Skarloey waited for T.J. to finish buckling the girth of the saddle, his fingers tripping on the intricate buckle. Skarloey is a chestnut gelding with a white blaze down his muzzle; T.J. is an autistic 14-year-old boy.
Even inside the barn at Southlands Foundation, just outside Rhinebeck, it was cold enough that humans and horses alike could see their breath. Nancy King, an occupational therapist and director of A Horse Connection, gave T.J. short verbal cues—“gentle touch” and “quiet hands”—as they readied Skarloey. During the preparations, T.J.’s attention scattered easily. He repeated the word “chocolate,” which, in the veiled world of autism, could mean he wanted chocolate, or that he was just hooked on repeating the word—a behavior known as perseveration. Another time, T.J. took out his grooming tools to brush Skarloey’s mane, but got distracted.
Skarloey, through it all, remained stoic, showing no signs of the layperson’s perception of equine impatience: tail flicking, snorting, pawing. When Skarloey and T.J. both were ready, Nancy led them to an indoor ring for a hippotherapy session.
Hippotherapy literally means “treatment with the help of the horse” (hippo- taken from the Greek word for horse). The idea of seeking aid for human ailments from horses began (in modern times) in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria in the 1960s—at that time as an adjunct to physical therapy. By the 1970s, interest had spread to the US and other countries, and over the next two decades standardized curricula were developed in the US for teaching therapists this specialty. The American Hippotherapy Association (AHA) was established in 1992; by 1999, the American Hippotherapy Certification Board was in place.
Today, a hippotherapy clinical specialist (a term preferred by the AHA over “hippotherapist,” ingrained though it is, given the current medical/insurance reimbursement milieu) must be a licensed physical therapist, occupational therapist, or speech-language pathologist who has additionally trained and earned certification in the use of horses as a tool to achieve treatment goals. Clients often come through physician referrals.
Specific riding skills are not taught in hippotherapy; that is the domain of therapeutic riding, which teaches riding skills to people with special physical, cognitive, emotional, or social needs. That approach does not require a therapist’s degree but practitioners need special training as a therapeutic riding instructor. Other therapeutic forms that use horses may focus on grooming, leading, feeding, and other tasks, or on the nature of the human-horse interaction (as is equine-facilitated psychotherapy).
Not Just Horsing Around
King led T.J. around the indoor ring, passing capital letters displayed along the wall. They passed the letter E and King said “E is for elephant. What else is it for? It’s for ear. Can you touch your ear?” T.J. patted near his ear, hidden under a knit hat and riding helmet. King was engaging T.J. on multiple levels. Besides his physical and emotional connection to the horse, she got him to focus—something autistic people often have difficulty doing. They passed the letter K and T.J. called out “King.” As King prepared to lead him through a series of traffic cones shaped like a figure eight, she asked if he was ready. “Ready, steady, go,” he answered.
Elizabeth, a teacher from T.J.’s residential school, said his coordination had noticeably improved because of these sessions. “He couldn’t buckle [the saddle] at all, and now he can. He needs a little help, but he can do it.”
King, who holds a master’s degree in occupational therapy, clarifies that the “occupation” in occupational therapy “refers to the way in which we spend time and energy. A lot of people hear ‘occupational therapy’ and think ‘jobs.’ But it means the occupation of everyday life. The way we occupy time. If I have a problem that interrupts my ability to be all that I am, I may be helped with occupational therapy to get back on track or become independent.”
And independence is relative. It may mean being able to sit up longer in a dentist’s chair, or it may mean becoming more verbal, as in T.J.’s case. “For a lot of occupational therapists,” King continues, “working with certain populations, we are very challenged. What can we do to engage a person? The horse sets up instantaneous engagement. Once T.J. was involved in his tasks on the horse, the perseveration got put aside awhile. For him, that’s big.”
Hippotherapy, as explained by the AHA, works like this: “In the controlled hippotherapy environment, the therapist modifies the horse’s movement and carefully grades sensory input. A foundation is established to improve neurological function and sensory processing. This foundation can be generalized to a wide range of daily activities. The movement of the horse, as the tool, can be compared to other therapy tools such as balls, scooters, or swings. The variability of the horse’s movement, the rhythm, dimensionality, regularity, and the ability of the therapist to modify these movement qualities, is where the horse, as a tool, supersedes the others.”
Improvements in muscle tone, balance, posture, coordination, and motor and cognitive development—as well as emotional well-being—are all proven benefits for a variety of conditions and impairments. There is also that special, unquantifiable human-horse bond.
Natural Horsemanship
Now at King’s home, north of Saugerties, I meet one of her horses, a mare named Calli. I cup my ungloved hands and hold them up to Calli’s muzzle for inspection, keeping the rest of my body still. Her big, brown nose quivers and she nuzzles my hands. I get a flash of why, tens of thousands of years ago, primitive peoples followed horses from central Asia across the land bridges of the Bering Strait. I understand why Genghis Khan forbade anyone to ride his horses.
Calli sticks close to me while I’m in the horse pen. Occasionally she looks toward Hal, a quarter horse and alpha of King’s five-horse herd, for permission. A couple of times, he nudges her out of the way, reminding her who’s boss. Calli even hides behind me—she’s shy, says King, and warming up to a stranger is unusual. Without knowing it, I’ve had my first lesson in natural horsemanship, which underlies her approach to human-horse relationships.
