Bulletin E-Edition:
more photosKobe Beard, 7, of Bend, gets his balance while standing on top of a Belgian draft horse, Lady, while volunteers Barb Cotton, left, and Dina Barker keep an eye on him during a therapy session at Healing Reins in east Bend. Kobe was deaf until recently, when he received a cochlear implant. His therapy sessions help teach him how to listen.
Photos by Pete Erickson / The Bulletin
Horses & healing
The idea of therapeutic riding has been around for decades. Among Central Oregonians with a variety of ailments - cerebral palsy, autism, multiple sclerosis and traumatic brain injuries - one local nonprofit has created many believers.
By Betsy Q. Cliff / The Bulletin
Published: October 06. 2008 4:00AM PSTWhen Maya Andrick went to her first therapy appointment at Healing Reins Therapeutic Riding Center as a 1½-year-old, she could barely hold her head up. She cried through the appointment, as did her mother.
Today, it’s a different story for the now 3-year-old.
The girl, who is almost totally blind and has cerebral palsy, sits tall and moves on top of the horse with the ease of a veteran rider. Formerly timid, Maya is now enthusiastic, crying out “Go!” to command the horse to move forward and “Back!” to reverse. She hugs her horse during the session and thanks him gleefully at the end of it.
Maya participates in the hippotherapy program at Healing Reins, a program that uses horses to aid in physical therapy. It’s just one of the therapeutic programs at Healing Reins. Founded in 1999, the nonprofit now has about 95 clients and uses more than 120 volun- teers each week.
In addition to hippotherapy, the center offers therapeutic riding and vaulting classes, which teach different types of riding skills to both children and adults with a variety of disabilities, including cerebral palsy, autism, multiple sclerosis and traumatic brain injury.
This spring, Healing Reins also added a mental health component, offering for the first time equine-assisted psychotherapy, which the center is now trying to expand.
Healing Reins is one of more than 800 centers nationwide that offers therapeutic riding programs, according to the North American Riding for the Handicapped Association, which accredits Healing Reins and other such centers. There are no other accredited centers in Central Oregon, though there are about 10 others around the state, according to NARHA.
Despite the fact that therapeutic riding has been around for decades and NARHA itself in existence for nearly 40 years, there is little published research on the value of horses in either physical or mental health therapy. The few studies suggest that it is beneficial, but most of the research remains anecdotal. Still, at least at Healing Reins, therapeutic riding has a lot of believers.
Maya Andrick
Maya’s hippotherapy appointments use the movement of the horse and various exercises on the horse to help with her cerebral palsy. Hippotherapy - hippo is the Greek word for horse - can be tailored to an individual client, and appointments vary based on what someone needs.
Maya, like many with cerebral palsy, tends to have tight hips, which can be relieved by the rocking motion of the horse. During her weekly appointments, Maya spends half her time on the horse and half in a more traditional physical therapy office.
“The physical is our primary objective,” said her mother, Wendy Andrick. “But there’s a lot of emotional strength she’s gained.”
That’s the hope for all of the kids and adults who come to Healing Reins. Though many come with one primary issue, usually a physical or developmental problem, they often find that the programs help other aspects of their lives. Learning to ride can build confidence, getting to know the volunteers and staff builds trust, and working with the horses can teach responsibility.
During Maya’s recent lesson, she sat on a 21-year-old Arabian named Foxy. Physical therapist Georgia Merrifield and a volunteer walked on either side of her, and a staff member from Healing Reins led Foxy. The group walked just outside the arena, where a variety of stations held multiple challenges. For one, Maya had to reach to her right, open a mailbox and pull out a plastic yellow ring.
That simple task, said Merrifield, helps stretch out Maya’s left hip, which is chronically tight. Pulling on the mailbox door and keeping herself upright on the horse also builds strength. And, said Merrifield, who asked Maya to put the ring on her own hand (it fit) and on Merrifield’s (it didn’t fit), it can help teach her basic concepts, like bigger and smaller. “I’m doing physical therapy, but we’re incorporating cognitive things with shapes and color.”
