by Anne Lindsey

Created on: June 24, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

What is it that horses have that some people seem to need? Is it the lessons of patience and living "in the now" that we can learn from them? Is it their uncomplicated willingness to share their strength and company? Whatever it is, my daughter and l will never again be able to live without horses in our lives.

As a child I rode whenever I had the chance, which wasn't often enough for me. I read everything about horses that I could get my hands on and could quote breed and conformation facts until people were sick of me. Then college and life interfered and my love affair with the horse was postponed. Years later I was a single parent of a child with an autism spectrum disorder and suffering from fibromyalgia myself. Things were looking pretty grim.

My daughter was doing poorly in school and I was near the end of my rope when I found some information that suggested that horseback riding was good therapy for autistic children. Since my daughter loved and obsessed about horses just as I had as a child, I decided to give her riding lessons for her 10th birthday. Then I got jealous of her involvement and started taking lessons myself. We never looked back!

For me, the lessons turned into a lease and I have a horse to ride whenever I like. He is a silly old curmudgeon named "Poncho" with big floppy ears. His personality is second-to-none and he makes me laugh every day. Spending time with him, playing, grooming and riding makes me forget all the aches and pains that go with the fibromyalgia for a while. The exercise is good for me too and it doesn't feel like work! The symptoms come back again afterward, but having a "vacation" from it for a while is all I need to cheer me up and keep me going.

For my daughter, horses and riding as therapy have been nothing short of miraculous. In a very short time she went from struggling to do her homework for hours, being angry and anti-social and having poor grades to a happy A-honor roll and gifted student who does her homework without help. She no longer requires any special adaptations at school. Most remarkably, instead of avoiding others due to the social limitations of autism, she actually tries new things. She has joined the chess club, the newspaper club and 4-H.

After a year of this amazing transformation, I leased a horse named "Dreamy" for my daughter as a reward and then bought him for her birthday 6 months later. It was a difficult decision because she fell in love with a somewhat difficult young horse which is not

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