Ashley Kerslake will tell you about the benefits of the horses that she loves so much.
When her new venture, the Prairie Crocus Equine Centre, held its grand opening on June 1, she was able to share those benefits with a lot of people.
The centre is located one mile east and a half-mile south of Lampman.
“I couldn’t have been more happy about it,” said Kerslake. “There were more than 200 people there, and we were not expecting nearly that many. We were just blown away with how many people were there.”
The grand opening saw people show up early. They had horse rides for the public, with a couple of ponies for children and a couple of bigger horses for adults and teens to ride.
A bouncy castle, a barbecue, rock painting, face painting and a petting zoo were among the non-horse related activities.
The equine centre opened in the beginning of March, but she decided to wait until the weather was nicer to have a grand opening, so that they could have additional activities.
Equine assisted learning and riding lessons are offered at the centre. The former is a curriculum-based program that teaches life skills using horses.
“Basically you take horses through different courses using a team, and through various activities, you learn different life skills. Basically I’m just the facilitator, the horses are the teachers and you learn together as a team.”
Kerslake believes there are considerable benefits from equine-assisted learning, and people have to see it to understand what the program can do.
“Right now I have an autistic boy who is mostly non-verbal. When he first started coming out, he would say ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ or he would mostly nod. I got him to say ‘appropriate assertiveness’ the other day, and I was just blown away.”
She is the only certified facilitator for equine assisted learning at the facility, but she does have assistance. If she’s on her own, she can only have four participants, but that number increases by four with each assistant.
As for riding lessons, she is nearly booked for riding lessons. She has been busy with multiple people coming out. The youngest rider in lessons is about six.
She has also experienced support from the community and businesses, along with family, friends and people she doesn’t even know since the opening.
Kerslake has been around horses for most of her life. Her mother had horses as a child, so any time there was anything to do with horses they would go.
“We were always at the rodeo, we started taking riding lessons probably 10 years ago,” said Kerslake.
They joined the Browning Light Horse 4-H project when it started up, too.
And she still considers her horse, Jackson, a registered American painted horse, to be her best friend.
“That horse has been through pretty much everything with me. Horses are a really important part of my life, and honestly, I don’t know what I would do without them. Their personality, with how they changed my life in general, they’re just amazing creatures.”
