Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Equine Assisted World.
I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson.
New York Times bestselling author of the Horse Boy.
Founder of New Trails Learning Systems and long ride home.com.
You can find details of all our programs and shows on Rupert isaacson.com.
Here on Equine Assisted World.
We look at the cutting edge and the best practices currently being developed and,
established in the equine assisted field.
This can be psychological, this can be neuropsych, this can be
physical, this can be all of the conditions that human beings have.
These lovely equines, these beautiful horses that we work with, help us with.
Thank you for being part of the adventure and we hope you enjoy today's show
welcome back to Equine Assisted World, where we talk to people, who are in
the world of therapy therapeutic, stuff that is just pl flat out good for you.
working with horses in a way for the body, for the mind, for the soul.
what's the cutting edge of this?
It's, it's a rapidly developing field, and the point of this, podcast is
to make people aware of some of the people who are out there really at the
cutting edge, doing amazing work with this on the neuroscience end, on the
practical end, on the horse welfare end, or putting it all together.
So I have today somebody absolutely fabulous.
you can always rely on me to find people who are absolutely
fabulous, and this is one of them.
She's called Terry Brosnan.
If you don't know who Terry Brosnan is, you should, Terry Brosnan is
in Dublin, and she runs the, equine program at the Child Vision, school,
which is in the middle of Dublin.
I don't mean on the edge of Dublin with some fields, I mean in the
middle of Dublin with horses starving kids from, poor backgrounds.
And, it's a school for the visually impaired, which has a really, really,
really large collegiate intake.
But it's also, a school that has large amounts of people with autism, other
neuropsychiatric related, conditions and physical conditions, some of them quite
severe and visually impaired altogether.
It's a really, it's tough job, , in a tough place, and Terry makes it work.
but Terry doesn't just do that.
Terry has been somewhat of a newcomer to the equine assisted world,
meaning within the last decade.
And one of the things which she identified, which I thought was very
interesting, was that there was a lot of factionalism and a lot of
division between the different areas of equine assisted stuff, whether it
was Path International or R d a or Hippotherapy or I gala or Horse Boy or
Dead, all of which are great things.
But they were all existing very much separate from each other.
And people, having an idea that somehow they were in competition with each
other or, you should do one but not the other, which of course is not true.
all the best practices combined.
So, Terry really saw this problem and she's one of the few people I've run
across who were proactive about it, and I was lucky enough to be sitting in a, in a.
Meeting about three years ago in Dublin, where an idea came up to create, an
organization called Equine Assisted Ireland, a national association
that would put together all these modalities, all these paradigms,
and, look for the best and look, look for the best practices within them.
This then went on to something else rather extraordinary.
And this is what I'm gonna ask Terry about.
So Terry, just introduce her.
Who are you?
What do you do?
Why are you here?
Terri Brosnan: I'm Terry Brosnan.
I have grown up around horses and fascinated by the way that we
interact with them all of my life.
I got the opportunity, just over seven years ago to work
in, a therapeutic setting.
and to take it on and make it work cuz it was sitting there.
It wasn't quite working.
and they didn't know what was, why this couldn't work in a situation
that had been set up specifically for it and it still wasn't working.
and so I came in and, one of the big problems that I found was that
there was a lack of communication between all of these different groups
that were setting themselves up within the equine assisted areas.
There was a lot of what we would call here in Ireland, snobbery, and just difference
between groups, and a feeling that certain groups were better or less than others.
from my understanding of it, because I was coming in from the
outside, I could kind of see that all of these groups were fantastic.
All of them offered really good connections with the people
that they were working with.
They were all coming from a really good place, and all of them wanted to learn
more than they currently knew, and wanted this practice to move forward.
so I think that when I, when I see common goals, I'm, I'm somebody who kind of goes,
oh, well, let's group all these people together and see, see where this can go,
because we're always better together.
We're, you know, human beings, we're better in a tribe, you know, we're
always better when we have support, and we're not trying to go it alone.
and so I thought, right, if I can get all these people in a room and we can
say, actually, look, we have so much to offer each other, we can go send so many
more places together than we can apart.
, and that was where the idea was born out of.
, we have a great relationship with I Gala because, you know, their
practices are so high standard here.
Their, their, their people are really well trained and, and
fantastic, , at what they do.
And when we looked at the R D A I, which it is in Ireland, which is the
equivalent of PATH or the R D A in the uk, these guys had been working
at this since, in Ireland, I think since the seventies and the eighties.
all with really good backgrounds.
They, a lot of these women coming from horsey backgrounds, knowing
their, their good Irish horses, knowing all these attributes, and
desperate for more information and not really having a way of connecting
in with the wider world and wider developments and EQU assisted activities.
And, and so bringing everybody together was a way of trying to, establish
connections to the likes of Hetty I, Ohio, the larger organizations where research
was being done where, like Horse Boy where people could actually just say,
oh yeah, I can see how I can apply this to my work and improve what I'm doing.
So that was how we started that.
Rupert Isaacson: So, just for the listeners who aren't familiar with
Heti and I Ohio, can you just tell us a little bit about what they're,
Terri Brosnan: so I'll start with I Ohio, cause they're a
really interesting organization.
They're the International Association of Human Animal Interaction Organizations.
So they look after things like, you know, human animal interactions with dogs, cats,
farm animals, horses, elephants, whale.
Everything.
Yeah.
And they're interested in studying how humans and animals interact with each
other, and they very involved in research and looking at this across the globe.
Then, I suppose Hetty is the horses in Education and Therapy International,
and they would be a member of Ohio.
Okay.
They would be one of the members of Iowa, Ohio, but they specialize in horses alone.
And so they would have originally been made up of the rda, the Riding for the
Disabled Association, path International.
those would've been the original founding groups of Hetty.
and it has evolved now, and it includes Al in various countries.
It includes, horse boy practitioners, it includes therapeutic riding coaches, OTs,
physios, everybody who's coming into this field, can become a member of if Hetty.
, and they're looking at trying to ensure great welfare for their horses, welfare
for clients and, and a kind of standard, professional standard across the board.
Rupert Isaacson: And so I, I, I was there with you.
That's kind of when I more or less first met you.
Yeah.
and we were, you were, putting forward, an island based national association,
which has since gained ground.
Called Equine Assisted Ireland, bringing all of these diverse groups together,
which I thought was a brilliant idea.
and now several years on, I now see that you're doing something else on a
national level, which I find intriguing.
so what, for the listeners, what, what Terry's done is she, so
she, she has, well, tell us, you involved Horse Sport Ireland, right?
Yes.
She managed to get the sport horse organization, which would be the
equivalent of the US Equestrian Federation or the British Horse Society to back
a really interesting project that, so what have you managed to do, Terry?
Terri Brosnan: So, I think, you know, we recognize the need for
therapeutic riding across every society that we've come across.
and what's happening is people are turning up on riding school
doors and going, knocking there and saying, hi, can you see my child?
and the riding instructors that are there have all this horse knowledge.
They've learned how to give a flat work lesson.
They've learned how to give a lunch lesson, lead rain, jumping, all of this.
But they've never learned how to give a therapeutic session.
and.
They didn't have that skill, that toolbox, that skill group.
and so horse Sport Ireland, came to us and said, look, we have this
demand, we have this enormous demand.
How are we going to fill it?
How, how can, what can we do?
How can we allow the people that are there who have all of this horse knowledge
to expand it and have a toolbox to work with children with, autism, sensory
processing issues, disabilities, all sorts of, in a regular riding school
environment, in a regular riding school.
Right?
And
Rupert Isaacson: I guess this would also include people with eating
disorders or anxiety or D H D or just the stuff that shows up, right?
Terri Brosnan: Everything across the board.
So, I mean, they're, these people are the type of people who are, are
knocking on the doors of writing centers all over Ireland anyway.
and there was a huge demand, but no qualified staff.
and so horse board Allen said, look, we need to provide qualified people here.
How do, how are we gonna do it?
And they came to, our team and, where I work in television, they said, look, you
guys all started as riding instructors.
You guys all came from a horse background system is working and
you're providing this amazing service.
So how can we, how can we become you?
How, how can we make ourselves, how can we provide this information to.
All of, the, people around, excuse me, there's a ghost in the background here.
Large dogs, but a four-legged one.
Yeah.
A four-legged one.
Yes.
So, we proposed that we would sit down, examine our practices and
see what it was that makes ridings instructors really good at this work.
And I think we're uniquely qualified.
Actually, horsey people are uniquely qualified because our day-to-day
colleague is a large non-verbal colleague.
We work with non-verbal people, inver commas, horses,
Rupert Isaacson: with a lot of anxiety.
A horse with a prey animal,
Terri Brosnan: absolutely.
With high cortisol levels.
So, I mean, these are our, these are our, best friends and our,
and our colleagues every day.
And so we are used to reading body language.
We're used to not having to communicate with words, and we're used to doing risk
assessments on a very, very quick basis.
so we, we have lots of skills within our armor that we can add to, to,
allow people to really provide good quality researched, Sessions that
will meet goals for people, okay.
Meet goals for the children and adults that they're seeing, and improve lives.
So that was what we did.
We put together a course, we wrote it over lockdown.
and then we, they, they, they came to us and, and said,
look, we'll fund it with you.
If you apply for funding with us, we'll, we'll go for it.
We applied for funding.
We were successful.
And that financed the setting up writing and, rolling out of this course.
So I, last year, between actually November, 2021 and November, 2022,
we had had about 50 people on our course, but qualified about 35 of them.
They all had the right qualifications to get certified within the process.
Rupert Isaacson: So when you say the right qualifications, this, this means that
these were people, for example, who'd already done their B H S A I, that would
be the British Horse Society assisted instructor basic level thing, that they
had to at least have something like that,
Terri Brosnan: or Absolutely.
They had to have some coaching ch or teaching qualification.
They had to have a good horse background.
and they also needed, because of the, the, the setup with the Horse,
port Island and the Association of Irish Riding establishments.
Who really pushed for this to go through, they had to be a member
of the Association of Irish Riding Establishments or be, an employee of a
member of the Association of Irish Riding
Rupert Isaacson: establishment.
So there's something here that's blowing my mind.
I'm used to the large horse associations, being closed priesthoods
that perhaps, act like gatekeepers and this can, like any bureaucratic
organization, make change a slow thing.
You said that horse Sport Island came to you, you didn't go to them.
No.
That's unheard of.
How did this happen?
Terri Brosnan: well, I think they had, I, I knew a lot of people who were working
in the industry have done all of my life.
and they were interested in, when I started into therapeutic writing,
they were interested because they know the way my mind works.
I need to have facts.
I, I'm very logical, I like things to, to progress in an order.
and they know that for me, the horse knowledge is where I want to come from.
I always wanna learn more.
I want to interact with my horses in the best way that I can.
and I'm not afraid to say there's lots of things I don't know, and
I'm always willing to learn if there's a better way to do something.
and so we started this.
