It's been a pretty rocky week. Our nephew Ben was hospitalized in San Juan with what they originally thought was a badly infected abscessed tooth. After a over a week of ups-and-downs, it turns out it's not an abscessed tooth with a huge bacterial infection swelling. Nope. He has lymphoma. As of now we don't know exactly what kind or what stage. We will find that out later this week. So for the past week I've been driving back and forth to San Juan a lot. Ben's mother and sister - my sister and niece - are coming into San Juan tonight so I suspect I will be there even more this week.
On a totally different note yesterday was one of the best days in the young life of Elaine's non-profit Horses of Hope/Caballos de Esperanza.
Frank Perez, the president of the Puerto Rico Association for the Blind came to HoH to ride a horse!
Elaine met Frank several weeks ago at an event to showcase services for the blind island-wide. A friend of ours from a therapeutic riding center on the other side of the island was also presenting at the event and arranged for another mutual friend to bring a horse. At that event Frank touched a horse for the first time and admitted his life long dream was to ride a horse.
Elaine said, "We can make that happen!"
It took a couple of weeks and several contact to get him past his initial anxiety and to actually get him here to ride. Yesterday was the day.
Elaine had a brilliant lesson plan designed to introduce Frank step by step and to guide him through the process. His class, as do all classes, began with being introduced to "his" horse (in this case Chocolate) by grooming.
The last step is grooming usually cleaning the hooves. Elaine thought this would be just a cursory introduction. Frank was fascinated by Choco's hooves, how hard they are, the shape, the feel and the pattern of the underside of the hoof around the frog.
The next step was tacking up Chocolate, putting on his saddle and reins. Frank was more involved in the process than many of our other clients!
From there, with the aid of our volunteers Chris, Paola, and Michael, Elaine had Frank walk with Chocolate around the riding arena so he could get a sense of its size and shape.
Then (drumroll please) they all moved to the mounting block. Again, Elaine had Frank feel the block, its size and shape and height. She also had him feel how tall Chocolate was compared to the mounting block. He immediately understood that he would stand on the block to get on the horse.
With Elaine's guidance - and with a bit of rising anxiety - Frank climbed the stairs. With help from Elaine and his volunteers Frank got on a horse for the first time in his life.
After that, there was nothing to do but ride!
After his first ride this man who had been so anxious, so flat-out scared, realized he can ride! It is a possibility for him. Now he wants to take lessons. His new goal is to ride independently with no side walkers holding him, with the horse leader's lead rope unclipped. This is very realistic, very possible. We can make this happen!
Our whole team, starting with Chocolate and including our rockstar volunteers Chris, Paola, Michel, Eslyn, Gladys, and of course Elaine, created a calm, safe, secure atmosphere to help alleviate Frank's fears and made this dream come true. Now on to the next one!
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