Benefits of Therapeutic Riding Realized

December 18, 2007

With a different instructor, students riding different horses, our schedule completely thrown off, and a new working style to which to adjust, last night could have been really crazy at Pegasus Farm’s therapeutic riding program. Despite all of the last minute changes, one of our more difficult students was thriving.

Randy, the instructor I work under when I volunteer with the riding lessons for the disabled, was kicked by one of his horses and broke his elbow. Without even meeting the new instructor, I knew this would be a tough night as there is nobody quite like Randy. I always think of him as the Santa Claus of therapeutic riding instructors. He’s kind of round, has a gray-white beard, round rosy cheeks, and eyes that crinkle and always look jolly. He’s an incredibly knowledgeable horseman, really knows how to relate to his students, and cares for them so genuinely. With him it’s all about the students — having fun, learning something new, and working through an issue even if it’s as simple as getting a verbal response for “walk on.”

Laura, another Pegasus instructor who was filling in, was also a very good instructor despite a very different style of teaching. She was a good bit more brusque with us volunteers as we were taking care of the horses, and spent a good deal of the night walking around telling us “not to do this” and “not to do that.” If the reins accidentally touched the ground while adjusting a bridle hanging on a hook, she was all over it. Where Randy is pretty laid-back and will only comment on the graver mistakes, Laura didn’t let a thing slide. I can relate though; I’ve always been a stickler for the rules. I also know you need to pick and choose your battles.

I know I, and I probably speak for the majority of the volunteer group, felt like we were walking on egg shells most of the night. We know the students and the horses, who gets along and who doesn’t, who needs what tack, what their issues are, what they do and don’t understand, what they need to be working on. Randy thinks we’re relatively smart people, and he lets us do a lot of work with the students as far as carrying out the tasks he’s set before them. We knew it would be different with a new instructor, so we stayed out of the way and let Laura do her thing. I know from experience how hard it is to take over someone else’s lessons when you don’t know the students you are working with … let alone the group of volunteers. So I only jumped in when it was really needed.

As I went in to the first lesson, I realized that if I felt that off-balance without Randy, it would be even harder on the students. Many of them are mentally disabled and really thrive on consistency. It’s vitally important to their success for those of us teaching them to understand their issues and needs … and it takes time to learn this one-on-one as a volunteer, let alone as an instructor in charge of the entire group. I knew that it would be up to us volunteers to provide the consistency the students needed. It was important that I didn’t act at all out of the ordinary.

A is a student who is pretty healthy physically, but is almost completely non-responsive verbally and has a pretty low level of understanding. About a month and a half ago, I actually got her to say “walk on” for the first time. Well, technically she said “tell him walk on” as she was repeating what I said and not understanding the concept. Since then she will pretty consistently repeat her volunteers when they say “walk on.”

Our next challenge was to say “whoa,” which was much more difficult. She just plain didn’t want to do it. I discovered that if I kept my voice low and really drug it out (”say whoooooaaaaa”), she’d repeat me. This week for the first time, A would say “whoa” every time I asked.

That would have been enough to make the night successful, but then something happened which blew me away. After getting a good “whoa,” A immediately said “tell her walk on” without any prompting from me! And she did this over and over again. It became very clear to me that A actually understood what would happen if she said “walk on!”

And to think we were just impressed that she was using real words at all when asked.

Posted in Jackie's Thoughts, Making a Difference, Therapeutic Riding