About Us
When a real horse walks into the hospital room of a sick child it is always a magical experience. Gentle Carousel Miniature
Horses is an award-winning nonprofit charity celebrating 27 years of service in 2024 . Teams of tiny horses bring love to thousands of adults and children each year inside hospitals, hospice programs, assisted living programs, and with families, veterans and first responders who have experienced traumatic events.
The therapy horses were called in to comfort survivors and first responders of the tragedies at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut , the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina and the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. They helped the tornado survivors of Moore, Oklahoma, victims of the fires in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, families in the aftermath of multiple hurricanes, students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida and families and first responders after the condo collapse in Surfside, Florida.
Working indoors would be a challenge for any horse but Gentle Carousel Miniature Therapy Horses make it look easy, even in high rise hospital buildings, news stations and convention centers. They walk up and down steps, ride in elevators, walk on unusual floor surfaces, carefully move around hospital and television studio equipment, work in small patient rooms and stay calm around unexpected sounds like ambulances, alarms and hospital helicopters… and yes, they are all bathroom trained.
Gentle Carousel’s Reading With Horses literacy programs inspire young readers and “bring books to life”. The horses of Gentle Carousel work inside schools, libraries, with mentoring programs, at literacy events and at education resource centers in high crime neighborhoods with a focus on at-risk readers.
Individual Gentle Carousel therapy horses have been featured in many books used in the program, by different authors and publishers. After children read a book, the ACTUAL character from the story visits the classroom to bring the book to life.
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