Unlike some of the other programs, hippotherapy does not teach any riding skills; horses are led by a staff member through the first part of the appointment. The second half of the appointment is spent on the ground, translating lessons gained on the horse to the non-equine world. “My goal is for independent movement, not to teach them to ride a horse,” Merrifield said.
Hippotherapy is often reimbursed by insurers as a regular physical therapy appointment, she said. Therapeutic riding, a separate program at Healing Reins, costs $185 for an eight-week session, though scholarships are sometimes available.
After fitting the yellow ring on her hand, Maya put it in the mailbox. The group decided it was time to move to the next station. Eager to have Foxy begin walking, the little girl, who renames the horse often, yelled in as loud a voice as a 3-year-old can muster, “Go, Spirit, Go!”
‘Kind of a mirror’
Many of the girls at New Leaf Academy, a Bend boarding school for girls ages 10 to 14, don’t have physical disabilities. The school, which primarily takes girls struggling with behavior issues, partnered with Healing Reins last spring to begin an equine-assisted psychotherapy program. The school uses it for family therapy.
“The horses are so great about showing the family about the family dynamics,” said Robbi O’Kelley, the executive director of New Leaf. O’Kelley said that because many people aren’t used to being around horses, it can help break down the natural defenses that people can keep up when talking, as is often done in traditional therapy.
During one family therapy session, said O’Kelley, a father, who had previously acted emotionally closed off, went into the arena. The horse immediately walked to him and put his head over the man’s heart. The man began petting the horse in a very sweet way, O’Kelley said, quite unlike his typical persona.
Then, the therapist asked him how he was feeling, and he stiffened immediately back into his old self. The horse immediately backed away from the man.
The horses “are kind of a mirror,” said Penny Campbell, program director at Healing Reins. “They are so in tune with their environment that they notice things about people that they don’t notice about themselves.”
Often the way a family reacts to a horse can be a catalyst for a discussion about how the family interacts outside the arena, said Caroline Stratton, the therapist working with the families from New Leaf at Healing Reins. Sometimes, she said, “the whole family converges on the horse at once, and the horse goes ‘What?’ and backs away.” Other times, she said, one family member will just walk straight up to the horse, without talking to the others.
She uses these simple gestures to talk about the wider relationships between family members. “They learn about their frustrations,” she said. “They learn about their expectations of other family members.”
Kobe Beard
Kobe Beard has to learn how to understand people all over again.
The 7-year-old was deaf until a cochlear implant in May gave him some hearing. Now he has to learn how to use his new ability to hear.
“Not having hearing, he just didn’t think he had to listen,” said his mother, Lindsi Beard-Simpkins. “So we’re teaching him that you have to listen.”
One way Kobe is learning is through adaptive vaulting classes at Healing Reins, a combination of dance and gymnastics on horseback. While an instructor holds a lead on Lady, a 21-year-old Belgian draft horse, and walks her in a circle, Kobe moves around to the instructor’s commands, turning himself backward, lying down and standing on the horse’s back with his arms stretched out.
Before getting the cochlear implant, Kobe knew only sign language, said his mother. Even when he began to hear, he didn’t know what words meant or how to interpret new sounds. When she said his name, she recalled, she had to tell him in sign language that “Kobe” was his name for him to understand she was talking to him. Now, he’s trying to learn the meaning of other words.
During his lesson, a woman doing sign language stands next to the instructor. If Kobe does not understand a command, she signs it, so that he learns. When the instructor tells Kobe to sit backward on the horse’s neck, he thinks she is asking him to lie down across the horse’s back. She corrects him with the help of the interpreter. He gets it right the next time.
Having to comprehend what the instructors are asking him to do, Beard-Simpkins said, helps him to learn new words and how to listen when he is out of the arena as well.
Beard-Simpkins said she likes having him come to the appointments. It’s helped his patience, his self-esteem and, especially after falling off and having to get right back on the horse, his self-confidence.
But they keep coming because of how much her son likes it. Kobe now does vaulting shows, she said, and looks forward to them, inviting friends and family. “He loves it,” she said. “He lives for the horses.”
Betsy Q. Cliff
can be reached at 541-383-0375 or bcliff@bendbulletin.com.
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