I got a lot of help from people within the organization that I work from.
I have an amazing team.
Everybody came with ideas.
We were lucky enough to be introduced to you, Rupert, and we, we absorb,
we have a team that absorbs ideas and we will find the best principles and
we'll take them and run with them.
I'm a magpie.
I will take anybody else's idea if I think it's good enough, and I will run with it.
And that's really what happened.
We learned a lot very quickly from our OTs, our physios from the
experts in orientation and mobility, disability experts learned a lot
going back to basics of horsemanship and going, okay, so what can we do?
How do we marry this all together?
The final linchpin for me was the horse boy experience.
So that marries the, the, the two aspects really well together.
And it showed me the place of the horse at the center of the work that I'm
doing, which really sat well with me.
and so when I'm doing something like that and I'm all enthusiastic,
I'll, I'm very evangelistic.
I'm, I'm talking to everybody about it.
so I, you know, I was, I was letting, people that I knew in the industry
know about this, the work that I was doing, and they said, this sounds
just like really good horsemanship and that's what we want to promote.
and you're, you're really preserving your horses at the center of the
work and you're doing good work with the clients that you're seeing.
So that's what we are interested in.
We're interested in coming from a horse perspective.
I think the difficulty is for the, the governing horse bodies around the world
is that the horse isn't always the center of therapeutic riding or therapeutic or
equine-assisted activities, whatever the
Rupert Isaacson: terminology of sport riding as well, I mean, or, or of sport
Terri Brosnan: riding.
Exactly.
Rupert Isaacson: Horse is often neglected as even, yes.
Yeah.
Terri Brosnan: So, so they're really are starting to move towards a
system where the horse is the center.
Okay.
And everything else needs to come from that.
The, you know, because if we're looking at having.
Other professions wanting to join us in the arena, they need
to have a horse person there.
I think the analogy I like to use is, you know, when you're a healthcare
professional and you're working with parents, they are the expert on their
child and they will tell you all of this amazing information about their
child and they know more about their children's needs than anybody else.
And that's equivalent.
You know, there doesn't make them a professional, a healthcare professional,
because if they had seen a thousand children at that level, that makes them a
horse care pro or healthcare professional.
And I would feel the same about horses.
Somebody who owns one horse and knows it well may be an expert in that horse, but
it doesn't make them a horse professional.
Mm.
But when you've had hundreds of horses through your hands and working with
them on an ongoing basis, that makes you a horse professional, hopefully
you're a horse professional who puts the horse at the center of your work.
and I think we need to be really, enthused that horse.
People want to get involved in this because they need to protect the horse
and keep it at the center of this work.
I want
Rupert Isaacson: to come in a few minutes to how exactly you are putting the horse
first, and what are you doing for the horse body, mind, spirit wellbeing as
part of this work and policy force.
But before I go there, what's been the response?
From the equine, these young equine professionals that you're reaching out to.
Cause you're basically saying to them, if, if I understand it correctly,
look, there's a career path here.
whether you do actual therapeutic modalities or whether you want to
just be, , a writing instructor, but knowing that you're gonna get
these people coming in now more and more with diagnosed conditions or
maybe undiagnosed conditions, but still needing a more sensitive hand.
what's been the response from these people?
Because horse people are famously bossy and like, well, they
should just get up with it and, you know, pull their socks up.
And so how, how have you managed to, to get through that bossy horsiness that
so many of us were brought up with?
Terri Brosnan: I, I, there are two aspects to this.
I think the overwhelming response has been relief, interesting from people.
Interesting.
They have been looking for a way to deal with these clients that they're seeing.
Either they know and they're being told these clients have autism or A
D H D or they're not told and they're still having to try and put them
on a horse and teach them riding without any skillset or toolkit.
so on that basis, there was overall relief and that was added to by the idea that.
Yes, you already have a huge number of the skills that are required.
We're not gonna teach you to suck eggs.
You know, we're not going to reinvent the wheel here.
All of the skills that you have around horses are all valid, and this is
how you utilize them better to put the horse at the center of your work.
and I think it's really important for, particularly in Ireland, because
we're the land of the horse and nobody wants to be talked down to here.
We're all very prickly about, you know, we know what we're doing.
so it, it leads to that idea of, you know, if you're gentle with people
and assume that they're coming from a place of knowledge, they can always
ask if they, if they want to fill in any gaps, and we leave that space open.
But we're saying to them, okay guys, this is stuff you have.
How do you want to evolve it?
You know, we're gonna give you everything you need.
What are you looking for?
So we're asking them to feed back into it, and that takes away the bossiness.
We all need to be a little bit more curious, a little bit more vulnerable,
a little less, you know, on edge when we, when we meet with other
professionals, who might, it might seem quite threatening, you know, here's
somebody going to tell you how to run your life or how to run your horses.
And that's not what we're about at all.
We're about.
Saying, look, we were curious.
We, we found this great system and we found other great systems and
we've implemented them all together.
or as much of the, the best practice with a human and the best practice
with a horse that we could find for various different reasons.
I mean, our specialty is visual impairment and it's a very unique slot.
And we found all the experts in that.
And we, we look at that very particularly.
but we have lots to learn from our students as well.
And we're not above saying to them, look, what is your experience?
Tell us your experience.
Bring your personality into the situation.
Trust the
Rupert Isaacson: experts, basically.
The experts being absolutely, yeah.
With the condition.
Yeah.
Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
So, I'm gonna ask you actually a bit in a mi in a moment about the
specifics of working with people with visual impairments, and particularly
when there's visual impairments are combined with say, autism or
say, a serious physical condition.
but let's talk about this horse welfare aspect.
so if you were saying that the, horse sport island, and then professionals
within the horse industry there were reacting well to what you were including
in this course, for professionals, not just about how you work with people with.
Special needs of one kind or another, but also on how do you prioritize
the welfare of the horse in this?
Can you tell us a bit about how you do prioritize the
welfare of the horse in this?
Cause you, you're in a unique position there in the middle of the city.
Terri Brosnan: Yeah.
So it there, there's a couple of interesting aspects to this.
Yes, we are in the city center, so that means that we actually
don't have access to daily grazing.
We don't have access to some of the things that in an ideal world, we would
want for our horses on a day-to-day
Rupert Isaacson: basis.
Well, that many people take for granted.
Terri Brosnan: Yeah, absolutely.
Horses and humans live have and will always live hand and gel for the last
God knows how many thousand of years.
So we've found a way of prioritizing the most important things,
which are our horses, welfare and happiness on a daily basis.
why, why would I be interested in this?
Well, originally when I, went and, and talked to the guys in Ohio, I,
I was talking to them from a horse perspective and a lot of their.
Practitioners were coming from psychological perspectives and working
with horses, but, but not necessarily always from a horse background.
And they were really interested to work with people who were just
coming from an equine background.
And so one of the things that I got involved in early on was a, an
equine welfare task force, or an equine task force, not just welfare.
One of the modules we worked on was welfare and training of the
horse and best practices within equine assisted activities.
It was a group from all over the world, and everybody was coming at
it from their own unique perspective.
You know, people from South Africa, from Australia, from
France, Germany, the states.
And everybody's situation was different, but the core tenants of
best welfare practice were the same.
and so that was an interesting group to work with.
And it, it, it, it fed into a lot of what I knew, what I'd learned,
what I was going to go on and learn.
and I'd always been interested in, Andrew McLean and Paul McGreevy's
work on equitation science.
I'd always been interested in how horses learn.
And then having worked with you guys in Horse Boy , it's applying that learning.
To keeping horses interested, keeping them happy, not letting them go
still, cuz in Ireland, I don't know.
I, I can only speak from my own perspective.
We have a situation where we break horses around four years of age.
We teach them a lot between four and six, maybe seven years of age.
And then we just stop, we stop their education.
Mm-hmm.
Unless they're very, in a very tiny number of elite horses
that are doing, progressing with dressage or venting, we stop.
And it's just so devastating for horses.
They're such intelligent beings.
They love to learn.
and they, they'll learn anything.
They'll learn lots of bad habits as well as good habits if you let them.
and I think that's inevitably what often happens to, to, horses in the
long run is that they get so bored, that they, they learn bad habits
Rupert Isaacson: instead of I agree.
I mean the, the, the, a lot of what people say, I think when they're saying,
oh, this horse is bad to behave, or it's just bored and, and that horses
are essentially playful animals and the one thing they're often so often
not allowed to ever do is play.
And certainly that, that play can't come into the working environment.
Can you tell us how that, given that you are in these, this really
constrained environment, what is your week to week program?
For your horses that keeps them happy, involved, fit and body and
mind that others could follow.
What, what, what's your formula?
What do you do at Child Vision?
Terri Brosnan: Okay, so it's a real mix.
across the board.
There are play times, there's loose schooling.
most of the weekends we, we don't work at the weekends.
We're in a very luxury position with horses.
Unlike most people.
We, we are, our horses are off every weekend, so we encourage
lots of loose schooling over our weekends, loose jumping, little
bit of lunging, but nothing where there's a human on their back.
If we can possibly get away with it over the weekend, Monday to
Friday, then we'll work in hand.
We'll work long reigns, we'll work lunging, and we will school our horses.
We don't have a huge amount of time.
We see an awful lot of people.
How many do you see Between 80 and 120 every week.
Okay.
And we have a, we have a staff of, of four at the moment.
80
Rupert Isaacson: to a hundred people a week.
Staff of four.
And you said lunging in hand and long reigning during the week.
When you're seeing these hundred people, how do you avoid there being a time
conflict between what you gotta do for the horse and what you gotta do for
Terri Brosnan: the people?
So this was, this was the really interesting thing working
with you guys was just where, how could we find the time?
Where would we find the time?
Because it seemed like, you know, you needed time for in hand work, you needed
time for this, you needed time for that.
And where were we gonna see all these clients?
so we, we combined the two where, where possible, you know, we give lunch
lessons, we'll give in hand work with our clients, we'll teach them how to
do it, we'll teach them how to lunch.
We will, you know, work with them in long reigns.
We will in use side rains and we'll use market harbors.
We'll use v e side rains to give our horse contact to work into, so
that they can continue the work that they've done on the lunge or in the
side rains as they progress around.
Rupert Isaacson: Oh, that's clever.
So you, you sessions, they can build their muscles at the
same time as working with the
Terri Brosnan: kids.
Absolutely.
Cuz we don't have enough time to do it outside of sessions.
We have to incorporate that work into when the horses are actually moving.
Rupert Isaacson: okay, so you, you, for example, would have an autistic
or blind child on the horse while doing the in-hand work with the horse?
Absolutely.
Terri Brosnan: It gives them amazing feel.
Rupert Isaacson: Ah, okay.
Okay.
No, this makes sense.
And then do some of your, older.
Clients who maybe are getting to adolescent, can you bring
them in as part of the team?
Can you then hand over some of the lunging, long reigning and in hand
Terri Brosnan: work to them?
