Author: joell

We’re back!  Wiser, inspired and slightly sore. Note to self; you are over 40 years old, it may be time to give up attempting flips on the trampoline (for the record – I stuck the landing).

Ahem.

For those of you who don’t know, we were invited to spend a week at HorseBoy Method, New Trails Center in Elgin, Texas for intensive Master Training with Rowan, Rupert, Iliane and the tribe at the ranch.  Neither Sigourney nor I knew what to expect.  We were both feeling a little bit sheepish leaving the care of all of the kids, critters and volunteers in Greg’s hands for an entire week, but we were so eager to build our skills and find out just why HorseBoy Method resonates so powerfully with autism families, we packed our helmets and boots and shuffled off to Texas.

What we found was pretty darn magical.  The folks at New Trails took us in like family.  Despite hobbling around on crutches with a freshly broken leg, Rupert was there smiling and bursting with enthusiasm, ready to bestow on us all the training our brains could hold.  We saw a group of people dedicated to providing Rowan a universe where he could be safe and where there is  joy in watching him learn in his amazing fashion. In turn, Rowan teaches everyone who spends any time with him. This is a group that truly walks a path of joy and gratitude and it shows in everything they do.

The horses did all that was asked of them with kindness and courage.  They were honestly the happiest bunch of horses I’ve known.  Not just happy, but educated.  We rode laterals, collection and even some airs.  The horses offered these upper level movements not from grinding and stress, but in a spirit of kindness and understanding.  I’m not just impressed, I’m flabbergasted.  And Rupert and Iliane shared training technique and worked us through bringing horses into suppleness and collection and the beginning of passage, half steps and levade.  Truly exciting.

Our evenings were spent around a table sharing thoughts, theory, stories, ideas and food. There are few things more enjoyable than to eat a meal with people while with a common goal to help and to serve.  It became clear that both horses and people live best in community with each other.

Now I’m saddled with the chore of  figuring out what all this means for Square Peg. Approaching the training of horses with the ultimate goal of having those horses be partners with us to reach kids who struggle changes the way you do almost everything with the horse – and the results are mind bending. We have already seen a significant improvement in our horses since Rupert and Iliane came out to train our staff and key volunteers in December. We will also go to work implementing some ideas about the physical environment that our horses live in and that our families ride in to be more conducive to working with LD and DD families (creating more space to run and play for the kids, replacing fluorescent lighting in the clubhouse with something less apt to trigger a response from ASD kids – things like this).

There is so much work to do and we can’t wait to get on it.  Join us if you will.  Here’s a list of some things we are going to need:

• Funds and hands to build a children’s play structure and area complete with trampoline and swingset.
• Funds and hands to do some re-fencing in the sanctuary pasture.
• We need a porch and an outdoor kitchen at our clubhouse/office.
• We need a 21″ to 22″ synthetic Western Saddle.
• We need to replace the lighting in the clubhouse.

Help if you can. Come and be part of this quirky universe. I guarantee that you will love the ride!

Here’s one really fun and easy way you can help – attend our Fundraiser with the Heart of Silicon Valley on Sunday, March 4.  Details and tickets here.

Another way to help is to share this post on your social networks.  Who knows who will read it and be able to be instrumental in helping? Plus, it’s how we reach more autism families who will benefit from what we have to offer.

You can always donate here.

Below is a detailed list of projects we have going.  If you would like to sponsor any of the items below, contact us at joell@squarepegfoundation.org

• $54,000 pays our annual facility rent
• $25,000 feeds the entire Square Peg herd for one year
• $20,000 builds our polo arena, including lights for evening playing, spectator seating and BBQ area
• $10,000 builds a handicap accessible bathroom at the ranch
• $8,000 replaces our old round pen for training and lessons
• $7,500 builds the new pasture including fencing and shelters
• $7,000 pays the annual farrier bill
• $6,000 provides bedding for the horses for one full year
• $5,000 pre-pays our veterinarian for the year
• $4,500 pays our lease for one month
• $3,500 buys 11 tons of feed – this lasts us 65 days
• $3,250 builds our HorseBoy Environment for sensory work
• $2,500 sponsors a HorseBoy summer camp experience for three autistic children and their families
• $1,000 cares for an Off Track Thoroughbred Racehorse for one month including board, feed, shoeing and training
• $500 purchases semi-annual vaccination boosters for the herd
• Every dollar counts!  Any donation you make helps us to turn “I wish” into “I can.”

KBAY’s Sam Van Zandt called Heart of Silicon Valley Founders Jeff Pollock and Yvonne Wolters in for an interview to talk about the great work they are doing at Heart of Silicon Valley.  They dragged little old me along for the ride and Sam gave us all a little bit of time to talk about the work we do.  The show will air Sunday morning February 5, 2012 on KBAY.  You can listen to the show here:

Heart of Silicon Valley KBAY interview

Don’t forget to get your tickets to this winter’s very best show – you don’t want to miss this one!

