The Power of Horses: Jodie Miller on Thereputic Riding

December 12, 2025

Jodie Miller, a senior at Centenary University, has been an avid equestrian since childhood. Spending a week at the equestrian camp of Clover Valley Farms Miller developed a love for horses and the benefits they can provide for us. 

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Professional Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship, or PATH International, is the official governing body of therapeutic riding for the world. They created the rules, standards, and regulations.

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Last year, Miller completed her first PATH International certification to become a Certified Therapeutic Riding Instructor (CTRI). 

What is therapeutic riding?

Jodie Miller: The most basic way to describe it is using horses and adaptive riding to help individuals with either social, emotional, cognitive, or physical disabilities. It's teaching them one riding skills, but also how to help them through their own personality, personal challenges as well.

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There are multiple other things aside from riding as well. For someone who has communication problems you can use horses and riding to help them through those challenges and have them learn a better way to communicate through the skills that you teach.
 

What made you interested in perusing this path?

JM: A few years into my riding career, I started teaching under an apprenticeship of my trainer back at home. My trainer gave me one student, she was diagnosed with autism. I saw how much after teaching her for a few years, really how much the horses helped her and how appreciative not only she was, but her mother was as well. Once I was with that student for quite some time, decided that this is something that I would want to do in the real world.

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When looking for a program to get certified in, what made Centenary stand out to you?

JM: I chose Centenary because of the dressage team and the fact that they had a therapeutic riding program. Not one school that I looked at other than Centenary had both of those things. But part of the reason that the therapeutic riding program here stood out to me the most is because you could actually get your certification through the school without having to be an Equine Assisted Services Major.

When I toured the school and I had Kayla Thao as my tour guide, and she was part of the therapeutic riding program. She's officially a CTRI and now works at a few different places for therapeutic riding. But I talked to her a lot about the program and what it entailed, and it seemed like a great opportunity to get a ton of hands-on experience under the mentors of the director of the program, Karen, as well as the other instructors in training. It seemed like a very involved part of the Equine Center.

When I was talking with tour guide originally about the program, she seemed so into it, and it just made me want to be into it as well.

The other thing too, Octavia Brown, who is the founder of TRACC and is also I think the 11th member of PATH International, she had created the program at Centenary. For her to have founded the therapeutic riding program and to do all the adaptive riding, the special dismounts, the special mounts, it made me realize that how much the therapeutic riding program that we have at Centenary is credentialed. It's very real and it's a very proper program. We go by the rules. We are PATH accredited. Which is another part of the reason why I liked it. Because you can have a therapeutic riding center, but it doesn't have to be PATH accredited.

Are there different types of certifications people can get in this career?

JM: There are three different certifications. The CTRI, which is the Certified Therapeutic Riding Instructor. Then it goes to Advanced and then the highest level is a Master Therapeutic Riding Instructor. 

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The easiest way to simplify it is the higher up you go, the more teaching hours you need and the more volunteer hours you need. There's the hands-on portion, which is the teaching the volunteer, whether it's sidewalking, leading, being a gate person, doing offside, helping out with the mounts, helping out with the dismount.

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As you go up the levels into the Advanced Certification, you need more hours of teaching, more hours of doing volunteer work. You need some case studies. Then the Master’s Certification is a few more case studies. You have to teach an abled bodied rider how to ride and perform a series of lessons through that. 

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And then every single one there's a written exam as well. And the written exams also have more specifics to them.

What was the process like to get certified as a CTRI.

JM: I've been volunteering for the track program since my freshman year. Pretty much right when I started school, I started volunteering. But for the course there's are two lecture-based classes and then you have your hands on portion.

During the lecture-based classes you learn a lot about the specific disabilities, you learn about the mounting, the dismounting, about the adaptive equipment. What they are, what it does, why you would use it. You also learn a lot about the horses and you're always looking at the way that they're moving, their biomechanics, their conformation and how it can affect not only you know, the rider, but also the rider's balance. Would this horse be a good fit for this rider? Would this horse be a bad fit for this rider? You also have to look at the height of the horse and the weight of the rider.

You're also learning a lot about the mandatory standards of being a PATH accredited center and a CTRI. You're also learning about a ton of precautions and contraindications. That was one of the biggest things that I learned from the hands on in the lecture-based portion. A lot of these specific disabilities have specific parts to them where it may or may not let the individual be able to ride, which is the contraindications part.

The hands-on portion of that is actually being in the ring. You work under a mentor with other instructors in training where you have to do a lesson plan every single time. You have to talk about the mounts, the dismounts, the horses you're going to use, what adaptive equipment you're going to use, what volunteers you need. There's always an objective. An example would be riders will demonstrate walk, halt, walk transitions three times in each direction with assistance as needed.

You also have the what, hows, and whys of everything. For the walt-halt-walk transition, your what would be walk-halt-walk transition. Your why would be to make sure that the rider can stop the horse and can have control. And then your how would be, sit deep in the saddle, say the word whoa, pull back on the reins.

After the lesson is over, you would do lesson notes. You would talk about the whole entire lesson. What went well, what didn't go well, some things that you would change. You also need to kind of have an idea of a plan for the following week to build up those skills and progress on those skills.

In the long term, what are your goals in therapeutic riding?