Yeah, I mean, we, we would have, we would have volunteers and we would
have older clients that come in and do work experience with us and volunteer.
And we would try, and this is not rocket science, and there is very little
gatekeeping within, our organization or our team within the expertise we have.
We have this expertise, do you wanna come and learn?
Let's do this.
You know, we'll give, we'll pitch it at the right volume, we'll
pitch it at the right level.
but we are not saying, you can't do this or you can't learn this.
There's far too much of that in horses.
It's like, I have this knowledge and you need to give me all
your money so you can have it.
so we try and just say, look, you know, what, what part of this, do
you wanna help us train these horses?
Would you like to, to learn how to lunge them?
Would you like to learn how to do in handwork?
And we keep it fairly basic because, you know, it depends on how we
don't wanna overwhelm people either.
You want to set them up for success and make sure that they're, you're, you're
providing them with accurate training that's going to allow them to do the work
that th that you're doing with them and improve what the situation and, and make
it all happier for them and the horse.
Rupert Isaacson: From the listener's point of view, I can really attest to this.
I had the, honor of going to the, Royal Dublin show, which
is the big Irish horse show.
If you haven't ever gone there, you really should.
It's one of the great cultural experiences in the world, I think.
and, I saw you Terry and Lucy, Lucy, Dylan, your right hand, who's amazing, and
David, , tell me David's surname again.
David Mole.
David Mole, that's right.
David Moore, who comes from a show jumping background, but is
now working in the autism field.
I saw you guys do a, a demo of the work, and one of the things that I
found very amusing was that the horses looked so good, that, and you listeners
will get a chuckle out of this.
So, basically the reason why a lot of people bring their horses
stubborn and show, obviously try and sell their horses, right?
So the, the horses had to look fabulous, you know, huge top
lines, huge muscles, da da.
And so the, the child, we saw the child vision team go in to do their
therapeutic riding demo on horses.
That looked so good that people came up who had no idea what they
were doing and said, oh, which showing class are these horses in?
And are they for sale?
And these were like donation throwaway horses that you guys had.
Totally turned around, and looked frankly magnificent.
and this of course, I was, I'm not used to seeing in the therapeutic riding world.
What do you think, we can do or you can or one can do mm-hmm.
To get their therapeutic places, getting their horses into meta horses like this.
Because I saw how these horses arrived with you and they Yeah.
Didn't look like that.
And then I saw how they were a year later, while having been trained
and rehabbed while serving the kids.
It wasn't like you had the time and the luxury to take them out
of work and build them, and then you've done it at the same time.
What would you say to, people who are running therapeutic riding or even
just regular riding, establishments who are, you do have this time
crunch to get their horses like this?
What, what's your advice?
Terri Brosnan: Well, first of all, on a very basic business economic level,
this is just a no-brainer for me.
you know, up until, you know, a couple of years ago, people are spending money,
massively on equine chiropractics.
you're, you know, you're spending money on spas, equine spas.
You're, you're trying to find time to school your horses there,
your insurance is going through the roof because your horses are.
Switched off.
And accidents happen when horses are not paying attention and
they're not engaged with the people that are working with them.
so from a very basic economic perspective, I have a very low insurance, rate.
I have really good feedback from my clients.
They love being on my horses and looking up my horses.
They want to be with them.
I don't have big chiropractic bills.
I have very small spa and chiropractic bills for my horses because they have
good core strength and they are stable.
So from, if you leave everything else aside, you know, if I leave all of
the therapeutics, by the way, that's a
Rupert Isaacson: dog in the background, everybody, sorry.
It is
Terri Brosnan: a very, very large dog with high heel spot clip
clapping across the wooden floor.
if you leave all of, if you leave the therapeutics aside, but you were in a
horse business and you want your horse to turn out and be, you know, look amazing
and behave amazingly, and be interested in what they're doing, then the work
that we do with them is how that happens.
It wa they, as you say, they weren't like that when we got them.
but putting these horses together not only improves their physical
attribute, but they're mentally much.
More engaged.
They really have a trust bond with the people that are
working beside them every day.
You know, they'll look to Lucy and David and myself, and they'll, you know, they'll
trust us over whatever is happening on their back, which means that we
can use them for very compromised kids because they're not listening to this.
They're listening.
They're not listening to the sky monkey, they're not listening
to the person on the back.
They're listening to the person at their front, at the side who's, who's
going to mind them, and who's the person who puts all the work into them.
and so from that basis, it's, it really is a no-brainer.
and I couldn't go back to producing horses for anything in a different way, because
it just wouldn't make economic sense.
Rupert Isaacson: So for you, the, the, the secret is in the, the play time, loose
schooling, and then also the lunging in hand and, and in, and, long reigning work.
Yeah.
But combining that with the clients now, can they come to you and learn this?
Terri Brosnan: Absolutely.
you know, we're, we're happy, happy to teach people what we're we're doing.
because it's, I think when you find something that works so
well, you want to pass it on.
You don't want to keep it to yourself.
You wanna spread the word, and you know, We're an open door.
People can come in and shadow us.
They can come and do courses with us.
they can learn about what we do.
we're, we're happy.
We're really are very open campus.
because the, we've nothing to hide.
I think that's one of the things as well.
It takes away that whole anxiety.
You know, people, how do you train your horses?
Is there some secret?
There's no secret.
This is science.
This is basic good horsemanship, teaching your horse new tricks, keeping them
engaged, doing with your horse is what you would love people to do with your kids.
Yeah.
Keeping them interested.
Learning, moving, supple, happy, engaged.
Rupert Isaacson: So this what this sounds like, you, you, you, you, there's some
sounds like conflict resolution to me.
so you've got, you've got time conflict resolved.
Yeah.
You've got a seeming conflict between the sport or performance horse aspect
and the therapeutic aspect result.
Mm-hmm.
You've got, can we have horses in a city versus country seemingly resolved?
and also looking for resolution through what you're doing through equine assisted
island and the, these courses for young professionals with horse sport island.
I know that you have a bit of a background in conflict resolution,
that's a little bit unusual.
Would you tell us, cuz it, because I think those stories would really help
inform people of how you've managed to come up with this rather revolutionary.
Yeah, yeah.
Terri Brosnan: I have, I have a brain that is tuned to conflict.
I suppose I grew up, , in the north of Ireland, between, I was born in
1969, just after the trouble started.
and I lived there until I was 10 years old, 11 years of age in 1981.
Now,
Rupert Isaacson: just before you go on, not everyone who's listening knows
what the troubles were and that's, it doesn't sound like a very big word.
Terri Brosnan: It's, it's a very small word to describe an apartheid system.
Okay.
so in the north of Ireland, there were two opposing, factions.
Very divided between what was seen as the Catholic Irish Republican, faction and
the Protestant unionist with, that's a union with the uk, and wanting to still
be part of the UK government and monarchy.
these were people who had originally been, asked to come and settle
the land in Northern Ireland, from Scotland, from England.
they had been given this land to settle and to organize, centuries before.
So they were at odds with each other because the people who had come
in, been given the land, had taken it off the existing inhabitants.
they had organized all of the businesses, and the economics so
that they benefited only and that the indigenous pop, indigenous
population couldn't benefit from it.
and, and that obviously leads to conflict.
however, you also have a situation where people have to live side by
side, and they've defined a way of, regardless of their internal politics
or even their external politics, of finding a way of smiling and nodding
at people across the counter in a, in a, in a day-to-day situation.
and.
I have great observation skills, so I, I spent my childhood watching these
interactions, and watching people who I knew were in opposition to
each other, having to go about their day-to-day lives in some somewhat of
a hand in glove way, and yet being at very opposing ends of the spectrum.
And it was fascinating how that
Rupert Isaacson: might turned.
Well, that makes it sound like sort of village or o office politics.
This is not what was going on.
The, the, the, the troubles for tho for those listeners who, dunno, what happened
was it erupted into enormous violence.
Yes.
and not, not
Terri Brosnan: British army were sent in to the British Army,
were sent in to qam the violence.
It started with, peaceful marches, people looking for, civil rights,
effectively, the, the Catholics
Rupert Isaacson: looking for civil rights
Terri Brosnan: effectively.
Catholics looking for civil rights.
and, the English government going, oh, well, we can't have them taking over.
Because the English government had a vested interest in supplying the unionist
population, the, the Protestant population with money and jobs and keeping the
governing Northern Ireland, keeping it all of their income in the UK tax coffers.
and so they said, look, we will support you guys.
We'll send in the Army to keep the peace in inverted commas.
and so in 1969, they sent paratroopers onto the streets of Belfast, and
violence erupted on a grand scale, because, Catholic, people were
already living in enclaves and, very poor economic and, situations.
They were at the end of their tether, tether.
They could not earn a living, successfully.
They couldn't get out of the situation they were in, because all
of very, like a apartheid in South Africa, all of the, power was in the
hands of the unionist population.
tell
Rupert Isaacson: us about the violence.
How did the violence manifest itself?
What, what happened?
Terri Brosnan: Oh, So, yeah, this is a, it's a, it's a thing.
It's funny to to think about it now.
It's, there were bombs all the time.
There were bomb scares every day.
So you might be in a shop and just be asked to leave, put down everything
you've, you've done and walk out the door.
you got searched every time you went into a public building.
Any public building, could be a library, could be a shop, anywhere where other
people went into the door as well.
You could be, bodily searched at every entrance to the shop.
your handbag was looked in.
your shopping bags were examined every time you went into a shop.
and
Rupert Isaacson: bombs were going off, right?
Yes.
Bombs were actually exploding.
Yep.
And killing
Terri Brosnan: people.
Yep.
People were being kidnapped, people were being shot, people were being disappeared.
and it may, it was happening and it didn't always happen so close to home,
but it was happening all around you.
The funny thing that always springs to mind when, when I talk about this
is there was an announcement used to be made around about six o'clock
or seven o'clock in the evening.
It would just come on in the middle of TV programs on your tv and it would,
people would say, will all key holders in a certain area please return to their.
Shops.
And that was because there had been a fire bomb or there had been,
there was a bomb scare in the area.
And, and my, my father was a business owner, so he would often have to get up,
drive back into Belfast, go and open the shop or do whatever was required of him.
And people lived like this all the
Rupert Isaacson: time now.
Okay.
So your father was a business owner through Yes.
So you, and you were a child through this thing with bombs going
off, people targeting businesses.
And one of the things I know happened, was that both sides ended up behaving
somewhat criminally and Yeah.
And getting protection rackets going where they would go and say,
well, we will burn your shop or we'll bomb your shop or whatever.
or we'll kill you if you, you don't pay us protection money.
You don't pay us protection money, which we'll use to supposedly
for our, our, our cause.
Our cause.
But actually we're gonna, you know, use to, yeah.
yeah.
What happened to your dad?
Was he caught up in this?
Terri Brosnan: Yes.
So he had an off license.
Rupert Isaacson: what's an off
Terri Brosnan: license for those who are not British?
Oh, , where you sell beer and wine.
