Page 20 - Flathead Beacon // 5.20.2015

20 | MAY 20, 2015 COVER
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Lynnette Holmes holds Charlie Jones as Imp wraps his head around Charlie at the end of a therapy session. GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
now, with about a dozen more on the waiting list.
Her large, gentle employees have worked 11 years in the barn, and in that time have developed close re- lationships with clients. Some kids consider the hors- es their best friends, Holmes said, and the horses are
known to nuzzle the kids after a session is complete. Riding horseback can help with physical and bal- ance issues, Holmes said, though the mental and emo-
tional benefits seem to be the most rewarding. “Autism is one of our biggest diagnoses in the pro-
gram,” Holmes said.
Children with autism face a gamut of challenges
navigating the social and physical world, she said, but riding a horse can help them stay grounded. Some kids benefit from lying down on the horse, covered with a weighted blanket, so they can feel the heat, the move- ment, smell the horse, hear the heartbeat, and feel the horse’s coat.
Most can only handle about 10 minutes due to an overwhelming amount of stimulus, but they get out of the saddle relaxed.
“When you get them off the horse, you get a sense of peace,” Holmes said.
Parents report their kids are sleeping better, and some parents have experienced a child climbing down from the saddle, climbing into their parent’s lap, and saying, “I love you” for the first time.
They’re communicating differently, having spent time with a friend who accepts them without question. “Horses don’t understand disability. They see
each person as they are, and accept them as they are,” Holmes said. “If you treat them with respect, they will respect and love you.”
ward of getting what he wanted, which was a horse ride. Eventually, he moved on to making a guttural “guh” noise, the start of the word “go,” to make the horse
move. Soon, he was saying his first words.
“He said ‘go,’ and that was his first word,” Erika
said. “Then he said ‘horse,’ ‘please,’ and ‘cookie.’” Connecting speech to communication was a major step for Kjell. It helped form the neuropathways in his
brain needed for talking.
“Once he understood, oh my gosh, it was like you
turned an ignition over,” Erika said.
It was gratifying to hear her son speak after years
of waiting to talk with him, she said, and it helped the entire family become closer.
“It just gave us – my husband, myself, and Kjell – it just gave us another way of connecting,” she said. “That was probably one of the happiest days and weeks. Peace came over the family; I knew everything was going to be OK.”
Inspired, Johnson joined the nonprofit board, Hu- man Therapy on Horseback, the sister organization to SAMS Riders, which provides about 65 percent of the cost for the horse therapy sessions, leaving parents and caretakers responsible for the remaining 35 percent.
After Kjell moved on from horse therapy after three years, Erika’s interests moved on as well. But just re- cently, with another of her pursuits ending, Erika de- cided to go back to the HTH board.
“I feel passionately about horse therapy,” she said. For his part, Kjell remembers specifics of his time at
K
12-year-old boy, interested in building Lego cre-
jell, pronounced “shell,” is a bright, talkative
ations and jogging. A couple of weekends ago, he sat rapt with attention, knowing he would earn the prom- ise of shooting hoops if he sat quietly while his mother, Erika Johnson, spoke.
Ten years ago, Erika and her husband found out their 2-year-old son was autistic. He wasn’t speak- ing, communicating his needs through screaming or throwing blocks against the wall.
The family felt at a loss on how to help him; autism treatment doesn’t come with an easily laid-out process to follow, Erika said.
“It’s just a morass to navigate,” she said.
She heard about SAMS Riders through the local Child Development Center (CDC) office, and Kjell’s speech therapist, Kathy Heider, encouraged the family to put Kjell on horseback as a complement to the thera- py they did in her office.
What Kjell needed was language, Erika said, any- thing to help him communicate what he’s experienc- ing. Once they started at SAMS, the 2-and-a-half-year- old boy began learning sign language.
At SAMS, the first phrase riders learn is “Go horse please.” Through his work there, Kjell was able to con- nect his signed request for the horse to go with the re-