APAHA educational programs are designed to allow professional riders and trainers a period of time to begin the study of new skills. This is done under guidance of an experienced eye in order to make the transmission of learning easier for the student by garnering the feel of certain advanced techniques on trained horses. The educational opportunities through APAHA aim to develop a finer comprehension in both horse and rider of throughness in contact and immediacy of collection.
Funding support given to APAHA helps to cover the costs of travel for students as well as housing for both student and horse during educational events. A goal of the work with students and their own horses is to instill in that horse enough of the transmitted knowledge so that rider can then transmit this knowledge to the next horses that they train and to the students they teach, thus expanding the art of horsemanship to a broader group of riders. The hope is to create a spark of experienced knowledge that can self-generate on into the future. Since there are no riding academies to train in under this umbrella of supervision in America, APAHA is working to create an atmosphere of research into sensations with the failsafe of having an experienced eye watch over riders as they experiment with the learning of new skills. The notion is very much like the role of a godparent helping watch over the psyche in the developmental phase of their godchild.