This Blog is dedicated to the Noble and Great horses in our lives and throughout history. Visit the land of the unicorns in Behind The Mist, the horse lover's fantasy for pre-teens to adults.


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Wednesday, March 21, 2012

THERAPY HORSES EARN THEIR HORNS!






Staff Sgt. Aaron Heliker riding with Rainier Therapeutic Riding founding Debbi Fisher.

I have just started a job with PATH, International: Professional Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship. It is in Denver and is the certification and training organization for the many wonderful horsemen around the country who are helping children and adults find valuable therapy through horses. A friend sent me this article written by Nancy Bartley for the Seattle Times. I know you will find it heartwarming. These horses and horsemen who help our injured service men are heroes...truly some of the "NOBLE AND GREAT" ones, as I call them in Behind the Mist.

Seattle Times:
by Nancy Bartley:


After six tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, Staff Sgt. Aaron Heliker's luck ran out.

A roadside bomb left him with third-degree burns, a traumatic brain injury and nerve damage to one leg. But the unseen wounds became the most disabling of all.

The 27-year-old who rode motorcycles, was a whiz at auto-body work and had wanted to be a soldier since he was old enough to ask his mother to "buy some army pants" could no longer tolerate being around people.

He was anxious, hypervigilant, expecting attack. Memories rushed in of his last tour in Afghanistan, the five-hour attack by insurgents his convoy fended off, the soldier he found bleeding to death but was unable to help.

To block out the memories and the surges of anxiety that made him feel always ready for battle, he began to drink. He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and sent to a lockdown mental-health facility for veterans.

Faced with overwhelming physical pain, afraid of being close to anyone, and so mired in despair that he could see no hopeful future, Heliker didn't want to continue living.

Then he met Fred.

A white Frederiksborg gelding, Fred is one of the horses in Debbi Fisher's Rainier Therapeutic Riding program in Yelm, where servicemen are matched with horses they learn to groom and eventually ride.

"I really liked him so I postponed my death for a week," Heliker said. "In an office I feel cornered but out here (at the farm) I feel at peace."

Horses are ideal partners for traumatized service members because "they're kindred spirits," Fisher said, and have similar fight-or-flight reactions to perceived threats.

Training a horse not to jump away at a blowing piece of paper, for example, becomes a model for the soldier's own life. Fisher takes 75 soldiers a year — both active-duty and veterans — without cost to them or the government.

When it comes to helping with rehabilitation, equine-assisted therapy has become well known across the country. Texas' Horses for Heroes started in 2007 as a model, and nationwide a number of groups have followed, Fisher's included.

Search for purpose

Fisher, 53, has spent 40 years riding and training horses. After her first husband, an Air Force pilot, died in a car crash in 2006, she felt lost.

Seeking a purpose, she knew there was a need for helping soldiers with physical and emotional difficulties, and had heard of the Horses for Heroes program. The idea of starting a program took off after she married Bob Woelk, who became the co-founder.

The program was just what Heliker needed. Nothing else had worked, he said, not treatment at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside Washington, D.C., not therapy at a clinic in Texas, not the lockdown PTSD treatment facility in Oregon — not even his beloved service dog, Chopper, his companion to help with anxiety.

Fred's ability to mirror Heliker's own emotional state, requiring him to calm himself in order to do as little as brush Fred, has made it possible for Heliker to get used to staying in control.

Not long after meeting Fred last June, Heliker canceled his plans to die, and over the course of nine months went from taking 42 pills a day to four.

As far as Dr. Murray Raskind, a psychiatrist at the Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System in Seattle, is concerned, programs that get service members exercising and out among people are excellent.

"All of those things are good," he said. "Physical exercise relieves depression, anxiety and stress. It gets people out of their isolated state from being in their 'bunkers' ... and gets them interacting with other human beings and (in the case of the riding class) connecting with an animal. Many people feel more comfortable around animals."

But, Raskind said, it's not a substitute for conventional therapy.

Fisher started her program in 2010, the same year Madigan Army Medical Center closed its PTSD program, and when 18,000 service members were returning to Joint Base Lewis-McChord from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Soldiers are referred to Fisher's program by the Warrior Transition Battalion at the joint base.Other recreation programs are offered as well, but the riding program is among the most popular.

At Rainier, each rider starts slowly by learning to groom the horse, leading it and eventually riding.

Sessions last eight weeks and run four times a year. Participants can repeat sessions and remain in the program as long as they want. Ninety percent are active-duty soldiers, the rest veterans. Some stay on as volunteers, including Heliker.

"Through this equine-therapy program, I've seen soldiers building relationships, confidence and their self-esteem," said Phyllis Lang, an occupational therapist with the Warrior Transition Battalion.

Fisher donates the use of her eight horses and operates in donated arenas. She says the program costs $700 per rider, which she raises through donations.

Class awaits

Two times a week, Fisher arrives with a caravan of horse trailers. Heliker and other volunteers help unload horses, saddle them and lead them into the arena with a class of waiting service members — many who have faced the worst of war but are now uncertain about the 1,200- to 2,000-pound animal before them.

