Emma Kane-Mikan once thought she wanted to be a professional horse trainer. She was a working student at a dressage barn, worked in a program that paired veterans with mustangs and worked at a private hunter/jumper farm. But those experiences helped her realize that making horses her livelihood wasn’t for her, and that she preferred keeping her equine pursuits in the “fun” column.

But even after trading her professional equine ambitions for a career in psychotherapy, she still found a way to fit her horse into her work. When the 27-year-old began working in the mental health field, she wasn’t planning on including her Haflinger “Tonka” into her professional life. But after her boss confused Kane-Mikan’s desire to offer sessions to equestrians with performance anxiety with a proposal to offer equine-assisted psychotherapy, Kane-Mikan found herself exploring a new avenue.

Depending on a client’s needs, Kane-Mikan’s sessions vary from being a typical therapy session, just one that takes place in an arena with Tonka rather than in an office, to one that focuses heavily on body language and Tonka’s responses to a client.

“As not sensitive as he appears in a lot of ways, he is extremely emotional, and he can read the clients honestly probably better than any human can to some extent,” Kane-Mikan said of her horse. “One day I had one of my regular clients come in, and [Tonka] just started pacing around the outside of the arena. And I’m like, ‘I think he can feel your anxiety.’ And then we worked on that and trying to use coping skills to bring it down, and she could see through him and how he was reacting.”

She had another client focus on using body language to get Tonka to walk over a teeter-totter without touching him or using a leadrope. “That was, like, three years ago, and she still talks about it now,” Kane-Mikan said.

Most of Kane-Mikan’s clients for equine-assisted sessions aren’t horse people, she said, but they’ve found the equine element of their sessions to be beneficial.

Kane-Mikan has worked in the mental health field for three years now and is currently enrolled in a doctoral program.

“I’m leaning towards, for my dissertation, doing research on equine-assisted [therapy], because if you go into the actual peer-reviewed public research, there’s like seven or eight studies, that’s it,” she said. “There needs to be more research and literature published on that.”

While therapy is Kane-Mikan’s main profession, she has a full plate outside of seeing roughly 25 clients a week. She’s also the village clerk for the Village of Bull Valley, Illinois. The village president and police chief are both horse people, too, which affords her some flexibility to attend shows, as long as she keeps on top of the important emails.

Her home in Lakewood, Illinois, is conveniently placed between two major showgrounds, Lamplight Equestrian Center and Silverwood Farm. Thanks to those venues’ robust show schedules, she braids almost every weekend over the summer to help with her horse expenses.

“If it’s a show during the week, I’ll go do that, shower and go to work,” she said. “I’ve seen clients telehealth in the parking lot of Lamplight. I’m always doing something. Being an amateur is no joke; it’s a lifestyle.

“We do whatever we have to do to make it work, and then we show up and don’t always place well,” she said.

Her background in mental health helps her reframe her thinking when she doesn’t go home with a ribbon. She’ll find a positive, like “that was the most relaxed test we’ve had,” even if the score wasn’t ideal.

She’s also the vice president of dressage for the Illinois Dressage and Combined Training Association and makes sure to consider the amateur’s position and keeping the sport accessible in that role.

A Versatile Partner

Kane-Mikan was introduced to eventing when she attended the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games in Kentucky. Though she rode at a western barn that specialized in trick riding and drill team, her trainer had eventing experience and agreed to show her the ropes on a former rodeo pick-up horse. Next she evented on her own oversized Haflinger, DaVinci, and while she had hopes of making it to the USEA American Eventing Championships, soundness issues prevented that.

Not one to stick with one discipline, Kane-Mikan has sampled many sports. When she first got Tonka nearly seven years ago, she hoped he’d be the horse to help her get her U.S. Dressage Federation silver medal. While they’ve competed in pure dressage and western dressage, it was never the gelding’s preference, which brought Kane-Mikan back to the eventing world. They currently compete at beginner novice with Tonka showing under the name Mein Liebling.

Much of the gelding’s background is a mystery. Kane-Mikan purchased him from Armando Dressage after he’d been abandoned at their barn, and at one point he’d been a rescue. No one is quite sure how old he is—though she estimates 15—and he bears the scars of a previous life. While it was a bit of a leap of faith to use him in therapy sessions, she also trusted him deeply.

“Now, through the process and working with other therapeutic programs a little bit and talking to other people, reading the research, I realize how good he is,” she said. “Definitely not intimidating. He just wants to snuggle. And he’s emotionally sensitive enough that he’s very good at picking up stuff while at the same time not being dangerous. … Moving forward, he’s exactly what I would choose.”

Kane-Mikan says therapy sessions are Tonka’s favorite job—who wouldn’t love getting pet and treats?—with eventing a close second, but they’ve dabbled in a bit of everything, from carrying the American flag during the national anthem at rodeos to competing in pleasure and speed classes and jumpers. This year, Kane-Mikan finally made it to the USEA American Eventing Championships (Kentucky) where they were 26^th in the beginner novice amateur division.

“He’s very difficult in a lot of ways to ride, but I can always count on him,” she said. “I can always pull him out and be like, let’s go. I don’t know what we’re doing, but we’re going to go.”