The much anticipated video is here! Considering taking a look at the video of Day 1 for comparison. Can you believe how far these riders have come over the past couple of weeks?
The Gift of Opportunity
It seems like every week we’ve added another veteran to our morning lesson. In fact, we’ve been so busy that our videographer has been recruited to help handle the ever-growing group (meaning no video the past two weeks). So, what have our veterans been up to lately?
At the beginning of the program each rider worked with a horse handler and two sidewalkers, a team designated to keep everyone safe around and on the horses. Over the past 4 weeks the riders have progressed to the point where they’re now spending part of the lesson completely independent, no leader, no sidewalkers. Initially riding alone only at the walk, last week’s lesson introduced everyone to the challenging (and thrilling!) experience of trotting without help. Our adaptive riding instructor, Corie, had the servicemen and women whooping it up through a barrel racing pattern.
Watching the riders maneuver through the course was a lesson in humility. One of the most challenging life lessons is learning to let those you care about take chances. It’s tempting to lend a helping hand, to be the little voice on a shoulder offering assistance. As a horse handler, the moment when you unclip your leadrope and turn to the rider saying, “You have your horse,” is difficult. It’s offering ownership of the situation to a student who is less experienced than yourself. Part of you wants to stay clipped on forever, ensuring that your lessons are nearly risk-free. However, the act of taking chances is the only process by which we grow. We teach everyone who leads our therapy horses to allow each student the opportunity to succeed, which conversely means offering them the chance to fail. If a student forgets to ask their horse to turn, their leader will slowly let the horse bump into the rail. “What happened?” Corie will exclaim, “Did you forget to tell Valentine to go left?” It’s this process that teaches both patients and students that their actions have consequences. If we’re always catching someone before they begin to fall, they never learn to tread carefully.
In many ways, letting kids begin to lose their balance is a vital aspect of hippotherapy. Thankfully, we have the ability to do this while keeping our patients safe, with sidewalkers maintaining light contact but resisting the urge to help out too much. For those with neuromuscular or sensory disorders, it can be difficult to feel asymmetries or imbalances. Instead of helping a child each time they begin to drift off midline, perhaps leaning to the right, the therapist may ask for a small left circle from the horse. The centrifugal force of the schooling figure encourages the rider to fall even more to the right, or outside of the circle. It takes this greater sensation of imbalance to teach them to find midline, helping the rider learn where the center is and how to stay there. Taking away support is often the only way to encourage someone to support themselves.
Many wonderful people have summed up the above in less than a sentence. From Kenneth Boulding who said “nothing fails like success because we don’t learn from it. We learn only from failure,” to Robert Allen, “There is no failure. Only feedback.” A great many men and women have expounded the virtues of missteps, errors, and flops. However, Henry Ford may have said it best, “Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.” Each moment of our lives is an opportunity, whether for success or otherwise, it is an instant in which anything is attainable.
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Therapy for Hippos
Blue Avocado, a nonprofit online magazine for community nonprofits, recently posted a column on things people say when they hear you work for a nonprofit. There’s definitely a host of misconceptions regarding nonprofits and their differences from for profit companies. This confusion is only compounded when you throw in foreign words like “hippotherapy” and attempt to convince someone that horses are absolutely a medical treatment and not simply something you see on a farm. Hippotherapy is one of those things no one understands on the first go round. Every explanation invariably ends with the listener offering a vacant smile or noncommital grunt of feigned comprehension.
So, what do we hear when we try to describe NCEFT?
“Is that physical therapy for horses, like if they’re hurt?”
What’s amazing about this comment is the acceptance of therapy as a tool for animals. It wasn’t too long ago that admitting to using accupuncture on your horse meant widened eyes and sympathy for someone who had quite clearly lost their mind. Now, chiropractors are as common as farriers and vets. In fact, our therapy horses receive regular body work to keep them happy and healthy.
“You do therapy with hippos?”
“Nope, “hippo” is Greek for horse.”