A liquor store?
yeah.
Liquor store, exactly.
In the States, the liquor store.
In, in, in, in Australia it's an an offie.
So
Rupert Isaacson: license to sell alcohol off premises.
Absent off, off license.
Okay.
Off
Terri Brosnan: license.
And so, he had been in the wine trade all of his life.
really enjoyed that end.
Had a barn restaurant in a, in a village.
And he knew instinctively that actually the area that he was looking at to
set up this off license would be, was a developing up and coming area.
And he thought, I know that needs an off license.
And he was right, it did, maybe just not at that time.
So he, he put this off license in what was effectively an old part
of the markets area of off Belfast.
and, it was right between two areas.
one was Protestant, one was Catholic.
So both factions would come, knock on his door, hold ho, hold him up with guns,
bombs, and demand money with menaces.
and so he had, he had three or four bad incidences, where he
just avoided being seriously hurt.
Rupert Isaacson: there's one you told me about.
Terri Brosnan: About, oh, the guys with the, with the barber, the ceiling.
Rupert Isaacson: Please tell us that story so solicits can get
an idea of how extreme this was.
Terri Brosnan: So they came in, one had a gun.
So he hold, holds my dad up and he says, you know, just don't make any false moves.
Don't ring anybody, don't shout.
and he sent the other guy up to plant an incendiary device, which obviously
a bottle shop is a great place to plant an incendiary device cuz you're
gonna have lots of, you're gonna have lots of glass flying everywhere.
and so he sends them upstairs into the, store area, and there's this and the
floor, the ceiling literally comes down near the floor and goes back up again.
Really
Rupert Isaacson: it's obvious that this, the ceiling goes,
goes down, it comes back up.
Yeah.
Most people never see that in, in their life.
I know.
It
Terri Brosnan: just go and the, the, the reaction from the floor back up again.
So it just, and, and the guy who's holding my dad up says, walk.
Don't run to the guy upstairs.
He's s scuffling out.
The incendiary device had gone on under his arm, got off under his arm
and it, he, he was missing part of his limb and the other guy grabs him.
The two of them make it out onto the street and they get away.
And this guy's
Rupert Isaacson: like holding it his seven arm.
Yes.
Yeah.
Blood spurting
Terri Brosnan: never caught.
Rupert Isaacson: Incredible.
Got into, and this was just, this was just one of several incidents.
Terri Brosnan: One of several incidents.
so yeah, it wasn't a place to have a successful business in the seventies.
It just wasn't possible.
Now
Rupert Isaacson: how were you getting into horses mm-hmm.
While you were living effectively in a war zone in Belfast during the troubles?
What, what, what was happening that you could do that?
So,
Terri Brosnan: it's interesting, you know, my dad had, he has this
vision for, an amazing place.
he wanted to set up a hotel that also had a riding stables, along
a river, in a beautiful place called Newcastle and County down.
And he had bought the hotel sale, ended up falling through 1974.
but he had this vision and he, he knew that this was what something
that people would love to do.
and he said, you know what, you, you would love to be on horses.
And at the age of five, I was sent, onto the back of this little Shetland
pony with my brother, and he hated it.
And he fell off the first day.
And I loved it and I couldn't get enough of it.
and so it was a priority.
My dad just went, yeah, do you know what you're gonna do this?
So he sent me every week, And it, you know, it was one of the, the, it was the
light in my life, in the maddest of times.
It was the thing that kept me going.
Right.
Because
Rupert Isaacson: Belfast itself as a city was not so big.
So you could get out of it to the countryside relatively quickly.
Absolutely.
Terri Brosnan: Yeah.
Really, really easily.
Rupert Isaacson: and so this craziness is going on where you are living.
Terri Brosnan: Yeah.
And you need to get away from
Rupert Isaacson: it.
Okay.
That makes sense.
But it's not just
Terri Brosnan: going on, it's not just going on where you're living.
It's going on around the families that you're living with.
Mm-hmm.
The people you're in school with, you know, it may not be happening in your
home, but it's happening in their home.
It's happening in your family.
Extended families lives.
It affected everybody.
It's a very small area.
I mean, we've less than a million people at the time in Northern
Ireland and over six counties.
and so, you know, a dispersed population, very few of them in the city.
Rupert Isaacson: So obviously, this is not really a healthy environment, if you can
possibly get out of it, to bring up kids.
what did your dad do?
How did he handle that dilemma?
Terri Brosnan: So in interestingly, he had, through, through all of this trouble
in, in the off license, he'd ended up, one of his bank businesses had gone bankrupt.
He was working for other people.
And it was 1980s, , Thatcher government in the uk.
lots of economic hardship across the uk.
so he had lost a job that he had.
and during the day when he was unemployed, he used to go down to the library
and look at all of the newspapers that they had for possible jobs.
And one of them was for a job on a stud farm in county temporary.
and he clipped it out, brought it home, and he said, oh my goodness, look at this.
Wouldn't this be amazing?
and on a whim, he applied for the job.
It was a job of, effectively, house manager butler to an American
multimillionaire who ran a stud farm.
In the most beautiful county in Ireland, in temporary, and in
Rupert Isaacson: Southern Ireland.
Not in Northern Ireland.
In Southern Ireland.
Terri Brosnan: Away from the troubles.
Away from the troubles.
And he got the job.
and he went down to try it out for a couple of months,
and things were escalating.
The hunger strikes were ongoing in, Belfast at the time.
These were political prisoners, hunger striking for political, political
prisoner status and recognition by the uk, which was not happening.
they had been on dirty protests and they had gone on
to, , starvation, hunger strike.
and so tensions were incredibly high, and we couldn't really wait to get out.
it was getting closer and closer.
My, my parents were really concerned.
My older brother was at, you know, he's 13, 14, very vulnerable age
when you're seeing all of this tension around you community-wise.
and we had arranged to leave in May of 1981, and the day we moved house
was the day that Bobby Sands died.
Rupert Isaacson: One of the may.
Tell us who, yeah.
Tell us who Bobby Sands was and why that was important.
He
Terri Brosnan: was one of the main hunger strikers.
and on the Catholic end, on the, yeah, Catholic end.
He, he was in the Mays prison and he was, Protesting peacefully for political
prisoner status of recognition that these people were not just, were not criminals.
That they were there because they were engaged in, conflict.
That a political conflict with, the current regime in the north of Ireland.
and it wasn't being recognized.
so they'd been arrested.
A lot of them had been interned without trial.
and then they took things as far as they could.
They stopped wearing clothes.
They started, stopped using toilet facilities.
and they smeared their excrement on the walls in the, in the, the prison
in order to highlight their plight.
and eventually the only thing they could resort to was hunger strike.
and so they did.
and several of them died, and Bobby Sands had stood as an MP for his
area, and it was unheard of that a member of parliament, parliament
of the UK parliament would be on hunger strike and then subsequently
die, from that hunger strike.
And it was just insane.
The place went up like a Tinder kick.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
So then it really erupted the violence.
I remember this.
yeah.
Cause bombs were going off.
I was brought up in London.
Bombs were going off in London at that time as well.
Terri Brosnan: I remember we're driving, we're driving outta Dodge
with all of our stuff on our back.
Rupert Isaacson: Literally.
So your dad gets this job?
Yeah.
In the south hundred.
150 miles or more away from Yeah, all of this.
Terri Brosnan: We leave the day that this all erupts.
We're leaving.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Leaving as literally the buildings are burning around you.
You are driving out.
It's
Terri Brosnan: an interesting Yeah, it was an interesting day.
Good lord.
and we arrived to a very rural, very bucolic, south County
temporary stud farm, you know, three or four miles from any town.
It's all very quiet, and very different lifestyle.
Very different lifestyle.
Rupert Isaacson: And that's where your horse career really took
Terri Brosnan: off.
Yeah, absolutely.
I had the most amazing luxury of these fun, fantastic people
who had stunning horse knowledge and who wanted to pass it on.
and this was the crim Carol family.
Amazing family in temporary, me under their wing and taught me everything.
I know.
They were incredible.
and I was like a little sponge.
I just couldn't wait to learn more and more and more.
and, yeah, it was an amazing education.
So
Rupert Isaacson: you then grow up and go through your adolescence, become, get into
the horse world, become a professional, , something is intriguing me here though.
Okay.
We've talked about your, your background with conflict and looking for resolution
within conflict, and perhaps that being something of an instinct, because you
would've, as a kid, been having to negotiate that whole system of in school,
in the shops in family while all this stuff was going on in Northern Ireland.
then suddenly you find yourself in horse paradise.
Yes.
but something else that I'm dictator, detecting rather down in, in what you've
been doing within the equine assisted world is there's a system to it.
Like you, you identified a problem which was fragmentation, factionalism
people from one area of therapeutic writing saying, oh, there's not
so good to the other people.
Which I guess if you're coming out of the troubles in Northern Ireland, if you can
put it in perspective and say, well, yeah, at least you're not planting a century
bombs in each other, in each other's.
Yeah.
This is small potatoes, guys.
You get over yourself.
Right.
I get, I mean, you useful, a useful perspective to come from.
and then, but this thing about, you know, looking for the system of, you know,
lunging in hand long reigning to, and play to get the, keep the horses happy.
Yeah.
Muscled and supple and.
And then looking for how to incorporate that into the session
so there's no time conflict.
And then looking at, you know, how to create these courses with Horse Sport
Island, this is all very systematic.
Where does your systems thinking come from?
Terri Brosnan: Oh, so interestingly, although my dad had this amazing
idea that I would get to involved in all these horses, he didn't
want me doing it as a job.
He was like, you know, there's no money in horses.
Don't, don't ever work with horses.
There's no money in it.
Unless you have a lot of money to start with.
You're gonna end up with absolutely no money.
You're not gonna get paid for the work that you do.
and in lots of ways, he wasn't wrong.
particularly in Ireland, you know, you, you need to come for money
in order to have and continue to have horses successfully over time.
it's something that eats at your money rather than earning you money on,
unless you're at the very high end.
And then it kind of produces money for itself.
so he said to me, look, you know, you're, you have a brain, like a steel trap.
It just wants to learn new things.
He said, why don't you go to college and do something useful?
So I went, and I did, management because why that?
Oh, you could have done anything very systematic, very logical.
I have a very logical brain.
You know me well, Rupert, I love logic.
I love maths.
I'm a big maths person.
and so for me, the appliance of mathematics is structural engineering.
and really that was what I wanted to know, but I'm, I'm also.
I'm a problem solver.
I, I can't just know one thing.
I have to know how that one thing fits in with the next,
it's like little cogs and wheels.
So engineering was a perfect fit for me.
and so not only engineering, but project management within construction
was the area I wanted to go for.
So you had to learn a little bit about architecture, a little bit, lot
about structural engineering, quantity surveying, finance, economics, maths.
You know, you had to, you had to have an overview.
And I love an overview.
I'm no good on small picture.
