Equine Therapy: Taking the Reins to Recovery

‘Not for the fainthearted’: Carlos from Key4Life with a programme participant

Outside watching races in the bookies, Aaron had never set eyes on a horse before, let alone touched one. He grew up in Northwest London and had fallen into a life of crime by the age of sixteen. Three years later, he was in prison. ‘When I came out, I decided I was going to build my own drug empire’ – and build he did.

Fast forward to 2020, Aaron’s leaving the cells for the third time, having just served a six and a half sentence for drug and firearm related offences.

‘The Ferrari of horses’. Key4Life participants lead a horse out of the stables

‘I ain’t doing that,’ was Aaron’s first response to the Key4Life flyer presented to him in probation. A charity that offers a seven-step rehabilitation programme, Key4Life is aimed at young men in or at risk of entering the prison system.

Created in the aftermath of the London riots of 2011, a response to the death of a Black man, Matt Dugan, at the hands of the Metropolitan police, its mission is to reduce recidivism by improving emotional resilience and employability. And so, determined to put a total of fifteen years – almost half his life – in prison behind him, Aaron caved and decided to try the six-month programme.

This is where the horses come in. Eva Hamilton, founder and CEO of Key4Life, owns two of them, Cruising and Carlos, who are direct descendants of Olympians worth millions of dollars. Their job, however, looks very different from the athletic competitions of their forefathers: these horses are therapists.

‘They are the bedrock of our programme’, says Hamilton, ‘equine therapy is the first thing the men do when they sign up.’ Working with horses is a crucial part of the ‘unlocking process’, the often-messy emotional groundwork participants must undergo to progress in their rehabilitation.

Placating groups of ‘the toughest gang leaders in the country’, some with up to 100 offences under their belts, is quite the task for two animals. But once the horses arrive, these hardened men are ‘hiding under their chairs.’