The Professional Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship International certification requires applicants not only to have a strong background in horsemanship activities, but also to have a history of volunteering at an equine-assisted therapy program. Nevertheless, the equine assisted therapy course, ADS 3233, at Mississippi State University has only consisted of a laboratory dedicated to developing horsemanship skills. This school year, volunteer hours performed at a local equine-assisted therapy program were required of students, and thus, the study objective was to evaluate whether volunteering assisted in the development of the students’ understanding of equine-assisted therapy. Researcher-developed, 22 forced-choice question survey was given at the start (S) and end (E) of the semester to students taking ADS 3233 in 2013 (n = 15) and 2014 (n = 15). While in both years students participated in a riding laboratory, only students in 2014 were required to volunteer a minimum of 10 h with a local equine-assisted therapy program. Each question on the survey was a statement concerning activities associated with working in various aspects of equine-assisted therapy programs with students rating from 1 to 5 their agreement to the statements. Lower scores indicated a stronger disagreement with the statement given concerning the aspect of the equine-assisted therapy program covered in the statement, while a higher score indicated a stronger agreement. Differences between S and E answers were calculated for each year and these differences were compared between years using a 2-sample Student’s t-test (P = 0.05). No question resulted in a score of 5. While both years demonstrated improvements on all 22 questions after completing the course, 5 of the questions demonstrated significant difference between years (P < 0.05). These questions focused on the ability of the students to work with various experts in the industry and setting up riding programs for specific groups. By volunteering, students were able to get a more thorough understanding of equine-assisted therapy programs by working firsthand with those participating in these programs.