Just outside the barn’s gates Salinas residents Rhett and Lisa
Loder sit on a metal bench, their gaze fixed on 9-year-old daughter
Rebekah. She’s balancing atop a horse
– no hands – holding a plastic diving ring. She drops it onto a
cone on the hay.
”
Nice job, Rebekah,
”
says Garry Stauber, a certified therapeutic riding instructor at
DreamPower, the nonprofit horsemanship training stable that aides
children and adults with behavioral, emotional and physical
challenges.
Just outside the barn’s gates Salinas residents Rhett and Lisa Loder sit on a metal bench, their gaze fixed on 9-year-old daughter Rebekah. She’s balancing atop a horse – no hands – holding a plastic diving ring. She drops it onto a cone on the hay.
“Nice job, Rebekah,” says Garry Stauber, a certified therapeutic riding instructor at DreamPower, the nonprofit horsemanship training stable that aides children and adults with behavioral, emotional and physical challenges.
“They really work with the kids well,” Lisa Loder said. “And they adapt easily to her behaviors. We always say Garry, he’s got her number. It didn’t take him long to figure her out,” she said.
Rebekah, who has special needs, attended the third annual special-needs horsemanship camp at the stables on New Avenue in San Martin. For a week, 16 children received therapy while riding, learning how to improve their balance, strength and dexterity.
Observing how a horse responds to body movements and tone of voice can help reinforce the power of calm, assertive behavior over a tendency toward aggressive or anxious engagements, according to DreamPower’s director and founder Martha McNiel.
McNiel started DreamPower after a career as a therapist in a traditional office setting. She said she would talk with children about experiences they had outside of the office, experiences she never observed. Jointly, she owned a horse and saw the benefits of riding and caring for a horse. McNiel’s wheels started turning. She did three years of research before launching DreamPower in August 2002.
“People and horses are very similar. They have similar relationships with people. How you react to horses is the same way you react in relationships with people,” McNiel said Friday. She wanted to observe the children and their behavior to better help them, not simply hear about their experience.
In 2009, DreamPower provided therapeutic riding services to 302 clients and 184 at-risk, low-income children and teens received equine-facilitated services paid for by donations.
The regular therapy sessions serve people as young as 4 and as old as 83 who have a variety of emotional, behavioral and physical needs.
At the weeklong camp, which concluded Friday with a family barbecue, the groups of special-needs children were given a hands-on education about horses from how their bodies work to grooming and feeding their new friends. Plus, the children are more at ease among campers with like disabilities.
“No one is going to judge them. She’s truly with her peers,” Rhett Loder said. “It has given her confidence. It’s just been a phenomenal experience. The young people have been really good. They’re assertive when they need to be and playful when they need to be. I would do it five days a week if I could,” Loder said. Rebekah receives therapy on her horse Tulips every Sunday.
“It’s definitely helped. I can see the changes. Her posture, she’s sitting up better. It’s helped a lot with her balance and strength,” Lisa Loder said.
More than 30 teens from South Valley Community Church donated a week of their summer vacation to DreamPower’s camp. The youth group, led by pastor Issac Serrano, were assigned buddies and assisted along with three others while the children rode, fed and groomed the horses and during arts and crafts time.
The children exercised their creativity Friday with nontoxic paint, glitter and hairspray for the daily craft time – a short break from the concentration needed during therapy riding.
The end result was a horse of an entirely different color.
The three mini horses and one mini donkey were painted mane to hoof with paint in every shade of the rainbow, their tails braided and tied with ribbon and some, like Flirt, sported a sparkling mohawk.
“This is pure fun. No other reason to do it, it’s just fun,” McNiel said. “Our horses are saints.”
The horses at DreamPower are treated with as much care and concern as its patients. McNiel said through her extensive research before launching the organization, she was attentive to how she wanted to deal with the horses.
“They’re not tools and not objects. They are treated like a valued team member,” McNiel said. She said she saw that many working horses had about a five-year span and then became restless or developed bad behaviors.
“I wanted our horses to die in old age. We want to make them happy and healthy and satisfied with their work,” she said.
McNiel could say the same for her patients. Her father was a pediatrician and it is he who she refers to as she talks about the great satisfaction that she finds when working with children.
“His love of kids continues on,” she said.
To purchase any of our videos, contact the Gilroy Dispatch at (408) 842-6400.
