Arivaca Boys Ranch

The Arivaca Boys Ranch serves 40-50 boys, age 14 to 18, on a 23,000 acre, 140-year-old ranch. The ranch is specifically designed to therapeutically help teenage boys from throughout the Southwest and especially California, learn how to make better decisions and become more mature in their thinking, while learning life skills right along with the “book learning” they’ll receive in our accredited on-campus school. Arivaca Boys Ranch is unique in that it uses three powerful therapeutic tools to help teen boys get on a right path in life. First, a specialized form of equine therapy. Equine therapy is commonly used to help teens who are struggling, but we take it one step further, we teach the boys to become “horse whisperers.” Known as the “Arivaca Way,” our therapeutic model teaches boys to understand how their behavior or mood affects their horse, and that helps them become more aware and responsible of their actions and how they affect others.

Secondly, we use Arbinger Principles to help provide a foundation for moving behavior from anger to positive motivational action.

The principles were developed by the Arbinger Institute, which is a worldwide leader in training on anger management. And third, we use the working ranch setting for training, responsibility and positive peer influence as a means of helping the teen grow in maturity.