Visit the YouTube channels for CADI and Freestyle, and the Bear Spot Foundation! Check out our new website Developing Nations Dressage, our BSFDressage website, and Like us on Facebook!

Don't miss a special message from Jane Karol, Founding Director of the Bear Spot Foundation, about the work and focus of the Foundation.

Saddle Mattress will donate $30 directly to the Bear Spot Foundation for Equine Facilitated Psychotherapy for each purchase of a Saddle Mattress from their website using the code "BSF" (plus FREE S/H!)

From "The Boston Globe": "Sorrows Unsaddled: At Concord’s Bear Spot Farm, Jane Karol and her horses guide students through dressage, patients through therapy." Read more...

CADI 2011
Read about CADI 2011 winner Ambriel Weatherly in the article published in the Chronicle of the Horse!

Bear Spot Freestyle is part of the SIGNATURE DRESSAGE SERIES alliance.
Read more...

Horses are so often nutritive to those humans who seek out their company. The work of my foundation honors and draws on the seemingly mystical nourishing quality of the horse. This nourishing quality allows bonds to grow between people of diverse backgrounds, serves as a balm for the disquieted soul, and somehow allows even the most lost to feel at home in their presence.
—Jane Karol

The Bear Spot Foundation

The Bear Spot Foundation to Benefit Equine Assisted Psychotherapy (the Foundation) was established in 2004 to provide therapeutic services for children, adolescents and their families.

The Foundation's programs address the needs of clients with affective disorders (like depression), ADD/ADHD, anorexia, bulimia and concerns related to low self-esteem, separation and loss and anxiety and phobias. The Foundation offers a unique combination of traditional psychotherapy with dressage riding and horse care

See our YouTube video below explaining the activities of the Bear Spot Foundation.

Equine Assisted Psychotherapy

A powerful and effective therapeutic approach, equine assisted psychotherapy harnesses the horse's ability to be both loving friend and patient teacher. Equine assisted psychotherapy is traditional treatment in an untraditional setting. Practitioners like Dr. Karol have been able to use horses as co-therapists, and have found them to be powerful catalysts for emotional and psychological growth, development and change.

Meet Dr. Karol

Jane Karol, Psy.D. is the Foundation's executive and program director. She is a psychotherapist with extensive experience treating children and adolescents. She is also an accomplished dressage rider, trainer, instructor and competitor.

The Foundation combines Dr. Karol's professional training and interests in a way that is distinct from other programs in the field.

Learn more about the Bear Spot Foundation

Our videos provide an overview of some of Bear Spot Foundation's activities.

Please watch this a special message from Jane Karol, Founding Director of the Bear Spot Foundation, about the work and focus of the Foundation.

Please also take a minute to visit the Bear Spot Freestyle YouTube channel, as well as the Bear Spot Children of the Americas Dressage Invitational (CADI) channel.