I'm all about the big picture.
and so that fascinated me.
and I learned how systems went together.
I learned how reliances worked.
You know, if you want something to move along that you've gotta rely on other
people to come in and help you out.
the best practices around realizing that everything is
just a part of a growing wheel.
So, you know, nobody's gonna be amazing on their own.
If I send you out to build a bridge, you know, over a large river and you're one
man, no matter what idea you have, you're not gonna be able to make that work.
You might be, but it's gonna take you an awful long time.
and so I love the fact that all of these different skills could come together
and make everything work much quicker.
Yet they kept, you know, they kept professional boundaries.
They kept, quality control going.
Huge part of it.
You know, you can't build a building without making sure that
everything hits the quality control.
and all those aspects were respected and valued on site.
And I loved working in that direct, in that way.
that the T boy was more important sometimes than the chief engineer,
you know, cuz you can only feed an army on its stomach, like, you know.
So it was really important that everybody had their role and it was valued.
And I think it's something that I really value in my team as well.
you know, when I have an amazing team where I work, and, and they would be an
extraordinarily amazing rider and riding instructor in David Moul, but on the
other end you have Lucy who is just this incredible horse, woman and a brilliant
educator, like an extraordinary educator, and person extraordinarily brilliant
and talented at working with children.
And everybody brings their strengths and weaknesses to the team.
And nobody has to do everything.
It doesn't matter if I'm not the best rider or I'm not the best horse
person, or I'm not the best lunger.
We have those skills within the team.
So it doesn't really matter.
We can.
Pick and choose where it works best.
but I think that's my system's
Rupert Isaacson: brain.
Did you got a chance to put this into practice, I presume?
Did you go out and work on building sites and, and Yeah, I did build
Terri Brosnan: projects.
I was involved in the building of a, a bridge over the
rivers Laney in hy in Wexford.
so this was one of the last ever, I love this, this, this work.
It was one of the last ever cast in situ do bridges, which meant that
we poured the concrete every day.
We didn't, didn't just bring in, pieces that had been precast
elsewhere and went together like Lego.
we actually had to do a huge amount of problem solving on site.
and we had to actually pour the concrete and deal with this
active substance on a daily basis.
It was fascinating.
And you only have
Rupert Isaacson: one chance to get it right.
Absolutely.
And the whole county is watching
Terri Brosnan: every, everybody on site that day and every, the whole town is
watching, so you don't get it wrong.
Yeah.
That's
Rupert Isaacson: great.
okay, so then how did you then, you, you seem to have moved away from horses there.
Did you keep horses going as a parallel
Terri Brosnan: career?
Yeah, I, I, I, I was trying to move away and go and have this career, in
engineering and I kept being dragged back.
so I.
I, I, I thought, you know, I miss horses.
I might like to ride occasionally at a weekend.
That is a hobby.
I know you're laughing now.
And I, I went, literally went, rang a riding school and I said, do you, do you
have a ride out on a, on a Sunday morning?
and they were like, yeah, do you have much experience?
And I said, oh, a little bit, you know, and said, what kind of experience?
Well, I used to teach, but I, I haven't done it in a while.
And, and they were like, oh, well, do you wanna come up
and, and, and stay for a bit?
so I arrived up on the Sunday morning at about 10 o'clock and left
there like nine o'clock that night.
And, I was immediately hooked back in.
Within weeks I was leaving my job and going back to horses.
So, so my dad's plans went astray and I went back to working with horses.
And you
Rupert Isaacson: went into the sport horse industry at that point, I presume.
What, what, what did.
Terri Brosnan: Mostly it was riding schools actually.
and teaching riding, riding out, taking trekking in the Phoenix Park
in Dublin, which is this amazing huge park, where, you know, it's beautiful.
On a sunny day, you ride out onto this 15 acre field with people behind you.
There are deer in the background.
It's all very lovely until you're there in September and the deer are
rotting, in the little gap that you have to go out into this 15 acres where
you exercise your horses and it all becomes a little bit more problematic.
And you learn a lot in those days.
and you've to bring new horses on you, you know, you're having to risk assess
people who've never been on horses before.
Japanese tourists were an experience for me.
Mm-hmm.
we, we had a group of Japanese tourists.
None of them ever held a re while they were out the entire time.
We relied on the goodness and kindness of our horses who were amazing.
but those kind of experiences show you where the gaps are, particularly if you
have a brain like mine that loves to find out where, where, where the gaps are,
what, what, what went wrong, and why, and how you could redo it a better way.
How did you
Rupert Isaacson: make it safe for these people who'd never been on horses to
go out among all the rutting deer?
Terri Brosnan: So, yeah, interestingly, and, and, and I didn't
know as much as I do now, but our horses were really intelligent.
Really, they trusted us.
We worked with them day in, day out.
So they trusted the people who worked on the ground with them.
And we, you know, we schooled them out on the, in the Phoenix Park
when we weren't taking tres, and they would follow nose to tail.
They knew not to pass the lead rider.
or they'd get growled up by the lead rider and they would stay behind us.
They were incredibly well trained, without having a huge amount of training.
Right.
And they incredibly well intentioned horses
Rupert Isaacson: actually.
No, but you said, okay, this is effectively trekking.
Yeah.
But I know, I know for a fact that you, you said for example, that you
grew up with the Kreme Carroll family.
Yeah, yeah.
They're they're an iconic Yeah.
Family in the Irish horse world.
So they, they must have taught you way beyond this.
Absolutely.
What was the education you went through with them?
Terri Brosnan: So, very classical, who would've taught me most, was, would've
been I think the first I in Ireland, BHS I, which is the full instructor
level of the BHS exams British Sure.
Society exams.
and we were just really lucky to not only have that family, but again, they were
amazing women, who wanted to learn more.
And Michelin was never happy with, just that's the way it is.
She wanted to know why all the time.
So if she didn't know, if it was something she didn't know and she
couldn't teach me, she would then look outside and she would go and learn it.
So she did a lot of classical dress with, a Dutch rider living in Ireland
and around Kilkenny Carmel at the time.
van Dvar was based there.
and, the Lum family were down the road.
and she worked with them.
Tell us about them who were there.
well, William Lum is the, the person most people would associate, with them.
Now William is the one of the sons, his dad was an amazing horseman.
They were Dutch family living again outside of, Tom Allen Re,
and fantastic horse knowledge.
Rupert Isaacson: What discipline were they, were they in?
Mostly dressage
Terri Brosnan: and show jumping.
Okay.
but, but you know, really well-rounded ac I think a lot of the people I was lucky
enough to come across at that stage, started off as three day Advers, knew
that the whole, picture of your horse depended on, you know, you wanted to
have a horse who could do everything.
And who was fit,
Rupert Isaacson: I guess.
Terri Brosnan: Yeah, absolutely.
and so those were the days of eventing, did roads and tracks.
Mm-hmm.
So, you know, you did, you did steeplechase roads and tracks,
you also did cross country.
You did dress out and your horse had to be supple, collectible, expandable,
jump, do everything speed up, really go fast, come back, you know, so they
trained their horses for that work.
and they didn't want to just train, show jumpers.
I think there wasn't a market for pure show jumpers at that stage.
Mm.
In Ireland.
Definitely.
So they had to produce these really well-rounded horses that would do whatever
the market demanded them to, to do.
Mm.
So we learned everything so versatility, basically.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I mean, we were looking at that time at Irish draft horses and Irish sport
horses, which came from the idea of having a horse that would drive you to mass.
You could, you know, ride, , afterwards and it was, you
know, it would also plow your
Rupert Isaacson: fields and then you go hunting on it at, on a Saturday.
Absolutely.
Right.
Yeah.
Up all the big banks.
Absolutely.
Terri Brosnan: Yeah.
Yeah.
It had to do everything and that, that ethos permeated the entire
equine industry here in Ireland.
Mm-hmm.
Was don't specialize, generalize, we're too small to specialize.
Mm-hmm.
You know, so we need to produce these horses that can do
Rupert Isaacson: everything.
So now let's just jump ahead to Child Vision, where you are now.
fitness is a really interesting thing because o obviously, you know, for many of
us, we'd say, okay, well that's hill work.
Or that's, you know, a lot of, trail riding at the trot.
You know, get your horses fit, get them hard fit in the tendons as well.
Da da da da da.
Well, you can't really do that where you are.
You're, it's just for li No, we have no room, no.
For listeners who, dunno where she's, you think Drumcondra in, in Dublin.
It's not greenfields and leprechauns if, or there might be leprechauns.
No, but they're living in, in tower blocks.
It's Sydney Center, right?
It's, it's, it's the city center of a, of a large European city with
a couple of million people in it.
So,
Terri Brosnan: and it's, it's not the Hyde Park end of a city center.
Right.
It's not the Shali end of the city center.
No, it is in the real core.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
It's not the Phoenix Park that she was talking about.
Yeah.
It's, it's no, like I said, if there's leprechauns, they're
living in tower blocks.
Absolutely.
How are you keeping your horses fit there?
Terri Brosnan: We're, we're working them.
We're lunging them, we're riding them.
We are we working them in hand and long reigning them.
We don't have the space.
Everything has to be done on a micro basis.
Mm.
You know, so you've gotta be
Rupert Isaacson: free.
So they're better in the gym
Terri Brosnan: the whole time.
Absolutely.
You've gotta find the smallest amount of space that you
can do the most amount with.
So we don't even have, you know, we don't have a gallop track.
We don't have, yeah.
We've had to make, do amend.
I recently had a visit from, a college in Northern Ireland coming down to
see what we were doing, and they said, when we talk to you and you tell us
about what you do, it, it, we thought we were coming to this huge place.
And you, you, it's so tiny.
It was like,
Rupert Isaacson: yeah, it's really tiny.
Yeah, it's really tiny.
So even within this tiny postage stamp that you've got, I know that you have
a trail around a sports field as well.
Yeah.
which you've gotta share with the rugby players and the Yes, we do.
but honors today, yeah.
I've seen your horses and they are muscled and magnificent.
So would you be available, for example, if there are, if there are people
listening saying, well, gosh, you know, I, I don't really have a lot of space.
what absolutely, what can I do?
Would you be able to mentor them in, in a program of fitness and
lunging and, and that sort of thing that you can use a small space
Terri Brosnan: for?
I, I mean, realistically for, for us, the big key to this
was the in-hand work that yoga.
I mean, you know, if you have a bathroom that is only as wide as
your arms, And as long as your body, you have enough space to do yoga in.
and, and we would feel the same about the horses.
So the in-hand work, the suppleness work, that all happens
in a relatively short space.
You don't even need a 20 meter circle to do this work in,
you can do it in the yard.
you know, up and down between the boxes.
We can, we can work in a very small space with this.
and actually sometimes it really helps to work in a small space because it helps
the horse to have a direction to move in.
but yeah, all that supple work, it's yoga for horses.
and so our horses are supple.
When they're supple, it's easier.
They're building muscle because they're relaxed.
