tracks.
• 1:06:01
  So it's an amazing project that they do.
• 1:06:04
  Path is retired officially from the military.
• 1:06:08
  He's in his early sixties.
• 1:06:10
  He was in the military for 40 odd years.
• 1:06:13
  Rupert Isaacson: What did he do?
• 1:06:15
  Emma Hutchison: He was in the pioneers, so he was, he was in
• 1:06:18
  as a noncommissioned officer to.
• 1:06:23
  And then ended up
• 1:06:24
  Rupert Isaacson: to ask you about who the pioneers are because I,
• 1:06:26
  that's quite an interesting branch of the British military, which I
• 1:06:28
  think a lot of American listeners and some would not be familiar with,
• 1:06:34
  Emma Hutchison: I think I'm not a great expert on this, but
• 1:06:35
  they basically build things.
• 1:06:37
  So if you go somewhere and you need a bridge build tool, something, whatever,
• 1:06:42
  the pioneers of the people that go in with the expertise to build the
• 1:06:45
  bridge to get the tanks over, right.
• 1:06:48
  So, he's a really charismatic guy.
• 1:06:50
  He, the last few years that he was in, he worked at the OTC, which is
• 1:06:57
  the young officers in the university.
• 1:06:59
  So working with young, young people again.
• 1:07:02
  And he now runs this program and he's absolutely amazing at it.
• 1:07:06
  Yeah.
• 1:07:07
  So you have taf, you have Joanne, who's our admin lady who again
• 1:07:10
  is married to an ex Navy pilot.
• 1:07:13
  So again, you've got the Navy connection there.
• 1:07:15
  And then you have my daughter, Charlotte, who you know, support
• 1:07:19
  you through and through, she's done a psychology degree, so she's
• 1:07:22
  interested in, in all that side of it.
• 1:07:25
  And then we've got Georgia, who is one of our school leavers.
• 1:07:29
  So she came on one of our schools programs about four years ago.
• 1:07:33
  She then came here on work experience and she's now employed as a, as a yard person.
• 1:07:39
  She's amazing.
• 1:07:40
  And then we've got some guys down south who, again, more ex-military
• 1:07:44
  guys who when we are running programs elsewhere, or they'll come up and
• 1:07:48
  be involved in the, the program.
• 1:07:50
  Are is,
• 1:07:50
  Rupert Isaacson: are these the people that you refer to as your mentors?
• 1:07:53
  Emma Hutchison: No.
• 1:07:53
  So these, that's our kind of southern team
• 1:07:55
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:07:56
  Are
• 1:07:57
  Emma Hutchison: basically people who have been through the program and then we have
• 1:08:01
  recognized certain skills with them and thought, Hmm, that's somebody that will
• 1:08:08
  be amazing as a mentor for other people.
• 1:08:10
  So we then put them on a mentors and an additional program that Jay's
• 1:08:13
  put together and they come up here and they, they given, you know,
• 1:08:17
  things about boundaries and, and sort of additional skills to help.
• 1:08:20
  And
• 1:08:20
  Rupert Isaacson: these would be people who transitioned out of the military
• 1:08:23
  exactly as we were talking about earlier.
• 1:08:26
  Gone through that identity crisis and then have come out on the other
• 1:08:29
  side of it and have created careers and lives in the civilian world.
• 1:08:33
  Emma Hutchison: So they have all been through huge, huge processes themselves.
• 1:08:37
  So they have got the empathy, but as you say, they have, they still, they,
• 1:08:41
  they would all quite happily admit that they're still on their journey.
• 1:08:44
  I think we're all on some sort of journey, but they all happily say,
• 1:08:48
  well, you know, some of them are working others are, are not working.
• 1:08:53
  We've got John, who is 79, he's an ex Royal Marine.
• 1:08:57
  He is the fittest, 79-year-old you will ever see.
• 1:09:00
  And he's amazing.
• 1:09:01
  And he said, this is what.
• 1:09:04
  He up here four or five times a year, and he's just brilliant.
• 1:09:10
  So they're kind of like, you know, mom and dad at the house dependent on age.
• 1:09:14
  Rupert Isaacson: But that's such a clever way to organize because I think a lot
• 1:09:18
  of organizations like ours that, you know, the manpower thing is, is massively
• 1:09:25
  tricky because it's, you know, humans are expensive and also entirely necessary.
• 1:09:30
  Yeah.
• 1:09:30
  And then you don't always have so much work
• 1:09:37
  for the whole team.
• 1:09:39
  So to have these people that, you know, are adjunct, that come in
• 1:09:42
  and come out who've also graduated through your program, I think
• 1:09:45
  there's actually a lot that a lot of listeners could learn from with that.
• 1:09:49
  Because one of the, as you can imagine, I go around doing a lot of
• 1:09:53
  trainings and one of the things I hear regularly is I haven't got the
• 1:10:00
  capacity, the human capacity for the amount of work I need to do, or that
• 1:10:04
  is coming in and I can't yet fundraise for all those full-time salaries.
• 1:10:10
  And, you know, I can't necessarily hire those full-time salaries
• 1:10:15
  until I know that those people are.
• 1:10:18
  Worth, you know, able to fully integrate into this program because,
• 1:10:22
  you know, and then they might be out on a limb geographically like you are.
• 1:10:25
  So that, you know, the equivalent in the USA, they might be in the mountains
• 1:10:28
  of Colorado or they might be, you know, some of the places we have in Ireland.
• 1:10:32
  And there's a difficulty because people then have to relocate from
• 1:10:36
  somewhere else to do that job.
• 1:10:37
  And then you're taking a big risk, you're taking a punt on that person.
• 1:10:40
  And if it doesn't work out for whatever reason, so much has been invested and they
• 1:10:44
  have had to do so many life changes to get themselves up to Northern Scotland or, you
• 1:10:49
  know, find a job, find, find, find a place to live and to, if it doesn't work out.
• 1:10:53
  But, so your idea of, of people coming in and out in, in this sort of mentor role
• 1:10:58
  and also having a sort of team that's down south where the big populations are that
• 1:11:05
  can then seasonally if you like, bring people to and front, I think that's really
• 1:11:10
  inventive and you might underestimate yourselves a little bit there.
• 1:11:15
  I think there's a lot that many of us running these programs could learn
• 1:11:20
  from you all in how you organize that.
• 1:11:22
  How did you come up with that concept?
• 1:11:24
  Because it's, it's quite original.
• 1:11:27
  Emma Hutchison: We because of the vulnerability of the military
• 1:11:31
  guys and because they were still serving, we were basically taking
• 1:11:35
  a group of guys, putting them into a, into a house, and I, I am Mrs.
• 1:11:41
  Health and Safety, I had real concerns about, you know, a lot of these guys
• 1:11:45
  mentally were just fragile and I wasn't happy about putting them in a house
• 1:11:53
  without some sort of supervision.
• 1:11:55
  So initially when we started, we would have a, a member staff stay in the
• 1:11:58
  house with them and it just didn't work because they felt that they were being
• 1:12:02
  Yeah,
• 1:12:02
  Emma Hutchison: constantly And you know, tail been told and all this sort of stuff.
• 1:12:07
  And so again, it, it, we, we just got some great people who came on the court
• 1:12:11
  courses early on and just said, look, how do you feel about if we, if we are, we're
• 1:12:17
  always there at the end of the phone.
• 1:12:18
  If something happens, then we're at the end of the phone.
• 1:12:21
  How do you feel about going in as the person who meets and greets?
• 1:12:26
  So, the mentor's always there because our program runs on a on a Monday morning,
• 1:12:31
  but everybody flies up, drives up, drive, whatever it is on the Sunday.
• 1:12:35
  So they have that first awful night in the house where they don't know anybody.
• 1:12:38
  They don't know what they're going to do because they've got this vague
• 1:12:41
  sort of story of what horseback does, but they still don't really
• 1:12:44
  know what they're coming to.
• 1:12:45
  They might be hundreds of miles away from home.
• 1:12:48
  They're extremely anxious and they're met by one of our mentors
• 1:12:52
  who say, hi, it's great to see you.
• 1:12:53
  I've made some Nathan, I've got chili on the whatever.
• 1:12:57
  But they already, they have these group chats beforehand.
• 1:13:00
  So they already start to get to know each other and interact and has
• 1:13:03
  anybody got any diet requirements?
• 1:13:05
  Have you got any favorite recipes?
• 1:13:07
  Do you need to bring a soft pillow or any of these kind of things to make them
• 1:13:11
  start to feel a little bit comfortable.
• 1:13:13
  You know, are you army or you navy?
• 1:13:14
  Are you the same regimen as me or whatever?
• 1:13:17
  And then the mentor meets them on the door and says, look
• 1:13:19
  mate, I've been where you were.
• 1:13:21
  I was anxious.
• 1:13:22
  I was the one who, who didn't want to go up the drive, who didn't wanna
• 1:13:24
  get outta the car, who was terrified to come here and nearly didn't get on
• 1:13:27
  the plane, but you've made it here.
• 1:13:29
  That's the first step.
• 1:13:30
  Come on in.
• 1:13:32
  And the thing is, again, about the military dependent on which
• 1:13:35
  army you were in, you call a cup of tea, a wet or a something else.