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“Autists are the ultimate square pegs, and the problem with pounding a square peg into a round hole is not that the hammering is hard work. It’s that you’re destroying the peg.”
— Paul Collins

Author Susan Salk did a fantastic story on Square Peg horses.

Thoroughbreds ‘lift’ up autistic, disabled kids

By Susan Salk on January 20, 2012

Joell Dunlap was struggling to make her instructions carry across the riding ring, above the din of a howling wind, to her young student who couldn’t quite grasp the concept of holding tighter to reins. Read the article here.

Esther Marr, blogger and columnist for BloodHorse Magazine featured HorseBoy and Square Peg in her latest post.  Read the article here. Here’s an excerpt:

“Most would call Hank a failure as a racehorse, considering he wasn’t even close to being on the board in any of his four starts. He retired with measly earnings of $1,600, which didn’t even surpass his $2,500 yearling auction price.  But Hank simply had another calling in life.

Now, with the help of Dunlap, the gelding is making a huge difference in the lives of children with disabilities. I can’t imagine a more worthy vocation.”

Over a year ago, I submitted a story to a beautiful online magazine Horses For Life.  They published the story last week.  You can read the published version here.

What makes a little girl to wrap a tiny hand around a cotton rope, tug and walk away assuming that 1,000 pounds of muscle, hooves and bone will follow? Is it delusion? Arrogance? Clearly, this is hubris?

Our answer doesn’t matter because the half ton at the end of the rope drops her head and follows that girl. She leaves the security of her food and her barn mates and simply follows that child. No matter how many times I put girls and horses together, this amazes me. It’s one of those little miracles that happens every day of my career and sometimes, just sometimes, I make the time to honor it by watching in wonder.

Every horse story is a story about trust in spite of the evidence. Every horse understands that hope inevitably leads to disappointment, but that trust leads to new possibilities.

Some people will tell you that a horse is dumb. He’s beast of burden that has been bred and broken until he accepts bit and saddle, spur and yoke with a resignation unique to prey animals.

That theory melts away when I send out our 22 year old one-eyed Thoroughbred to teach a student to jump her first fences. He canters lightly to the fence, ears pricked, head slightly tilted to see the jump properly. He knows he could go around. He knows he could stop. But he never, ever does. He slows himself down after that fence and basks in the hugs and pats bestowed on him by the child on his back. She’s got pink cheeks from the excitement and she’s just now taking her first deep breath since the beginning of the lesson. Call this lack of intelligence if you will, I will call it generosity.

There are people will offer to teach you to teach your horse to trust. They will sell you a book, a brightly colored whip (?) and a weekend seminar. They try to unlock the secrets of the horse/girl bond. But it’s not until a girl’s heart has been broken, until her best friend has moved away or until she’s have been shunned by those she thought were supposed to love her that she realizes the depth of effort that it takes for a horse to trust. Only then can she appreciate the fragile beauty of the horse and their power to let us “in.”

People ask me all the time what connects girls to horses. After 25 years of searching, I think I finally know the simple answer; trust.

As girls, we recognize the ability to throw ourselves to the fates without resigning ourselves to defeat. We know how to keep certain parts of ourselves sacred while allowing the rest of us to be controlled, to be led, to be vanquished. Somehow we know in our hearts that the prancing horse in the show ring doing tricks manages to retain her own haughtiness, her own boundaries even while she dances for the crowd. We are forever awed by the fact that our own horse allow sus to climb upon his back and urge him with impatient knees into places where predators lurk.

We ask him to carry us over fences, down paved streets and through the scary corner of the arena. He will allow us to do it again and again. Each ride is an exercise in forgiveness.

This is what bonds women to horses. This is what causes us to forsake boyfriends, money, clean clothes and mall shopping. This simple task of learning to trust is taught by the horse in the most important way; not by lectures, not by assignments and tests, our horse teaches by example. He trusts not with the resignation of the defeated, but with the acceptance of the wise. And he is there to teach us again and again each day, each moment we spend with him.

Some of my least proud moments have come when I have rejected this lesson. I remember riding a young and  flighty thoroughbred filly  who one day would not go around a corner of the arena we had ridden in every day for the last month. I was hot, I was tired, I was impatient and she was adamant. I pulled, I tugged, I kicked, I half halted, I FULL halted, I backed her into the corner to show her who was boss. She bolted forward no matter what. Finally, I hopped off her back, enraged and tired. I marched her into that corner to make her stand. And she stood, and she trembled. With my jaw set, growled at her “see, there’s nothing here!” I was triumphant as I looked into her panting face. I would win this battle of wills. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement. An angry mother bobcat and her babies crept out from behind a tree not eight feet away. The filly was right all along.