There's no tension, there's no stress in the body.
and they're able to, they're, they're getting, they're feeling better.
So they're feeling like they can move their shoulders a little bit more.
They're feeling like they can move their hindquarters a little bit more.
When they feel like that and you put them on the lunge, they are starting to get
that hind leg further underneath them.
They're starting to feel good about themselves the way we do when we
are more supple and more agile.
and you get the same response.
They're more willing to take a leap to go and, and and go that
extra mile cuz it feels good.
It doesn't feel hard.
Rupert Isaacson: How do you avoid, I mean, horses still need to get
out there and eat grass, you know?
Sooner or later.
And I, I remember when I was a kid in London, when, 500 years ago, there
were actually quite a lot of horses in the city then, rag and bone men.
the, the, the, all the breweries had drays delivering the barrels of beer pooled
by magnificent, teams of shy horses.
They obviously all the police horses, but they're also, like a lot of the
old cab drivers came from families that had, had ha had, had hackney cabs.
Yeah.
and still had a tradition of carriage driving in their spare time and kept their
horses in muses, you know, urban stables.
Yeah.
in the middle of the city.
So interestingly that, that was how, but they, they, they would
send their horses out, yeah.
For grazing a certain amount of time in the summer to the counties around.
What do you do for your horses for this?
Well,
Terri Brosnan: well, were we in the same situation here in, in Dublin when
I moved, into Dublin from Tip Prairie.
and actually the horse industry in Dublin was full of those guys who
were, carriage drivers, dray drivers, and they, they were some of the first
people that I got to know in the city center, around horses in the city center.
And so when I had this problem of working in a stables in the middle
of the city center, no turnout or very limited turnout, I went, what?
How do I get my horses outta grass?
and I went back to these guys who, you know, and I said, you
know, guys, what, what do you do?
What are you doing?
And I remembered, one, one particular family, the good family.
and, and they would always, they were big into their horses, went outta grass.
The minute they weren't being used, they went outta grass, you know,
if they weren't interacting with humans, they went out, got downtime,
got to be horses away from humans.
And so that was, you know, I I, I spoke to Ben and Val about this, Ben and Val.
Good.
And I said, where were they?
Where can I, who were Ben and Val?
Good.
The, these are, these are the guys that I'd met who were carriage
drivers in Dublin City Center.
Okay.
Values used to drive the Guinness carriage.
Ben used to drive the Lord Mayor's carriage.
So they were great men to us.
They were great mentors.
and so, you know, they said, go to me because that's the place for
the best grass nearest to Dublin.
And it's the next county up.
and the soil is fantastic.
And that was where they had put their horses.
and so we went to Ashburn in meth and we rented land.
It was one of the first things I did when I moved into, working in that
yard, in television, in Dublin, because they just didn't have enough grass.
Okay.
and there was no way I could sit there with these horses and look at them never
getting out for a really good grass.
Rupert Isaacson: And how far are these pastures that you rented?
In county me from drum condra, where in the city center,
Terri Brosnan: they're about 35 kilometers away.
so it's a sh you know, it's, it's not even an hour with the Horsebox.
and so we, we, we take them out as often as we can.
Rupert Isaacson: Do you have a sort of a pattern to it of rotation?
Yeah, we,
Terri Brosnan: I mean, we have two weeks in the summer, two weeks at Christmas.
We'll go for a week at Easter and a week at Halloween as well.
Around October, no, September, October time.
and more if it becomes available, if any horse is not doing well, we stop
the work and we put them outta grass.
If they're for any reason, they're not going to be working,
we put them out to grass.
so it, it's our default place.
It's our rest home, it's our downtime if we get a long weekend, and it's
more than just the Monday off, we might have the Friday off as well.
Horses go to grass.
Okay.
So it's, it's, it, it's where we possibly can.
and we'll rotate them as well.
So to give one rest and bring one in so that they're coming in fresh all the time.
I had a horse out last week, because he just needed some downtime.
he needed to just lie in the sun and be a horse.
and he's come back in great form.
you know, and a week of that is really good.
It's like ourselves when we go on holidays.
You don't necessarily need two months holidays cuz you enjoy
your work, but you do need to get away from it on a regular basis.
Yeah.
And you need to know that you can come back into it.
Lots of short
Rupert Isaacson: breaks rather than Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, I, I, I, I think that's very, very important.
You know, I, I've, I've, in the course of the horse boy work, I've
been lucky enough to work with some people who work in, urban settings.
Obviously you, a a great go Mandy in, in Amsterdam, who is in a, again, a
very small patch, other, other places.
And of course they always battle to find the areas outside of
the city where they can get to, but all of them prioritized it.
and it seems to be, as you say, the magic formula.
obviously you need all that good type of work you were talking about, but Yeah,
just for, for the brain and the, and the nervous system and the gut, you know,
just to be able to go out to grass and, as you say, not deal with humans for a bit.
Well, I, I think until they present themselves at the
gate and say, no, I'm ready to
Terri Brosnan: come back.
Yeah, absolutely.
We, we, I mean we, we mustn't forget our horses work.
They are working horses.
They're not leisure horses.
They do a job.
and it's really important that they get downtime.
Like us.
They can't, you can't give from an empty cup, and our horses
can't give from an empty cup.
So you've gotta have that ethos across the board for your team, for your horses.
Our horses are our team.
So as far as our, we were concerned, it was a no-brainer,
Rupert Isaacson: you know?
So, so tell us a little bit more about the work you do at Child
Vision with the visually impaired.
how is that specific within the equine assisted world?
I know you're not only working with that population, but it's,
it's a population that I, that I'm intrigued, by for many reasons.
Talk, talk us through a
Terri Brosnan: little bit.
Oh, this is my, my, my pet subject.
You might not ever get me off this.
So
Rupert Isaacson: grab a bottle of whiskey guys.
Yeah.
Terri Brosnan: carries off.
We'll be back in a while.
no.
we have the most amazing setup because we have preschool children with a
visual impairment coming into our service at, from the age of 18 months.
And so 18 months.
18 months, yeah.
So we can have him up on the horse
Rupert Isaacson: at 18 months.
Absolutely,
Terri Brosnan: yes.
Okay.
That's interesting.
So we can even for a few minutes And, and, and, and remember at that age they're
physically not able to take a huge amount and it would only be supported riding.
Rupert Isaacson: So are you riding with them in front of you in
Terri Brosnan: the saddle?
Absolutely.
Back riding and for a few minutes just to help encourage head control, you know,
body control, all those kind of things.
we are so lucky to have this population to work with because it's interesting.
None of the children we see are just visually impaired nowadays.
Somebody with just a visual impairment is considered very mainstream.
And so the children and adults that we see have visual impairment and another okay.
Number of issues.
So they may have autism, which is the most kind of straightforward group of
kids that we would see from our services.
They may have cerebral palsy, they may have a number of syndromes
associated with premature birth.
They may have cortical visual impairment where their eyes are
perfect, but their brain can't process.
The visual information from the eyes.
And this is a really interesting one for you, Rupert, because neurologically
the older part of the brain, not the newer part of the brain, is still
getting some visual information that high contrasts black and white.
Even with people with visual impairment, the kinia cells are still sending
signals across the brain, but not in the visual neural pathways that we
currently associate with color vision.
And
Rupert Isaacson: so how are those, so kinia cells for those, or kin cells
as we should kin them Kinney cells?
Yeah.
For those people that Dunno what those are, those, those are cells,
produced in the, cerebellum mm-hmm.
That when you move and problem solve, your brain produces this protein called bdnf,
brain-derived neurotrophic factor that makes your brain produce more brain cells.
Yeah.
And among these brain cells are these things called bikini cells, which govern
motor skills and social skills and act like an internet within the brain.
How are those, that's just sort of so people understand what you mean by that.
But my question is how are those cells, you said those cells
are picking up and transferring information through the brain.
That's visual, but it's not being interpreted by the brain as sites vision.
Absolutely.
How is, how is the brain interpreting that information?
Terri Brosnan: So the, the, the motor pathways and the old kind of contrast,
very basic, In the, in, in the really old part of the brain though, that's still, so
what we associate with modern sight is all this, you know, rods and cones is color,
high color, high definition vision that we associate with being fully rec sighted.
But there's an older vision right in the back, which is still about, you
know, high contrast, black and white.
that, that is really closely linked with motor pathways.
And we're currently looking, we're doing some research at the moment into the
effect of rapid movement on, vision and orientation because we can move people
on a horse much faster than they're ever gonna move on their own two feet.
And it makes them solve problems faster, it increases their thought process
speed, and it is giving them new ideas so that it's, that's just one of my
hobby horses on, on the end of, and it's something that we're working on
at the moment of paper we're working on for Denver, actually for the, vision
2023 conference in Denver in July.
But, so there's a lot of, there's a lot of similarities.
Vision impairment is a sensory processing issue.
If you're having an issue with your vision, you are having an
issue with one of your senses.
So, All of the things that apply for sensory processing issues and autism and
ADHD all apply for visual impairment.
and so we've got this amazing crossover, and we've got people with absolutely
no vision cantering on horses, and they're able to turn, turn the
corner independently, independently.
We are not even on lunch line.
They are riding independently encountering these horses.
and you know, their vision would be very, very poor in
comparison to the main population.
they might have some light or you know, some color maybe, but not necessarily the
Rupert Isaacson: two.
But they're getting, they're getting down the road with a stick.
They're, they're sorry, what?
They're getting down the
Terri Brosnan: road with a stick.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
They're walking with a cane.
Rupert Isaacson: So what do you think is allowing these, these people
to be able to guide their horses?
So we've, through independently in the
Terri Brosnan: arena, we've been asking this question actually at
orientation and mobility conference.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: What do they say?
Have you asked them?
Terri Brosnan: Well, they've come up with loads of ideas.
They've come up with this whole idea of echolocation and they've
come up with the idea of, you know, The feedback from the horse.
they've, you know, maybe if, if they, they're mapping the arena
somehow, but these are people who are not on their own feet.
They're not at the same height they're normally at, they're, you know,
moving faster than they normally move.
Right.
So actually the secret is that this old part of the brain that isn't
processing vision as we know it, as they move in space, is telling
them about what's coming up.
It's giving them a map of the arena or of the space that they're in.
Rupert Isaacson: So, so they're getting a brain and body map.
Yes.
That's extending beyond the horse.
Because those of you who know what brain and body maps do, let's say
you're holding a pen, your brain creates the pen as part of your body, or the,
you're going through a doorway and it creates the hype between your head
and the doorway as part of your body.
So you duck Yeah.
That sort of thing.
but to, to, to say, to make the whole arena Yes.
Out of a brain and body map, they
Terri Brosnan: can map the whole place.
Do you think that
Rupert Isaacson: this is therefore like a bit of a superpower that you might get?
Absolutely.
If you are visually impaired, because you've gotta overcompensate in another way
because I, I can't map the whole arena.
Well, these are my, and I spent my life riding in arenas.