• 1:13:40
  There's this camaraderie that they instantly have that Oh, I, I was in the,
• 1:13:45
  I dunno, I get very confused by all.
• 1:13:48
  So they, they have this instant, they'll
• 1:13:50
  Rupert Isaacson: have their private languages.
• 1:13:51
  Yeah, tribal languages.
• 1:13:52
  And
• 1:13:52
  Emma Hutchison: they always know somebody who knows somebody
• 1:13:54
  who's dad knew somebody.
• 1:13:56
  It's absolutely nuts that everybody on every single course has always
• 1:14:00
  got somebody who's known, somebody who's known somebody kind of thing.
• 1:14:03
  So by the time they come to us on that Monday morning, they go off
• 1:14:07
  and get a cup of tea in the kitchen.
• 1:14:08
  We bring the mentors in and say, right, how was it?
• 1:14:11
  And they've already sussed everybody out and they can say, oh, you know,
• 1:14:14
  he's, he needs to be, he's a bit quiet.
• 1:14:16
  We need to just bring him forward.
• 1:14:18
  And that helps me because I very quickly have to allocate the horses
• 1:14:23
  for that first day from quite a.
• 1:14:27
  Knowledge because again, the knowledge that you get on
• 1:14:29
  the phone and the application forms is, is irrelevant really.
• 1:14:32
  So it's that the feedback that I get from the mentors and then literally
• 1:14:38
  just that first kind of bit around the table and having that first cup of tea.
• 1:14:42
  And I'd say it is amazing though.
• 1:14:44
  Rarely do I get it wrong with the, the horses and we have to change them.
• 1:14:47
  You can generally suss people out because they're, they're most
• 1:14:51
  vulnerable then, and then they, it, it's really apparent what they need.
• 1:14:55
  Even if they're trying to mask it.
• 1:14:56
  You can see, well this, this is somebody who needs to be more confident
• 1:15:00
  and stand up and be more assertive.
• 1:15:02
  So I'm gonna give them poll because poll is a big old co and you know,
• 1:15:05
  if you're not assertive with her, she's gonna drag you over the field
• 1:15:08
  to get the long bit of grasp thing.
• 1:15:10
  So
• 1:15:12
  Rupert Isaacson: do, do you feel that that's a system that you could train
• 1:15:17
  other equine assisted groups in and how to identify, find and deploy these mentors?
• 1:15:24
  'cause I think this is, this is something that sort of hasn't
• 1:15:26
  occurred to a lot of people.
• 1:15:27
  Emma Hutchison: Yeah.
• 1:15:27
  And we've got mentors.
• 1:15:29
  We have got mentors course that Jay's put together, which is actually an
• 1:15:31
  sqa Scottish Qualifications Authority qualification where it can be so they
• 1:15:36
  can come and get an actual qualification.
• 1:15:38
  But the thing is with them, we are really grateful to them and
• 1:15:43
  we really grateful to because
• 1:15:47
  right.
• 1:15:52
  Emma Hutchison: They don't wanna be away from, they love coming
• 1:15:54
  to horseback, horseback, they are part of the horseback family one.
• 1:15:57
  We always kind of joke, you know, once you're here, you're
• 1:15:59
  never away from the family.
• 1:16:01
  You are part of this dysfunction family.
• 1:16:04
  And so they love and they're, they're continuing their journey and they
• 1:16:07
  feel they are giving something back.
• 1:16:09
  They are helping other people.
• 1:16:10
  And that's, you know, that's the sort of circle that we wanna kind of be able to
• 1:16:15
  Rupert Isaacson: do.
• 1:16:15
  Some of these mentors also come and help you on the non-military
• 1:16:18
  program, so they help you with the troubled youth and the kids and Yeah.
• 1:16:21
  Yeah.
• 1:16:21
  I, I think, I think what we need to do is maybe after this podcast maybe
• 1:16:27
  do a, a, a webinar for our stu for our members on new trails learning systems,
• 1:16:34
  you know, who are all running programs.
• 1:16:36
  I think that people would be fascinated by this possibility that if you weren't
• 1:16:41
  connected to the military in the way that you guys are, you wouldn't know that there
• 1:16:45
  are these networks that you can tap into.
• 1:16:48
  And it might not occur to people who are in the military or transitioning
• 1:16:51
  outta the military that they could become mentors in programs like these,
• 1:16:57
  unless they're, you know, so you guys really bridge could serve as a bridge I
• 1:17:01
  feel, between the more civilian end of equine assisted, which is most of it.
• 1:17:07
  And really solving a lot of these, these dilemmas which people have
• 1:17:10
  of not enough team members, but not enough money to hire people.
• 1:17:18
  Full time and can't really rely on volunteers all the time
• 1:17:21
  because it's not, it's not fair.
• 1:17:22
  And b, if you not paying people, they sort of can't show up all the time.
• 1:17:26
  And that a lot of people get caught in that time, in, in,
• 1:17:29
  in that particular dilemma.
• 1:17:30
  It seems like you guys have really found an amazing way through that.
• 1:17:34
  So with your permission, I think we'll ask you to come and
• 1:17:38
  do some consulting with that.
• 1:17:40
  You talk about allocating horses.
• 1:17:42
  Talk to me about the horses.
• 1:17:44
  Talk to me about how you train and prepare the horses.
• 1:17:47
  Talk to me about, you know, obviously there's, how many horses have you got?
• 1:17:52
  How, how do you keep them?
• 1:17:54
  Talk me through the equine end.
• 1:17:57
  Emma Hutchison: So we we're lucky, we have plenty of space.
• 1:18:00
  We have a herd of 40 horses who dietary requirements allowing we've got a big
• 1:18:08
  in the, in the winter we have fields around the, the house and the stables.
• 1:18:12
  So they live in smaller herds around the, in the winter because,
• 1:18:16
  because that's what has to happen.
• 1:18:18
  In the summer we've got a 40 acre hill field which pretty much most of the
• 1:18:24
  herd go out two, certainly in the next two weeks, and it'll be up on the hill.
• 1:18:28
  The grass is just starting to grow now and then we've got another 40 acre.
• 1:18:33
  Of rough, what we call rough ground.
• 1:18:35
  So it is literally rough ground, all sorts of different types of grasses.
• 1:18:38
  Go bushes, bits of little bits of woodland and stuff.
• 1:18:42
  And I mean, you talk to Jay about the, the bush, one of the, the best
• 1:18:46
  activities that we do with the kids is dependent on the time of the year.
• 1:18:50
  If the horses are out in the rough ground, it's kind of like, guys, you're
• 1:18:54
  gonna have to go find your horses because you literally can lose these horses
• 1:18:58
  and you can take half an hour sort of marching across this bit going just
• 1:19:02
  Rupert Isaacson: to locate them.
• 1:19:02
  Yeah.
• 1:19:03
  Emma Hutchison: And then you can locate it, but you can't get to it
• 1:19:05
  because there's a huge break horse that you can't go through unless
• 1:19:07
  you've got the highland pony that just literally goes straight through it.
• 1:19:11
  So I mean, our, our thing is that they're kept as naturally as they possibly can be.
• 1:19:15
  Happy horses in that sort of environment, may working with them,
• 1:19:22
  for them doing their job very easy.
• 1:19:24
  It means that we don't have to worry about you know, whether this horse
• 1:19:28
  is gonna kick that horse or whatever when we are working with them in more
• 1:19:32
  enclosed spaces because they've, they've dealt with all that in the fields.
• 1:19:36
  They all know the hierarchy and never think about, you know,
• 1:19:38
  don't go near that horse because it's it's mean kind of thing.
• 1:19:41
  So they have all sorted out the horse, sort all that out.
• 1:19:45
  We have bred some of our own horses, so easy to just bring into
• 1:19:50
  the workplace and start working.
• 1:19:52
  Because coming in as, and getting tied up.
• 1:19:56
  Herd.
• 1:19:57
  And people are always amazed when they come up here that we can have 20 horses.
• 1:20:01
  We've got the, the corral in the center of our kind of stead.
• 1:20:05
  We tie the horses all up there.
• 1:20:07
  They don't get hay nets.
• 1:20:08
  They just get tied up and they just stand.
• 1:20:11
  And they'll stand there whilst they're groomed.
• 1:20:13
  They'll stand there all together.
• 1:20:15
  And our young horses learn how to stand because everybody else is standing
• 1:20:21
  and that's what you do sort of thing.
• 1:20:24
  So we start the youngsters coming in with, with the other horses.
• 1:20:28
  And then they'll just start to get groomed.
• 1:20:30
  We do do a lot of groundwork with them because part of the programs that our guys
• 1:20:35
  do is simple things like backing a horse up or drawing a horse into you, or being
• 1:20:40
  able to just move its back end around.
• 1:20:42
  So it's just very simple kind of horsemanship that we do.
• 1:20:45
  So all of our horses need to be able to do that to ensure that
• 1:20:50
  every individual that asks the horse to back up is going to get a win.
• 1:20:56
  So the horses are all kind of taught from a, a certain command
• 1:21:00
  and a, and a and a noise.
• 1:21:01
  And the, the people who come on the are told, well do this bit
• 1:21:06
  of pressure, ask with this noise, and the horse will back up.
