Cayuga County Farm Uses Horses for Therapy Cayuga County Farm Uses Horses For Therapy

Bailee:
Ardia Prior comes to Healing H’arts once a week to help with her autism. The barn in Cayuga County specializes in helping those with physical and mental challenges through the use of hippotherapy.

According to the National Library of Medicine, hippotherapy is a form of physical, occupational and speech therapy in which a therapist uses the characteristic movements of a horse to provide carefully graded motor and sensory input.

For high school senior Emma Dennis, Healing H’arts is a place where she can escape real life and just spend time with the horses.

Emma Dennis:
“My favorite thing was just being in the environment and around horses. As much as I loved the riding, it wasn’t my favorite thing because it’s not as important as it is to necessarily be around them.”

Bailee:
Dennis started coming to Healing H’arts as a part of their teen program that promotes healthy mental health practices. This helped her through a life changing experience that she still finds hard to talk about.

Dennis:
“I had to go through my parent’s divorce. and so during covid, my father wasn’t really around and it was really hard, especially for my mom being that she was by herself.”

Bailee:
A 2007 study by New Mexico State University concluded that caring for horses effectively improved the global assessment of functioning scores of their test group of children who had been diagnosed with mental health issues.

Owner Kirsta Malone never pictured that her future would entail helping others with the help of horses. In fact, she never believed she’d ever own a horse.

Kirsta Malone:
“And I said, ‘I am never going to be a horse person.’ I did not like it at all and I gave it up completely.”

Bailee:
She now runs the barn that features over a dozen horses who help people overcome physical and mental obstacles. She says there was one case in particular that truly amazed her.

Malone:
“I had a little boy with a genetic disability, a genetic defect whose team at school was like, you know, we need to address his drooling. He’s drooling, and it’s a public health safety thing. After those ten weeks, not only did he stop drooling completely, he started talking in sentences where before he’d only say one or two words and it was like so amazing.”

Bailee:
Healing H’arts doesn’t just help their clients; they also take on interns from neighboring institutions, like Emily Tran, an occupational therapy student at the Bryant and Stratton College Syracuse campus. She says working with these horses for her internship has been an empowering experience.

Emily Tran:
“So as a person, I’m more introverted and I haven’t really identified myself as a leader. so it’s interesting to have like control of such a large animal. And it’s, I would say like an empowering experience to be able to lunge a horse and tell them which direction to go in and what type of gaits to use.”

Bailee:
Tran, Malone and Dennis, along with Sonny the horse, all pitch in to help visitors take a load off and experience the enchantment that keeps them coming back for more.

Malone:
“I think what makes me most proud is that people who come here call it magic. And I was like, ‘What do you mean, magic? Like what does that mean?’ and the people that come here are like, as soon as they come down and see the big barn, they feel calm. they feel like they’re going someplace that’s going to help them.”

Bailee:
Thanks to these horses, kids like Prior are always able to find a reason to smile.

For NCC News, I’m Bailee Marie Tucker.