I don't map, hold on.
My, my circle's always.
Shit.
You know, these are,
Terri Brosnan: these are called Magnocellular Pathways.
Rupert Isaacson: Magnocellular Pathways, cellular Pathways
in Magnocellular Pathways.
Tell us about these, please.
Terri Brosnan: I, I, I, I'm currently in my research, mode.
and I, I have, coming back with more, but I spoke to an ophthalmologist
today and she said, oh yes, the magnocellular pathways in the brain
are along the movement pathways.
They go back into that ancient part of the brain and they're giving an impression
of what's in front of that person.
So it's not vision as such, but is an impression of where
things are in space around them.
Okay.
So that's fascinating for me.
Absolutely.
but yes, and it's that bdnf, the more you create the bdn f the
brain-derived neurotrophic factor, the more you grow those brain cells,
the more information they're getting.
The more they come across this, their thought processors are
just getting faster and faster.
It's like learning to drive a car, because when you get in first you're like, oh,
everything's coming up on me so quickly.
And then you're like, oh, faster, faster going on motorways.
You're fine.
You know, you get, become used to it.
You never step back that pace.
You never unlearn thinking at that speed.
Mm-hmm.
So if we can put them on the horse, they learn to think faster.
Than they have
Rupert Isaacson: previously.
So optimal, optimal cognitive function, basically.
Terri Brosnan: Absolutely.
Yeah.
Interesting.
Horses moving at 24 kilometers an hour at Cantor, it's, they're
moving at two and a half to three kilometers an hour on their feet.
Mm.
This is 10 times the speed.
Mm, sorry.
It's just a,
Rupert Isaacson: it's so fascinating to me.
What, what, what, what's fascinating to me there too is that, well,
obviously if it's a car, if it's a machine, it does your bidding.
Yes.
A horse, of course, has many variables.
It's gonna take that corner differently depending on your body weight, depending
on if it's either a bird over there, depending on if there's the, the, how
the ground is, any number of factors.
So you could do 10 circles and each of those circles, presumably,
if you're visually impaired, could feel very, very different.
Yet you can map that circle time after time on an animal that is
reacting itself to that circle.
To the circle.
Yes.
What's going on there?
Is that more bdf?
What's, what's that?
Terri Brosnan: It's, it's, it's something that's still under research
that we're looking at at the moment, but it's, ah, it's just a joy to look at.
and what we're we're seeing is that, you know, when somebody is on the back of the
horse, part of their body is supported.
So, you know, if you're visually impaired, you spend a lot of your concentration
on keeping your body upright in space.
Mm-hmm.
Just moving one foot in front of the other is a difficult
Rupert Isaacson: task.
Right.
This is on foot, not even on before you even think about a horse.
Terri Brosnan: No.
But if you take away some of that concentration, the horse is
supporting you from the waist down.
You've got more brain power to think about other things.
Rupert Isaacson: This makes sense.
And I guess something that's spraining to mind while you were talking there.
You know, we all, those of us who ride all sort of aspire to, to
that center feeling, you know?
Yes.
And sometimes we, we really have it where it feels like our, our
own legs sort of basically become the front legs of the horse.
And, you know, we're really at that optimal melding
shapeshifting really, you know?
yes.
And of course, one of the ways many of us who teach riding get people to do
that is by Shark 10, shut their eyes.
Right.
You know, go down the long side, take a certain number
of steps with your eyes shut.
You always, your feel improves.
Do you think that if, if these people are riding effectively with
their eyes shut the whole time?
Terri Brosnan: Well, one of the things that stops us from realizing
our dream of being sent to us is that we open our eyes and we look and we
see that we're not part of the horse.
Okay.
You know, so there's, there's that visual aspect of you're sitting and
suddenly you're moving through space.
Your body is moving through space elegantly and beautifully,
and you don't have this visual.
Signal say it's not all you.
That's
Rupert Isaacson: brilliant, Terry.
That's something I hadn't considered at all.
so perhaps the visually impaired experience of riding a horse is
truer to what we're all seeking.
I hope so.
The visually, I hope so.
Terri Brosnan: They love it.
What what a
Rupert Isaacson: what a what a joyful it is a joyful thing.
Concept.
I mean, fantastic.
I just feel my heart lifting as you say that.
Terri Brosnan: So yes, I have the best job now, and we can start
them from when they're quite small so we can give them this
Rupert Isaacson: experience.
Right.
So yes, if someone starts with this at 18 months and then is doing this from there,
by the time they're 20, it's just there.
So, and, and do you really observe a cause I know you've been there seven
years now, so you've presumably seen some kids go from, you know, through
that seven years trajectory with you.
Yeah.
What have you observed in their cognitive function,
Terri Brosnan: of that time?
They are, I mean, so the, the difficulty is because I see all of our children
as being bright and beautiful and amazing, and, and having their own towns.
But you do see huge leaps actually in cognitive function, in their ability
to interact with you in their wanting to interact, follow instructions.
Concept
Rupert Isaacson: development in, in their academic life, in the school away from.
Terri Brosnan: Absolutely.
so I mean, we would work towards sort, sort of things,
pattern recognition, academics.
We're always working towards that end of things.
So yes, we can, and we do do academics with some of our
children on the back of the horse.
but it's all around initially it's often around concept
development with visual impairment.
Concept development is even harder than it is for somebody with autism.
so, you know, what are you sitting on?
I have no idea.
I can't see this horse.
Interesting, interesting.
So we work on concept development around everything.
you know, where they are, what the field looks like, how trees
are, they can feel them, they can touch them, they can reach up.
yeah, so we work a lot on concept development initially with them.
And then we work around movement and then onto academics and all
Rupert Isaacson: that.
When you're teaching academics, okay, so let's say your concept development
is good and they're now understanding the environment they're working in, what
they're on, and the brain is developing.
Could you give us an example of how you would.
Do an academic exercise in the saddle.
So we
Terri Brosnan: very simple because you know, we, we are a small charity.
We don't have massive amounts.
We're not an international charity, say for example.
So funding is not enormous.
so we, we have defined really interesting ways of doing things.
and one of the things we found, her foam dice are an amazing tool.
and we hide them in our trail, in boxes and we get the children
to collect them, find them, and then we might throw the dice.
and the sum of the dice might be the number that of steps that we taught for,
or it might be a multiple of the number
Rupert Isaacson: on the dice.
Oh, so they, they would, they would take the foam dice throw.
Can they feel, can they feel the, the dots on it?
Can they feel vi, is it a bit like braille?
Can they feel the dots of the number?
We, we have,
Terri Brosnan: we have wooden ones that have holes Yeah.
That have holes in so that they can use those visually impaired.
Okay.
Can, can use those.
Rupert Isaacson: But we, yeah.
So then they would throw it.
Yeah.
A number would, they would feel that number.
Give them up, put the horse into that number of trot steps.
Yeah, absolutely.
And that's a sort of cellular way of becoming a, what
would you then do with that?
How would you then turn that into a arithmetic?
Terri Brosnan: So we might say if, if we, if we are doing it in groups,
there might be two people with five.
So we've gone for five and we might say, well, we'll add the second
five steps onto the first five.
So we might say, right, we're going to talk for.
5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 5 and five more is 10.
So we might, we might do it that way.
We might work on getting them to, you know, add the subtract one from another.
Well, depending on what we're working on that day, we'll make it very physical.
We'll make it very practical.
so that, could you, could
Rupert Isaacson: you take it beyond addition and subtraction?
Could you take it to multiplication and division?
Abso Absolutely.
Terri Brosnan: How would you do that?
Two times.
Five is 10.
Two times five is 10.
Okay, so we've got two of you.
So we've had five and five, that's two times five.
Okay.
So how are we gonna, and then if we were to take five away from what we
did, we'd have only gone for trot.
We'd have only trotted one time for that first five.
So 10 minus five is five, you know, so we would in, in that way, we
develop those concepts over time
Rupert Isaacson: and all of that is being felt through the body
Terri Brosnan: completely.
And it's much more motivational.
They're getting all of that oxytocin, they're getting that lovely
movement, and they're having fun.
They're getting proprioceptive feedback.
They get everything's involved, their vestibular systems activated, because
they're moving, and, and they're moving in a rapid movement on the back of the
Rupert Isaacson: horse.
And they're, what, what you're really doing there.
What you're really talking about, it seems is applied neuroscience.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
That just happens.
Enjoyable.
Four legs.
This,
Terri Brosnan: he's applied neuroscience as a systems girl, I need to be
working with the main computer.
You know,
everything else comes from that.
Let's make that the, the center of where you're gonna work from.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
It's fascinating.
if you were giving advice to somebody starting up now in the therapeutic
riding world, or somebody who was, had been in it for a while, Yeah.
But was looking for new horizons, you're obviously developing all of this.
Yeah.
What would your first advice be?
Terri Brosnan: My first advice is be professional.
Think about the best practice that you can achieve within whatever space you're in.
It doesn't matter if, if you're 50 horses or you've two horses, do
the very best that you can at every aspect that you can afford to do it.
So for me, you know, I like to learn about everything.
I'm, I just like, I love knowledge.
I, I'm curious.
I wanna know, am I doing the right thing?
And if I'm not, is there something better?
What makes it better?
Why is it better?
How can I improve what I'm doing?
Because we develop as humans and we want to always, there's no point in, isn't
what they say about failure is doing the same thing, you know, time after time
and never learning from your mistakes.
Well, that's
Rupert Isaacson: insanity actually is what
Terri Brosnan: True.
But you know, so for me it's about what can I learn in this situation?
Mm-hmm.
Stay curious.
Always stay curious, and then go and find the mentorship that you need.
That's,
Rupert Isaacson: go ahead.
I didn't want to interrupt you that.
Yeah.
Terri Brosnan: So, so, so just never just say, oh, I don't know
how to get that information.
Ask the people who are doing it, because if they're anything like
me, I will happily tell you forever.
so, you know, just go and ask.
People really want, if they're doing something well, they
want to share that information.
If they're doing something poorly, they'll want to hide it.
So if, if they're doing something well, they want the world
to know about it, you know?
so they will happily tell you, I've never met somebody who does
a really good job, who's not happy to say, do you wanna learn?
Mm.
And it may be you have to spend three months doing it this way, or you spend
a year doing it this way to learn.
You give your time or you give your money or whatever it is that makes it work.
Find the mentorship, go and find the people who can do it.
Rupert Isaacson: That seems to me the key word about that's run through
your whole thing here is mentorship.
Right.
So, you were mentored by the Kreme Carroll family.
Mm-hmm.
you absorbed all that, Yes.
Good equine practice.
Then when you were getting into systems stuff, you mm-hmm.
Went to be mentored in that mechanical engineering.
Yeah.
you went, when you got into the therapeutic riding side, you
went off for mentorship Yeah.
For some years.
And then now you offer mentorship.
Absolutely.
I think, I think one of the, the problems in the, in the horse world frankly,
is lack of curiosity and people being afraid to be judged as a beginner.