• 1:21:09
  So the horses have to be trained to a certain standard to get that win.
• 1:21:15
  Probably 50 of them are ridden.
• 1:21:19
  So again, those are all started in Holter.
• 1:21:22
  They're generally started bare back.
• 1:21:24
  Once you can walk rot and can to bare background in a Holter, then
• 1:21:27
  we might decide to put a saddle on.
• 1:21:30
  So that, and again, they're just so used to being around each other.
• 1:21:32
  It's just a really simple process.
• 1:21:36
  So we do put saddles on them, but we ride in side falls.
• 1:21:40
  We don't ride in bridals.
• 1:21:41
  So again, we ride kind of like with a, if people are riding, then they'll ride
• 1:21:46
  with a kind of like a Luc range because again, I've got this real phobia of,
• 1:21:50
  of kids in riding schools, balancing on their hands and things like that.
• 1:21:53
  So I'm just we need to be as kind to the horses as we can.
• 1:21:57
  When they do ride, the first thing that we tend to do, we used to, we used to do
• 1:22:03
  a lot more of the like, let's get you on.
• 1:22:05
  But actually now I've kind of changed a bit, and the first time that people
• 1:22:09
  will get on is actually bareback.
• 1:22:12
  So their first experience of riding a horse will be bareback,
• 1:22:14
  whether it's the kids or, or the adult or the military guys.
• 1:22:18
  Because again, it is just about that closeness.
• 1:22:20
  And again, it's, it's, it's not about riding a horse, it's
• 1:22:23
  about having that connection.
• 1:22:24
  It is about feeling the way that the horse is moving and we'll get them to,
• 1:22:29
  you know,
• 1:22:31
  Emma Hutchison: touch their toes or put their arm up or
• 1:22:33
  maybe close their eyes and.
• 1:22:41
  They're riding, but they, it's not about the riding.
• 1:22:44
  And then they get off and say, I want to do this again.
• 1:22:46
  I want to do more.
• 1:22:47
  So then we can do more.
• 1:22:49
  And then we might put the saddle on.
• 1:22:50
  We might not put a saddle along.
• 1:22:52
  We might do some obstacle courses.
• 1:22:54
  We might end up going for a trail ride round the rough ground.
• 1:22:57
  When we do that, you end up being followed by several Shetlands, which
• 1:23:00
  can be slightly intimidating sometimes.
• 1:23:02
  But or as I say, we might take them off onto the, the trail where we bundle
• 1:23:06
  them all in the lorry and they go for the big kind of trail rides and then
• 1:23:10
  the, the guys camp out every night.
• 1:23:13
  So, as I say, the horses have all got, they've all got
• 1:23:18
  things that they enjoy more.
• 1:23:21
  So we've got the horses that love being groomed.
• 1:23:24
  There's always some horses that are a bit nonplus about being groomed.
• 1:23:28
  We've got horses that are fantastic at groom groundwork.
• 1:23:32
  We've got horses that are very good in the round pen.
• 1:23:35
  We do do some some stuff in the, and we've got some horses that are good at that.
• 1:23:39
  We've got others that love being ridden.
• 1:23:41
  We've got ones that can be ridden, but they don't.
• 1:23:45
  We able to, because we've got the space and the put the
• 1:23:49
  horses into the job that they.
• 1:23:52
  Good at and love, which means they're better at the job that they do
• 1:23:56
  because they love it kind of thing.
• 1:23:57
  Right.
• 1:23:58
  Rupert Isaacson: And they're more, more generous when it comes to
• 1:24:00
  occasionally being asked to do a job.
• 1:24:01
  Well, okay, maybe that's not my favorite job, but, alright.
• 1:24:04
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:24:05
  You also though, you, you guys are accomplished rider in the,
• 1:24:08
  in the sport world as well.
• 1:24:09
  You guys event your and your daughter's event and so on.
• 1:24:13
  So it's interesting that you, you cross, you know, it's, it's, I'm
• 1:24:16
  always intrigued by people that cross over between those worlds because
• 1:24:20
  one of the if you like, curses of the equestrian world is that I always feel
• 1:24:24
  people over specialize as like, I am only a natural horsemanship person.
• 1:24:28
  I only do western pleasure, or I am, you know, a show jumper.
• 1:24:33
  But I'm not interested in that dressage stuff or I'm only a dressage writer.
• 1:24:37
  It's like,
• 1:24:37
  why
• 1:24:38
  Rupert Isaacson: not do it all?
• 1:24:39
  You know?
• 1:24:39
  I mean, horses, pe presumably like variety in the same way that people do.
• 1:24:44
  So I was quite intrigued when I came to you to see that aspect.
• 1:24:49
  What do you feel that the involvement in eventing brings to the assisted
• 1:24:55
  program and from an equine standpoint and from a human standpoint?
• 1:25:00
  Like what, talk to me about that cross-fertilization that also happens
• 1:25:03
  within your own family as well.
• 1:25:04
  So this makes for an interesting mosaic.
• 1:25:07
  Emma Hutchison: I think.
• 1:25:08
  I mean, anybody who, kind of connection with their partner, the horse, because
• 1:25:13
  otherwise, I mean, there are people who will do it, but I personally, I
• 1:25:18
  think, and, and I think in eventing as well, because it's so extreme,
• 1:25:22
  Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
• 1:25:22
  You have to trust the horse with your life.
• 1:25:23
  Yeah.
• 1:25:24
  You
• 1:25:24
  Emma Hutchison: have to have, yeah.
• 1:25:25
  I mean, you, you cannot make a horse jump what these guys are jumping.
• 1:25:29
  The horse has to wanna, and, and you're not gonna get the
• 1:25:32
  right stride the whole time.
• 1:25:33
  So you are putting your trust in that horse to get the two of you over.
• 1:25:38
  And you have to you have to give the horse the capacity to think.
• 1:25:43
  And I think that that's what I always say is the difference personally that
• 1:25:47
  I feel between your more traditional English riding and your more sort of
• 1:25:52
  Western horsemanship is that in the, the western side, you tend to put a
• 1:25:58
  little bit more hands on, a little bit more responsibility on the horse.
• 1:26:03
  Rupert Isaacson: As someone that lives in Texas for over 20 years, I'd say
• 1:26:05
  you see exactly the same spectrum of bad and good in the western world
• 1:26:09
  that you do in the English world.
• 1:26:10
  But yes a good horseman does do that.
• 1:26:13
  Yes.
• 1:26:13
  Yes.
• 1:26:13
  Yeah.
• 1:26:14
  Yeah.
• 1:26:14
  So,
• 1:26:14
  Emma Hutchison: So again, what what we've, what we've done is with the, the
• 1:26:17
  horses that we used to compete on mm-hmm.
• 1:26:20
  They're still used.
• 1:26:21
  They still benefit from all of the other stuff.
• 1:26:24
  Rupert Isaacson: Fantastic.
• 1:26:24
  Emma Hutchison: That we do with the horses here.
• 1:26:26
  Rupert Isaacson: And do they get involved in the program as well just
• 1:26:29
  or is there like, oh no, you guys are the posh horses over there and you guys
• 1:26:32
  are the, the rough horses over there or do they all actually muck in together?
• 1:26:35
  Emma Hutchison: There is a bit of like, well these are the posh
• 1:26:37
  horses over here, but when we're wanting to show what you can achieve
• 1:26:41
  with what now,
• 1:26:42
  Emma Hutchison: this is when you've got a a a sort of top level partnership,
• 1:26:45
  this is what you can achieve.
• 1:26:47
  And we've got one of the, the thoroughbreds who is very extreme and
• 1:26:51
  it's taken a lot of, a lot of work with her to sort of be able to teach her, to
• 1:26:54
  bring her anxiety down and, and sort of, so we can use her to show, this is a horse
• 1:27:00
  that was at the top of its game, was a kind of race horse is basically designed
• 1:27:04
  to run this is, this is long legs.
• 1:27:06
  She runs she doesn't want to be made to stand still and do kind
• 1:27:10
  of little things, but we've taught her that actually it can be fun.
• 1:27:12
  So we do a lot of liberty stuff with her and taught her to sort of come in a
• 1:27:16
  whistle and, and the kids love all that.
• 1:27:17
  If you can kind of have a horse sort of countering around you in a circle in
• 1:27:21
  the field and then you whistle and it kind of runs to you and nozzles in the
• 1:27:25
  kids are like, wow, that's just amazing.
• 1:27:28
  And we've got some of the horses that are, are quite capable of doing that with these
• 1:27:31
  kids and they just, they just love it.
• 1:27:32
  Just being followed around by.
• 1:27:41
  The individuals.
• 1:27:42
  We have got a herd of an aging herd, which again, we, we bred some horses
• 1:27:47
  because we did think we'll buy there.
• 1:27:48
  By this time these horses will no longer be with us.
• 1:27:52
  We have got now quite a herd of 20, 20, 30-year-old who are still have come out
• 1:27:58
  this winter particularly well and actually have been used on the program last week.
• 1:28:01
  They just come in, they get a groom.
• 1:28:03
  They love that.
• 1:28:03
  That's kind of where they're at the moment.
• 1:28:06
  And then we've got some little mini Shetlands because we get
• 1:28:09
  big six foot, six raw marines who are terrified of horses and
• 1:28:14
  literal
• 1:28:15
  Emma Hutchison: terrified horses.