Natural horsemanship was developed by former rodeo rider Pat Parelli. Parelli has been around horses his entire life, and developed a series of games for learning to play with, and think like, a horse. His emphasis is on communion and collaboration, not coercion. In a nutshell, the tenets of natural horsemanship go like this: Horses are herd animals. They are also prey. Horses are hardwired to be hypervigilant around predators. People are predators. What one aspires to in natural horsemanship is being accepted into the herd. This takes reprogramming on the part of the human, learning to interact in a nonpredatory way. If you think this is easy, bear in mind part of being a predator is expecting a reward for one’s actions. Understanding this makes for safer riding and interplay between people and horses.
The Horse and I
I get to apply what I’ve learned about natural horsemanship when I go to Flying Change Farm in Accord, owned by Diane Schoonmaker. I’m here with Ada Citron, who uses Schoonmaker’s horses to work therapeutically, but in a manner very different from hippotherapy. Citron is a spiritual counselor in the Taoist tradition of Mantak Chia, working with the Six Healing Sounds. She is dark, petite, and, in another incarnation, would have looked at home dancing around a gypsy campfire.
“The demographic group I’m willing to work with—I call them healthy neurotics,” says Citron. “I don’t treat people with capital-letter stuff unless the person who’s treating them for the capital-letter stuff calls me and we’re working together. I don’t work with hard-psych diagnoses.”
Citron, a lifelong horse lover, graduated from Brown University with honors and a double major in semiotics and theater arts. Along the way, she took up Chi Kung and became a licensed massage therapist. After September 11, when one of her clients was hurt, Citron found herself drained and at loose ends. She attended a workshop at Epona, a retreat in Arizona founded by Tao of Equus author Linda Kohanov. There, Citron was rejuvenated by work with horses, and subsequently incorporated the animals into her work. She calls her approach “equisessions” and offers two forms to aid people (and another for horse owners with problematic horse behavior). One is a counseling-based session in which the client interacts with the horse and Citron facilitates by asking questions and offering comments (a horse professional is also present). The second form is a combination of a Chi Kung session and an equisession.
Today, I am going to have a counseling equisession. I ask Citron what to expect.
“The first session with me is nonriding,” she replies in the husky voice of a blues singer. “Working on the ground.”
But what’s going to happen? My inner control freak is coming out. Prior to our meeting, Citron told me to think of an issue I wanted to address. She didn’t want to know what it was until we were en route. Now I tell her. “I’m having trouble sticking with a weight-loss and exercise program. I’m a culinary professional and I know how to prepare great food and what I need to do but have trouble doing is remaining motivated. Is that the right kind of question?”
“Yes,” Citron tells me. “Okay. The horses bring you into the herd. You come in with an emotional or psychological ill and the herd says, ‘Whoops! One of our members is having an emotional ill. Who’s going to attend?’ So, whatever horse picks you to do it—”
“They pick me?” I’m getting freaked out about being rejected by horses I haven’t even met yet.
“One of them is clearly going to be your horse. They just kind of take it from there, and I follow the horse. So walk around and stand in front of the horses’ pens. Stay as long as you like, but don’t touch them or talk to them.”
We’ve come to six horses, each with its own large, fenced area and a small barn. I walk from enclosure to enclosure. I startle one horse and he kicks up and runs. Two give me no more than a cursory once-over. Then I stop. On the far end of this enclosure is a dark rust (that’s bay in horse lingo) horse with a black mane and tail. She is all fine-drawn lines and long muscles, a nine-year-old Arabian named Jezzabelle—Jessie, for short. The phrase coup de foudre comes to mind, meaning literally “hit by lightning,” or “love at first sight.” Instinct tells me she isn’t going to be easy to attract.
I close my eyes and think, Pick me, pick me. Jessie pricks an ear in my direction, which I will learn means she is paying attention to me. I make my way down the length of the fence facing sideways, giving her monocular eyes a chance to see me better. I am overwhelmed with the desire for her to come over to me.
And then she does. I breath into her nostrils (a “cheat” suggested by an equestrian friend), and she breathes back into mine. She licks my gloved hands, then my bare hands, and gives them a little nip. I step back. Score: 1-0, Jessie. I put my hand out and she nips again. This time, I step forward, and she steps back. We are dancing, playing, and the “score” is now tied.
Citron, who has been observing, asks what I am feeling. This is how the human-horse encounter becomes counseling. I tell Citron I’d wanted it to be Jessie, and with a smile, she tells me I am thinking like a predator.
Citron suggests that I get bored with restrictions, especially ones I know are stupid. She asks what it was about Jessie that I identified with. I say she plays by her own rules. In recent years, I’ve tried too hard to play by others’ rules, be they diets or other aspects of life, and found only personal and professional disaster.
Later in the session, Jessie goes to the other side of her pen. Even with her back to us, her ears are cocked, and occasionally she turns in my direction. This is a comfortable distance between herd members, and very much the way they might treat one another. It appears that, however briefly, Jessie accepts me as a playmate.
Did the equisession help? In part, it did. It made me more mindful of eating when I’m bored. For me, part of being bored comes from trying to be someone or something I’m not—just like Jessie can’t be anything other than a headstrong Arabian. She taught me by example. And if I’m really lucky, I can be a guest in her herd now and then.
RESOURCES
American Hippotherapy Association www.americanhippotherapyassociation.org
North American Handicapped Riding Association www.nahra.org
A Horse Connection (845) 417-4646; www.ahorseconnection.com
Southlands Foundation (845) 876-4862; www.southlands.org
Ada Citron (845) 339-0589; www.adacitron.com
Flying Change Farm (845) 626-0020; www.flyingchangefarm.com
This article appears in April 2007.
