FOLSOM, La. — Did you know that when a horse comes near you, it can sense and mimic your heart rate?
That's because it has acute sensory perceptions and emotionally responds to people.
At a farm in Folsom, that kind of horsepower is being used for healing and teaching.
Sometimes, the biggest lessons you learn in life come from, well, something really big, like more than 1,000 pounds.
“Just like, being with like, such a big horse, and a strong horse, like, it teaches me, like, I can just be so much stronger in like, figuring out how to control. It helps like controlling emotions, and thoughts,” said Brooke Fridge, 16, about the horse named Freedom, she was working with.
“I came here. I just was, I wasn't very happy in the morning, and he made me just feel much better when I left,” said Brooke’s little sister Emme about the horse, named Mr. Fine, she was working with.
Bonny Barry runs Equine Reflections in Folsom.
“I know now I have self-confidence, and I can do anything in life,” said Courtney Guillory, 9, who was working with a horse named Chubby.
“That's what we're trying to do with her, is try to let her know that just because you're working with horses, doesn't mean that this can't spill over into how you act at school, how you act with your sisters, and everybody else,” said Courtney’s father Terry Guillory, who says the program is making a difference.
But there's also a journey of hope much deeper that happens on the farm that we can only tell you about.
“Anytime a child is abused, that child is brought to Hope House as a first response, and we collect evidence. We also provide therapy and advocacy, it's just for hope and healing after child abuse,” explained Thomas Mitchell, Executive Director of Children’s Advocacy Center, Hope House.
Hope House sees 500 abused children and teens a year from St. Tammany and Washington Parishes. And now with a partnership with Equine Reflections and a grant from Chevron, children from Hope House do part of their therapy with licensed mental health counselors at the farm with the horses.
“They're smiling when they leave after one session because the horses don't judge. They do know what's happened, and they know how to act accordingly,” said Bonny Barry, Founder and Executive Director of Equine Reflections.
You see, the horses they are working with have been rescued from abuse too.
Danny Boy, the horse that suffered horrible abuse of his own, and what some of the children do is they write their hopes and dreams on him on one side, and they write what happened to them on his other side, and then they wash off the bad things that happened to them, and leave their hopes and dreams written on him.
When asked why she does this, Barry replied, “I can honestly say my life was saved by a horse as a child. I went through abuse, and I was silenced, and literally, the horses saved my life.”
Success stories include a bullied child from far away who had not talked in nearly a year.
“And within seconds, he literally put his head around her back and brought her to his chest. She turned and looked at her mother, and said, ‘Mommy, he loves me,’” Barry remembers of the girl’s first meeting with Danny Boy.
It's horsepower, of a different kind, changing lives.
Equine Reflections has many types of teaching and healing programs for people age five to senior citizens.
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