Episode 177: A Comprehensive Safety Session for Equine Assisted Work with Sara Lavoie

We’re hosting a live conversation with Sara Lavoie, a certified Equine-Assisted Learning facilitator and Safety Officer, who has developed a comprehensive safety manual for equine assisted work. This live is for any horse professional working with clients, regardless of modality, facility type, or certification background. True professionalism means more than skilled facilitation. It requires clearly defined standards, ethical responsibility, and systems that protect horses, humans, and facilities. In this live, we’ll explore what real safety looks like in equine assisted work, including scope of practice, duty of care, insurance considerations, animal welfare, and facility responsibilities, as well as the gaps that exist across the industry. Horses are not pets. They are powerful, highly sensitive prey animals, and working alongside them requires awareness, responsibility, and ongoing respect for their nature. When safety becomes casual or assumed, risk increases for everyone involved. This manual exists to support safer choices, clearer standards, and deeper respect for the horse as our partner and teacher, while keeping accountability exactly where it belongs with the professionals who choose to do this work. This is about raising the bar for our entire horse human community and creating work that is trusted, sustainable, and worthy of the horses who make it possible.