Each of us has met the un-trusting horse. We know right away from his eye, from his posture, from his distended nostrils. Maybe he’s been abused, maybe, just maybe, he knows he does not need humans. We are fascinated we need him to trust us, we need him to look at us and see something worthy of his trust, something good. Our favorite stories are the stories where this same horse chooses a human, sees something special that we can’t  see and he crosses the chasm and simply trusts. This is the stuff of daydreams and fantasy. These are the stories that move us.

This trust is so profound that the same horse, on the day when you decide that her legs can no longer carry you, that her back will no longer support you, when her belly can no longer tolerate the dried, processed food that you feed her, lays her beautiful head in your lap as the doctor injects the poison that will stop her heart. She takes one last trusting look at you before she sighs her final breath.

If you are a horse lover, chances are you have see the latest article or something similar:

Obama Legalizes Horse Slaughter for Human Consumption by madeline bernstein

Snippets from the article include “During these trying times, is the only thing that Democrats and Republicans can agree on is that Americans need to eat horses?”

Someone will read this blog post and will announce that “Square Peg is pro-slaughter.” That’s not just false, it’s silly.  For the last 20 years of my life, I’ve been placing OTTB’s in homes.  If I cloned myself a thousand times and if I cloned the amazing Joe Shelton twice that many times, we could not save them all.  It’s a fact that rescuers live with every darn day.  With slaughter banned in the US,  these animals head in terrible conditions to slaughter plants across the boarders.  Those plants are not supervised by anything like the Department of Agriculture and they don’t have inspectors from the FDA imposing fines on renegade operations.  The horror is palpable.  I won’t go into it here – if you are curious, you can look it up yourself.  But bring a strong stomach and some tissue.

For now, until we can address the horse overpopulation issue horse slaughter will continue and it’s unsavory.  So why wouldn’t we afford our horses the same protections that we gave the cow that you ate at lunch yesterday?  Because we don’t want to face the reality that horse slaughter exists and that we, as the horse community are in some way responsible?   Are you ready for the facts?  Not only will protesting legalized horse slaughter not save a single horse, we have now doomed those same horses to a horrific and torturous death. Over 100,000 made the trip last year and this year will be no different, there are too many horses and the economy is not improving while horse care costs continue to rise.

Want to really save some horses?  Want to make a difference?

Then donate until it hurts to a local rescue with a strict

NO BREEDING policy. Encourage your friends to do the same.  Ask for the rescue’s adoption contract.  Find out if the rescuer has a breeding operation.  I’m always blown away at how many rescues have parallel breeding programs.  Wow!  How is that addressing the overpopulation problem?

Volunteer at the local Humane Society, or help a struggling neighbor keep her horse through the winter. Sponsor a rescue horse for a Christmas gift for a friend or a child. Offer your talents in marketing or housekeeping or brochure writing for your favorite rescue.  Question the folks in your local horse club when you hear someone say something like “she’s going to be off for a year and we aren’t sure that she will be sound again so my husband said we can breed her.” No seriously, have that conversation every chance you get and you will be saving lives!

Don’t have extra time or cash?  Then support rescues with the money you are already spending. Give your business to the local vet, farrier and feed companies that help out rescue operations.  If you don’t know who they are, call the local rescue, they will be glad to tell you. Promote your favorite rescue on your Facebook and Twitter accounts.  Encourage your local riding club to attend fundraisers for legitimate rescues.  Host a bake sale at your school  or a bowling party.  So many fun options that really will be making a significant difference!

If you are a racing fan, support racing in states such as California, Kentucky and Illinois who directly fund Thoroughbred Aftercare and push them to support aftercare for the horses who never made it to the track.  The National Thoroughbred Racing Association is doing more than ever in history to support ex race horses.  Encourage their work with a card or a note or a call. Let them know that you appreciate their sincere efforts.

Want to take on the environmental issue of a slaughterhouse? Simply eliminate meat from two meals per week to start.  Encourage your friends to do the same.  If that works well, make sure that for another two meals per week, that you choose local and/or organic meats.  How hard is that to put your morals where your mouth is?  Lead by example and friends and family will follow. That’s how lasting change has always occurred.

And lastly, if you do decide that the old horse in your pasture really needs to go to a good home, pick the rescue or the organization mindfully and be prepared to make a cash donation for that animal’s care.  And I don’t mean $50.  If you expect the rescue to care for and re-home and re-habilitate your  horse, please be prepared to donate three to 12 months worth of feed, farrier, dentistry, veterinary and training costs.

Yes, it’s easy to get upset by reading headlines and we love to blame our legislators.  Remember that they didn’t create the horse overpopulation problem. They’re trying to address an economic issue and the moral problem of the transport and unregulated slaughter for our beautiful horses.  It’s a bitter pill to swallow and none of us  like it.  Remember that we, as the horse owning community must be responsible for the animals we produce.