• 1:28:16
  So you bring this thing that is the size of a Labrador out and say, you're
• 1:28:21
  having a laugh if you're telling me that you, you're frightened of that.
• 1:28:23
  And then they kind of say, okay, fair enough.
• 1:28:25
  Rupert Isaacson: And then why not disclosing to them that the most
• 1:28:27
  terrifying equine they will ever encounter is in fact a Shetland pony.
• 1:28:30
  But hey,
• 1:28:33
  Emma Hutchison: well, exactly.
• 1:28:34
  Yeah.
• 1:28:34
  They are the horrors.
• 1:28:35
  So we've got, we've got lots of different, we've got thoroughbreds,
• 1:28:38
  we've got cos we've got quarter horses, we've got Irish drafts, we've
• 1:28:42
  got a whole spectrum of, of horses.
• 1:28:45
  We've got horses that we've rescued, we've got things that we were given whatever.
• 1:28:50
  And they've all kind of found their, their little place, but they, they're
• 1:28:53
  just but as I say, it, it fascinating how we had one horse last week with
• 1:28:58
  one of the military with a lady and he.
• 1:29:08
  And I don't know why I made this match with this lady last week, but I thought,
• 1:29:12
  right, I'm gonna put her with Mikey.
• 1:29:14
  And he just loved her and it was just a match made in heaven.
• 1:29:19
  And I just thought, my goodness, this horse is just having a fantastic week.
• 1:29:24
  He was, every day he was looking for, and he'd come in and it was just amazing.
• 1:29:29
  Just amazing.
• 1:29:31
  So they are, they're funny critters.
• 1:29:32
  And we had, again, we've got one big Irish draft horse who had a, a really
• 1:29:36
  autistic boy who came on one of the schools programs and just, you know,
• 1:29:39
  he didn't want to engage at all.
• 1:29:42
  And so we were out with all the other kids catching the horses and he just stood,
• 1:29:46
  put his head down and just whatever.
• 1:29:48
  And this big old Irish draft was not the horse I was gonna put him with,
• 1:29:51
  but he clocked him from the other side of the field and he, I just saw,
• 1:29:55
  saw him kind of like coming and he just literally came up and he put
• 1:29:59
  his head on this kid's shoulder.
• 1:30:01
  Ah.
• 1:30:02
  Emma Hutchison: So they spent the whole, their, their school program.
• 1:30:05
  He then came back to us about two years later to do the youth development program
• 1:30:11
  and bubbling up here to think about it.
• 1:30:13
  And this kid, having not been here for two years, went into the field
• 1:30:17
  and exactly the same thing happened.
• 1:30:18
  This horse
• 1:30:19
  Emma Hutchison: from a distance sped this child who was then 19
• 1:30:23
  years old and literally went up to him and did the same thing.
• 1:30:26
  Now how does that happen?
• 1:30:28
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, this is one of the things that I am constantly
• 1:30:31
  flawed by, is just when I think I know something about horses, they do.
• 1:30:37
  In, in this type of work that we do, the way that they'll show
• 1:30:42
  up making their own decisions
• 1:30:49
  completely independent of us.
• 1:30:52
  I remember once one of my really good quarter horses who could be aloof.
• 1:30:59
  We had a boy who drowned and was in a pretty vegetative state and
• 1:31:05
  people said, well, can we bring him?
• 1:31:06
  I'm like, sure.
• 1:31:07
  But I, I dunno what you know, but Sure.
• 1:31:11
  And this kid comes out and he's in a wheelchair and he's completely
• 1:31:15
  unresponsive feeding to tube, and my horse clue just comes like you
• 1:31:21
  just described across the field and just sniffs him all over and then
• 1:31:29
  licks him all over from head to toe.
• 1:31:35
  Emma Hutchison: And that's not something that horses do.
• 1:31:36
  That's just, we,
• 1:31:37
  Rupert Isaacson: they don't, and it's not like that he was
• 1:31:39
  my licking horse or something.
• 1:31:41
  No.
• 1:31:43
  And
• 1:31:47
  what ended up happening was the kid ended up riding him and indicating and
• 1:31:51
  responding and, but what was going on
• 1:31:57
  mm-hmm.
• 1:31:57
  Rupert Isaacson: In the sort of other dimensional consciousness.
• 1:32:04
  That the, with, for example, with this autistic boy that you describe and
• 1:32:09
  your horse, something goes on in, in, in, in that field of consciousness
• 1:32:14
  that's outside of our perception.
• 1:32:16
  And it's, I think, I always think that's one of the
• 1:32:22
  things that keeps us in, in this, because it can be quite exhausting
• 1:32:27
  work, as you yourself know.
• 1:32:29
  And then you, you come across these situations relatively regularly and it's
• 1:32:34
  like you are, you are dancing with God.
• 1:32:36
  It's like you Yeah.
• 1:32:38
  Emma Hutchison: But people say to us, how does it work?
• 1:32:40
  And I just say, I don't know.
• 1:32:42
  Yeah.
• 1:32:42
  But I don't need to know.
• 1:32:44
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:32:44
  Emma Hutchison: And I think that's the best.
• 1:32:46
  Just let it happen because it, it does happen
• 1:32:50
  Rupert Isaacson: now really what we're talking about with the
• 1:32:52
  collective consciousness in that, you know, you can call it God, you
• 1:32:55
  can call it the Akashic record.
• 1:32:57
  You can call it, you know, parallel consciousness as or, but really
• 1:33:03
  it seems to come down to love.
• 1:33:05
  And you know, we've touched on the fact that you operate as an
• 1:33:09
  extended family, but you also operate as a close type family.
• 1:33:12
  What's it been like for you and your children to really grow up together?
• 1:33:18
  Because as you know, parents, kids make their parents grow up, whether
• 1:33:21
  their parents want to or not.
• 1:33:23
  You guys have grown up in this endeavor, as you said.
• 1:33:26
  You know, when the.
• 1:33:28
  Lads were first coming out, it was your fridge, and they might
• 1:33:31
  eat the kids' lunch or dinner.
• 1:33:33
  And the kids sort of having to grow up sharing their space.
• 1:33:37
  I think it's very healthy.
• 1:33:39
  Talk to us about what it's like for you and for them to do this thing as a family.
• 1:33:46
  Emma Hutchison: So, I mean, the, the, the best was Helena
• 1:33:49
  was three when we started this.
• 1:33:51
  And for the first few years, a lot of the guys who were coming
• 1:33:54
  to us had prosthetic legs.
• 1:33:57
  So in our kitchen you would see literally these prosthetic legs all
• 1:34:01
  just leaning against the wall in the kitchen and various other kind of limbs.
• 1:34:04
  So the girls just grew up, they thought that was normal.
• 1:34:07
  But Helena would always, as soon as we got somebody came up to the
• 1:34:10
  house, whether it was on a course or whether it was just somebody else,
• 1:34:14
  she just used to kick them in the shin
• 1:34:18
  quite a while to say,
• 1:34:21
  she said, it's not a real, I said, but, but not everybody has metal legs.
• 1:34:26
  It's, it's, you can't just kick people in the shin.
• 1:34:29
  So she just thought that everybody had these, these kind of amazing
• 1:34:33
  legs that you could kind of kick.
• 1:34:35
  And again, Charlotte used to some of the courses, some of the
• 1:34:37
  prosthetics that they had had feet.
• 1:34:40
  So, you know, I've got decisions of the girls with their eight or nine nail
• 1:34:44
  polish out and they would be nail polish.
• 1:34:51
  Just, you know, and I think a lot of their friends, they just, because
• 1:34:54
  people can find things like that, disfigurement and disability and stuff,
• 1:34:59
  people can find it really difficult.
• 1:35:02
  They don't know how to, how to deal with it.
• 1:35:04
  How to
• 1:35:05
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:35:05
  Can trigger fear basically.
• 1:35:07
  Yeah.
• 1:35:07
  How, how do
• 1:35:07
  Emma Hutchison: I speak to, I mean, a really good friend of mine
• 1:35:10
  said, well, how do I speak to Jay?
• 1:35:12
  When we first met him, and I said, what do you mean?
• 1:35:13
  How do you speak to Jay?
• 1:35:14
  Well, you know, Jay's got all this stuff that's gone on with him.
• 1:35:17
  I said, but speak to him like he's Jay.
• 1:35:20
  Yeah.
• 1:35:21
  And
• 1:35:21
  Emma Hutchison: she said, okay, but people find barriers.
• 1:35:24
  So my kids had no barriers.
• 1:35:26
  Their friends had no barriers because it was just normal.
• 1:35:31
  They loved it until they got to about 12 or 13, then they hated it.
• 1:35:37
  It was the worst thing when Dad used to go into school to give a presentation
• 1:35:42
  about the charity or everybody would say, oh, what's happening at horseback?
• 1:35:46
  They hated it.
• 1:35:47
  And then that love has kind of come back, sort of 16, 17, suddenly
• 1:35:52
  the, they actually appreciate what we're doing here and see the
• 1:35:56
  differences and have got involved.
• 1:35:58
  And so that kind of passion and that love has come back.
• 1:36:01
  It's not easy working with family.
