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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 15, 1979)
wsfTf-M Graduate student Don Topliff helps Marty Love- lace-Chandler, 8, from his horse to his wheel chair. typing, and more Business Correspondence, Form Letters, Research Papers, Dissertations, Manuscripts, Theses, Transcripts and Mag netic Card Storage. We guarantee confidentiality and accuracy. Scientific, legal and medical terminology are our. specialities. / the office / 693 5262 \ 707 south texas avenue suite 221d college station, texas 77S40 > a little push and lots of love By CHERYL CESSNA Battalion Reporter After being told all your life that you can’t, it’s nice to find out you can. The Special Students’ Riding School, a joint project of the TAMU Horseman’s Association and the Texas Agriculture Extension Service, is in its second year of helping children with disabi lities realize their potential. Dr. Doug Householder, horse specialist for the Texas Agriculture Extension Service, said there are no entry fees, and the horseback riding clinic is open to all handicapped children. “We’ve made this available to all children in the A&M Consolidated School District and Bryan Independent School District, and we do have a few children from Hearne, but everybody has an opportunity to participate,” he said. “Anybody who wants to ride — even if they have to ride sidesaddle because they can’t spread their legs far enough apart. “Sometimes in those cases we try to get horses that are very thin through the barrel and we put a bareback pad on them that’s real thin, so there’s a minimum amount of leg spreading for those kids who really have a problem with that.” Householder said the clinic, which is being conducted at the Horse Research Center, had 26 students last year and 36 this year. The program’s sponsors are trying to fan the same fire in other parts of the state. “There are some states that have done more of this kind of thing than we have. For example, Michigan has been doing similar kinds of things since 1972. Last year we did our first one, and last year’s and this year’s are pilot studies for us to figure out how to conduct schools for hand icapped children, both mentally and physically handicapped children,” he said. He said experience gained from this clinic may be used to help start other programs. “Once we dry run it here and find out how to do it, then we can write up suggestions and guidelines for every county in the state — dis seminate it out to county extension agemts, other horse riding groups, other universities in the state—anybody who has horses and has an interest in kids. We can tell how the thing should be done and encourage them.” Householder said the children are divided into two age groups. “The 12 through 17-year-olds ride from 8 to 10 a.m., and the other kids ride from 10 to 12. Most of the severely-handicapped children are in the second group — the ones with cerebral palsy and bad physical problems.” And, he said, the second-year students are showing improvement. “We have a fairly high percentage of kids in this group who participated last year and we can see a big difference. They’re pretty sharp this year — they already know a lot of this stuff and they feel a lot more at home and a lot more comfortable and confident,” he said. Ricky Taylor, a sophomore in Animal Science and co-chairman of the project, said it’s impor tant not to treat the children as though they are handicapped. “The main thing is to treat them like you would anyone else. Challenge them — tell them, Til bet you can’t do that.’ A lot of people have pam pered them all their lives, and they’ve kind of lost interest. But if you tell them they can’t do some thing, they look at you and say, ‘Just watch me.’” Taylor said pushing limits is what the program is all about. “You have to be careful that everything is safe and not go beyond their limits, but you want to challenge them and push them to go beyond the limits that they knew they had. We try to give them a feeling of accomplishment out of the deal.” But, he said, the students will expand their own limits if given the chance. “They’ll surprise you. Last year we were ex pecting it to go real slow, but the next thing we knew we were having to pull obstacles and ev erything out of the woodwork, because they were just way ahead of us.” He said each student is given a T-shirt as a completion award and this year they may be presented to the students by a Houston Oiler football player. Sue Rogers, a teacher of Vocational Educa tion for the Handicapped at Stephen F. Austin in Bryan, said her students love the clinic. “They are so excited. It’s all they’ve talked about since they heard about it. Everybody wanted to come, but we had a problem getting the parents to cooperate. But this is great. In their classes they tell all the other students ab out it — what their horse's name is, what they learned to do.” She said they are already making plans for the future. “They want to do it all year, and not just these three Saturdays. They’re already planning on coming out again next year. I don’t think any body’s going to have any choice, because they know about it and they're going to be looking for it.” Angela Simmons, left, hands a horseshoe to James Florence, 11, during a relay race. Photos by Lee Roy Leschper
