A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF THE EFFECTS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY ...

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
Alison Selby has spent a lifetime learning from horses. She showed hunters and jumpers as a
teenager, was a rodeo queen, and managed an Appaloosa breeding farm as a young adult. She
also worked for a time with gaited horses. During a break from attending college at Northeast
Missouri State University, where she was studying art education, she became a working student
for a member of the United States Three-Day Event Olympic team while pursuing her
Horsemaster’s certification; It was at that point that her life’s course took a drastic turn: Having
always been interested in Thoroughbreds, she took a position at a leading breeding and racing
stable based in Virginia, and from there went on to an eighteen-year career as an exercise rider
at Belmont Park in New York for some of the world’s most talented and best known trainers,
including Woody Stephens and H. Allen Jerkens, where she galloped over 30,000 horses. After
completing her undergraduate degree in Psychology at New York University, she earned her
Advanced Therapeutic Horsemanship certification in Wylie, Texas, and taught riders with
physical, cognitive, and emotional disabilities for several years. She became interested in the
benefits of horsemanship for at-risk youths after realizing that all of us have abilities and
disabilities, some are just more apparent than others, and completed her MSSW with a goal of
working with this population. She is currently involved with building a practice employing horses in
therapeutic work with mental health clients. Alison discovered the excitement of carriage driving
and is competitive in North Texas combined driving events. She continues to ride, school, and
learn from horses.
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