• 1:36:03
  And obviously Jock and I work together.
• 1:36:04
  We are very different.
• 1:36:05
  We have managed to carve out very different roles within the charity, which
• 1:36:10
  has kind of kept us able to work together.
• 1:36:13
  And as I say, Charlotte's kind of come in now and she's the yard manager
• 1:36:17
  and the horse trailer and stuff.
• 1:36:19
  So she's carved out her role there.
• 1:36:22
  It's difficult, but it is, as I say, I think they're, they're
• 1:36:26
  now very proud of, of, of this.
• 1:36:28
  It's 16 years into it and this kind of legacy that, that they
• 1:36:31
  are part of the horseback family as are their friends actually.
• 1:36:35
  They're, they're kind of kind of proud of it now, but it's been, been
• 1:36:38
  a journey It has, I have to say.
• 1:36:41
  Rupert Isaacson: if you're a horse nerd, and if you're on this podcast,
• 1:36:44
  I'm guessing you are, then you've probably also always wondered a little
• 1:36:49
  bit about the old master system.
• 1:36:52
  of dressage training.
• 1:36:53
  If you go and check out our Helios Harmony program, we outline there step by step
• 1:37:02
  exactly how to train your horse from the ground to become the dressage horse
• 1:37:08
  of your dreams in a way that absolutely serves the physical, mental and emotional
• 1:37:15
  well being of the horse and the rider.
• 1:37:18
  Intrigued?
• 1:37:19
  Like to know more?
• 1:37:20
  Go to our website, Helios Harmony.
• 1:37:25
  Check out the free introduction course.
• 1:37:27
  Take it from there.
• 1:37:28
  What's what's interesting as, as you're talking, I'm just considering, you
• 1:37:32
  know, you've got a core equine team there, which is mother and daughters.
• 1:37:42
  You've got a core male team, which is, okay, now what are we gonna
• 1:37:47
  do with these prepared horses?
• 1:37:52
  And obviously there's integration.
• 1:37:53
  It's not like everyone's confined to a role, but it makes me think
• 1:37:57
  very much of sort of a hunting and gathering community where you do
• 1:38:01
  have to some degree gender roles, but not because anyone's assigned them.
• 1:38:08
  Like, you can't hunt 'cause you're a woman, or you can't
• 1:38:10
  gather 'cause you're a man.
• 1:38:11
  Of course you can.
• 1:38:11
  And actually there's a lot of cross-fertilization people do, but
• 1:38:14
  people find their roles by choice.
• 1:38:17
  So they have agency and then they know how to weave that ecosystem together.
• 1:38:22
  And again, you know, as we know the horse world is, is.
• 1:38:25
  A, you know, just female dominated anyway, except for in the professional
• 1:38:30
  end where you do get a a bit more balance.
• 1:38:33
  But I often observe this, particularly working with autism, that you might get
• 1:38:41
  an basically an all female staff with an almost all male clientele, autistic boys.
• 1:38:51
  And
• 1:38:53
  where's the male role models leadership Now, if you go to a place
• 1:39:00
  that's doing, say, special needs with surfing or mountain sports or
• 1:39:03
  something, the blokes are there.
• 1:39:05
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:39:06
  Rupert Isaacson: But we need them in the horse world.
• 1:39:08
  And you and in the equine programs, you guys have really got that
• 1:39:13
  and you've got the strong women in leadership roles as well.
• 1:39:16
  It's like the best of all worlds.
• 1:39:18
  And I do feel that you guys could and should be out there mentoring other
• 1:39:23
  equine programs saying, look, you gotta kind of have this balance if you
• 1:39:28
  want to balance people's brains and nervous systems because you, without
• 1:39:33
  it, it's, it, it, it, it's weighted.
• 1:39:36
  So that was actually gonna lead me into the next thing I wanted to ask you about.
• 1:39:39
  You guys have started this register and I know that you're also running
• 1:39:43
  courses and people can, now come and train with you to some degree.
• 1:39:46
  And you've also got, you, you, you're, you're busy working stuff out with
• 1:39:49
  Hart Pre College down which is one of the big agricultural colleges
• 1:39:53
  in, in the uk for those listeners in the USA and elsewhere, just the
• 1:39:58
  geography, it's think Alaska to Denver.
• 1:40:01
  You know, it's, it's like the top of the highlands down to Middle England.
• 1:40:06
  It's, it's not round the corner.
• 1:40:08
  But it's a major educational establishment.
• 1:40:12
  So talk to us now about Yeah.
• 1:40:14
  The, the, the register and your educational programs, and then also
• 1:40:18
  how can people, you know, get in touch with the four mentorship.
• 1:40:22
  Emma Hutchison: So Hart came about, I was down there six, seven years
• 1:40:26
  ago, and we got the opportunity to run some pilot programs down there.
• 1:40:33
  Hart is the biggest EQU in the university in the uk.
• 1:40:37
  And it's very traditional.
• 1:40:39
  And they, but they have some members of staff who are quite high up, who,
• 1:40:45
  who are quite innovative and thought that it was a good idea for us to do
• 1:40:50
  some equine assisted services programs.
• 1:40:53
  So we went in.
• 1:40:54
  But
• 1:40:54
  Rupert Isaacson: how, because they're not exactly in your neighborhood, are they?
• 1:40:56
  And so you'd have expected that to happen through a Scottish
• 1:40:59
  college or So Hartery is.
• 1:41:02
  Apples, oranges,
• 1:41:04
  Emma Hutchison: personal relationships basically.
• 1:41:06
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:41:06
  Emma Hutchison: So they kind of invited us to run some programs.
• 1:41:09
  And we basically, you can see, I remember the first day that we went in, you
• 1:41:13
  could see the equine department there thinking, who are this bunch of weirdos
• 1:41:19
  who are saying, can we build an obstacle course and can we do this and can we
• 1:41:23
  just groom the horses in the arena?
• 1:41:25
  And with the kids we're thinking, well, why are they not?
• 1:41:28
  What, what is that for?
• 1:41:30
  Anyway, they, within literally 24 hours, they were all asking if they
• 1:41:33
  could volunteer to help yet find director is just the most amazing guy.
• 1:41:37
  We've run some pilot schemes, we've run some additional programs, and we're
• 1:41:40
  now trying to, I'm going down in a next month to see how do we work out, how
• 1:41:45
  do we fund this on a long term basis because it needs to be sustainable.
• 1:41:50
  It needs to be something that isn't just there a, a week here and a week there.
• 1:41:54
  It needs to be something where they want to bring equine assisted
• 1:41:57
  services to Hartley so that it's a standalone department and
• 1:42:02
  running all sorts of programs for different groups, whether it's kids,
• 1:42:05
  whether it's military, whatever.
• 1:42:07
  So that's a work in progress, but it's really exciting because to say it's
• 1:42:10
  a, an environment that, it's amazing how many horse people still don't
• 1:42:17
  know about equine assisted services.
• 1:42:22
  Rupert Isaacson: E.
• 1:42:22
  Exactly.
• 1:42:22
  And what I think what's changing, particularly in the UK and Ireland,
• 1:42:27
  is that it used to be, you know, RDA and RDA was volunteer and
• 1:42:33
  therefore you didn't get paid.
• 1:42:35
  So you had to either be, you know, you were usually a lady of a certain
• 1:42:39
  age who didn't need to work, so you were gonna put your time into that,
• 1:42:43
  or someone who was really drawn to it and you were gonna kind of work for
• 1:42:48
  nothing because you felt this calling.
• 1:42:50
  But things have changed now and quite recently, you know, it's now a career
• 1:42:54
  track and it can be a, a decently paid career track, but this is all quite new.
• 1:42:58
  So you're, you're right, a lot of people aren't aware of it, dunno about it.
• 1:43:02
  And they might be going into the equine industry thinking, well, I've
• 1:43:04
  got to go into the sport end, but that's already saturated with, you
• 1:43:08
  know, people and competition and anyway, there's no security there.
• 1:43:13
  Or like everything in sport, unless you float up to the very, very top, it's,
• 1:43:18
  yeah.
• 1:43:18
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
• 1:43:19
  So, yeah.
• 1:43:20
  Talk, talk to us about how you guys are developing that and, and looking for
• 1:43:26
  the funding for those sorts of programs.
• 1:43:28
  And, and again, also tell us about this register that you guys have
• 1:43:30
  put together and what that's for.
• 1:43:33
  Emma Hutchison: Yeah.
• 1:43:33
  How it sort of came about is as I say, were looking to then Harvey,
• 1:43:37
  were then looking to run an equine assisted program as, as a qualification.
• 1:43:42
  And then they realized that that part of the, the program needs to be sending
• 1:43:47
  people out to do practical work.
• 1:43:49
  And actually they didn't know who they were going to be sending
• 1:43:54
  people out to students X Right.
• 1:43:56
  To, they couldn't, how they didn't know if, if, if these people that
• 1:44:00
  they were gonna be sending them out to were going to be any, any good.
• 1:44:03
  So they kind of, pulled that back.
• 1:44:04
  And at the same time we had myself and some other people had got together
• 1:44:09
  because I was been constantly contacted saying I want to do what you do.
• 1:44:13
  How do you do it?
