How the horses helped the handicapped.

This is kind of different from the other posts that I have done, but is one that is very close to my heart. It is about my first experience helping the handicapped people in my town ride. This one day taught me something very valuable in life. Keep reading and you will find out.

It was about May of 2007. My current riding instructor had convinced my mom, my two best friends and me to participate in helping the handicapped residents from Cardinal group homes ride horses through the RideAbility program in my hometown. We pull up to the barn and my mind was just spinning about what we would be doing. My instructor had given no other instruction other than dress for the weather and pack a lunch. So it was a given that I was slightly nervous.

We come to the barn to see the usual barn horses grazing in the round pens. We also saw a large white van and a bunch of strangers trying to feed one of the horses. Being a little shy, I kind of hung towards the back of the group, not really sure what to say to handicapped people, having never really met one before. However my mom reassured me that they aren’t harmful and are just people, but I wasn’t too sure.

We are assigned our person. I was assigned a women that looked about middle 40’s. We will call her Rosie. She was pretty average looking, besides the fact that she had a disability.

One of the first things that we do before we ride is brush our horses. So I go to the tack bucket and pick out two brushes, hand one to her and ask, “Would you like to help brush Holly?” She slowly grabs the brush and begins to imitate my actions much like a child trying to be like their parent. She lightly applies the brush all along the horse’s back. I instruct her to apply more pressure because horses love being brushed. She continues to brush and stare plainly at the horse, as if I had not said anything to her. I thought that she had just not heard me, so I repeated what I had said. Her helper that had come with her informed me that she had developed a strong case of stranger anxiety and hardly talked to anyone.

I looked over at the other groups laughing, smiling and talking feeling envious of them. I was beginning to feeling very discouraged. I stood there pondering for a minute on what to do. I thought ‘well this is really a lot of fun! I was the unlucky one and got the person that won’t talk. Why me? I might as well make the best of this situation. I wonder if I just keep talking to her as if she was talking back if she would eventually open up?’

So I talked to her about many things. All about horses, about the horse she was going to ride, anything. Much like before, she never said anything back. I was beginning to wonder what the point of this was if she didn’t respond to anything I said or did. Little did I know I was about to find out.

Time seemed to pass endlessly. It was now time for the people to mount their horses. Myself and three other people help Rosie get on her horse and I begin to lead them around the arena. I instruct Rosie on how to make her horse go, stop and turn. To my surprise, the other horses acted so differently with these people. It was like they were totally different horses.

We kept going around the arena what seemed like an eternity. My legs were starting to ache and my body starting to sweat from the heat. I could not help but hope that it would be done soon. My opinions soon changed when I looked over my shoulder to check on Rosie. I saw something that I had not seen nor expected to come from Rosie. A smile. She was smiling ear to ear and was seeming to enjoy her ride. This made me feel extremely happy to know that someone that could not speak to people in the same way as others could be saying so much with horses through their body language. Rosie was expressing herself without saying anything at all.

This turned the whole day around. It soon came up on lunch time and instead of eating with mom and my friends I decided to eat with Rosie so that she could spend more time with the horse. As I sat down with my back resting on the stall door and my lunch in my lap, I observed Rosie with the horse. The smiles continued and she loved giving her treats and petting her. This is when I got the first look at the magic horses have on other people besides myself. All they need is someone to love them and they will give you all they can. People with disabilities can open up to horses unlike with other people. Maybe its because horses won’t judge them or that they don’t care about what they look like, how they act or about what they say or do. They can truly be free of the image society has painted of them. I discovered that sometimes its not about what someone does for you, but what you do for them and in the end you reap the greatest reward. For me that was knowing that I gave someone who is sometimes looked down in society a reason to smile. On the outside they may look like your average disabled adult, but if you take the time to really look at what is on the inside and what matters most you may discover what is lying deep within yourself. It was this experience that made me decide that when I open my own riding school, I would like to host groups of disabled/handicapped people at my barn. To give many more people a reason to smile.

Here is the website to the program that helped me discover how good it is to help people, so incase you are interested in volunteering with RideAbility:
http://www.rideability.org/