Back in the saddle
For Ontario woman who lost her legs in a car accident, riding her horse is ‘freedom’
On a bone-chilling March evening, Santanna Marrocco is on a routine evening ride.
She takes her horse, Dealer, from a walk to a trot.
Her back is straight and confident and she moves easily with the chestnut mare’s bouncing gait as they do laps around the covered arena behind her home in a small Simcoe County town.
After a few minutes, she clicks her tongue and Dealer responds, increasing speed from a trot to a canter.
Santanna’s mother, Jo-Anne — who has been quick to tease and joke until this point — has stepped outside, too nervous to stay and watch.
Her father, Rick, and her husband of nine years, Dan Brodie, hover at the edge of the arena, ready for anything.
“If Santanna falls, that’s it,” Rick says quietly. “There’s no more second chances. If she falls she could really hurt herself. She could kill herself. For us it’s like a heart attack from when she gets on until she gets off.”
Rick pauses and watches her ride by. “It’s what makes her happy. It’s about the only thing that does.”
After an automobile collision on Dec. 9, 2010, Santanna nearly died. She was 24 at the time.
She was a passenger in her motherin-law’s car when they were in a fender-bender on a country road. They pulled over and Santanna was standing by one of the cars waiting for the police when an approaching vehicle lost control and hit her, sending her flying, then running her over and dragging her.
Her right leg was amputated at mid-knee, her left leg at mid-thigh. When she left the hospital months later in her electric wheelchair, she was held together by metal pins in her pelvis and hips.
“The doctors looked at me like I was crazy when I said I wanted to ride again,” she says. “It’s not an option to fall. I can’t. I’ve got metal everywhere.”
But for Santanna, now 30, who has been riding since she was 8, never being on a horse again was no option at all.
That singular focus kept her going in her darkest moments, though it took more than two years to get her onto a horse again.
“I’ve always been positive through the whole experience, ever since the accident happened, but (at that point) I was losing hope that things would go back to normal,” she says.
As a temporary fix, her riding coach, Nicole Clark, suggested she try Dealer, a retired racehorse and four-foot jumper she’d had for 10 years.
“She knew the horse would stand still while I got on, which is the scariest part,” Santanna said. Their first ride was on July 12, 2013. It took almost no time for Dealer and Santanna to find their rhythm. After their second ride, when it was time for Santanna to dismount, Dealer instinctively bent her left front leg so Santanna could slide right off.
Within three rides, Dealer would respond to her shifting her weight and her voice commands. Within 10 rides, they were trotting. Within 20, they were cantering.
She told Clark: “You know you are going to have to sell her to me, right?”
Though she has had no training for riders with disabilities, Dealer can sense when Santanna becomes unbalanced because her left leg is tired — the femur is cut, so it gets sore more quickly — even if Santanna tries to hide it.
“She is so intuitive,” Santanna says. “She completely judges what I can do and what I can’t.”
Earlier on the March evening, Santanna opens the stable door and calls in the horses and ponies from the paddock, muddy from the wet snow. They trail in one at a time: Dealer, Eddie, Dan’s horse, Kylo, who is prone to neighing loudly when he feels neglected, and her mother’s mischievous pony, Colby, who once chased off a pack of wolves. The three miniature ponies — Timbit, Jenga and Momma — follow. Santanna says she’s going to train them to pull her around town in a cart.
The stable is entirely accessible. From her electric wheelchair, San- tanna mucks out the stalls and feeds and grooms the horses every day except Wednesdays (her mom gives her the day off ). Her dad, who is retired and is now her caregiver, helps to do the one thing she can’t: empty the wheelbarrows.
This is the new normal. She is still a florist, though her days are punctuated with prosthetic leg training, physiotherapy and swimming. Three years ago, she and Dan moved from Bolton to a farm in Loretto with a home fitted with ramps and an elevator. Her parents live in the self-contained basement apartment.
Her life — on horseback and off — has become a team effort.
Once the other horses are in their stalls, Santanna starts brushing Dealer down.
“Up, up,” she says to the horse, who obligingly lifts her one white leg — though it is more beige from mud.
“Having her and having my saddle have given me everything back,” Santanna says, using a rag to clean Dealer’s leg. “Her show name is ‘My Freedom’ because she gave it all back to me. I never thought I’d be able to do what I could before. But with her, I can. She’s starting to give me myself back.”
Dan brings over Santanna’s saddle, bought with money raised through a fundraiser in 2012. It’s a repurposed dressage saddle, adapted by a local saddler Joe Boustead.
It took about two years to get the setup just right. There are no stirrups. Instead, thick straps on either side help hold Santanna’s thighs in place. The cuffs are attached by Velcro, so they are adjustable and can be loosened or tightened — one of the many ideas that came up through the trial-and-error design process.
“A lot of your balance is in your knees,” she says. “But now, I have to use my core.”
Once Dealer is ready, it’s time to get Santanna in the saddle.
This is the only part that terrifies her. Their system requires Dan and both her parents. With her dad behind her, she goes up a metal ramp to a square wood platform.
Once she’s safely on the platform, she puts on her helmet.
Santanna slowly moves up the ramp to another, higher platform, her father still behind her.
Dan guides Dealer into position. He stands on the outside, holding the horse steady, with Jo-Anne in front.
They count to three and Santanna heaves herself from her chair onto Dealer. She calls it a leap of faith.
But once she is in the saddle, she is instantly relaxed and in control. These are her legs. “I don’t think any of us breathed that first ride,” says her riding coach, Clark, of the Northside Training Centre in Caledon.
It took some time to build Santanna’s stamina and strength for her to be able to ride for about an hour.
By the summer of 2015, Santanna was competing in small shows in the area — the only rider with disabilities to participate — and placed second in her class at one event.
Clark acknowledges the risks Santanna faces, but says it’s clear that being able to ride and forge a connection with Dealer has helped Santanna’s recovery.
“The wonderful thing about horses is they don’t judge. They always give it to you straight,” she said.
Back in the arena, Santanna’s father, Rick, says: “Are you going to do the naughty thing . . . canter?” “Yeah,” Santanna says, laughing. For someone with both legs amputated above the knees, to canter is unusual, almost unheard of, Rick says, as proud as he is worried.
“She is the only one we know of who does it,” Dan adds.
“They don’t want to hear this, but I’m saving up for a jumping saddle,” Santanna chimes in from across the arena.
She’s talked with Boustead about creating a saddle with cuffs that would rotate on hinges to allow her to lean forward into the jumping position. Clark, her riding coach, has some ideas, too. They are planning to start training to jump this summer.
Eventually, Santanna says, she wants to open a riding school. “The support from my husband and family has been irreplaceable,” she says. “I wouldn’t have been able to go on this journey without them.”