Real life: Miniature horses comfort people in need
They may only stand just over 2ft tall, but these miniature therapy horses have made a big impact on many people’s lives
With her family gathered around, all having been warned she had only a short time to live, Sheila, who was in her 90s, took comfort in her final minutes from an unusual quarter – an American miniature horse called Wish.
Just 27.5in tall, the horse walked calmly into Sheila’s room, gently lay her soft jet-black muzzle on the foot of her bed and slowly made her way up until her own head rested alongside Sheila’s.
‘Wish slowed her breathing down to be in sync with Sheila’s and a family member helped her stroke Wish, then their breathing gradually slowed down even more,’ explains Katy Smith, 57, who takes the miniature therapy horses she trains to visit care homes.
‘Not long afterwards
Sheila passed away with a smile on her face,’ she adds. ‘The family said thank you afterwards and told me it had helped them with the grieving process. It was an extremely emotional occasion.’
In our 28 November issue (Horses Helped Heal Her Broken Heart), we reported on how one poorly young girl was helped back to health by a horse. But it seems the soothing power of horses is now becoming much more widely understood – Wish is just one of a growing number of miniature therapy horses that are comforting people who are ill or have special care needs.
Wish was trained by Katy, whose passion for everything equine has been lifelong; she had her first ride at five years old and she qualified as a horse trainer at 18. But seven years ago her life changed forever, after breaking her back in two places when she had a bad accident during a show-jumping lesson and was thrown from her sister’s horse.
It took four months of treatment and rehabilitation for her to walk properly again, but the long-term damage to her spine meant that she was unable to return to her job as an events organiser for a retirement village. During that dark time, she found it was the love of her horses that helped her own recovery. ‘My mare Dara had a foal, Summer, two months before the accident. For me, Summer was a dream come true,’ she recalls. ‘I knew I had to get better – I had them to care for and feed so they inspired me to get out of bed in the morning.
‘I was warned riding wasn’t the best idea but I started riding Dara again shortly after I could walk properly again and while I was still wearing my back brace – that’s how much I trusted her,’ says
Katy, who has two grown-up
children aged 27 and 30.
After seeing the powerful effect the horses had on her own recovery, when her dad spent a period of time in a care home recovering from a fall, she felt the perfect way to say thank you to the staff and residents was to offer to take a pony in to visit them.
‘It was amazing to see the reactions from the 20 or so residents. Everyone had their five minutes each with the pony, they were stroking her and interacting with her and each other,’ she recalls fondly.
‘I remember one lady who had suffered a stroke and who couldn’t move blinked to let the staff know she wanted to hold a carrot. It was incredible.’ She was thrilled with the response but after seeing that some people were intimidated by how big the full-sized pony was, Katy started looking for smaller versions and discovered the American miniature horse online.
Katy, who’s from Northallerton, North Yorkshire, started with her first miniature horse – Mr P, a chestnut and white skewbald standing 31in high – in 2012 when he was three years old.
‘When I bought him, the important thing was to build his trust in me, I did a lot of groundwork with him, being his companion, I used to bring him into my ground-floor flat to see how he would cope with being indoors and it grew from there,’ she explains.
‘It was amazing to see the residents’ reactions on seeing the pony’
‘He loved all the attention and he thrived on it, I would take him to the nearby town Yarm, Cleveland, in a horsebox to desensitise him to different noises; we have been into a pub and a coffee shop for tea and cake – he’s partial to a bit of carrot cake!’
Katy now has five fully trained miniature horses that she takes to visit care homes and to others in need, such as events held for children with life-limiting conditions, and she is training three more, which takes around two years.
But not only do the horses offer comfort and joy to those who meet them, they can also trigger old memories. Katy explains, ‘We were visiting a care home in Derbyshire, and met a man called Stan, who was 88. The moment he saw Mr P, he reached out his arm to hold him and stroke him and Mr P rested his head in his lap.
‘He spoke about a man he remembered from his youth who would sell fruit and veg from a shire horse’s flat-bed cart. He could recall a lot of detail, and afterwards he smiled and said, “Thank you so much for bringing that memory back, something I haven’t thought of for a long time,”’ she adds.
While on another occasion, Katy had been warned that a gentleman, also called Stan, who was in his late 80s and had dementia might not be interested in meeting the horse as he could be quite argumentative and aggressive – but when he clapped eyes on Mr P, Katy sensed something very special.
‘I asked if Stan had been in the Cavalry,’ she explains. ‘He didn’t speak to me at all, but he spoke to Mr P all about his time in the Cavalry, and about his horse, and spoke so much about his life, things that people in the care home didn’t know about him. It was fascinating.’
Katy believes the reason the horses have such an effect on people are manifold, part of it is because an animal’s love is unconditional – they don’t ask for anything in return, although she notes the more you give them, the more they give back.
But Katy feels there’s an extra quality, too. ‘I say they bring people special magic – and smiles,’ she adds. And it seems she has a host of people who have benefited from them who’d agree with her.