JM: I know that I don't want to do this full time. As much as I love it and as rewarding as it is, it can sometimes be very physically and emotionally draining. You're on your feet for a lot of hours of the day and it's not your typical riding lesson. There's a lot more involved to it than a typical riding lesson. But for me, I would like to continue being a CTRI. Keep that certification up to date and go through more teaching hours, more volunteer hours and possibly get my advanced certification. I honestly don't think I would ever get my Master Certification just because of the amount of time that it takes and the fact that I don't want to do it full time

Teaching the riders and being a mentor now or mini mentor now, I do like it. I do want to keep doing that just to help keep the amount of CTRIs growing because it really is a low number.

What makes a good therapeutic riding horse?

JM: The biggest thing is temperament, 100% temperament. You do not want a horse that is hot-to-go or spooky. So, when you think of horses in a therapeutic riding program, you're thinking of horses like Sadie and Petey that are just calm, cool, collected, pretty much all the time.

The other thing that you always want to look at is confirmation. You want to look at are they cow hocked? Are they in even thirds? And you also want to look at their height, and you also want to look at their weight. In therapeutic riding, we try our best not to get super tall horses, because especially if we have individuals that have physical disabilities, it can be really hard, not only on the volunteers, the leaders, the instructors in training, but it can be really hard on the horses too because of the specific mounts and dismounts. Weight wise, you do want to look at the horse's weight, because if the horse is really, really small, and it depends on what individuals you're going to have be having riding these horses.

Essentially, you don't want a horse that's super, super small, where maybe an adult can't ride him or her because of the weight issue.

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The other thing also really important to look at is the way the horses move. When we're looking for a therapeutic riding horse, we're looking at do they have a super bouncy trot? Do they have a super smooth trot? Are their hips even? Is this horse super unbalanced? If you have a super unbalanced horse and you have an unbalanced rider to begin with, it makes a bad combo.

Getting to know the horses too, getting to ride the horse's bare back and feeling the way that they're moving your pelvis and they're moving your hips has also made me a better instructor in general to really analyze horses in a regular program as well. To see what kind of flaws that they have and see how it affects the rider. But mostly biggest thing is temperament. They need to be safe.

The other thing too that you want to look for in a therapeutic riding horse is that they like their job, they want to work. It's very hard to have a therapeutic riding horse that does not like the job because not only is it not good for them that they don't like it, that they're not having fun and that it's not enjoyable. You can get behavioral challenges from the horse that can then turn into a possibly dangerous situation for the rider.

What is your favorite part about this field?

JM: I think seeing how much it benefits these individuals, and not only these individuals, but these individuals families as well, and how much joy they get from coming to the barn and coming to ride for just an hour. I can see how much it helps them. One, physically, but two, socially and emotionally. These riders can connect with these horses in ways that nobody else can. It is so special to see that and how some of these horses can just completely change these riders. Some riders they're maybe struggling to walk or maybe they're struggling to do something, and then they get on a horse, and they can post, and they can go into their two-point position, and they also just have this sense of control. I think a lot of the times when you have individuals with disabilities, it seems like sometimes they can't control what goes on in their life. But when they get on these horses and they can be independent and they can steer their horses and go and weave through cones and go over poles, it does.

You can see that sense of control that they get from being on a horse and how empowering it is to be on such a large animal and have them be doing what they're asking them to do. So really the main point of that was just how it's a very rewarding part of the equine industry and very rewarding job. But really just to see how much it benefits these individuals. Again, whether it's physically or socially, emotionally, cognitively, and how much they're learning just riding skills, how much it helps them through personal challenges as well.
 

What advice do you have for those interested?

JM: I would say, as much as you can, just get that hands-on experience. Whether it's sidewalking or whether you're leading a horse. Anyone that wants to be a CTRI definitely can. If you want to put in the work, then you can 100% become a CTRI.

The biggest thing is have having an open mind for sure. A lot of the times we have to train the horses a little bit differently because of the job that they're doing. So having an open mind to different training ways and always trying to be positive because like I said before, it can be a very emotionally draining thing.

The other biggest thing is just remember why you wanted to do it in the first place. Like, there, there are sometimes where I'm like, oh, like, I don't want to go. I don't want to do it. It's too cold out, or, oh, my God, whatever. Then you get there, and you see how much the horse has helped them and you're like, this is why. This is why I wanted to do it in the first place. For me personally, the other part of the reason. To go back to one of your other questions, I think it was about why I wanted to become a CTRI or something. It was mostly because of that one student who, you know, was diagnosed with autism.

But throughout my personal life, horses helped me like no other. I don't know if I would be here if it weren't for horses just to be completely honest. So, I wanted to give that back to others and be able to see and be able for other individual, you know, have other individuals be able to have horses help them just like they helped me.

Jodie’s final thoughts.

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I would like to add other than the fact that Therapeutic Riding is a think the least known portion of the equine industry right now, although it is growing the fastest. If you want to become a CTRI, we always need more, and places are always looking for them. I believe there's only 5,000 CTRIs in the world right now. Only a few hundred that have their Advanced Certification. Karen Brittle, who's the director of the TRACC program, just got her Master's Certification and she is the 25th person to ever get the master certification in the world.