• 1:44:14
  Where'd you raise the money?
• 1:44:15
  You know, whatever.
• 1:44:16
  And I thought, you know, it's, this has taken years and years of us doing this.
• 1:44:21
  It's a really hard slog.
• 1:44:23
  But there are lots of people out there who are doing amazing jobs,
• 1:44:26
  but there's also lots of people who don't have the right insurance.
• 1:44:29
  Whether they, they know or they dunno.
• 1:44:31
  They, they possibly just dunno that they don't have the right insurance.
• 1:44:34
  There's a real thing within equine assisted services that you suddenly
• 1:44:38
  bring a horse into the environment and you've become an expert in a
• 1:44:43
  field that you've got no knowledge in.
• 1:44:44
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:44:45
  Just
• 1:44:45
  Emma Hutchison: because you,
• 1:44:47
  so, group of us got together and formed this register, which is part equine.
• 1:44:54
  Now the aim of this,
• 1:44:56
  Rupert Isaacson: what's the register called?
• 1:44:57
  Emma Hutchison: The register's called the Human Equine Interaction Register.
• 1:45:02
  It's called Air, HEIR.
• 1:45:04
  And that sits under this Equine Services Partnership.
• 1:45:09
  And basically the idea behind that is that it, it's there to
• 1:45:14
  protect and promote providers.
• 1:45:16
  So, you know, service people that, that actually deliver to
• 1:45:20
  protect the participants and to protect the horses as well.
• 1:45:23
  That's the main aims to things like making sure that people have got the
• 1:45:29
  right insurance in place, that you stick to your scope of practice that you are
• 1:45:33
  considering animal welfare, that you're not just doing this to earn a few extra
• 1:45:37
  buck on top of your riding school kind of thing that you're doing, whatever.
• 1:45:40
  It's, so, so it's now got, I think, close on a hundred different members
• 1:45:45
  that are from single people members doing it to organizations like ourselves.
• 1:45:51
  And we've got the second annual general meeting that's being held at heart
• 1:45:57
  rate on the, is it the 8th of April?
• 1:46:02
  And again, it's about sharing information.
• 1:46:04
  It's about learning from each other.
• 1:46:06
  It's not about being modality specific.
• 1:46:08
  I don't care what what model you use, as long as you're doing good
• 1:46:13
  work and you're being kind to the horses, you've got the right.
• 1:46:15
  Insurance is in place and you are doing what you are, you've got the skills to do.
• 1:46:19
  So.
• 1:46:19
  If you are, if you, if you're not a therapist, don't say that you're
• 1:46:23
  doing therapy or don't try and do therapy, leave that to the qualifier.
• 1:46:27
  Rupert Isaacson: How, how do you, if you like police this though, how
• 1:46:29
  do you, how do you, because are you actually traveling around and doing
• 1:46:35
  inspections on each individual place or?
• 1:46:37
  Yeah.
• 1:46:37
  Emma Hutchison: So it's, as it stands at the moment, it's a voluntary membership.
• 1:46:40
  Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
• 1:46:41
  Emma Hutchison: We are asked, we would ask, somebody would apply and
• 1:46:44
  we would ask for specific documents.
• 1:46:46
  Have you got qualifications, whatever, to show that you say what you're doing.
• 1:46:50
  And then as far as things like the welfare, it's basically just
• 1:46:54
  saying, these are the standards.
• 1:46:56
  Do you apply to this?
• 1:46:57
  I mean, we, at the moment, we, we, we don't police it, but it is basically
• 1:47:01
  pushing the emphasis on that individual to say, yes, I, I do, this is what
• 1:47:07
  I do, and I sign up to these values.
• 1:47:13
  That's as far as we got at the moment, is that, and we've,
• 1:47:15
  it's been a big job to get
• 1:47:17
  Rupert Isaacson: I am sure
• 1:47:20
  have that You're dealing with a lot of strong personalities and
• 1:47:22
  very independent minded people too.
• 1:47:24
  Yeah.
• 1:47:25
  But I think we can all agree that we're in this interesting transition with that EQU
• 1:47:29
  assisted world, but people like you and I, who kind of ended it up in it by default
• 1:47:35
  and now are sort of 20 years in realize that you, it would be helpful to have.
• 1:47:41
  Some forms of regulation and standardization and at the same time, that
• 1:47:47
  can very quickly kill the whole thing.
• 1:47:49
  Yeah.
• 1:47:49
  Rupert Isaacson: And how do you dance that line?
• 1:47:52
  And the answer is that any of us says, well, we don't know, but if
• 1:47:55
  we don't try, then shame on us.
• 1:47:58
  So I can see the, I can see that the real value there.
• 1:48:02
  Your, the, the meeting that's coming.
• 1:48:03
  So listeners, we're, we're doing this interview in March, early March of 2025.
• 1:48:10
  And so Emma, you've just said this is meeting will happen on the 8th
• 1:48:15
  of April, but presumably if you're listening, if you find this podcast
• 1:48:18
  in a year from now, whatever, there'll be more meetings coming up.
• 1:48:22
  These AGMs that are happening at Hartley, are they open, just generally open?
• 1:48:26
  Anyone can attend?
• 1:48:28
  It's and get information or, or, or Yeah.
• 1:48:30
  How does it go?
• 1:48:31
  Emma Hutchison: It's for membership.
• 1:48:32
  We're kind of, again, we've been playing around with the membership a little
• 1:48:34
  bit, but we're now kind of, changing it so that you can, but what if you
• 1:48:38
  Rupert Isaacson: wanted to just come and get information and Okay.
• 1:48:42
  All the, all the lads are together.
• 1:48:44
  Do you have anything that would be open to say it was me and I wanted
• 1:48:47
  to come and I'm not a member, but I wanna find out more about it.
• 1:48:50
  Can I come or how would it work?
• 1:48:53
  Emma Hutchison: Yeah.
• 1:48:53
  I think as I.
• 1:48:58
  Website.
• 1:49:00
  There's an awful lot of membership information on that.
• 1:49:02
  And we are starting to put more information on, we're doing things
• 1:49:06
  that they're calling airtime.
• 1:49:08
  So we've got a lady who is running Zooms, and again, it can be for
• 1:49:12
  members, but again, there are other people that you can come in and learn
• 1:49:15
  from these things because again, you don't know whether you wanna sign
• 1:49:17
  up for this to start with or not.
• 1:49:18
  Sure.
• 1:49:20
  Try before you buy almost, don't you?
• 1:49:22
  Rupert Isaacson: Indeed.
• 1:49:22
  Emma Hutchison: And then at the, the, the one at Har, there's lots of
• 1:49:25
  different speakers from all sorts of different modalities talking about.
• 1:49:30
  So could
• 1:49:30
  Rupert Isaacson: someone buy a ticket, for example, to that HAR
• 1:49:32
  event and just come and listen?
• 1:49:34
  Emma Hutchison: Yes.
• 1:49:34
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 1:49:35
  Yeah.
• 1:49:35
  Okay.
• 1:49:36
  Yeah.
• 1:49:37
  Emma Hutchison: I think we
• 1:49:37
  Rupert Isaacson: need some horse for people to come there.
• 1:49:39
  Yeah.
• 1:49:39
  Yeah.
• 1:49:39
  Emma Hutchison: Information will be on that on the website.
• 1:49:42
  Okay.
• 1:49:42
  So that's, I think, as I say, and then the whole thing with qualifications,
• 1:49:46
  again, I would love to have something where, you know, this, somebody's
• 1:49:49
  got this qualification that they're at such and such a level.
• 1:49:52
  Yeah.
• 1:49:52
  But as
• 1:49:52
  Emma Hutchison: you know, there's 1,001 different qualifications out there.
• 1:49:55
  So what this partnership is trying to do is trying to map all the
• 1:49:59
  different qualifications, but at least, you know, you come into
• 1:50:03
  this as a, a counselor or dad who's wanting to, to look for somebody.
• 1:50:09
  You can see where all these qualifications go.
• 1:50:11
  And that one is level, that one that isn't level with that one.
• 1:50:15
  So that's piece in itself is being kind of done at the moment.
• 1:50:19
  Rupert Isaacson: So we should probably get you, info on our program levels
• 1:50:24
  and what those mean in terms of skill sets so that you Yeah, okay.
• 1:50:29
  That makes sense.
• 1:50:30
  Because yeah, for example a horse boy level two in terms of if you've
• 1:50:36
  gone through the evaluation process, not just the certification course.
• 1:50:39
  Yeah.
• 1:50:39
  ERA in Ireland will ensure you if you, if we have gone taken that
• 1:50:46
  person through the evaluation.
• 1:50:47
  'cause we then know their standard of equine care, not just their
• 1:50:51
  standard of training and riding.
• 1:50:53
  But we realize as, for example, horse boy grows, we now have to evolve that
• 1:50:58
  so that w we can go to the next level of, okay, how do we inspect these yards?
• 1:51:05
  Because just 'cause they went through it and did well two years
• 1:51:07
  ago doesn't mean they are where they are now and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.
• 1:51:10
  And of course a lot of organizations have gone through this in the
• 1:51:12
  past, like the BHS and whatever.
• 1:51:13
  But it's, it's a learning curve for all of us.
• 1:51:16
  And it's, it's true.
