Location: Buffalo Gap, Texas, United States
Camp Able of Buffalo Gap is a nonprofit equine-assisted services organization and horse sanctuary founded in 2014 in Buffalo Gap, Texas, seven miles outside Abilene. It is a PATH International Premier Accredited Center with a dual mission: providing therapeutic riding and skills-based programs for people with special needs, and providing sanctuary, rehabilitation, and care for unwanted or neglected horses.
The organization started with $86 in the bank and a volunteer-driven vision, and has grown to serve approximately 150 participants with the support of around 200 volunteers — one of the most substantial therapeutic riding operations in the Abilene region.
About This Program
Camp Able’s approach reflects a belief that the horse and the person with special needs are genuinely helping each other. Participants receive therapeutic riding and skills-based training that targets physical, cognitive, emotional, and social development, while the horses at Camp Able are rescued animals given a second chance through rehabilitation and purposeful work. That mutually redemptive framework is woven throughout everything the organization does.
The Day Camp program is the foundation of Camp Able’s therapeutic services, offering daily therapeutic riding instruction and skills-based training at its main Buffalo Gap facility. Programs are available to individuals and groups, including school-based sessions serving students from local elementary, middle, and high schools in Clyde and Jim Ned. Approximately two-thirds of participants are school-aged children; the remainder includes adults with diverse special needs and military veterans.
The therapeutic mechanism at the heart of the program is well understood by its staff and volunteers. The horse’s three-dimensional gait — side to side and forward to back — mimics the movement pattern of crawling, a developmental stage that some participants with neurological conditions never completed. That movement stimulates neural pathway development, and program leadership has reported participants speaking for the first time, gaining physical independence, and seeing academic improvements as residual effects of riding sessions.
Camp Able also operates specialty summer residential camps for children with disabilities and their families, and works with organizations statewide to provide specialty therapeutic riding events for people with special needs and military veterans. The program has developed partnerships with nursing and healthcare programs at Hardin-Simmons University, where students in the Patty Hanks Shelton School of Nursing volunteer as part of their mental health clinical rotation.
Services Offered
- Therapeutic riding (individual and group)
- Skills-based training programs
- Day Camp (daily therapeutic sessions)
- School-based group programs (elementary, middle, and high school)
- Specialty summer residential camps
- Adult and veteran programs
- Horse sanctuary, rehabilitation, and adoption
- Volunteer program (approximately 200 active volunteers)
- Buster Welch Legacy Fund for therapeutic riding support
Who They Serve
Camp Able of Buffalo Gap may be a good fit for:
- Children and adults with special needs of all abilities
- Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (including nonverbal autism)
- Individuals with Down syndrome
- Individuals with ADHD
- Individuals with cerebral palsy
- Individuals with traumatic brain injury
- Individuals who have experienced stroke
- Individuals with PTSD or anxiety
- Individuals with anger management challenges
- Individuals with rare chromosomal conditions
- Individuals managing cancer
- Military veterans
- Families in Abilene, Taylor County, and the surrounding West Texas region
Facility and Setting
Camp Able’s main facility is located at 1302 Pecan Street in Buffalo Gap, Texas, in Taylor County, about seven miles south of Abilene. In 2017 the organization purchased an additional 83 acres to support its long-range expansion plan, which includes additional grazing pastures, a covered riding arena, a Learning Center, and ultimately a purpose-built 42,000-square-foot Therapeutic Riding Center. The current facility includes an arena for beginning riders and sensory trail stations for more advanced riders.
- Buffalo Gap, Texas location (Taylor County, 7 miles from Abilene)
- 1302 Pecan Street, Buffalo Gap, TX 79508
- 83-acre expansion property in development
- Fenced arena and sensory trail stations
- PATH International Premier Accredited Center
- 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization
What Makes Them Unique
Camp Able is one of very few equine therapy facilities within a 100-mile radius of Abilene, making it a critical regional resource in a part of Texas that is largely underserved by such programs. Taylor County has a higher-than-average percentage of the populations that Camp Able serves, and the absence of alternatives in the region makes the organization’s presence all the more significant.
The dual horse sanctuary and therapeutic riding mission is also genuinely unusual. Most therapeutic riding programs source horses from outside their organization; Camp Able rescues them, rehabilitates them, evaluates them for therapeutic work, and places those that do not qualify with adoptive families. The result is a program where the horses themselves are participants in a story of recovery — which resonates deeply with the families of participants whose own children are on similar journeys.