Horse
A horse weighs half a tonne and reads body language faster than most people. That makes the encounter both fascinating and demanding, because your own mood shows up immediately in the animal's response. The pictures below make the handling clear, from greeting to goodbye.
Trotting horse
A brown horse trotting.
Horse
A brown horse stands in profile.
♀Playing horse with a blanket
A girl crawls on all fours with a blanket on her back like a horse.
Horse with blanket
A horse wearing a checkered blanket on its back.
♀Playing with a blanket
A happy girl runs holding a blanket over her head.
♀Riding a horse
A girl rides a brown horse with a saddle blanket.
Horses
Two horses standing side by side.
About this visual support
A large animal offers a kind of feedback few other situations provide. The horse responds not to what the child says but to how it moves, and a tense shoulder or a hurried step registers immediately. That makes the contact instructive but also unpredictable, because the answer sometimes arrives before the child has noticed their own mood.
Visual support helps by turning the handling into a known order. Pictures for approaching from the front, patting the neck, leading by the halter and leaving the box give structure to something that otherwise happens on the animal's terms. Structure in the action makes it easier to stay calm, and calm is exactly what the horse responds to.
A concrete tip is to always do the same thing first, stopping and breathing before the gate opens for instance. A fixed beginning gives both child and horse a predictable start. In Routined the stable day can sit as a routine with times and steps, and the app can be tried for fourteen days at no cost.
Use this image in a schedule
Build your own visual schedule with this image and download it as a print-ready PDF. Completely free.
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Put on the horse blanket
A woman puts a checked blanket over a horse.
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A woman in boots leads a horse from the paddock.
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A woman feeding two small kittens with a spoon from a bowl.
Turn out the horses
A woman leads a horse through a gate.
Take off the horse blanket
A happy girl takes a checked blanket off a horse.
This visual support in other languages
Take the visual supports with you
In Routined you build schedules from these pictures, add timers and voice instructions, and your child follows the day on their own.
* 14-day free trial, then $2.39 a month or $20.99 a year (US pricing). Cancel anytime.