bringing hope & healing
Our mission at the Archie Foundation for Therapeutic Horsemanship (AFTH) is to enhance the quality of life for veterans of the armed forces with diverse needs through therapeutic horsemanship training programs. We strongly believe in the powerful impact horses have and want to enable military veterans and their families to experience that for themselves. At AFTH, we focus on building solid foundations in horsemanship skills through the authentic, knowledgeable instruction of new concepts and methods while creating enjoyable experiences on horseback.
Archie the Horse
The Archie Foundation for Therapeutic Horsemanship is named, aptly, for a horse. When I first envisioned building an equine program that would benefit veterans, I kept thinking back to one particular experience I had with a horse and the feeling it left with me. A feeling of being in harmony with the horse. The feeling was - therapeutic. I knew that I wanted to give veterans the opportunity to experience that same feeling. So, it was only fitting to name my foundation after that horse- Archie.
Archie was a young, rough around the edges, English Thoroughbred my daughter, Morgen, and I invested in as a “project horse”. Morgen had just graduated from Texas A&M with an undergraduate and was beginning graduate school in England, where we lived at the time. The idea was for Morgen to use the skills she’d gained while competing on A&M’s Equestrian Team to train this young horse and then sell him for a profit. But, true to Archie’s nature, he stole our hearts and became so much more than a project. Archie liked to drink coffee – and like a true Starbuck’s aficionado, drank it out of a paper cup. He liked it with milk and sugar, and a biscuit (or cookie as we say in the U.S.) and if you weren’t careful, you might lose a button on your jacket due to his… affections. Archie also loved to jump.
On one unusually warm and sunny English summer day, I was riding Archie in the outdoor arena where there were a couple of small jumps set up. He was always well-behaved with me and I was confident on him. We had been cantering around the outside rail and I guess Archie got bored because a nice quiet canter along the rail turned into cantering straight for a jump. I figured, if he thinks we can do it, then we must be able to. It was pretty spontaneous, so I just sat there and we sailed over the jump as if it wasn’t there. Even though the jump was just a little one, I felt like we were flying. That feeling of being one with the horse, and the exhilaration and pure joy of it, has stayed with me ever since. It is my hope that veterans going through our program will experience that same feeling for themselves…
- Marvin Kobza, Founder and President AFTH