• 1:51:16
  I think we have to work together.
• 1:51:19
  Emma Hutchison: But I think that's the big thing to start with.
• 1:51:20
  It's been about getting everybody to buy in to working together because,
• 1:51:25
  you know, 10 years ago people were not prepared to work together.
• 1:51:28
  No.
• 1:51:28
  And now it's really coming together and it's been, it's really positive.
• 1:51:32
  So if we can get that and then we can suddenly start to say,
• 1:51:36
  well, let's start to put some standards that we work towards.
• 1:51:39
  And yeah.
• 1:51:40
  So that's.
• 1:51:42
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, if with your permission, I'll, I'll,
• 1:51:45
  I'll try to get a couple of people down to that on April 8th.
• 1:51:48
  I, myself can't because I'm gonna be in the US but I'm thinking automatically
• 1:51:52
  of Nicole Gillard, who runs our place down in Froom, which is, you know,
• 1:51:56
  relatively like you as an inventor.
• 1:51:58
  And they have the they have medical students coming out from
• 1:52:02
  Bristol University doing their electives and mental health going
• 1:52:07
  to move the Mind, which is, it's, that's the name of the place.
• 1:52:10
  So it's now logical yes.
• 1:52:13
  To add everybody to this network.
• 1:52:14
  And I, it what I want listeners, the reason I'm, I'm going on about this
• 1:52:19
  and asking these questions of Emma, is, is as our field evolves the only
• 1:52:23
  way it's going to really serve the, the number of people it needs to is
• 1:52:27
  if it effectively becomes part of the National Health Service or is if it's in
• 1:52:32
  the USA is funded by just automatically by the big insurance companies.
• 1:52:37
  And I'm sitting here in Germany and that is actually the case, the what's
• 1:52:41
  called the Curatorium for te, which is the, the sort of Health Department
• 1:52:48
  of Therapeutic Writing is, and has been a wing of the government health
• 1:52:52
  department for like three decades.
• 1:52:56
  So they, they, they have really led the charge on this.
• 1:53:00
  But the, the difficulty can be that not.
• 1:53:05
  Every equine assisted need can necessarily be met by every modality.
• 1:53:12
  So the curatorium itself is running into some issues of its own limitations, and
• 1:53:18
  I think that's the same for all of us.
• 1:53:20
  So there might be someone that comes to my program and actually saying,
• 1:53:23
  well, you know, actually that person might be much, much, much better
• 1:53:27
  served by horseback, but a, I need to know about horseback for that.
• 1:53:30
  BI need a relationship with horseback.
• 1:53:32
  We need to be, not be in competition with each other, and we need to really
• 1:53:35
  understand what the other one does so we can make, so that we can come
• 1:53:42
  across as a, as a, as a, as a body of professionals rather than a bunch
• 1:53:48
  of bossy horsey people in fields or looking at each other suspiciously.
• 1:53:53
  Which as you say, 10 years ago, it, it was, despite the very good
• 1:53:57
  work that was being done, have you found that there is, you say, got a
• 1:54:01
  hundred members now on the register.
• 1:54:04
  That's impressive.
• 1:54:05
  How have you managed to get the word out there and people to buy in and
• 1:54:12
  what's, what's the message that you've, and what's the outreach you've done?
• 1:54:17
  Emma Hutchison: I mean, we obviously had quite a rush to start with because
• 1:54:20
  everybody kind of heard about it.
• 1:54:22
  And then it, it, it just, it media.
• 1:54:32
  To give yourself a voice, to be heard, to learn from everybody else.
• 1:54:36
  I mean, that's, you know, I'm a great one for saying,
• 1:54:38
  everybody learns from everybody.
• 1:54:40
  You might learn how you don't wanna do something, but you learn how
• 1:54:42
  you do wanna do something else.
• 1:54:44
  I was course last week and, you know, you just, just learn from everybody.
• 1:54:48
  It's, it's so, this is a, it's a huge opportunity.
• 1:54:51
  Don't be so stubborn and think, oh no, I'm doing fine.
• 1:54:54
  I'm, I'm absolutely, you know,
• 1:54:55
  not
• 1:54:56
  Emma Hutchison: doing, yes, you might be doing a fantastic job, but you
• 1:54:58
  can do an even better job by learning from somebody else that might want
• 1:55:02
  to do photography or something.
• 1:55:03
  Rupert Isaacson: No, exactly.
• 1:55:04
  Exactly, exactly, exactly that and, and, and your whole mentorship system.
• 1:55:09
  It's, it's, it's, it's brilliant and it's original.
• 1:55:11
  You think it's like the way you were talking about it.
• 1:55:14
  Oh yeah.
• 1:55:14
  And we do this and we do, and we have these, you know, this team down south who
• 1:55:17
  come up and these, but it's actually a bit mind blowing if you are listening to this
• 1:55:21
  from where I'm sitting, because you just answered in one sentence the dilemma of
• 1:55:32
  just the, that gap between manpower and funding that almost every organization
• 1:55:39
  hits as it becomes a bit successful.
• 1:55:43
  So the other
• 1:55:43
  Emma Hutchison: thing, just, just on that, the funding thing.
• 1:55:45
  So again, what we've done is we've had to move away from your
• 1:55:50
  standard stuff, and we've been working with our local council a.
• 1:55:55
  And in Scotland we have a, like an employability spectrum, which
• 1:55:58
  is one, one being you don't have a job, five being that you have a
• 1:56:01
  job and everything else in between.
• 1:56:04
  And I managed to convince the head of the employability department
• 1:56:08
  that we could provide a service to people who were pre one and one.
• 1:56:14
  So basically somebody who is not able to leave the house or their wellbeing is so
• 1:56:19
  bad that they're just so anxious about, they can't even think about getting a job.
• 1:56:24
  They're not gonna get to five.
• 1:56:26
  It doesn't matter who you invite them to go and see.
• 1:56:28
  So let us spend some time with them, we can work on them.
• 1:56:31
  And then we work on them pre one, we do one and two.
• 1:56:35
  And then at that stage, they're ready to engage with other people, social workers,
• 1:56:40
  whoever it's employability organizations or other members of the employability team
• 1:56:45
  who can then say, right now let's think about what you might want to do as a job.
• 1:56:48
  Because now you're confident enough, you're able to interact with other people.
• 1:56:52
  You're getting up regularly, you've got some sort of routine.
• 1:56:54
  We can help put all these things in place.
• 1:56:57
  And that has opened up funding to us from a council point of view,
• 1:57:01
  which we didn't have previous.
• 1:57:03
  And that has worked with both the youth development program and with it's
• 1:57:08
  enabled us to start a community program.
• 1:57:10
  So it's basically a week long program where we work with horses,
• 1:57:13
  do all the other activities.
• 1:57:15
  And then the thing is we, we working with the Ukrainian refugees.
• 1:57:19
  As well.
• 1:57:20
  So that's a new thing that we're gonna be starting.
• 1:57:22
  And it's a blended program, so there will be some online stuff.
• 1:57:28
  And again, you think you can't do this work online, you can random, but we
• 1:57:32
  learned that through Covid we weren't able to deliver our programs here
• 1:57:35
  'cause we couldn't have anybody here.
• 1:57:37
  So we, we put together some videos and we talked and we did some zooms with a video
• 1:57:42
  of the horse and we were able to do that.
• 1:57:44
  And that enables you, yes, ultimately you always want people to be able to come and
• 1:57:49
  interact with the horses, but sometimes cost distance numbers exclude that.
• 1:57:55
  So if you can put together this kind of stuff then you can feed it to people.
• 1:58:02
  They can make all these changes.
• 1:58:03
  They might not make as much of a change as if they're actually here
• 1:58:07
  and then they can maybe come here for a day to put all that into practice.
• 1:58:11
  So that's what we're doing with some of these, the Ukrainian community,
• 1:58:14
  because again, we've got do some work to convince them that they wanna actually
• 1:58:17
  be involved in these programs to start.
• 1:58:19
  So we're just about to take on a Ukrainian social worker who will, will
• 1:58:23
  become part of our team and is funded through this, this employability program.
• 1:58:29
  Rupert Isaacson: And is that social worker sitting in Ukraine and will come
• 1:58:31
  in by Zoom or Is is here in the uk.
• 1:58:34
  Emma Hutchison: He's an immigrant himself.
• 1:58:35
  That's, that's come over here and he's actually been working with
• 1:58:38
  the council for the last few years.
• 1:58:40
  And they've allowed him to join our team.
• 1:58:42
  Rupert Isaacson: Now when you say you, you approach the council.
• 1:58:45
  Okay.
• 1:58:46
  And the council's got these Ukrainian refugees, or the council's got these
• 1:58:52
  people who can't get out of bed and, you know, they're pre one or one.
• 1:58:58
  Not everyone knows how to approach a council.
• 1:59:01
  Emma.
• 1:59:03
  How do you do that?
• 1:59:06
  Emma Hutchison: It's just about relationships.
• 1:59:07
  I mean, you have to basically do Italy, find out who people are in councils.
• 1:59:13
  There are so many different departments,
• 1:59:15
  Rupert Isaacson: but people also get elected and, and come and go.
• 1:59:17
  So, I mean, let's say you're trying to build something over two to four years.