Hippocrates, an ancient Greek physician, is often credited with first suggesting horseback riding as more than recreation, but instead a means of exercise. It wasn’t until the 1960s that the term “hippotherapy” was coined to define the horse as an adjunct to physical therapy. Considering this relatively recent timeline, its amazing to note that NCEFT will be celebrating its 41st year of offering equine-facilitated therapy.
“That must be depressing working with kids with disabilities.”
Anyone who’s ever stepped foot on our facility knows how far this is from the truth. Imagine being a child who can’t walk without the help of canes, who has to labor over each step. Now, how would it feel to be given the chance to sit astride a horse and ride without help. To be present during a hippotherapy or an adaptive riding session is to know joy. The only sadness or tears we see are from children unready to leave their ponies, or kids who want to take just one more lap on the ATV.
“Does that actually work?”
While we see countless improvements in objective, measurable areas like speech, balance, and strength, it’s the unmeasurable improvements that are most touching. At its heart, therapy is about improving quality of life. NCEFT offers patients and students the opportunity to spend a little time with beautiful animals in a stunning setting. Consider what Winston Churchill once said, “there’s something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man.” When it comes down to it, there’s something about 880 Runnymede Road that’s good for the inside, the outside, and everything inbetween.
So, what’s the best line you’ve heard when explaining hippotherapy or equine-facilitated therapy?
Heroes and Horsemanship: Day Three
Whether it’s carriage driving, competitive riding, or just a hobby, a life with horses is a social one. Though it’s not clear if horseback riding attracts talkative people or instead creates them, the result is the same, a group of people intent on carrying on a conversation until days pass and seasons change. Like twins separated at birth, we manage to find each other at crowded parties and expansive companies, and upon finding each other refuse to let go, madly quizzing each other on the price of hay, or the best winter blanket. Ever noticed how our Horse Handlers say each equine’s name before issuing instructions (“Sebastian, walk on”)? It’s to let the horse know the conversation is no longer aimed at the sidewalker, therapist, or patient, but at them.
For veterans returning from war, depression and anxiety can leave servicemen and women feeling isolated, starting a terrible cycle of social withdrawal. We often talk about the physical benefits of equine-facilitated therapy, and even the mental benefits, but the emotional ones are just as important. Our adaptive horsemanship program not only joins together veterans as peers, but brings into the conversation their significant others, children, and friends. It creates and nutures relationships that are essential to their recovery. Our arena is such a wonderful place to be, and within its walls are a group of people intent on helping each other become the best possible version of themselves. We hope you too can feel that sense of friendship as you watch this week’s video, and be sure to stick around until the very end for what must be one of the most inspiring shots of a young veteran and his growing family.
Video: Heroes and Horsemanship: Day Three
Heroes and Horsemanship: Day Two
At some point in their life every horseperson has come across a friend, acquaintance or family member who’s shocked to hear that after decades of riding you’re still taking lessons. “You’ve had a horse for fifteen years and you still haven’t learned to ride it yet?”
Simply put, riding is hard. Not only are we working to maintain our balance on a moving surface, but we’re attempting to synchronize multiple body systems: hands, legs, voice, seat. Before you so much as mount a horse you’re challenged to remember a host of instructions. Leading a horse to the mounting block sounds simple enough, but remember to look where you’re going, hold the leadrope below the snap with your right hand, keep the excess rope in your left hand, walk at the horse’s side between their head and shoulder, don’t get too close to their hooves, and keep your head up, shoulders back, chest open, well, you get the idea.
As able-bodied individuals, we sometimes take for granted the ease with which we complete everyday physical and mental tasks. As you follow the progress of our veteran’s program, put yourself in their shoes. Think about how difficult it is to walk through deep sand at the beach, and imagine that’s how it feels for some of the men and women to walk in our arena. Try to instantly memorize a new telephone number, do you have to repeat it to yourself many times before it sticks? Now, imagine trying to memorize that number while talking with a friend. That may be what it’s like for participants with PTSD or TBIs to try and remember the order of grooming tools or a riding pattern during lessons.
The programs offered at NCEFT are far from pony rides. They’re hard work conveniently disguised by hooves and hair.
Watch the video from Day Two, where our veterans mount up for their first ride.
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