Elk Ranch Academy

Structured Therapy

We also offer Individual and Group Therapy.  Each student will have a specific Student Service Plan; our Therapists, Life coaches and Educational team will work together to create this plan.  Therapists hold group and individual sessions with the boys.  Our goal is for the boys to learn how to respect themselves and others, self-discipline, and communication.  Our Therapist will work with each boy individually to insure that all the students’ needs are being met.

Animal Husbandry and Equine Therapy

Elk Ranch Academy is a working ranch, so boys will have daily interaction with a wide variety of animals, such as horses, cows, sheep, goats, pigs, rabbits and dogs.  Boys are assigned regular rotations caring for the animals, learning the diet and regular habits of each animal, as well as their clean-up and exercise requirements.  Each boy, under strict guidance, is taught to care for, tack and ride a horse.  Elk Ranch Academy uses horses to help boys change attitude and behavior problems by giving them the responsibility of caring for and loving a horse.   By requiring each boy to learn the basics about horses and riding, they learn responsibility and the challenges of caring for another being that has behaviors and a personality all its own.

When put in this caregiver position boys learn to be more responsible and compassionate.  They also get insight into the amount of work that it takes to care for something or someone, helping them to better appreciation the efforts of parents and teachers.  These experiences are designed to allow each boy some form of self-discovery, either in recognizing their own poor behaviors, in learning more constructive behavior, in learning better ways to communicate and problem solve or simply by helping them to step outside of their self-centeredness.  These moments of self-discovery are the basic building blocks on which we teach boys to begin building new, constructive, positive behavior patterns.