• 1:59:22
  You might be dealing with this one person is, is sympathetic
• 1:59:26
  and then someone else comes in.
• 1:59:27
  And so how do you navigate, you know, a a how do you, a, how do you lo
• 1:59:32
  find, get that relationship going?
• 1:59:34
  Like a lot of people are just shy.
• 1:59:35
  What door do you even knock on?
• 1:59:37
  How do you do it?
• 1:59:38
  Do you send someone an email?
• 1:59:39
  How does it begin?
• 1:59:41
  And then how do you navigate?
• 1:59:42
  Yeah.
• 1:59:43
  Emma Hutchison: Yeah.
• 1:59:43
  We started by, by contacting our local counselors, and you're right, they do
• 1:59:47
  change on a regular basis and you've got your different, you know, your
• 1:59:51
  different parties, get them all out, invite them all out, get them to come
• 1:59:55
  and see the work that you're doing.
• 1:59:57
  I mean, as I say, we really, do you find
• 1:59:58
  Rupert Isaacson: they generally will, are they usually pretty
• 2:00:01
  Emma Hutchison: They absolutely will try a local productive, we've had local MSPs,
• 2:00:04
  we've had our mps, we've had also, so,
• 2:00:06
  Rupert Isaacson: okay.
• 2:00:06
  So, so in find out who they are and invite them.
• 2:00:09
  Emma Hutchison: Yep.
• 2:00:10
  Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
• 2:00:12
  Emma Hutchison: People don't understand this type of work until they see it.
• 2:00:14
  We are very lucky.
• 2:00:15
  We have got Jock who is an amazing kind of sales front person to
• 2:00:19
  do the real and he loves it.
• 2:00:21
  You know, standing up in front of and giving demonstrations is not
• 2:00:24
  everybody's back, but he loves it.
• 2:00:25
  So we're very lucky that we do have that.
• 2:00:27
  And
• 2:00:27
  Emma Hutchison: then again, the employability team, the, I got to
• 2:00:31
  know through inviting out the head of the employability team, he had
• 2:00:34
  no money for probably eight years.
• 2:00:37
  And then one day I phoned him and he said, you're not gonna believe this.
• 2:00:40
  The government have just granted us some additional employment
• 2:00:43
  funding through this new scheme.
• 2:00:45
  So yes, put a grant in and we'll work together and we'll come up with a plan.
• 2:00:49
  And that's basically what we've done.
• 2:00:51
  And through that we have managed to got
• 2:00:53
  Rupert Isaacson: it to
• 2:00:54
  Emma Hutchison: get all this.
• 2:00:55
  But I mean, it's just, it's just,
• 2:00:57
  Rupert Isaacson: but without that relationship, he would never
• 2:00:58
  have called you to say that?
• 2:01:00
  Emma Hutchison: No, it's, I mean, it's still, it's not
• 2:01:02
  an a well known enough thing.
• 2:01:04
  People certainly up here, people are not going, oh, that send somebody
• 2:01:07
  to EQU assist, they'll sort it out.
• 2:01:09
  Not, not in a million years.
• 2:01:10
  You have gotta fight your corner.
• 2:01:12
  So you've gotta get it's numbers, you've gotta contact loads of people,
• 2:01:16
  you've gotta constantly follow it up, invite people out, send them brochures.
• 2:01:21
  I mean, it's just general kind of sales, isn't it really?
• 2:01:23
  Which when you're delivering at the same time is really difficult to do.
• 2:01:26
  Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, exactly.
• 2:01:27
  And looking after your horses and, and you know, I, I think by their very nature,
• 2:01:31
  you know, a a lot of us that get into this work are, are fairly maverick and not.
• 2:01:38
  Great lovers of bureaucracy and authoritative systems, but there
• 2:01:42
  comes to be a, there comes a point where if we dunno how to
• 2:01:45
  access them, we can't survive.
• 2:01:47
  And again, I, I think there's just a real need for you to give
• 2:01:50
  this sort of mentorship to people.
• 2:01:52
  You know, if you've got someone who's standing in a field in Staffordshire doing
• 2:01:56
  an amazing job, but no one knows who, who that person is, are they gonna be
• 2:02:00
  there in five years able to do it still without knowing that you can find out.
• 2:02:06
  And how would you even know to what department to look up?
• 2:02:12
  Emma Hutchison: I know because it's not this, again, with us it's different.
• 2:02:14
  Aberdeen City is different to Aberdeen Shire,
• 2:02:17
  right?
• 2:02:17
  Emma Hutchison: It's just literally it.
• 2:02:18
  You just have to keep on and keep asking and keep inviting and just I mean things
• 2:02:23
  like, I mean, we are a charity so we can get, go to trust and grants, but again,
• 2:02:28
  you need to build that relationship.
• 2:02:30
  You are going to get regular funding from those funders who understand, appreciate,
• 2:02:36
  and have a relationship with you.
• 2:02:38
  So it's just the relationship building for an organization like
• 2:02:42
  ours is really, really important.
• 2:02:43
  And that's what's allowed us to keep on and grow and diversify.
• 2:02:47
  And again, you have to think out the box just because you're working
• 2:02:50
  with kids and that's what you love.
• 2:02:52
  Funding school children for us is virtually impossible because
• 2:02:56
  everybody up here says that the kids should be in school and it's funded
• 2:03:01
  by the government and the school.
• 2:03:03
  Well, it doesn't happen like that.
• 2:03:04
  We all know that.
• 2:03:06
  But the lottery and people like that, they won't fund kids during school
• 2:03:10
  hours that fund it outside school hours.
• 2:03:13
  But our courses run during school hours.
• 2:03:14
  So it's just, and I mean, I'm quite happy because I say we, I've gone
• 2:03:18
  down all sorts of different paths and we've diversified and we've changed
• 2:03:22
  this, and we've adapted that because you have to or you won't survive.
• 2:03:26
  Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
• 2:03:27
  Absolutely.
• 2:03:28
  Well, I do think people should be in contact with you.
• 2:03:32
  So can, and here's another question.
• 2:03:35
  If people want mentorship in how to grow and develop their
• 2:03:40
  organizations like that, do you offer trainings and courses in that?
• 2:03:43
  Or is it more informal?
• 2:03:45
  Can, but can people actually hire you as a consultant for this kind of thing?
• 2:03:49
  Because the, the, the kind of information that you're giving Emma,
• 2:03:52
  it's, it's very needed and there's a bit of a paucity of people out there
• 2:03:58
  who really can help people navigate.
• 2:04:02
  So can they contact you and Yeah,
• 2:04:04
  Emma Hutchison: absolutely.
• 2:04:05
  Rupert Isaacson: So, so give us all the contacts.
• 2:04:06
  Emma Hutchison: So our website is www horseback org uk
• 2:04:12
  Rupert Isaacson: horseback org uk.
• 2:04:15
  Emma Hutchison: Yep.
• 2:04:16
  My email is.
• 2:04:19
  horseback.org
• 2:04:20
  uk.
• 2:04:22
  Rupert Isaacson: Perfect.
• 2:04:22
  Emma Hutchison: You can follow us on Facebook again, just horseback
• 2:04:25
  uk and we are on Instagram, we're on TikTok, believe it or not.
• 2:04:30
  So all of the socials, we're on all those.
• 2:04:32
  We do try and keep those up to date so that you one of the stories of what's
• 2:04:36
  going on and everything, because again, the funders like to see what's going on.
• 2:04:39
  They like to see.
• 2:04:40
  Rupert Isaacson: Sure.
• 2:04:41
  It's all about story.
• 2:04:42
  Yeah.
• 2:04:42
  Emma Hutchison: Yeah.
• 2:04:43
  Absolutely.
• 2:04:44
  We'd love to hear from anybody.
• 2:04:45
  Rupert Isaacson: Well, Emma, it's brilliant.
• 2:04:47
  I, I, I know you've got to go and get on with your evening.
• 2:04:51
  I hope that we can reconvene.
• 2:04:54
  I'd like to have you back on.
• 2:04:56
  I can think of more questions and I know people have more questions
• 2:04:59
  for you and and for Jay also, it might be nice to get Jock mm-hmm.
• 2:05:03
  And TAF on.
• 2:05:04
  Yeah.
• 2:05:04
  Because there's just such a wealth of info.
• 2:05:07
  So, maybe we can agree that this is the first of two or three
• 2:05:12
  rather than just a one-off.
• 2:05:15
  Yeah.
• 2:05:15
  Rupert Isaacson: Because people will have, people will have questions.
• 2:05:19
  So horseback do org.uk
• 2:05:24
  and emma@horseback.org.uk.
• 2:05:29
  All right.
• 2:05:30
  Alright.
• 2:05:31
  Well, until the next time, thank you so much for sharing everything you've shared.
• 2:05:35
  It's been.
• 2:05:38
  Educational, not just interesting, like I've learned like, well,
• 2:05:42
  I'm thinking, oh, I've gotta get a photography thing really good.
• 2:05:46
  Alright.
• 2:05:46
  Till the next time.
• 2:05:48
  Emma Hutchison: Okay.
• 2:05:50
  Rupert Isaacson: I hope you enjoyed today's conversation as much as I did.
• 2:05:53
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• 2:05:58
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