Horses help people heal.

​

Before this place had a name, there was just quiet work, mucking stalls, filling water buckets, standing in fields with horses who didn’t ask for words.
At the time, I didn’t realize it was healing. I was just trying to breathe again.

 

My name is Raja, and I’m a survivor, the kind whose pain hides in silence and hypervigilance, whose nervous system never fully rests.
The horses met me there, in that stillness. They didn’t demand eye contact or explanations.
They simply offered presence, curiosity, and breath.

​

 

And then came Harley.

​

He didn’t come looking for love.
He was shut down, not angry, not scared. Just… gone.
He didn’t react or connect. He kept his distance, not with drama, but with detachment.

 

Something in me recognized that.
Some trauma doesn’t roar; it freezes. It fawns. It flattens.
It hides behind quiet eyes and steady routines.

 

Traditional training methods would have broken what little trust he had left.
So instead of trying to “fix” him, I started searching for another way.

 

​

Discovering a New Way.

​

That search led me to Warwick Schiller, whose approach of connection before correction opened a door.

​

As I began learning more about how the body responds to stress and safety, everything started to make sense.

I discovered that horses have a nervous system remarkably similar to ours, but they’re often better at finding their way back to calm. When a horse returns to balance, it naturally invites the person beside it to do the same.

​

What began as an effort to help Harley heal became the very thing that helped me heal, too.
The same principles that rebuilt his trust, safety, consent, curiosity, and connection — are the same ones that restore us.

​

In this work, horses become mirrors and partners in the story of healing. They reflect what’s happening inside us and offer the safety we need to find new ways of relating to them, to others, and to ourselves.

​

His healing became a mirror for mine.

​

​

That’s how Waterford Equine-Assisted Healing Inc. was born.

A place where survivors of trauma can be met not with pressure, but with presence.
Where healing happens through relationships with horses, with the land, and with ourselves.

 

We’re building this one partnership, one session, and one story at a time.

For the ones who’ve gone quiet.
For the ones who never got to rest.
Harley’s here. And he gets it.
And so do we.

​

Raja Pizzey

Founder, Waterford Equine-Assisted Healing Inc.