Whereas of course, one always is a beginner.
Whenever one learns a new skillset.
Yes.
So therefore, don't go learn a new skillset.
Just defend forever what you do, rather aggressively and
be really grumpy about it.
If anyone suggests any change, And, and yeah.
The mo, you
Terri Brosnan: know, absolutely.
And, and that has traditionally been the mindset here.
But for me, mentorship doesn't just come from experts.
And I have had amazing mentors in my life, John Watson, who was a, an Olympic rider.
I got to work with him when I was a very small child.
He used to do pony club rallies.
I mean, you know, but fantastic mentorship.
but it isn't always these people with this huge knowledge up here.
I get mentorship every day from my colleagues.
Mm.
I get mentorship from the kids that I see.
Mm.
If you're curious, you will find mentorship everywhere you go.
Are you
Rupert Isaacson: actively asking your children for their feedback?
What do you think?
Yes.
What could we improve?
What's working, what's not working?
Rather than ask our parents, shut up and put this, throw this dice
so that we can do this exercise.
Terri Brosnan: Yeah.
No.
What do you want to do?
We give them of the autonomy.
We ask them where they want to go with it, because it's not about us.
This, this whole thing is not about, it doesn't matter.
If I go out there every day and it's about me, then nobody else benefits.
I can't benefit anybody else unless I give, get their feedback, unless
I ask them how they want to do this.
Because it's not about me.
It's not about my experience of equine assisted therapy or I.
Any interaction with the horse, it's about I ask my horses what they want to do.
You know, so I, I I need to be not the center of this situation.
I need to ask what is best for you?
How am I best serving you?
If I'm not serving them, I'm not doing my job.
I am not there to be served.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
If something's not working, what can I change?
Yes.
Rather than absolutely it's the, the fault of that person, or it's the fault of that
Terri Brosnan: horse.
It's, no, it's never, it's, we need to change something in the situation.
It's not something is wrong or somebody has done something wrong.
It is just, we need a change.
And people, I, I'm not great with change.
I'm not always brilliant with change.
People are great with change, but I've found that change is what works.
If again, you know, repeating the same mistake over and over again,
it's, it's no good for anybody.
So, you know, there are amazing people out there.
and I'm really lucky in an, I work in an organization where people
have lots of different skills and I don't have to have their skills.
I can just go to the people who have them and say, what do I do now?
Rupert Isaacson: So you're, you're going to occupational therapists, you're
gonna physical therapists, you're gonna
Terri Brosnan: speech and language therapists, o and m specialists,
orientation and mobility specialists, disability specialists, nursing staff.
We have nursing staff on campus, which is incredible godsend.
But even in terms of research, I have library staff, I
have hr, so I'm very lucky.
I have an unusual situation because all of the things that you would want to
have as a business, if you're setting this up, I actually have, and I have
lots of expertise in that in other areas within the building that I work in.
And I don't have to do all of that.
And yes, I have run my own yards and had to be, you know,
chief, washing, bottle cleaner.
Everybody.
I, I did all the jobs, you know, where you're, you're mucking out,
you're answering the phone, you're teaching the lessons, you're pulling
the mains, you're doing everything.
I, I, I've, I've done that and of things.
And it's not joyful.
Mm-hmm.
It's not joyful when you, everything comes on, falls on one person.
It is joyful to work in harmony with others.
Tribal, whether it's Yeah.
Tribal.
Exactly.
Extended family.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Clan.
Yeah.
And that's where the joy comes.
Interesting.
Yeah.
I, I think that that's always the central theme here is that if you are,
if you are not having wellbeing, if the horse is not having wellbeing, how can
you and the horse transmit wellbeing?
To some someone else, you, it's not possible, right?
It's impossible.
and you're so right that, that the team tribe call it what you will aspect of
it, brings joy because that's of course how humans are supposed to to be.
But we know so many people in the horse industry exists in isolation.
It's just me in my yard doing my thing.
I don't want any outside interference.
I don't want, and this is certainly true in the therapeutic
Terri Brosnan: world, but it's just fear.
It's just fear.
We, I think particularly in the horse industry, there's an awful
lot of cases of, imposter syndrome.
Mm.
So we hide what we don't know under, a facade of bluff.
Mm.
and, and, and brusqueness rather than saying, actually, can you show me how that
Rupert Isaacson: works?
Right.
No, I, I couldn't agree more.
and I think it's a sickness within, obviously it's not just the horse world.
One, one
Terri Brosnan: part.
No, it's everywhere.
No.
Rupert Isaacson: it's, it's somehow, particularly a
little bit in the horse world.
And one of the things I, I find fascinating about you, Terry, is
that you, you are one of those few people I've run across there who just
go into this forever student mode.
because you could say, look, I'm working for this.
Really cutting edge, organization, child Vision in Dublin.
We're doing a fantastic job.
We really know, think, I know that you're getting invited to
conferences around the world.
I know you just got back from Warsaw.
I know you're off to Colorado, as you just said, to present in Denver.
Denver.
there's a neuroscience conference coming up, next year in, in Virginia, which
I know you're gonna be invited to.
so, you know, you're, you're in demand, so you could rest on those laurels, but
you don't, you, you still go out and look.
Yeah,
Terri Brosnan: so my brain needs input all the time.
I have that brain that needs constant, you know, it needs to problem solve.
I need my vestibular problem solving, brain needs input all the
time, and I love to solve problems.
a pattern recognition is my, it's my little, it's my
specialist area of interest.
So,
Rupert Isaacson: so tell us, sir, how can people get in contact with you?
How can they find out more about your work?
Terri Brosnan: Okay, so I'm, I'm working in child's vision
in Interim Contra in Dublin.
And anybody is welcome to drop in Monday to Friday, nine till
five into our yard and say hello.
Where they could
Rupert Isaacson: just public, they could just Google Child
Vision is one word, absolutely.
Terri Brosnan: Ie.
Child Vision, ie.
And they can rock up on the campus.
It's open to the public, so, All, all year round and we'll be there.
so on a very physical level, you can get your ass into television
and, and we'll be there.
and on an internet level, you can find me at terri@equigeek.com,
so E Q U I g e e k.com.
and or Terry brosnan@childvision.ie.
Rupert Isaacson: Just repeat those a couple of times so people
run off and get their pens.
Just yeah.
So it's say them slowly so people can write them
Terri Brosnan: down.
The Irish disease of speaking really quickly.
so it's Terry Brosnan, T e r, yeah.
R i b r o s n a n at Child Vision, ie.
That's c h i l d V I S I O n, ie.
or Terry, t e r r qui geek e q ui g e e k.com.
Alternatively, you will be able to get me at Terry Horse, ie.
in the next couple of weeks.
Okay.
yeah, so I will answer emails if you send them through to me, I'll,
I answer any questions or I will put you in touch with somebody who
knows more about this than I do.
Rupert Isaacson: and specifically for people who are interested in, in this,
course that you're doing, for equine professionals wanting to look at the,
the various ways of getting involved in a therapeutic world professionally.
Yeah.
I could imagine that this goes beyond Ireland.
that if people from other countries wanted to look at the model that
you've produced and look at some doing something similar, can they get with
you and talk with you about that?
Can they book themselves on one of your courses?
Terri Brosnan: Absolutely.
we will have a course coming up at the very end of August, beginning of
September, in Dublin in Child Vision.
there would be a four day therapeutic writing coaching
course, on the last week of August into the first week in September.
it's the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday of that week, and we, there
will be one in Northern Ireland in cre, in Enki, in the college, the
agricultural and equine college in Enki.
Sometime over Halloween holidays.
I haven't got exact dates yet, but there's, there's definitely one coming
up in Northern Ireland for that date.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
And obviously I'm gonna say because the internet is timeless,
this is 2023 we're talking about.
Yeah.
if you're listening to this, in later timeframes, just contact Terry for
Terri Brosnan: absolutely when there's gonna be more and we'll continue to
run these courses, for as long as Horse Board Island will continue to fund us.
Rupert Isaacson: Fantastic.
well, listen, Terry, it's been an absolute treat to check in with you.
the work you're doing is stalking, as we say in Okay.
and it gives me great gladness because as a dad of an autistic child who
found his way through horses, but in an unconventional way, I just know that with
people like you out there doing this sort of thing, there's gonna be more kids like
mine helped, and this makes me happy.
I want to thank all the listeners.
Mm-hmm.
Or, tune in.
Please do contact Terry directly.
Yes.
She really will get back to you.
She will help you.
I've, I've seen her do this time and time again.
It doesn't matter if you're in the USA or Japan.
She can help you, particularly if you are trying to put something together in
a smaller space, particularly if you're looking at how to look at all these
various, apparently conflicting modalities within the, the therapeutic horse world.
How do you marry them all together?
She's the lady to talk to.
if you are interested in, what we do at Horse Boy, please go to, n ntls.co.
ntls.co.
That's for new Trails Learning Systems.
that's Horse Boy Method Movement Method, and Athena, which is
our trauma based modality.
Or if you're interested in the horse training and personal
development, go to long ride home.com and you'll find us there.
and please tune in for the next equine assisted world.
As you can see with Terry here, the people that are coming on this
are, are doing extraordinary work that we all need to know about.
I have one last little sneaky question.
Yes.
Okay.
You and I, I'm sure everyone was wondering this, your surname is Brosnan and you're
Irish and you're living in county.
Me?
Yes.
We're to know that Pierce Brosnan.
Pierce Brosnan is a Navan man, right?
I believe he, yes.
Right.
Any, yeah, any relation?
Are you relation?
Terri Brosnan: Yes.
They're all actually Kerry men.
Oh.
And apparently there was a family feud.
About a hundred years ago over a farm somewhere in Kerry, on the other side of
Ireland, on the other side of Ireland.
so our side of the family doesn't actually know his side of the
family, for some bizarre reason, but apparently he's a lovely man.
and yes, his family are from just up the road, so they're
Rupert Isaacson: okay.
Yeah.
So what that really means, our listeners, is if you get in touch with Terry, she'll
sort you out with a date with Pierce.
So, excellent.
Or, or the more reason to, to contact.
Terri Brosnan: I, I'm only married to his, lovely cousin, so,
Rupert Isaacson: and, and Nile, Nile Brosnan.
For those who don't know, Terry's husband is a very, very lovely man.
He's what you would really call a polymath.
, computers, mathematics, music.
Brilliant man.
If you ever find yourself lucky enough to be around a table with that man
with a glass of whiskey in Terry's kitchen, so, so if you sign up on
one of Terry's courses, you might find yourself in that situation.
Terri Brosnan: You may well find yourself in my kitchen.
Ruth, thank you.
It's
Rupert Isaacson: been such a pleasure.
Oh, thank you so much.
Thank you very much.
All right.
I can't wait till the next time.
Okay.
Talk to you soon.
See you soon.
Bye-Bye.
All.
thank you for joining us.
We hope you enjoyed today's podcast.
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