Heliker, who has spent nine years in the Air Force, stays in a camper on base. Living in a barracks is uncomfortable right now because he feels safest when alone or with a few trusted people.

While he continues to take part in therapy through the Wounded Warrior Battalion, he volunteers much of the week — mucking stalls, feeding horses and helping other service members. On Wednesdays, he rides with the advanced class.

He knows how easy it is to go the way some older vets from the Vietnam era did — disconnecting from everyone. So he talks to one, Ed Wilus, who also rides in the program. Wilus tells him how he gave up a family and job and spent years avoiding his problems by drinking. He ended up living under bridges.

Heliker began building a relationship with Fred when he realized the horse needed to trust him or the animal wouldn't cooperate. On days when Heliker was angry, Fred reflected it. Heliker had to calm himself down to get the horse to work with him or face spending the afternoon chasing Fred around a field.

Gradually, Heliker grew calmer all day long, not only trusting the horse but also forming a close bond with Fisher, whom he regards as a second mother. He is also rebuilding his relationship with his mother, whom he shut out of his life after he was injured.

Sue Heliker, who lives in Grand Valley, Pa., said the son who had been the family clown disappeared on the battlefield, replaced by the lost soul she saw at Walter Reed in January 2011.

He had stopped talking to her about convoys along the dangerous Highway 1 south of Baghdad — the stories had become so familiar to her, she felt she had traveled the highway.

He had stopped speaking of July 4, 2009, his birthday, when he was the lead gunner on a convoy going over a mountain pass in Afghanistan and his group was ambushed and trapped by small-arms fire for five hours. He didn't even tell her he had suffered a small stroke on his sixth deployment.

So when he was hospitalized for PTSD at Walter Reed last year, his parents gathered around him not knowing how to make things better.

"Look at me, Mom, look at my eyes. I'm dead," Heliker told his mother.

"I looked at him and knew there was no way I could save him," she said.

When he ended up at Joint Base Lewis-McChord and was referred to the riding program, his mother wondered if it would do any good. But after just three months, she could hear the change in him over the phone.

"You sound so peaceful. You're like the boy you were before you went into the military," she said. "How does a horse do that?"

"When I'm around the horse, he reminds me of a giant puppy dog," Heliker said. "You can hug him. You can talk to him. ... It's just relaxing. There's no pressure, just you and your best friend."

Even though he's sad his military career is ending — he expects to be discharged soon — he's beginning to think of new possibilities, such as training to become a horseshoer. For the first time in a long time, he's thinking of the future, and of horses that will be in it.





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Wednesday, March 7, 2012

PHAR LAP - A unicorn from Down Under






While the US struggled through the great Depression and pinned its hopes and dreams on a funny looking little hero of a horse named Seabiscuit, our friends in Australia and New Zealand had their own hero to carry them through the Depression. Their National Icon was a large, chestnut thoroughbred named Phar Lap.




Phar Lap was foaled on Oct. 4, 1926 in Seadown in the South Island of New Zealand. Sydney trainer, Harry Telford convinced wealthy American Businessman, David J. Davis, to buy him as a yearling, sight unseen based upon his pedigree. When he arrived in Australia he was a gangly, awkward colt with warts all over his face! When Davis saw him he was so angry he refused to spend another penny training him. So, Telford offered to train him for nothing in exchange for 2/3 of his winnings...if there would ever be any! Telford had him gelded so he would concentrate on his training better.




His first race he came in dead last and he didn't even place in his next three. However, as he matured, his achievements slowly started to accumulate and so did his reputation. In fact, criminals tried to shoot him early in the morning of Nov. 1, 1930. They missed and he went on to win the Melbourne Stakes that afternoon. Three days later he won the Melbourne Cup. In 1931, he won fourteen races in a row!




Eventually Telford had enough money to become joint owner of Phar Lap whose name comes from a Thai word that means "Lightening."




His nicknames included "Big Red," just like Man 'O War and Secretariat,) and "Australia's Wonder Horse."




In 1932 Davis insisted upon bringing Phar Lap to America to run in some races. He ran his last race in Tijuana Mexico for the largest purse ever offered in America. He was then taken to California.




On April 5, 1932, Phar Lap died by Hemorrhaging to death. A necropsy revealed that hte stomach and intestines were severely inflamed. Since that time, theories have abound as to his cause of death, the most sinister of which involves U.S. Gangsters who poisoned him so he wouldn't mess up their bookie businesses. In 2006, a team of researchers in Australia concluded that it was almost certain that Phar Lap was indeed poisoned with a large dose of Arsenic. This supported the Gangster theory. However, Arsenic was a common tonic in those days and most horses were given it in small doses. In 2008, a study of six hairs from Phar Lap's mane suggested that he was given a massive dose of arsenic 30 to 40 hours before his death. Very Suspicious I would say!





Phar Lap's remains have been divided up between his two countries. His Hide is in the Melbourne Museum, His Skeleton in in the Museum of New Zealand and his enormous heart, like Secretariat's, is in the National Museum of Australia.

He is an icon in both Australia and New Zealand and a worthy nominee for Unicornhood!


Here is a clip from the 1983 movie about Phar Lap titled "Phar Lap: Heart of a Nation."