Walk On: A Brief History of One Heart Equestrian Therapy - Part 1

Walk On:

A Brief History of One Heart Equestrian Therapy

One Heart Equestrian Therapy has been improving the lives of central Iowa’s children and adults with disabilities since 2002. One Heart provides a wide variety of therapeutic riding services, from developmental riding classes for children and adults with a variety of physical and intellectual disabilities, to driving classes for those who cannot ride a horse but want the benefits of therapy, to classes with mini horses designed to give individuals unable or unwilling to ride therapeutic experiences with animals.

One Heart is part of a nationwide movement to provide people with disabilities the opportunity to benefit from interaction with horses, and is a member of PATH, the Professional Association for Therapeutic Horsemanship. One Heart did not, however, magically materialize, fully formed and ready to provide these services to the community. One Heart is the product of dreams, hard work, and the support of hundreds of residents of central Iowa and beyond.

In the Beginning: the One Heart Idea

The idea for One Heart began with Kris Lager. Kris is a special needs mom, and a self-identified “horsey person.” One Heart grew out of both of these aspects of Kris’s life. In 1995, she and her husband Kelly adopted their second child from Romania, a little girl with special needs. This adoption set the wheels in motion, because it helped Kris to lose her fear of people with disabilities. She commented “I was raised in an era when if you were staring at anybody, even in a cast, or who limped, or had a crutch or a cane, let alone in a wheelchair or had Down Syndrome, Mom just slapped the snot out of you and said don’t stare. So you were raised with a wariness, maybe even a fear” of people with disabilities. Being the mother of a special needs child plunged her into a new world, one that familiarized her with the needs of people with disabilities.

This, however, wasn’t enough to set the wheels in motion. Another important factor was Kris’s history as a “horsey person.” She said, “I grew up horsey. Everything was 100% horse.” As a child, she showed horses in 4-H, and in college, she studied animal science. She also earned a master’s degree in physiology, where she again explored her interest in horses. Because of this interest, she was fascinated by the story of her sister-in-law’s father, a man who had survived polio. As an adult, he maintained his mobility through riding Barney, one of his farm horses. It was Barney’s motion and his body’s response to it that kept him moving. This story influenced Kris’s sister-in-law to become a therapeutic riding instructor, and in the summer of 2000, she took Kris to watch a therapeutic riding session in Minneapolis. Kris was astonished to see the therapists put a young man with quadriplegia on the back of a therapy horse. She had seen “every kind of horse and pony imaginable,” but she’d never seen a therapy horse at work before, and it was magic. She remembered, “Rolling in his chair up the ramp and transferred to the back of the horse, everything about him changed. Now, he didn’t walk out of the arena, he didn’t speak, but there was some chemical transformation that you could just see. Everything about him changed when he was riding on the horse.”

When Kris returned home, she mentioned to her boss at the USDA, Dr. Lawayne Nusz, that she thought it “would be neat to look into the potential of researching the possibility of maybe thinking about having a therapeutic riding program in our community.” She was not ready to act, but she was thinking. What she didn’t know was that her boss shared that information with a special needs mom in the Ames community. One evening, when Kris was in Fareway after a long day at work, a mother introduced herself in the store. She said, “I heard you’re starting a therapeutic riding program. I think my son would benefit.” As Kris said, “that was that. When God gives me a sign, it’s a billboard. I mean, it has to be. So that was it.” One Heart was born out of a chance encounter with a mom who wanted something better for her special needs child.

Out of thin air: Bringing the pieces together

Story Co. Fairgrounds

Kris began researching therapeutic riding programs, and found the North American Riding for the Handicapped Association (NARHA), now known as the Professional Association for Therapeutic Horsemanship (PATH). She then called the Nevada Journal, to see if she could put an ad in the paper about a meeting to explore the creation of a therapeutic riding program in central Iowa. The paper thought it sounded like news, and published an article about the project. Kris also posted a notice in the faculty/staff area of the veterinary college at Iowa State University.
Fifteen people from three counties came to this initial meeting: horse people, special education teachers, a physical therapy assistant, and various friends. This group became the steering committee.
What One Heart now needed was a certified, qualified therapeutic riding instructor, a requirement for NARHA membership. Again, connections intervened. A person on the steering committee pointed Kris toward Maureen Howard, a recent transplant to Boone, Iowa. Maureen had been a therapeutic riding instructor at Cedar Creek Therapeutic Riding in Columbia, Missouri, and a meter reader who knew a member of the steering committee saw her in her backyard, wearing a Cedar Creek sweatshirt. Maureen was ready to get back into therapeutic riding, and had even contacted the Boone YMCA camp about the possibility of teaching lessons. When she came to visit Kris, she brought a resume including publications and presentations in therapeutic riding. As Kris said, “she knew everything there was to know.”

Now, One Heart needed a place to ride, and horses.  Story County 4-H was willing to arrange for both at the Story County fairgrounds.  Kris, however, took things one step further, and wrote a letter to all of her friends from the horse show world to see if anyone had a horse to give.  She was willing to take retired show horses, brood mares whose foaling days were over, or any other available horse.  Kris’s childhood friends from Smithville, Missouri, the Dolans, came through.  They gave One Heart its very first horse, a five year old, green broke Morgan mare, Rosie.  Neighbors donated pasture space (affectionately known as “the jungle”) for her, and One Heart’s herd was born.  But while One Heart had a horse, it didn’t own a brush or a bridle.  As Kris said, “we had nothing.”  

Rosie arrives.

One Heart’s first community event was a bridle shower, or horse tack shower, but fashioned as a bridal shower, complete with invitations, a cake, and little mints.  The community came through with everything One Heart needed, from bridles and brushes to fly spray and hoof picks.  The community also gave $1500 in cash.  Slowly, but surely, other pieces fell into place.  The Nevada Kiwanis built a ramp system that allowed people in wheelchairs to roll up and transfer easily to the back of a horse.  The Boone Rotary voted to supply One Heart with five riding helmets in each size, something absolutely necessary for the riders’ safety.  Cedar Creek in Columbia, Missouri, provided another two usable horses. Other donors provided the fourth and fifth horses, Sonny and Soldier.  One Heart had asked, and the community had answered.

To be continued...

Over the next few weeks we'll be posting more about One Heart's history. Stay tuned.