That Suprising Call

Good morning Friends; I hope we have one particular reader joining us today.....Ms. MK.

Yesterday, I left off with mention of a strange and suspicious call I received during our "summer break". A lady said she was calling from a production company in Chicago. Her company, Luminair Production, had been hired to research, direct, write, produce, film, edit, etc. a 6 hour documentary on the horse. Of the six, 1-hour episodes, one hour was to be devoted to the horse as a companion. The other parts were the history/breeds of horses, the horse as a worker, the horse as a warrier, the horse as an entertainer, and the horse as competitor. I gave her my 2 cents that I felt the therapy horse should be featured as a work horse, not just a companion, in that they were assigned a job and had to show up for work. Since our clients have individual goals and the horse is selected to best achieve those goals we couldn't easily substitute just any horse for any rider. Likewise, we had to have horses with a solid work ethic and showed up for their assigned time willing to do the job regardless of enviromental or personnel, or personal issues. When riding for pleasure, the rider can always assess the horse's willingness to give a good ride and make the decision to either ride then or wait for another time. A therapy horse usually doesn't have that luxury. So, now you got the 2 cents too!

The producer stuck to her original plan regardless of my opinion - but modified the title of the segment to The horse as healer and companion. That made perfect sense. The company found One Heart through their research department and approached us mainly due to our Special Olympics Team. They wanted to film and interview One Heart Special Olympics Athletes as they prepared for the State Special Olympics Equestrian Event. I thought that would be nice and left it at that.

Not long after, I was called again by Luminair. They wanted to come to One Heart and they wanted to follow the team to the State event. That would be nice.

I had encouraged this fun activity knowing our riders would be perfect to illustrate the relationship they had with "their" horse and demonstrate all they had accomplished. By the third call I decided I should discuss this with the Special Olympics state office. I took the whole thing seriously when the state office informed me that the production company had already called them to discuss logistics of filming at the competition.

I will spare you the alarm that went off when I realized that not only the regular prep for a show would happen but we had to get an entire farm, fields, tack room, walls, cobwebs, weed eating, and paddock cleaning effort underway. So much for our summer "break"!

An all-call went to the volunteers. The staff organized. I worked with the production company to also arrange "mock" classes of the different types of therapeutic riding we offered including interviews with therapists, moms, staff, and riders.

You must be included in the prep. It is a chance for me to show off the One Heart volunteers. Here they came. We cleaned and weeded and scrubbed and clipped and rebuilt and updated all those projects it seemd that we had been saving for just this occassion. We invested weeks and hours and $$ and elbow grease to ready ourselves for a film crew. Due to the delicate nature of the insulation lining the indoor arena a pressure washer wouldn't be appropriate.....thus, here comes Vol Jen with her cousins who could reach the lower levels. They hand dusted the walls using rags. Then Vols Jen and Hannah pulled out the ladders and up they went, brooms in hand. You can tell the difference! What dedication. This dedication went on throughout the couple of weeks we devoted to preparing. Each and every day, including Labor Day holiday, volunteers came.

Then we worked on the horses, clipping, trimming, grooming and finally came to our white minitature horse, Peanut. Peanut got his first bath. We really needed to get

scruffy Peanutput out to dryall ready!

all the sunblock and fly repelent off that had accumulated during the late summer.

After all the work and prep the week finally came for filming. It also coincided with our previously scheduled week for new client evaluations and volunteer training. It was busy and fun and tiring.

The filming went well. It was fun and seemed to accomplish what the production crew had in mind. The horses and riders and volunteers all did their best and it was wonderful. We hope to make the cut for the final documentary but we will see sometime in the fall of 2010. Stay tuned!

Next time, I will invite you to enjoy our day at the State Special Olympics Equestrian Event. And I haven't forgotten that I need to tell you about Dagmar.

Until later.......walk on! Kris.