CHAMPION, Ohio – Trumbull Career & Technical Center’s equine studies program prepares students for animal-related careers, the only such high school program in the Mahoning and Shenango valleys.
“I’ve always been passionate about horses, and I originally came to the vet science program. But once I saw all the horses and saw the facility, I just was really pulled to it and saw a future in the industry,” said Alexa Atchison, a senior from Bristol High School.
She wants to be an equine therapeutic horsemanship professional, rehabilitating horses to use them as therapy animals.
Payton Meloni, a senior from Lakeview High School, has been riding horses the past few years and enrolled in the equine studies program to learn more about handling them.
“I want to be a large animal or equine vet,” she said. “I want to learn more about the sciences behind them …”
They are among the 39 juniors and seniors enrolled in the TCTC program.
Lisa Street, the program instructor, said equine studies teaches students how to manage and run a horse farm.
“It would also involve horse health care, so understanding general health care, all of their vital signs, that type of thing” as well as managing and training horses, she said.
Each of the school’s 10 horses has a tailored training plan.
“I’m really big on behavior and getting a read on what the horse is telling you and maybe why he’s doing that,” Street said.
Something that works on one horse may agitate another.
One mare, for example, doesn’t like flat nosebands and grows upset if someone puts one on her. But she’s fine if a rider uses a round one.
While some students enter the program because they want to ride horses, equine studies covers more than that.
“I do want them to learn to ride here, but my goal would be that when they leave here, they could feed a barn by themselves on a weekend,” Street said. “They could identify if the horse had a health crisis. They could take vital signs if they needed it. They could wrap a leg if it was necessary.”
As far as riding, it’s not as easy as it looks, Street said. There’s a difference between riding a horse and sitting on one while it walks. One’s a rider and the other is a passenger, she said.
A rider is in control and communicates with the horse, both listening to it and letting it know what’s expected.
The program also introduces students to various animal-related careers. Besides veterinarianary medicine, some of those professions include horse trainers, professional riders, people who work with therapy animals and those who run horse farms.
Two 5-month-old donkeys, Rubble and Theodore, were added to the stable this year with plans to train them as therapy animals.
“Donkeys are just adorable, and they can be a pet,” Street explained. “I don’t want anyone to think we don’t love our horses, but they are never truly just pets.They always have to have a disciplinarian.”
If a student is leary of horses, the donkeys make a good starting point.
TCTC’s equine studies program started in the late 1990s, but this year the school opened a new $2 million, 7,771-square-foot barn for the program.
“When people say we upgraded, that’s truly the understatement of the year,” Street said.
The program’s previous quarters was a pole barn with temporary stalls that didn’t allow the horses to see out. It wasn’t heated or air conditioned.
The new space provides both. And it includes a classroom, indoor arena, tack room, laundry area, stalls with openings for the horses to see both outside and into the building, a feed room and storage area and space for grooming horses.
The classroom and the barn under one roof also means no wasted learning time traveling between buildings.
The equine science students planned and organized a horse show recently at the barn, drawing 425 entries. It served as a fundraiser for the program and an exam for students.
Atchison and Meloni appreciate the improved space too.
Last year, temporary stalls covered half the arena, limiting the area where students could ride horses, Atchison said. The new barn offers a larger arena, “and it is so efficient and organized and so easy to just learn because everything’s accessible,” she said.
And they’re learning a lot. One of the most important things is how to read the horses, Meloni said.
“We just recently did an assignment, and it was basically about how much we as people affect the horses too,” she said. “Every time we put hands on them, or work with them, or get them out of their stalls, we’re teaching them something …”
Pictured at top: Alexa Atchison wipes down the nose of Fritz, one of the horses in the Trumbull Career & Technical Center equine studies program.