Horses as healers...for everyone

Today, I came across this video of a 94-year-old retired veterinarian riding a horse. She was incredibly happy...as I will be if I ever get to 94 and am able to get on a horse in any way. 

Seeing that lady and the gentle way she was treated by the people who helped her reminded me of the couple of years I spent as a non-therapeutic riding instructor at a therapeutic riding center in Maryland, Therapeutic Riding & Recreation Center (TRRC). I didn't take the job on because I was crazy about hippotherapy, although I had taken ONE course in it years earlier at Virginia Intermont College. I took it on because I needed the money; the book industry was going through a phase, and I couldn't get enough hours at the show barn-riding academy where I was teaching a couple of days a week. 

At the therapeutic riding center, I taught mainly the riders with no disabilities, but who were very intimidated by horses although they really, really loved them and wanted to learn to ride. I also had a class of severely disabled students whose benefit from riding was not in learning a skill to any degree, but having the exercise and emotional connection with horse. In that class, parents or other helpers ALWAYS sidewalked and led; my only job there was to devise very simple things they could do for coordination, generally involving dropping balls into buckets and suchlike.

At TRRC I also met Raymond, a Downs syndrome man who volunteered and tacked up many of the horses. He had had intestinal cancer but was over it when I first met him. 

Then the cancer came back, and he decided he had had enough treatment and would just live out the clock. 

He lived in a flat attached to his brother and sister-in-law's house, and they would bring him to visit as often as they could. One day, they arrived and said it was his final visit because his condition had become so bad. He was able to ride on his own indoors, normally, on a big draft horse he loved. I was the only teacher available at that moment, so I volunteered to help Raymond tack up as he was too weak by then to lift the Western saddle he rode in. 

I asked if he wanted to ride alone, or  preferred that I sidewalk. He asked me to sidewalk. It was an honor the likes of which I have seldom had. It was Raymond's last ride. His last ever ride. On the animal he loved above all others. Fortune smiled on me and I was allowed to share it. I still quiver at the majesty of what I was allowed when I think about it.

But then, when I think about it, I had lots of other celestial honors at that riding center. 

One of the students in my very disabled group said my name. Big deal? Yes, it was. Her parents told me she had NEVER said any instructor's name before. She looked about 16, but was actually 40, and so severely disabled in most ways that her parents sidewalked her--and they were both in their 60s--the entire hour. Another honor.

And there were the two physically disabled ladies who had an hour each Saturday morning being walked on horses either in the arena or out in the fields if the weather was fine. They were not my students, but one day, one of the ladies told me how they lived for that hour each week when the transport brought them to TRRC because they felt free and could see so much more. Another honor.

And there was the Japanese-American child, one of the cutest kids I have ever seen, whose father came every Saturday to sidewalk. I often wondered if he was anguished at having such a charming child who would BE a child for the rest of her life. I didn't ask, of course. I expect he just simply loved her; he was the most pleasant man, as lovely as his child.

All of this was rather strange to me, although obviously satisfying. In the show-oriented riding center down the road where I taught many more hours, parents would tell me that they were happy when I was demanding of their children, making sure they knew all they should at each level of their riding education. 

I was quite pleased to know that, of course. I believe in riding for so many reasons. Discipline, empathy, kindness, exercise, overcoming fear, bonding with a mammal of another color so to speak. All that and more. 

In retrospect, I think adding at least a little therapeutic riding to one's teaching experience can only do both riders and teachers good. The hunter-jumper show ring--my main milieu--is a somewhat rigid and highly stratified entity. I love it. But I think I was a better teacher for the dedicated, ribbon-hungry students seeking hunter-jumper fame and fortune at the show barn AFTER I had been teaching at TRRC for a while. I hope I was of some value to my students at TRRC--as they certainly were to me.

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This column came from my heart...and TRRC did not know I was going to write it. However, if supporting therapeutic riding appeals to you, I can at least vouch for TRRC as a very worthy program to support. Should you be inclined, here's their donation page.

Copyright 2019, Laura Harrison McBride