About

Victoria Acres Equine Facility, Inc. was founded in May of 2012 by Erin Pashley, Victoria Acre’s Executive Director, and became a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, in 2014. Ms. Pashley has extensive equine experience and has personally seen the benefit of equine-inspired wellness and healing through horses. She imagined the impact that equine therapy could have on individuals of all ages and abilities. It became her goal to provide empowering, encouraging, and educational equine-assisted opportunities to people with and without disabilities living in the Capital Region of New York and surrounding areas.

This vision has manifested into Victoria Acre’s mission of promoting empowerment, encouragement, and education through equine assisted therapies to a wide range individuals. Everyone has a story, a challenge they are facing. The Board of Directors of Victoria Acres believes that dedicated work with equines, professionals, and trained volunteers can help people heal and achieve great goals. From the girl who desperately wants to do something her typical peers do, but is too afraid to try, to the veteran returning stateside from active duty with a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder who needs time and encouragement to heal, to the young boy that has been bullied and beaten down and needs self-esteem enhancement and a safe place, to the adolescent child living with autism who benefits greatly from the challenge of working with horses and gains a sense of calm after visiting the barn, or to the individual who relies on a wheelchair to take them places who is put on the back of a horse to feel a different means of freedom and their muscles being able to experience the gait of the horse which is so similar to the human gait, and to so many more who haven’t been met yet. In these examples and in countless others, Victoria Acres provides hope, and the opportunity to change lives one individual at a time.