Taught Me How To Walk

Report From Turkey Visit

May 12 2014, Monday

We have met at Akhal Teke Riding Center at around 10am. After the first meeting and introducing the new attendees, we have a played a game called “team building and name games” with the leadership of project coordinator Yota Arvanitin. After that we had a coffee break and then we had a tour in the riding center. Detailed information about the riding center has provided to the attendees;

The barn has 22 horses, one small and two big paddocks, a rolling area, and it has almost 10 000 m2 area. The center is located on the side of Red river. Moreover, the center has a closed restaurant with 100 people capacity and a garden restaurant area with 500 people.

The number of horses can vary among different seasons and can change from 35 to 45. The center was founded for touristic purposes in 1988, however, it has been started to serve for the sportive riding services from 2010. Therapeutic riding activities have been started in 2012 and some improvements have been made from that time. We still improve our knowledge and experience in the center.

As there are mainly long-lasting ridings at the center, Anatolian and Arab origin horses are used for the ridings.

After the lunch, “mounting and dismounting” presentation was made. We had a coffee break after the presentation and then had an application for “mounting and dismounting”. Attendees also shared their knowledge and experiences about “mounting and dismounting”. We finalized the program at 5:30pm.

May 13 2014, Tuesday

In the second day of the program, attendees have participated a 1and half hour riding tour in the Cappadocia region with watching the beautiful view of the fairy chimneys. Attendees discovered the beauty of the valleys and fairy chimneys during the riding tour. We had a small city tour and then had the lunch at the riverbank.

After the lunch, “Horse Choosing” and “Horse Choosing for Adaptive Riding” presentations were made. We have discussed those topics after the presentation and application was performed at the barn. After the application, we had a coffee break and then we discussed about visits to the project partners and evaluated the visits. During this evaluation, we made some groups and determined the gains of each visit.

May 14 2014, Wednesday

We met at a meeting hall in Vocational School, Nevsehir Haci Bektas Veli University at 10am. We made some groups with having at least one person from each participated country and tried to find the answer for “What should be look like an ideal therapeutic horse riding center?”. After the brain storm for almost 2 hours with those different groups, each group shared its own ideas and suggestions about the topic with the other groups. We all finally came to a consensus about the general structure of an ideal therapeutic horse riding center. At the end of the meeting, all the attendees evaluated the visit to Nevşehir. After the lunch at the university social building, we met again in Göreme. In that meeting, we talked about the preparation of “the best application guide book” and printing out this book. Moreover, we also talked about finalizing of some shortcomings at the WebPages. At the end of the meeting, we decided the date for the last meeting in Athens on 13th of July 2014 and closed the meeting in Göreme. We had the honor dinner of the visit at Akhal Teke riding center, took many commemorative photos, and wished the best till we see each other again.